Agents Heaven - Real Estate Blog

Yahoo! Real Estate’s “How much house can I afford?” Calculator

The other day I told you about a basic, but very cool, mortgage calculator widget, that makes for a great addition to any real estate site. Today I’d like to bring to your attention another type of calculator, that may not come in the form of a widget for us webmasters to use, but it couldn’t be more important for home buyers, specifically first time home buyers.

Check out Yahoo! Real Estate’s “How much house can I afford?” Calculator. In addition to stupidly going with adjustable rate mortgages, the current surge in foreclosures is due to people not understanding how much house they can afford.

Folks today seem incapable of adding up their monthly bills (with high-ball estimates) and then comparing it with the low-ball estimate of what they make each month, and then determining from there, what they can afford. I don’t know why people don’t understand this, but the “how much house can I afford” calculator eliminates the excuses from those who are incapable of figuring out their budget.

Update: Bank of Green is sharing this calculator, along with a list of other mortgage calculators, with their readers.

Tags: mortgage calculator, how much house can I afford, first time home buyer, budget calculator, mortgages, real estate calculator, home buyer, real estate budget

How To Make Successful Low-Ball Offers In Buyers’ Markets

Whether or not you like the future of the real estate market, there is no debate over who currently holds the cards: the buyers.  With home prices projected to fall and more existing homes sitting on the market, buyers are justifiably beginning to wield their power.

The “lowball” offer isn’t exclusive to the buyers’ market, but it’s especially important in a buyers’ market and can lead to you saving a bundle.  MarketWatch’s Amy Hoak has written an article, detailing the “dos and dont’s” of low-balling and the potential outcomes of making these types of offers.

Amy discusses a case study, and then details the three major points of low-ball offering.  The main points follow, but you should read the entire article as she details each of these 3.

1. Learn how motivated the seller is to make a deal
2. Make your case with hard facts
3. Prepare for the possibility of rejection, or negotiation

Elizabeth Weintraub at About.com offers similar advice.

Tags: first time home buyer, make an offer, buyers market, real estate, home buyers, buyer’s market, low-ball offer, lowball offer, buyers’ market, home buyer, discount real estate, cheap real estate, real estate market, real estate offer

Can’t Get Rid of That Home? Try These Tried & True Home Selling Methods in This Buyer’s Market

As the current mortgage situation weighs on the overall outlook for the real estate market, it’s tough to say “it’s a buyer’s market”, as many people are concerned we’re not even close to the bottom yet, and things will get much worse before they get better. Others disagree.

The trouble is, it’s tough to know who’s right. Many of the “experts” are bloggers who’s existence depends on negative developments in the real estate market (evident by their very blog names), so can you really trust them? We’ve heard “experts” say that the “real estate bubble” was about to burst for years, and it never happened. Even now, we’re still in slowdown rather than a crash. Could it crash? Possibly, but we aren’t there yet. We still occasionally see positive numbers pop up in months where negatives were predicted, indicating a softer blow than some seem to be almost hoping for.

Home prices have definitely fallen, and seem set to fall further for some time. Some call it a buyer’s market, others call it the calm before the storm. Either way, the ball is certainly not in the court of the seller at this point, especially with the existing homes on the market piling up. If buyer’s have good credit and can get a loan, one could argue that they’ve got their pick of the litter.

Because of this, BankRate.com offers all you sellers some tips on moving that real estate. It should come as no secret that this one is becoming more common, and almost expected as buyers get more and more picky:

• Closing costs: What buyer wouldn’t welcome some help with those teeth-gritting closing costs (legal, title, filing fees, etc.) that, according to a Freddy Mac estimate, typically run between 2 percent to 7 percent of the loan amount?

Do read the rest, but that one is far and away a buyer favorite incentive.

Tags: buyer’s market, homes for sale, FSBO, selling my home, real estate for sale, selling homes, real estate incentives, realtor incentives, selling real estate, selling your home, buyer incentives

Real Estate Buying & Selling Tips Galore

Cruising around the web today I ran across two sites offering you tips on various aspects of buying and selling real estate.

A blog entitled Oppertunity Land (not my spelling!) has a posted a list of excellent tips for home buyers. An interesting read, and the author promises to add to the list in the future. You should definitely check out all the tips offered, which you would use throughout the buying process, but the first one stands out to me, as it’s something I find myself telling people all of the time:

1) Know Your Budget Sounds obvious but there are buyers out there today who have no idea how much it is likely to cost them to buy a home, or what they can afford. Work out what you have coming in, and what you can afford to spend each month including all the household bills.

Seriously, it’s disturbing how many people simply don’t get what they can and can’t afford, and that’s exactly why we’re facing the current mortgage crisis. Whether it’s a home or supersizing your fast food - 1. Do you need it? 2. Can you really afford it? A Big Mac might not sound like much, but it adds up… no self made rich person will tell you they got their with stupid spending habits.

The bottom line is that people need to take responsibility and ask themselves “can I afford this?”, and when you screw up, don’t ask the government to bail you out… because now you’re hurting the rest of us! If you find yourself in trouble, you’d be better off checking out these tips on avoiding foreclosure.

The OC Coastal Real Estate Blog is also offering up a list of 10 tips relating to real estate buying, selling, and investing. It appears they had some formatting issues, as the post isn’t broken down in to paragraphs, but it’s worth a read because there are a few nuggets you could take away from it.

Tags: home buying tips, real estate tips, first time home buyer, home selling tips, home buyer tips, first time home buyer tips, home for sale tips