Comments for sellectrealty.com http://sellectrealty.com/blog providing both traditional and alternative real estate choices for consumers Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:10:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 Comment on What is the trend for mortgage in 2009? by Marc Trachtenberg http://sellectrealty.com/blog/?p=11&cpage=1#comment-5 Marc Trachtenberg Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:52:37 +0000 http://sellectrealty.com/blog/?p=11#comment-5 Happy New Year Everyone- I hope you all are as excited to be in 2009. We finally feel that we have some positive news to carry us through the first couple quarters of '09. The Treasury has started buying MBS this week and plan to buy up to $500 billion by the end of the second quarter. This program is aimed at driving down the price of mortgages and making home loan more available. This is GREAT news for us. Rates should remain LOW for the first 2 quarters if not longer. To give a quick update on some things we have seen change with the new year: Conventional: • Couple guideline changes. The main thing we are seeing is 2nd homes will be limited to 90% LTV for Purchase and RT. • MI companies are no longer insuring 97% loans effective 2/1/09. FHA: • HUD has announced that any cash out LTV > 85% will now require 2 appraisals effective on all case numbers ordered after 1/1/09. • Max loan limits for 2009 have been set. It appears majority of Ga has gone to $320,850. You can access this by going to https://entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/hicostlook.cfm • Max LTV is now 96.50% It is a great time to finance a home!!! Dealing with the right lender will make the process much more enjoyable!!! Happy New Year Everyone-
I hope you all are as excited to be in 2009. We finally feel that we have some positive news to carry us through the first couple quarters of ‘09. The Treasury has started buying MBS this week and plan to buy up to $500 billion by the end of the second quarter. This program is aimed at driving down the price of mortgages and making home loan more available. This is GREAT news for us. Rates should remain LOW for the first 2 quarters if not longer.

To give a quick update on some things we have seen change with the new year:
Conventional:
• Couple guideline changes. The main thing we are seeing is 2nd homes will be limited to 90% LTV for Purchase and RT.
• MI companies are no longer insuring 97% loans effective 2/1/09.

FHA:
• HUD has announced that any cash out LTV > 85% will now require 2 appraisals effective on all case numbers ordered after 1/1/09.
• Max loan limits for 2009 have been set. It appears majority of Ga has gone to $320,850. You can access this by going to https://entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/hicostlook.cfm
• Max LTV is now 96.50%

It is a great time to finance a home!!! Dealing with the right lender will make the process much more enjoyable!!!

]]> Comment on What is the trend for mortgage in 2009? by Brian Stephens http://sellectrealty.com/blog/?p=11&cpage=1#comment-4 Brian Stephens Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:30:43 +0000 http://sellectrealty.com/blog/?p=11#comment-4 We are witnessing history. Mortgage rates are at their lowest levels in over 40 years! This is in large part due to the Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. Treasury purchasing Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) as part of the "bail out" plan approved late last year. We are speculating that the Fed and Treasury will purchase about $80 billion of MBS monthly until they reach their limit of $500 billion. This should lead to 30 year fixed rates hovering on either side of 5% for the next few months. There has never been a better time to finance a home in a generation, so don't wait: act now! We are witnessing history. Mortgage rates are at their lowest levels in over 40 years! This is in large part due to the Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. Treasury purchasing Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) as part of the “bail out” plan approved late last year. We are speculating that the Fed and Treasury will purchase about $80 billion of MBS monthly until they reach their limit of $500 billion. This should lead to 30 year fixed rates hovering on either side of 5% for the next few months. There has never been a better time to finance a home in a generation, so don’t wait: act now!

]]> Comment on Our Company by erik amick http://sellectrealty.com/blog/?p=9&cpage=1#comment-3 erik amick Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:44:57 +0000 http://sellectrealty.com/blog/?p=9#comment-3 We used Sellect Realty (Victor and Suzanne Higgins) to sell our house in 2008 in a terrible selling market. We used the flat fee program. I originally listed my house for free with a free listing company, but decided to use Sellect Realty once I needed services beyond the listing. I really don't know what else you would get with a full commission realtor other than maybe them hosting an open house for you. With the electronic lockbox, we got feedback from almost every realtor that came through our house automatically to our e-mail. That was helpful to know what was working and not working in the marketing of our house. One HUGE benefit you get with Sellect Realty over other flat fee listing companies is that they do all the price negotiations on your behalf, preparing counter-offers, etc and doing the paperwork and faxing for you. They also assist in the inspection negotiation, which other flat fee listers do not. In our case, we had a quick closing and the Higgins helped us negotiate a very reasonable cash payment for the buyers to handle the inspection repairs themselves. Further, Victor and Suzanne personally answered their phones 7 days per week and well into the evening, unlike other discount listers. I was overwhelmed by their quick response times to all my questions. When I wanted to make changes to my listings, they did that pronto as well. And all along they had a very cheerful and helpful attitude about everything. One time they even came out to our house while we were away because another realtor forgot to put the keys back in the lock box. The icing on the cake is that they also attended the closing. Again, I really don't see what more you would get with a full comission realtor. I HIGHLY recommend Sellect Realty and if I ever sell a house in Atlanta again, I will use them without a question. We used Sellect Realty (Victor and Suzanne Higgins) to sell our house in 2008 in a terrible selling market. We used the flat fee program. I originally listed my house for free with a free listing company, but decided to use Sellect Realty once I needed services beyond the listing.

I really don’t know what else you would get with a full commission realtor other than maybe them hosting an open house for you. With the electronic lockbox, we got feedback from almost every realtor that came through our house automatically to our e-mail. That was helpful to know what was working and not working in the marketing of our house. One HUGE benefit you get with Sellect Realty over other flat fee listing companies is that they do all the price negotiations on your behalf, preparing counter-offers, etc and doing the paperwork and faxing for you. They also assist in the inspection negotiation, which other flat fee listers do not. In our case, we had a quick closing and the Higgins helped us negotiate a very reasonable cash payment for the buyers to handle the inspection repairs themselves. Further, Victor and Suzanne personally answered their phones 7 days per week and well into the evening, unlike other discount listers. I was overwhelmed by their quick response times to all my questions. When I wanted to make changes to my listings, they did that pronto as well. And all along they had a very cheerful and helpful attitude about everything. One time they even came out to our house while we were away because another realtor forgot to put the keys back in the lock box.

The icing on the cake is that they also attended the closing. Again, I really don’t see what more you would get with a full comission realtor. I HIGHLY recommend Sellect Realty and if I ever sell a house in Atlanta again, I will use them without a question.

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