Check back soon at our website for a link to a great new tool you can subscribe to. Here’s the deal: you download the program to your cell phone, and then you can see all available MLS listings right on your phone!

This service will cost a little less than $5 a month, and should be worth every penny. Driving around on the weekend? You can search for current open houses near you - GPS technology lets the program know where you currently are and allows you to search within that zip code or within a specific radius. Come across a great place and want to know the price? Use the program and you don’t have to call the list agent and listen to a sales pitch.

Data that you want, when you want it, all in the convenience of a program on your cell phone. Try it out this summer! I tried a prototype and it works great.  

Are you a first time buyer? Have you not bought in a long time? Do you have questions about how you can save money in this buyer’s market? Well my goodness do we have something special for you.

Join us at Countrywide’s Peabody branch on 202 Newbury St. on Route 1 south on May 20th. I promise you won’t be disappointed. The program starts at 7pm and will run until 9 or so. You can reserve a seat by calling 978-536-1313. This free program is sure to be valuable to you if you are thinking about buying a home in the next 6-12 months or just want some questions answered.

What will be covered? How to buy foreclosures, negotiating tips in this market, determining how much to offer, how to buy with little or no money down, problems to avoid when buying, home inspection tips, and information for veterans on VA loans. If you have any questions, feel free to attend and pick our brains.

A real estate attorney, a member of the buyer broker hall of fame, and loan consultants with experience in home repair/rehab loans, credit repair, and government loans will all be presenting. Hope to see you there!

Home sales are way down, that much we know. Sales closing in March of 2008 were down almost a third from the same time frame a year earlier. How come? Without knowing all the facts, one would first point to the struggling economy. Recession fears are all over the news right now. Is that the problem? No. Boston’s economy continues to improve, and although there have been some layoffs in the financial services industry, job growth in our area remains steady. Popular sectors still hiring and growing in the Boston area are high tech and biotech firms. In fact, the economy has grown 3% in the first quarter.

So what’s the deal? Unfortunately, it’s the credit crisis. Lenders are continuing to restrict their loans. They are having a harder time finding money to lend to buyers, and if you don’t have at least 5% saved to put towards a down payment, you will find it very hard to get a loan. I have spoken to quite a few potential buyers who are not able to get preapproved, and in most cases it is because they are looking to buy with little to no money down. Until lenders can access money more readily, this trend is bound to continue.

The majority of owners with homes on the market right now will be looking to turn around and buy again as soon as their current home sells, but with fewer qualified buyers looking at their home, time on the market will not go down until this credit crisis eases.

If you are a buyer with less than a 5% down payment, there are alternatives out there. FHA loans are becoming increasingly popular and may be a good alternative to traditional lenders and brokers. If you are thinking about entering this buyer’s market, ask for help in obtaining preapproval for a loan. Many good agents know about current loan standards, and we at Buyer’s Choice are knowledgeable in this area and can point you to available resources.

I recently heard about an unfortunate situation on Boston’s north shore, in Manchester. You can find more about it at the site of WCVB tv. Here’s what happened: some unfortunate homeowners purchased a house that was most likely built on an old landfill. They tried to sell their house and potential buyers balked at the last minute. After learning why, the owners had their soil tested. Chemicals galore were lurking in their back yard. Lead, arsenic, mercury. Not exactly healthy. The worst part? Mom was weeks away from giving birth.

Who’s responsible? Surely the builders knew what type of land they were building on, right? Maybe they had no idea - could have just been fulfilling a contract. Surely the town knew the history of the land that was to be built upon, right? It turns out they did, and sent lent a letter to the builder ordering them to stop construction. No one followed up, the house was built, and the rest is history.

The family moved out right after learning about what was present in their yard, and hopefully they will raise a healthy baby. What about the person that sold them the house? If they had done their due diligence about the property, they would have found out this information.

Maybe, maybe not, but if the buyers had used an exclusive buyer’s agent, they would have avoided this unfortunate situation. I can’t express enough how important it is to have someone working on your behalf, not someone just trying to sell you a house. Most consumers are still not aware that they could hire someone, for essentially no money, that would work in their best interest. Something to think about if you plan on ever buying a house.

Shouldn’t we blame REALTORS® for this mess that we currently find ourselves in? A recent study asking consumers how they felt about real estate agents came to some interesting conclusions. When asked about REALTORS® in general, people were mostly wishy-washy - some were in favor, some were not, most were unsure how they felt. But when asked about their particular REALTOR®, about 80% of respondents stated they would work with their agent again. What gives? The majority of business for most agents comes from repeat clients, referrals, and word-of-mouth. Agents should have a long-term interest in the area in which they work, since a few unhappy clients could potentially put them out of business.

I’m sure some agents were only seeing $$$ signs over the past decade, hoping and helping their clients and customers buy properties they could not afford. This is not true for the vast majority of agents, though.

I will place some blame on lenders, especially the big players. Their major concern is writing as many mortgages as possible so they can turn around and sell them. Nothing wrong with that in our capitalist economy, but lenders failed to think long-term and have reaped the seeds of their sowing.

Some blame must also go to global capital providers (those around the world with the big bucks like governments, megabusinesses, sovereign wealth funds, etc.) because all they were looking for was juicy returns on investment - a portfolio of risky loans returns a lot more than T-bills or any other ’safe’ investment. The bottom line for them is greed, and they must be taken to task for it. Will that happen? Their investment losses are probably their only punishment.

The biggest amount of blame must be put on the rating agencies. These companies, like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, are responsible for assigning a level of risk to a product. Because so many rely on their rating and only buy/sell AAA rated products, the ratings agencies are ultimately culpable for this mess. Instead of rating subprime loans at a level they should have, like BBB (much riskier than AAA), they decided en masse to rate these loans AAA. After all, the agencies make the most money by rating products AAA (many companies have risk policies that prohibit them from owning lower-rated investments) so that others may comfortably buy and sell the AAA products on the open market.

The ratings agencies are not non-profits, so clearly it is in their best interest to rate highly, as they make more money that way. There should have been more transparency, guidelines, and oversight regarding these companies. Since we cannot change the past, we must make an effort to make sure that this happens in the near future.

How can you help? Write your congressperson expressing your displeasure of the ratings agencies and suggest that they have more government oversight, stricter guidelines as to what really qualifies as AAA, and more clarity in reporting how and why each product receives the rating it does. If this happens, maybe we can prevent another mess like the subprime one from occurring in the future.

Current statistics of homeowners show four types. Those that borrowed at subprime make up 9% of owners. Those who borrowed at prime make up 50%. FHA/VA mortgagees make up 6%, while the remaining 35% of owners own their homes free and clear. So what, right? The flip side of this picture is more telling. Foreclosure statistics show that owners who were approved for subprime loans - they may have paid no money down, did not have income verified, or did not have a sufficient credit score to qualify for a normal, prime loan, among other reasons - comprise 53% of current foreclosures. Prime borrowers make up 33% of this category, while FHA/VA borrowers account for 14% of foreclosures at the moment. Take a minute to let this sink in - one tenth of all homeowners are subprime owners, but they make up more than half of all foreclosures.

The first subprime loans were made in 2000, and none have been made since August of 2007. Roughly 1/5 of all borrowers who have subprime loans are currently late (in default) on their mortgage payments, as opposed to approximately 3% of prime borrowers. The fact that there are no subprime loans being originated right now is a good start, but we will be feeling the effects of this crisis for years. I will examine in my next post who really should be blamed and will try to provide some ways we can fix this problem. For the record, we at Buyer’s Choice Realty encourage all our clients to meet with a lawyer and their lender so they may endeavor to understand the terms of their loan and verify that they can meet their payments.