Ken Crotts | Windermere RE/Maple Valley | (206) 999-7998 23104 SE 40th Ct., Sammamish, WA Sammamish Short Sale – Priced for a quick sale on this 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 3,020 square foot, den and bonus room home! 4BR/2+1BA Single Family House offered at $562,000 Year Built 1987 Sq Footage 3,020 Bedrooms 4 Bathrooms 2 full, 1 partial Floors 2 Parking 3 Car garage Lot Size .464 acres HOA/Maint $30 per month DESCRIPTION Kempton Downs Approved short sale ready to close! Beautiful Connor Resale in Kempton Downs on a large shy 1/2 acre lot and culdesac. 5 minutes to freeways and shopping. Filled with solid wood millwork and doors, expansive hardwood floors, and beautiful wood framed windows. A flexable upstair layout provides 3 bedrooms, a bonus room Master suite and 4th bedroom/master sitting room. A fantastic price, home and location! see additional photos below PROPERTY FEATURES - Central heat - Fireplace - High/Vaulted ceiling - Walk-in closet - Hardwood floor - Family room - Living room - Bonus/Rec room - Office/Den - Dining room - Breakfast nook - Dishwasher - Stove/Oven - Microwave - Dryer - Laundry area – inside - Balcony, Deck, or Patio - Yard ADDITIONAL PHOTOS Photo 1 Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4 Contact info: Ken Crotts Windermere RE/Maple Valley (206) 999-7998 For sale by agent/broker Equal Opportunity Housing Posted: Jun 14, 2010, 6:11pm PDT

]]> http://kingcountyhomesolutions.com/?feed=rss2&p=286 0 http://kingcountyhomesolutions.com/?p=278 http://kingcountyhomesolutions.com/?p=278#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:55:04 +0000 admin http://kingcountyhomesolutions.com/?p=278 Negotiating short sales daily is like sword fighting for a living. You have allot invested in winning and allot to lose if you don’t. This is especially true when you want to stop foreclosure.  After months of grinding out negotiations with lenders on short sales something interesting begins to happen. You recognize the party on the other end of the transaction using the same tactics more than one time and you realise this is just a game for them. Yes the lenders have multiple other parties to contend with like mortgage insurance companies, investors, and others but to them it is all the same. It’s not their money.

You also gain a certain confidence and ultimately an objective detachment from the tactic of the moment and focus on the end game. By objective detachment I mean we take the emotion out of the negotiation on our side of the equation and thereby remove those levers and buttons the opposing negotiator likes to use to get a better deal. It’s like watching an emotional quarterback yelling, throwing their helmet and stomping around the football field versus the detached quarterback who methodically picks apart the competition with cool precision.

This is exactly why negotiating a loan modification or short sale is so difficult for homeowners and most agents. Until you have been in enough battles to develop the skill and perspective, the outcome of your efforts is likely to be less than optimum.  As a Certified Short Sale Negotiator and Certified Negotiation Expert we have the tools of an excellent education at our disposal. As a battle tested short sale specialist I have the tempered perspective of having completed numerous negotiations successfully.

To stop foreclosure on your home the stakes are high. Miss and you lose your home and credit. Make the right call and you can buy time to begin recovering and lessen the impact and speed recovery.

Ken Crotts

Certified Short Sale Specialist, Certified Negotiaiton Expert, Certified Short Sale Negotiator

Best of all they portend to give you the monthly fluctuations in graph form and will even email you letting you know how much your home has gone up or down in the last 30 days. Pretty miraculous wouldn’t you say? The last email I recall from Zillow said my house went up $26,ooo over the previous 30 days. Cool! I felt like celebrating. When it actually comes to determining what the actual market value of your home is are you willing to leave it to a web site to make the determination? If so, which site? Zillow.com, Cyberhomes.com, and EAppraisal.com all give you automated valuations on their sites.

I recently had a customer who was obsessed with Zillow. With every fluctuation I heard about Zillow this and Zillow that. Just for kicks I put the address into the 3 sites to see what values came up. Zillow came in at $588,500. Cyberhomes came in at $546,062. EAppraisal came in at $487,226, and last but not least the county’s 2010 assessment is $394,000. Of the valuation web sites there is a $101,276 spread which is much more than a statistical insignificance. I tried this for a few other addresses and got similar results.

For home buyers and homeowners these are fun and interesting sites to visit. Check out your neighbors, and friends or whomever. When you really need to get down to a real valuation there’s no substitute for the opinion of an experienced Realtor who knows your neighborhood.

Ken Crotts, Managing Broker, Windermere Real Estate

Certified Negotiation Expert

Under Water Homeowner

This is a subject I have been talking to my clients about allot over the past two years. If you owe more than your house is worth, how long will it take for you to get back to zero? By zero I mean your house is worth what you owe. First American CoreLogic asked the question: When will these under water homes start to float?

The company estimates that the typical underwater homeowner will not begin to surface until late 2015 to early 2016. It’s an even longer stretch for some of the most depressed markets, where First American CoreLogic says the typical borrower in negative equity may not experience positive equity until 2020 or later. This is a revealing report since it highlights one of the biggest questions that many distressed homeowners have to answer, and one of the biggest challenges lenders have to deal with when assessing short sale and loan modifications.

The most common solutions for homeowners fall in to 3 categories.

If a homeowner can get a loan modification most advisers say “get it”. I don’t always agree with that because of the negative equity factor in the equation. In fact I built a calculator in excel to take into account many of the factors that are beyond simple pondering. The calculator takes into account a multitude of factors affecting the loan modification vs short sale outcome. The results are surprising when you compare foreclosure, short sale, and loan modification side by side. I put it online so others can use it to calculate their financial positions going forward for themselves.

As homeowners are getting more savvy many are electing to short sale their properties rather than to hang on to a property that will not see an equity position for 5 to 10 years. With tax relief and pressure on lenders not to pursue deficiencies it is a strategic decision that allows the homeowner to fully recover in a couple of years.

Among the new housing initiativesannounced by the administration Friday was assistance for borrowers with negative equity. In order to deter these homeowners from strategically defaulting, the Treasury will begin requiring servicers to consider principal write-downs as part of their Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) evaluations for borrowers whose loan balance is more than 115 percent of the property’s current value. The plan also includes a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) refinancing program for negative equity mortgages.

Reducing a homeowner’s overall debt to 31% of their monthly income so that modified payments are within their budgets requires cooperation from both the first and second lien holders.

In a letter to the CEOs of Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, Frank wrote, “Many homeowners are eager to save their homes despite being ‘underwater,’ but find that lenders and servicers are unable or unwilling to make necessary modifications. These homeowners are increasingly forced to short sale their homes or walk away and let the first lien holder foreclose due to the lack of cooperation.  In many cases where the homeowner and the first lien holder are in alignment with both benefiting from a modification, the junior lien holder holds veto power over the agreement and is often exercising their right to cast the deciding vote for no deal. Frank wrote. “According to investors, administration officials, and other experts I have consulted…the problem of second-lien mortgages standing in the way of successful principal reduction modifications has reached a critical stage and requires immediate attention from your institutions.”

Frank argues that most of these second liens have “no real economic value,” since the first liens are well underwater, and the prospect for any real return on the seconds is “negligible.”

But he notes, “Because accounting rules allow holders of these seconds to carry the loans at artificially high values, many refuse to acknowledge the losses and write down the loans, which would allow willing first lien holders to reduce principal and keep borrowers in their homes.” So in the end the homeowner loses their home over an accounting strategy that allows the second lienholder to keep their book values artificially high.

Frank is demanding a quick response from the four banks in his line of sight. “I will be calling you within the week to discuss what your institutions plan to do to remove the second liens you own or control as impediments to principal reduction modifications,” he said in the letter.

“To save homes on a large scale, we must move past temporary modifications in interest rates or terms and focus on permanent principal reductions that result in truly sustainable mortgages,” Frank wrote. “There is no more important priority for me in our efforts to restore stability to our mortgage market.”

The administration has incorporated a second lien component into its Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which is slated to begin within the next few weeks. It includes a payment schedule for extinguishing second mortgages and the automatic modification of a second lien when a first lien is modified. Bank of America signed on to the program in January, but none of the other major servicers have agreed to participate.

Second liens can also prove to be an obstacle for short sales, the focal point of the administration’s Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program set to take effect April 5. Although the first lien holder may agree to the sale of a home for less than the outstanding mortgage balance in order to circumvent a foreclosure, if there is also a second lien on the property, the sale can fall through if the junior lien holder will not relinquish their claim.

Ken Crotts

Certified Negotiation Expert

This is the world of real estate. If you are looking to hire a full service agent are you going to be flying stand by or first class? There’s allot on the line too. Your house is a big part of your financial and personal life so messing up here can have significant consequences. Full service agents all charge commission rates that fall within a narrow negotiated range. So the questions is “why do so many people fly coach when first class is the same price?”.

It appears that many homeowners give less consideration to whom they choose to represent them in the largest financial transaction of their lives than they do which isle their seat is in for their next vacation flight. It is common to hear a homeowner refer to a neighbor who has a license, or a friends kid who just got into the business and their desire to help them out. In the current market where real estate agents are really struggling to just survive the stakes are even higher. The old saying is “desperate times call for desperate measures”. Why would a normally thoughtful, intelligent homeowner higher an agent who’s carear has one foot in the grave? With mounting personal and financial pressures on the agent their objectivity may become compromised, so why take the chance?

Here’s why. They are compassionate and caring souls who want to help someone they know and they are unaware of the real challenges and jeopardy that a mishandled real estate transaction can bring. After years of increasing prices and easy transactions the reality of this market has yet to sink in. Sellers cannot afford to lose a buyer, or their equity, to simple but costly mistakes that inexperience can cause. As our economy moves into recovery and the real estate market gets back onto firmer footing in the coming years we may get back to the point where selling a home is as simple as booking an airline flight like in years past. For the next few years homeowners will need to be a bit more discerning in their selection of agents in order to protect themselves and their homes equity in order to have the favorable experiences that they desire.

Ken Crotts, Broker, Certified Negitation Expert, Certified Short Sale Specialist