AllAboutCary.com

Today, I got a call from an associate of mine who is having a problem with a loan officer that her client wanted to use. The client had found her loan officer on the Internet somewhere, and the loan officer was really unknown to both my associate and her client. Now, there is NOTHING wrong with finding a loan officer or a REALTOR® that way. Just make sure that you get a good one! Ideally, either YOU should know the loan officer, or I should know the loan officer. A good one would be one who has access to a great variety of programs, so he or she is placing you into a program that is tailor made for your situation, instead of trying to shoehorn you into a loan that merely works for the loan officer!

Some loan officers are better than others. A Mortgage Banker has access to programs from the bank or mortgage company that he or she works with. A Mortgage Broker has access to a variety of programs from a bunch of different lenders (”investors”) who have different programs with different qualifying criteria and different rates and different types of documentation required. And, to confuse things further, a loan officer can be both a Mortgage Banker and a Mortgage Broker. And a good Mortgage Broker has an excellent understanding of all of the common types of loans, along with a good understanding of most of the less common loans, along with the ability to find out about loans that may be WAY off the beaten path! Another “must” is a loan officer with a good rapport with the underwriter that he or she uses, along with a good rapport with an appraiser. A good rapport with these persons will NOT get you the ability to commit loan fraud, but it WILL allow you to get straight answers to some of the weird questions that sometimes (oftentimes?) come up!

As an aside, your bank or credit union that you have an ongoing relationship with might be a good place to start! If you have a banking relationship with them, and it is a good one (i.e. you do not bounce checks, and you have more than $1.50 in your checking account) then it has been my experience that they want to help you and make things work. Your Mileage May Vary, depending on your bank, though!

If you are doing a relatively standard loan, on a relatively standard property, and you are a relatively standard person (you have a job, you are not self-employed) then most loan officers can do an acceptable job. The trouble is when weird things happen. When my associate called me, she was dealing with some goofy loan officer in another state, who had an underwriter say that they were going to have to consider a stick-built property as a doublewide manufactured home, because (as far as I can figure) the tax records mention that there used to be a doublewide there. A loan officer who was worth his or her salt would NOT allow this to stay that way!

So, again, make sure that either YOU know the loan officer, or I know the loan officer! Save me some pulled out hair!

Wherever I go these days, I see Cary Mayor Ernie McAlister. I was showing a client the really neat Carolina Preserve retirement community the other day, and His Honor was addressing the residents about the state of improvements in that area of the Town.

We snuck out the back door of the sales center, but only because we had some homes to see and a tight time line! That is a very pretty community, near Amberly in Cary, and looked at the models. Now all my buyers need to do is sell their home in Florida, and presto! One new Cary resident!

And one of the reasons that each new resident becomes a HAPPY Cary resident is due to the quality of this area in so many different ways. And Mayor McAlister is one of the ways that this happens! It surprised me to find out that he is stalking me, though. Or maybe I am stalking him. Or maybe we both travel in the same circles. In any case, I saw him again tonight. He briefly addressed the Western Wake Republican Club at their monthly meeting at Bentley’s American Grill. He was not the featured speaker, Jack Hawke was, but Ernie had some interesting things to say. And he is sticking to that diet - no adult beverages for him, which can be quite tempting at Bentley’s! And I have his word that he is working on making Cary ever BETTER than it is now! (Not that that will be easy - to improve upon something already so good, but heck, he is trying hard!)

A REALTOR® almost always wants to take a listing. In fact, there is an old saw in the real estate business that says, “If you list, you last.” I want to take listings. It always put a smile on my face to help some nice person or family sell their home. Heck, it even makes me feel good to help a bank sell a foreclosed home.

Unfortunately, the truth is that some listings are more trouble than others! I have a client who is about to list a home that is going to be a showplace. Unfortunately, it is anything BUT a showplace now! He used to work down here as an engineer, and got transferred to Maryland when his company was bought. The trouble was that he bought a home that needed some work. It still does! In fact, he is halfway there to refurbishing it - the cabinets are there, the tile is installed, a bar has been built, the jacuzzi tub is there, but… But it is only halfway done! And we are going to sell it as-is. My client is working hard at his REAL job, and has decided to make a sacrifice to clear the agenda, so he can get on with his life.

This is going to take a SPECIAL buyer! I am going to post some pictures as soon as we get the contract inked. This will be the way for all of the folks who watch the “Flip This House” show to come up to the table and see if they REALLY want to do it or not! This will be a showplace - and a profitable one - when it is done. Right now, it just needs a little “TLC,” as we say in REALTORspeak!

You have undoubtedly heard about the recent “crisis” in sub-prime lending. I think, like many areas that the mass media reports on, it has been sensationalized to the point of absurdity. I want to stand athwart of this and put some perspective on this issue. Yes, there are some problems. Yes, there are some unethical loan officers who have put people into loans that they could not afford. There is an article in the News and Observer today about this, in fact. There are examples given of people who have gotten into bad loans and have had trouble with foreclosure.

Here is the real deal about “sub-prime” loans: There is a reason that people with bad credit scores, who cannot get conforming mortgage loans, are higher risk borrowers that most. It is this simple: They have not paid their bills. Does this mean that they are evil people? No. Many people have low credit scores through no real reprehensible fault. They had a divorce, and the ex ran up bills and walked away from them. They were stuck with crazy medical bills due to a health problem of a family member. They were young and stupid, and did not realize the impact of having a low credit score. (If you did not do anything stupid when you were a young adult, I admire you. I did plenty!) They did not budget, and accidentally got in over their heads with unwise running up of credit cards. Sub-prime loans give these folks with low credit scores a second chance to own a home and collaterally to rebuild their credit score. The premise of sub-prime loans is that the borrower could get into the home, pay their mortgage on time for a year or two, and thereby bring their credit score up to the point where they could refinance into a conforming (and thus lower interest rate) loan. These loans are a GREAT opportunity for these people to get a second chance, and thus they serve a valuable purpose.

The problem is that sub-prime lenders did not know how to separate the sheep (the people we described above) from the goats (the folks that are really just deadbeats, and who shall perpetually remain so.) Some of them also got caught up in stupid business decisions that ignored risk, and are now paying the price. Due to the increased risk of the borrowers, particularly of the “deadbeat” borrowers, there are now more foreclosures. This is anything but an “epidemic.” Most sub-prime borrowers are paying as agreed, or something close to it, and are not in any danger of losing their homes. A very good discussion of this is whole scenario is found in one of Roger Schlesinger’s recent columns.

Unfortunately, ever ready to stick their nose into private business arrangements, several of our legislators have availed themselves of the typical government impulse to DO SOMETHING. They have filed bills that will make it harder for banks to foreclose on real property. But, instead of flying off the handle to pass new legislation, it would seem to me to be more productive to look at foreclosure. Here it is in a nutshell: If you pay your mortgage, the lender cannot foreclose. If you get behind, CALL YOUR LENDER, who will much rather negotiate a work-out or a loan modification (repayment plan) than take back your property. It costs the lender a great deal to foreclose. Those who get foreclosed upon are ones in unwinnable situations, who cannot or will not pay their bills for one reason or another, or who WILL NOT ANSWER THE PHONE when the lender calls! If these people would talk to their lender, and TELL THEM THE TRUTH, they can almost certainly work something out so they can stay in their home. For the unwinnable situations, there are other options: sell the home, do a short sale, or give the lender a deed in lieu of foreclosure. I will write about these at some point as well.

In an entirely separate category, but still related, is the fact that there has been some loan fraud uncovered as people look more closely at non-performing loans. I think that we can all agree that, in a case of intentional loan fraud, whoever is responsible, especially if it is a loan officer or other real estate professional, ought to bear the brunt of criminal prosecution. The borrower who has been hurt in these cases ought to be made whole. There is another bill that has been filed that purports to illegalize loan fraud. News flash! This is already illegal! The statute of Obtaining Property by False Pretenses, which is always a felony, and which can apply to any sort of fraud, including this, has roots in English common law, and has been codified into North Carolina statute law since 1811. I don’t know that this new statute will affect anything much, except that it will be good for political grandstanding for certain legislators. If they were to add something like a tarring and feathering for loan officers, appraisers, real estate professionals or borrowers who engage in loan fraud, I would be all for it, but a careful reading of the bill provides that it does nothing of the sort.

According to the US Census Bureau, our MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) grew 25% in population from April Fools Day, 2000 to July 1, 2006. (From 797,025 to 994,551.) This includes just Wake, Johnston, and Franklin Counties. The Durham MSA (Durham, Orange, Chatham, and Person Counties) grew, too, but only a comparatively anemic 9.6% during the same period, from 423,800 to 464,389. I have lived, worked, and sold homes in both MSAs, and trust me, I know why there is a difference! (For all the details, go to the US Census Press Release.)

What does this mean? It means that we have a BUNCH of new neighbors! Be nice to them, Triangle residents! Chances are you moved here from somewhere else, too!

Something that is not that recent, but not that old, either, are last August’s rankings from Expansion Management Magazine. The Raleigh-Cary area is a 5-Star Business Opportunity Metro, the Number 3 Metro Area Overall, the number 9 Metro Area for Knowledge Workers.

For a good list of our area’s many accolades, go to NCSU’s Entrepreneurship Initiative site.

We came across an uninvited visitor on the porch on one of our properties! Luckily, I know possum psychology, and was able to talk the possum into the bucket without having to do any more than nudging him (or her? I didn’t check) into the bucket. He or she was then relocated to a nearby area that is a veritable possum paradise, with lots of bugs and stuff for a possum to eat.

No possums were hurt in the making of this photograph! If you really want to know about them, possumrescue.com has a very informative site about the Virginia Opossum.

We just helped a very nice couple move into their first home. I felt wonderful that they got into it - after a few missteps, we finally found them the home of their dreams. These were not missteps on their part - other than unlucky timing! But they did a few things JUST RIGHT! The first part was working with Big Daddy. The second was working with intrepid loan officer Amelia Rose with Guaranteed Rate. (Actually, the first good move was finding Amelia. She helped them find me!)

These folks had the WORST luck. We found a home that they really liked, and we put an offer in on it. The listing REALTOR® had neglected to note that the seller had accepted an offer on it already. The second home had been on the market for something like 90 days (long for this market) and it had several offers put in the same day that we put ours in. The other offer was for the same amount, but it was a cash deal. (I always hope for the millionaire with the briefcase full of money to walk into the office when I am on phone duty. It rarely seems to happen that way, but it DOES happen! Even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while!) The third home had been on the market for a YEAR and was taken off the market, to be rented out, the VERY SAME DAY that we went to schedule a showing! We were beginning to wonder what was going on!

The home they ended up with was owned by a Major in the United States Marine Corps. It was ship-shape, and looked as if an inspection had just occurred. Not a speck of dust or an errant blade of grass was to be found! We closed on it at the end of March, and the wonderful buyer clients of mine showed up at the closing with champagne for me and Amelia!

I mention these folks because we got a burst of windy weather on Monday. They emailed me the following photo of their newly purchased yard with their newly purchased tree, unfortunately fallen on their newly purchased grass in their newly purchased yard, and knocking over part of their newly purchased fence! It is a good thing that they have newly purchased homeowner’s insurance!

Fortunately, nobody was hurt. It fell in the only direction that it could fall and not hit anything more expensive than the back of their neighbor’s shed. Which, I suspect, will be newly purchased by their insurance company!

OK, show your age! Who had the tune that that line goes with come into you head when you saw that headline?

Do you need a local job to move here? Well, so do all of your neighbors. Get in line. Seriously, we all need a job. OK, actually, most of us do. Unless you have a briefcase full of cash, it is MUCH easier to get a mortgage loan when you have income! In fact, with this brouhaha about subprime lending in the papers, that is about the only way to get a mortgage loan. In fact, if you did not have a job, you should have come down here a month ago, before all the lenders tightened up so much on underwriting! This has affected even A-credit borrowers - the best credit risks out there. As the saying goes, “This, too, shall pass.” But it is darn inconvenient for some folks! Don’t worry about it, though - where there is a will, there is a way. Most of the time, anyway. But if you have a really low credit score, be prepared to not get a 100% loan, and to provide more documentation than was usual in the past.

Here are some links to employers in and around the Raleigh and Cary area to get you started:

Raleigh News and Observer
Triangle Help Wanted
Research Triangle Park Jobs
Town of Apex
Town of Holly Springs
Town of Cary
City of Raleigh
State of North Carolina
Wake County
WakeMed
Rex Hospital
Cary Chamber of Commerce Job Listings
Raleigh Craigslist Jobs
SAS Institute
Monster.com
NCSU
Wikipedia Cary Major Employers
Capitol Broadcasting
Employment Guide
Job Finder

More to come!

Yes, we did it again. Money Magazine released their Best Places to Live in the USA. As usual, we are right in there. We are number five. Take a look and see why!

People sometimes ask me “Why should I live in Cary?” There are hundreds of little things that add up to us being a great community. Unfortunately, we are not like some places, where a single monument, idea, building, or historical event define a town. We have more than that, here in the Heart of the Triangle.

We have nice folks, a good economy, clean and safe streets, reasonably priced homes, good shopping, and a plethora of different kinds of restaurants. We are close to the NHL hockey Carolina Hurricanes and both the AAA Durham Bulls and the AA Carolina Mudcats baseball. We have lots of soccer, with the SAS Soccer Park right here in town, but I am too old to know anything about soccer, as I did not grow up with it! We have college sports - NC State’s Carter-Finley Stadium, home of Wolfpack Football, is right next to the RBC Center, home of Wolfpack Basketball, and is about a mile outside of Cary’s city limits. There are parks and ponds and greenways and swimming pools. (Though most are private HOA or swim club pools instead of the public pools that are common elsewhere.)

Though we have no college of our own, we have nearby North Carolina State University (”State”) in Raleigh, along with Meredith College, Peace College, Shaw University, Saint Augustine’s College, and Wake Technical Community College. In Durham, we have Duke University, North Carolina Central University, and Durham Technical Community College. In Chapel Hill, we have The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC or “Carolina.”) We also have satellite campuses for Strayer University in Morrisville, University of Phoenix in Raleigh, and Mount Olive College (my alma mater), along with Campbell University, Pfeiffer University, and North Carolina Wesleyan College in Durham.

We have concert venues, including the Koka Booth Amphitheater in Regency Park in Cary, and we are close to concerts at the RBC Center and Walnut Creek Amphitheater in Raleigh. The NC State Fairgrounds, about a mile from the Cary town limits, feature a variety of shows and (of course) the North Carolina State Fair each October.

How do I love, thee, Cary? Let me count the ways! Seriously, this just scratches the surface of Cary and its environs. More to come when I feel moved my the spirit to write more!

The fine folks at Morgan Quitno have done their work once more, rating Cary, NC as the 8th safest city in the United States, and the 3rd safest city with between 100,000 to 499,999 residents.

As those of you who know me know, I used to be a policeman. I have several friends who work with Cary PD who I used to work with when we were Durham Police officers. (And no, I left their employ well before the Duke Lacrosse case occurred, thank you very much! But ask me, and I will tell you all about it - I still have many friends in Durham’s law enforcement community. And, no, Mike Nifong is not one of them. He is the guy whose office is so lax in prosecuting normal felons that do not make headlines that a guy who pointed two guns at me and two other officers, and who I had to shoot in the line of duty, got off with a plea bargain to 36 months of probation. This was for a plea down from many more serious charges to merely one count of Assault With a Deadly Weapon on a Law Enforcement Officer and Possession of a Firearm by a Felon. Thanks, Mike.)

In any case, I remember a conversation with a friend of mine on the Cary Police Department.

He had worked the overnight shift the night before, and when I was talking to him before he went to work, told me that he hoped that he would get a call that night. I asked him what he was talking about. He said that, though other officers had gotten calls the night before, he had not. I rapidly reminded him about the last time we had a similar conversation when we both worked in Durham, and about how one night he had 42 calls in a 12 hour shift, and I had handled 38. What a difference there is from one side of the Wake/Durham County line to the other! Durham is not listed as one of the 25 worst communities, and I am too cheap to buy the online report to see where they stand. However, we in Cary and other Western Wake communities can be proud of our community, our residents, and the outstanding job that our police departments and the Wake County Sheriff’s Department do in seeing to it that these crime rate numbers stay where they are: very low.