AllAboutCary.com

Here is a message from my friend and mortgage guru, Larry Charns, about the recent upheaval in the mortgage industry:

As you may already know, the lending industry has recently been turned upside down.  During the last six months we have experienced over 50 lenders either closing up shop or greatly reducing their offerings.  The most recent of which were American Home Mortgage, Home Banc, Saxon, and National City (home equity dept) .

The trickle down affect to the rest of the industry has led to greatly reduced product offerings, and in some cases,  increased interest rates for specific programs.  The adjustments affected primarily the sub-prime., reduced documentation (stated, no ratio, no doc) and jumbo loans.

An additional adverse affect with this turmoil has been unfunded loans.  There have been many buyers and sellers sitting at closing tables waiting for funding.  Unfortunately, in some cases, their funds did not arrive.  You can only imagine the confusion and frustration that occurred!

I would like to assure you that Stockton Turner Mortgage Bankers is still offering all product lines and closing our loans on time.  Stockton Turner is a mortgage lender and broker.  We have over 100 branches nationwide.  We process, close, and fund most of our loans internally.  For the product types that we can’t close internally, we  have the ability to broker to over 250 lenders.

We have programs for conventional, FHA, VA, Jumbo, first time buyers, reduced documentation, investment, and commercial loans. Our interest rates are considered one of the most aggressive in the industry.  And our service is second to none.

Mortgage industry changes do affect your business.  Consistency and reliability are paramount.  I have over 15 years of real estate and lending experience.  I’ve walked in your shoes, and I am fully aware of the challenges you experience on a daily basis.  Your livelihood is linked to the consistency and stability of your mortgage lender.

Please feel free to call me for additional information.  I can assure you that you will not be disappointed.

Best Regards

Larry Charns
Branch Manager
Stockton Turner Mortgage Bankers
4030 Wake Forest Road    Suite 300
Raleigh, North Carolina  27609
Office:  919-719-7202
Toll Free:  866-535-1328
Fax:  888-355-8009
Cell:  919-604-8529
Web Site:  www.larrycharns.com

Unbeknownst to me, the National Park Service has had Smokey The Bear hard at work all over Raleigh. (Unless Smokey has an assistant these days. Maybe Yogi and Boo-Boo are helping out. Who knows…)  Smokey has been identifying all of the historic places in Raleigh, and you can see them all here. How they could have left the Char Grill off of the list is beyond me, but it it an interesting list. I found this while I was looking for information on Raleigh’s former streetcar system. An article about this and other former streetcar systems can be found here. An informative article about the former streetcar system in the News and observer can be found here. Of course, they have a liberal political slant to the issue of streetcars, as they do with almost everything else, but it is interesting reading about Raleigh’s past.

We know that we can sell homes around here - it is supply and demand. We have a great number of people who want to move here, so it is certainly easier to sell a home here than many places in the world. Forbes Magazine has gone one step further: They say that we are the BEST place in the US to sell a home! (Full Article Text) (MSN Real Estate Version)

Of course, it can still be a nightmare to sell without professional help! Pricing, marketing, and staging the home are not as easy as you might think. Luckily, we are experts in this subject, so you are in good hands!

I have a client - a couple of them actually, a very nice newly married couple from New York. They thought that they may wish to move to this wonderful area, and did what many others do. They made a recon trip in January, and fell in love with the area. (I did, too - in 1983 - and the area has only gotten better since them - so I don’t blame them!) I showed them around, and they decided that they wanted to grab a piece of the wonderful lifestyle that we have here, and we found them a home.

My clients own a co-op, up in New York (right outside of New York City.) Now, for those who are not from New York, a co-op is a form of ownership where each member owns a share of the building. I learned about it in real estate school, and there might have been a question about it on the state exam, but we don’t have them around here. And I cannot describe just how glad I am of that! Once they got the co-op under contract, they came down and we got to the hard work of finding a home. We saw a bunch, and we selected a beautiful North Raleigh home on a hill, and put in an offer. After a few rounds of astute negotiation on my and their part, we got under contract. Since their co-op was under contract, then all it was is a matter of scheduling our end and leaving in an appropriate buffer in case the closing got postponed a day or two, right? After all, that is what we normally do.

Unfortunately, I have had to learn how wrong I was! Apparently, selling a co-op in New York involves coordination of manpower and resources to rival General George Patton’s efforts to relieve the 101st Airborne at Bastogne during World War Two. First, the co-op has to be listed and put under contract. Then, the hard part begins. Apparently, the co-ops have an almost absolute veto power over the prospective buyers, and must approve them before the sale can occur. And apparently, they can be cavalier about the procedures used to do this, and the timing of the interviews with the co-op board and all that. Their inaction and arbitrary delaying of this procedure has delayed the closing of my client’s co-op by over a month, and when I talked to the attorney representing him, she said that this is par for the course of selling a co-op up there.

Luckily, we FINALLY have a closing date for them, so that we could set a closing date down here. Apparently, the co-op boards in New York have created this crazy atmosphere where they do whatever they want to do, and have not been accountable to anyone. Luckily, there is prospective legislation to change this on the books, that the co-ops are fighting tooth and nail. The craziest part is that the closing up there will be attended by an attorney for the seller, and attorney for the buyer, an attorney for the co-op (who in this case is a jerk and has made the process even more trying than it normally would be) and an attorney for the bank who is providing the loan for the new purchase. Sounds like a goat rodeo to me.

All I can say is that I thank God that this is almost done, and I can get back to normal real estate deals! And I am also grateful to understanding sellers of the house down here, as well as their agent, who have tolerated these delays and the attendant uncertainty, mostly without blowing a gasket. And I think that I have ONE MORE good reason to love North Carolina: No co-ops!

Apex and Holly Springs are highly rated on a CNN-Money Top 100 Best Places to Live in the US list.

Why not Raleigh and Cary? Maybe we have been “discovered” already, and it is not news for anyone anymore that we are a great place to be. But who knows?

Zucchini Nut Bread

2 cups grated zucchini
4 large eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
3 1/2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup pecans
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix all ingredients well. Bake at 350 degrees for 55-60 minutes in 2
well greased 9 x 5 loaf pans. A great way to use all the zucchini in
your garden! It also freezes well if double wrapped in plastic and
aluminum foil.

One of our friends, Ms. Jamie Brown, with First Charter Bank, is walking in the October 6th American Diabetes Association’s “Step Out To Fight Diabetes” walks. I just gave some money, and I would encourage everyone else to do so, as well!

To contribute, or to see her ADA webpage, click here.

To open an account with First Charter Bank (which I highly recommend - I bank there!) you probably need to talk to Joe Farrar or Ron Keever at the Cary Office. Their office number is 919-793-2540. But before you do that, why not pledge a buck or two?

If you have been keeping up with the Wake County Schools, you know that there has been much ado about year-round schools. Some people love them, some people hate them, and Wake County Schools have tried to force them upon both groups. As we mentioned earlier in the year, a judge’s ruling forced Wake County Schools to make the formerly mandatory year-round schools into a voluntary only plan, which it should have been from the start. Another recent judge’s ruling has made it clear that this also applies to newcomers to Wake County. Their children (your children, probably, if you are reading this BLOG!) can NOT be forced into attending year-round schools when you move to Wake County. Depending on where you move, you may either be on a traditional calendar or you may have to choose between this option and a year-round school. And remember, all the high schools are on a traditional schedule.

Isn’t the liberty to choose between these alternatives much better than being forced into a year-round program? We thought so, too!

It seems like something that is so easy to do: Buying a home. You have the money in hand, or the financing, all you have to do is call the number on the sign, and see the house, and set a closing date, right? Maybe not. For Sale By Owners (”FSBOs” - pronounced “Fizz-Bows” in the real estate industry) are a way that some people attempt to save money, either in buying or selling a home. While this works for some people, the truth is that you end up with all sorts of strange situations that are easily handled by an experienced agent, but are difficult at best with novices. So, an experienced home seller or buyer with a LOT of time on their hands can do OK in some situations, but even they are not going to know all the tricks. For an interesting story, take a look at FSBOGoneWrong.com. This site is subtitled, “A cautionary tale for home buyers considering a FSBO without a Realtor.” And no, this was not put up by a REALTOR®!

Here is a link to the 180 critical steps performed by a REALTOR in a home purchase and sale, brought to you by my buddies at the Orlando, Florida Regional Association of REALTORS®.

And don’t forget that, as a buyer, the seller of the home pays for my work on your behalf. For all of the convenience and protection, using me as your REALTOR® does not cost - it pays.

I help people buy a lot of homes. Due to this, I show a lot of homes. (So far, we are not into the level of logic that it takes a PhD to figure out.) I think that my record of showing homes to a client before we bought one is two. I have shown lots of homes to people who, in the end, were not able to obtain a loan to buy any of them, even though they were pre-qualified before we got into the car.

I had an interesting client the other day. Another Re/Max agent who is a friend of mine showed him homes during three trips down here from Boston. He was coming back, “to get a deal done” and my friend did not have any time on one day to help him, so he asked me to assist. Nice guy that I am, I of course obliged. We spend about eight hours over the next two days looking at homes, all of which had some sort of problem that my “client” did not find acceptable. (There are too many trees. I think there might be snakes in the woods. It’s too close to an intersection. It’s on the wrong part of the cul de sac. It’s too close to the neighbors. It’s too far away from the neighbors. It’s up a hill. It’s down a hill. It’s got Masonite siding. It’s got Formica instead of granite. The yard isn’t perfectly flat. I want to be in Cary. No, I want to be in Apex. What about Holly Springs? I just saw a lizard, aren’t they dangerous? And on and on…) And this was after triaging them over the computer, so that we were NOT looking at homes that he just did not like! Of course, some were better then others, but almost all of the ones we saw were just fine. After this ordeal, we had a little heart to heart, and we decided to meet in a couple days to see some more, after I did some more research.

We never did meet up. I found that the “buyer” had (for a second time) gone to a new home builder to submit an offer to buy a home. This time, it was a $375,000 offer on a home that was listed for $409,000. Of course, they did not take it. But it did show me FOR SURE the fallacy of spending any more time with that guy. I may remind you that we are in a STRONG market, one that Forbes magazine called the 6th strongest market in the whole country! Homes in Wake County generally sell for between 98% to 101% of the list value. There is, of course, some variation in price and some price negotiation, but 92% generally does NOT get the job done, and never does on new construction around here!

So the moral of this story is in the headline:

• The perfect is the enemy of the good: Let’s TRY to get 100% of what we want, but maybe we ought to call it a good day if we get only 95%? 98%? You have to make the call as to the threshold, but it is rare that 100% love of any property can be obtained.
• Don’t be a joker: Don’t put in ridiculously low offers. In Wake County, they are NOT going to get accepted. By doing this, you waste your time, your agent’s time, the seller’s time, the seller’s agent’s time, and probably a bunch of FAX paper. Yes, I know that is how they do things in (Pick area.) That is not how we do them here. When I go to (that area,) to buy property, I will engage the services of a local Re/Max agent who knows that market, and will guide me appropriately. Around here, even the banks holding foreclosure properties do not let them go that cheap.
• If you want a guided tour, please just tell me: I give these all the time, usually to people who are considering moving here from other areas. If you are not ready to buy just yet, I still will be very happy to show you around! It is just that we can do this oh, so much more efficiently, if we set our goals for the day appropriately.