I have been getting  a few emails lately asking me, “What happened to the Monday Real Estate Market Reports?” Well, the answer is simple. They are so popular, we made our own site for them alone that is being run by my father, Peter Aiello!

So, if you want to read & review the best local & hyper local real estate market reports in the area, check out: www.ThePeninsulaRealEstateBroker.com!

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After the San Bruno Fire, Home owners & buyers have a lot of concern if they live near underground pipelines that could put themsevleves and their families at risk.

So for your ease, here is a link to the Federal National Pipeline Mapping System:

https://www.npms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/
This shows all the major gas pipelines, above and below ground and includes storage tanks.  At the current time, this is the only resource I can find. If you know something better or that can be used in addition to this, please let me know.

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So, if you haven’t noticed we added a pretty cool new area onto TeamTapper.com. On the right sidebar beneath our “Featured Listings” we added a “Local Real Estate For Sale” almost every city in the Peninsula is currently setup with “pre-fabed” searches for each city. We established three common price ranges to make searching easier for you.

With these property profiles (for every home on MLS) we tried to include every piece of information that we are allowed to give the public access to. So you may find that our site as more information than other sites with similar features.  So if you do find that you like our site for finding homes as you’re driving around. Go to google.com, type in the address followed by “Team Tapper” and click the first thing on Google’s list and all the information for that listing will be right there in front of you!

Click request a showing, request more information, etc. and it will send us all the information to our cell phones and a team tapper agent will contact you as soon as possible to setup a showing.

Pretty cool, huh?

Not your cup of tea? Use our traditional MLS search feature and remember it is FULLY customizable, even if we don’t have a search feature you want we will try to add it for you. (Ex: Say you are only looking for single story houses, we will do everything in our power to set you up on a search for single story houses in the cities of your choice!)

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Why do short sales take so long?

When you see a large lender like Bank of America or Wells Fargo, you usually think it’s the bank that is losing money on the loan if they decide to sell the home for less than what is owed.

But the truth to the matter is that for “most” of these loans, there is an investor who has asked these lenders to loan out a block of money, usually in the hundreds of millions of dollars and the banks are just servicing them.  It’s not the banks money, it’s the investors or a group of investors who have their money on the line. There is also Fannie and Freddie Mac government backed loans.

Remember, these investors have never seen the home. All they see is numbers. They are relying on the listing agent to get as much money back as possible for their investment.

The lender and investors are also worried about fraud. How do they know if the home owner is selling their home to a friend or relative for a lot less than what the home is worth? They don’t. They need to do their due diligence as best as possible.

It’s called an arms length transaction where all the parties sign a document that there are no side deals and that they don’t know each other.

Another reason the short sales take so long is because many times there is more than one loan and you are now trying to satisfy two or three lenders/investors. That’s very time consuming. Many lenders are also under staffed. They have thousands of delinquent loans, and only so many employees to service them. Remember, many banks have gone under and are on longer in business, so they have had to cut down on their payroll.

The home owner can also be the one who is delaying the time line. Either because they have failed to provide all their financial’s and a hardship letter, or maybe because they want to live in the home as long as they can without having to pay their mortgage. What lender(s) have done to take steps to shorten the time line?
Wachovia is the leader among all the lenders up to now. They have addressed this problem by setting up a system where they have a manager come out and meet with the home owner and listing agent and they determine what fair market value is.
Once they receive an offer, it only takes 45 days for them to make it happen. Wachovia is by far the most advanced up to now.

I’ve recently heard rumors that Wells Fargo is about to start a pilot program where after a home owner is turned down for a loan modification, they will agree to a short sale with the home owner.

If you have any question about short sales or any real estate related questions, please feel free to write or call.

Tap

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Hello Readers,

Sorry, this video is a few months old. I posted it on my twitter account when it was uploaded to YouTube, but forgot to post it here! For those of you on the fence what Realtor to choose in your home search, hopefully this video of my clients will help you out

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