Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

Is this technology thing terrific or what.

Late last week I showed a home to a first time home buyer in the Lake Oroville real estate market. She liked the house enough to make an offer on it last Saturday evening  through the online bidding process that the seller had established.  No paper offer to write and no signature needed when submitting our bid.  I simply discussed the offer terms with the buyer and from my desk and computer  in my home office I entered the online bid.

Come Monday morning I received an e-mail, on my iPhone, at about 6:30 am informing me that the seller had responded to the offer by sending us a counter offer. I immediately called the buyer, discussed the counter offer and decided to submit a counter offer to the seller’s counter offer.

I submitted the new terms to the seller. After about an half hour I received another e-mail letting me know that the seller had accepted our new terms. I promptly called my buyer to inform her of the good news.  After congratulating her and discussing the next steps in the process, I ended the call and hung up the phone.

It was then that it hit me. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all heard the old saying , “Give them an inch and they will take a mile.” Right?

Well, this has never held more true than it does today in this age of bank owned properties. No, this is not another one of those bank, bashing blog posts that seem to be everywhere these days. Quite frankly it is difficult to tell if the expanding trend of banks REQUIRING  more and more of a potential purchaser before accepting an offer, is the work of the banks or of some of the bank-employed REALTORS® that have hitched their fortunes to their bank-employer.

Let’s take a little walk down memory lane to see what I mean.

Inch #1-In the beginning, banks that owned foreclosed homes simply required that a buyer present a loan prequalification letter with any offer that was made on one of their homes. This seemed fair, as no seller wants to be dealing with a buyer that is not qualified for a loan.

Inch #2- It was then not good enough that the purchase contract stated that the buyer had given a deposit check to their agent. The bank wanted a copy of the check.

Inch #3-Next the major banks required that any prospective buyer be loan prequalified with their bank before they would consider the buyer’s offer. Great way for the bank’s loan officers to try and persuade a buyer to swtich their business to them. Yes, it is happening! Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama signed into law the extension of the first time home buyer tax credit. Included in this extension was an expansion of the credit to current homeowners who have owned a home in 5 of the last 8 years.

The extension and expansion allow buyers in the Lake Oroville real estate market, and beyond,  to claim the credit as long as you are in a binding contract no later than April 30, 2009 and close not later than June 30, 2009.

And no ,you are not allowed, on May 5th, to back date your contract to April 30th.

Below are links to  further information from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) on the new rules for the credit. Please take the time to read and understand them as you are ultimately responsible for following the rules. And please let me know if you need any further explanation on how this credit works.

NAR Tax Credit FAQ

NAR Tax Credit Extension Chart

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