Nevada Real Estate >> Las Vegas Real Estate Specialist: Nevada: Las Vegas: Henderson

I am looking for opportunities of photos of "blight" for a new website I am building and I found this one on Saturday and it is just too awesome for words. 

How did the "under new management" banner not manage to go up in flames is perplexing to me!

It's funny how when you keep your eyes open & look for things in life you find them quickly!  Perhaps I choose to look at life with my glass half full so I don't see it much.  Rose colored glasses perhaps?

copyright 2006-2011 Renee Burrows, REALTOR®, The Force Realty  702-966-2494

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Every year my phone starts ringing off the hook the first Monday after New Year's Day. People want to either rent or buy a Las Vegas Home as their resolution.

The question is a tough one to ponder. Each individual scenario needs to make sense:

Are you planning on living in the home for at least 5 years?
Will the home be functional for that time frame? (Are you planning on adding or subtracting children or pets to your household?)
Is your job stable?
Is your income high enough?
Is your credit decent? (No lates in last year or collections?)
Do you have enough reserves in the bank? (A couple of months worth of house payments?)

No matter if your New Year's Resolution includes a Las Vegas Rental Home or Las Vegas Home Purchase, please put my phone number - 702-580-1783 on your list to call on the first Monday after New Year's Day!  I will be happy to answer your questions about purchasing or renting a home in the Las Vegas area!

Here are two scenarios that make sense if your personal scenario makes sense!  Click on the Flyer Image for further listing details (including map!)

copyright 2006-2011 Renee Burrows, REALTOR®, The Force Realty  702-966-2494

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This is part of my series:   “Things That Can Make Your Las Vegas Financed Home Purchase *Blow Up* in the Middle of a Transaction.”

My ultimate goal in this series is to make Las Vegas Home Buyers aware of the challenges of a specific home’s eligibility for financing.

Congratulations!  Your lender just approved you to purchase a Las Vegas area home by looking at your check stubs, debt to income ratio and you are now approved to purchase a Las Vegas area home!

Hold the phone here, *you* may be eligible to purchase a home but is the house eligible for financing?  This series is designed for you to research a home’s eligibility for financing.

DISCLOSURE:  I am not a lender, title company, home inspector, contractor or appraiser.  I am only speaking from personal experience by working with financed Las Vegas area home buyers.  Hopefully you have hired a Las Vegas area real estate agentwho will be able to spot things that can *potentially* cause problems with your financing (mostly FHA/VA) before your contract to purchase a Las Vegas area home.

Much of Las Vegas is currently priced in fire sale status.  Many times when you see unusually inexpensive homes there is a reason – they are not eligible for financing and the seller does not wish to rehabilitate the home to make it eligible for financing.

Today’s topic at hand is “Changing Your Marital Status During an Escrow“.

Here is another good way to mess up your escrow:  Getting Married in the Middle of a Home Purchase!  Especially if your potential mate has awful credit.  While this isn’t “house specific” like most of my series is – this is definitely a good way for you to “blow up” your financing on your Las Vegas home purchase!

Lenders are now checking spousal credit even if the spouse isn’t on the loan for the home purchase.

There are many who have cooked up a scheme in their head with a foreclosure.  “The home that was foreclosed on was in my name, not my wife’s name, we are going to purchase a home!” Probably won’t work.

Can I marry my boyfriend while I am buying this home?  Do you want to hurt your chances of having issues during your escrow – especially if he has marginal credit?

You have waited this long to get married, you can wait until the home closes.  There is no hurry!  You can always add someone to the title after close (doesn’t necessarily have to be a spouse.)  All you have to do is go to the Clark County Recorder’s Office and pay a nominal fee.

copyright 2006-2011 Renee Burrows, REALTOR®, The Force Realty  702-966-2494

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Creativity is the spice of life in the mortgage loan modification business. When the bottom fell crashing out of the real estate market and homeowners began sliding in droves toward foreclosure, home loan providers at first just watched the carnage from afar, unwilling to lift a finger for help. Soon the ominous situation grew into a full-blown crisis and the government had to get involved because the private mortgage industry couldn't or wouldn't do much about it. Despite that, mortgage lenders still found novel ways to deny most homeowners the loan modification they were applying for. The original paperwork somehow got lost, another department is now handling the file, the decision will be made soon and yet another pay stub is needed, and so on. Endless string of excuses and delays that can stimulate hair loss.

Now homeowners in mortgage payment trouble are striking back. Many have tried the modification route, were eventually turned down and in an act of defiance stopped making payments. The properties eventually go into foreclosure but they aren't moving out. The plan is to hang on for free as long as they can, hopefully building up cash reserves in the meantime, or finding a job, that would land them on their feet when move-out is imminent. They use every legal remedy in the book to keep the mortgage lender at bay, to buy them time.

There are other mortgage borrowers who are doing this without even trying for a modification because they don't have jobs or lack the needed income. They just cease sending in checks and hunker down. Free rent is their motto. And why not. According to LPS Applied Analytics, on average it takes 438 days to evict a homeowner in mortgage foreclosure. When someone is in a real bind, a year or more of free ride can make a huge difference.

LPS, moreover, reports breathlessly that earlier in the year over 650,000 households were 18 months behind in their home loans. Out of those, 19% have not heard one single word from the mortgage lender or servicer, or received a nasty certified legal note, regarding repossession of the home. Nada. That's a year and a half of living free as the system is frantically trying to figure out whose paperwork is where.

In a way mortgage providers are starting to taste their own medicine. Homeowners have been angrily following them over the past few years eagerly accepting taxpayer bailouts, and then spend much of that money irresponsibly on purposes other than helping those who helped them survive. No wonder more people are growing increasingly disgusted and finding their own remedies to somehow make it through the long downturn. This particular behavior can be dangerous for the entire housing industry if it really takes hold. It can bankrupt more small and mid-size mortgage lenders and derail any real estate recovery for quite a while longer.

One of the key mortgage segments funding home purchases in the recent past has been warehouse lending. The concept can be defined as short-term lending by large commercial banks or other financial institutions for non-depository mortgage brokers and bankers. Using originated mortgages as collateral, the warehouse lender makes available interim financing until the loans are sold off on the secondary mortgage market.

The housing meltdown has been devastating to the home loan business. Every financial institution has suffered from its effects, some more some less. Warehouse lenders generally were the backbone for the smaller mortgage originators, but have lately been cutting off their lines of credit, putting restrictions on them or exiting the business altogether. This has inevitably forced smaller home loan firms to curtail their product offerings and giving consumers fewer options when looking for a mortgage.

Call Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mammoth operators on the secondary mortgage market, to the rescue. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that they soon will launch, it's still unannounced, a pilot program to address warehouse lending. Basically what they plan on doing is to some degree replace the traditional warehouse lenders to provide more liquidity to the still reeling marketplace. So they'll step into the vacuum left by the private investor.

The mortgage industry has seen dramatic consolidation in the last year or two. In 2007 the three largest private mortgage providers held about 35% of the market, while through the second quarter in 2009 that share had grown to about 50%, according the WSJ's estimate. That rapid growth has pretty much come at the expense of the independent home loan lender. The regulators in Washington see the dangers of this trend and are now working to reverse it.

This is good news for the smaller, independent mortgage firm. It may never get back all the market share it previously had, which was somewhere over 60%, but it can possibly recover some of it. Yet, the main beneficiary actually will be the consumer. The more there is competition, the more choices he has at the lowest possible price.  

The key home loan financier operating on the secondary mortgage market has seen much better days with its immense portfolio. Just like most other lending institutions it, too, has been slowly bleeding as foreclosures keep shaking its once solid foundation. So much so that Washington had to bail it out a while back. Yet, it's still doing what it was mandated to do, invest in mortgage paper.

Fannie Mae, to stem growing losses, is gradually hiking mortgage underwriting criteria, though. In the latest round of updates that'll go in effect November 1, the borrower's FICO has to be 620 or better for every home loan that complies with its Selling Guide. This date applies to manually underwritten and FHA and VA loans. Furthermore, for mortgages routed through Fannie Mae's Desktop Underwriter the start date is December 12, pushed there to get the software configured. Excluded from this FICO upgrade are Fannie Mae's Refi Plus products and manually underwritten loans with non-traditional credit. The minimum score now is 580 for most programs and government loans have none.

Southern Nevada - Las Vegas, Southern Highlands, Summerlin, Henderson, Mountains Edge, Anthem and Green Valley among the communities here - is trying to emerge from a deep real estate slump and these changes naturally will hamper that. The same goes for many other areas in the country, from Arizona and California across to Florida and elsewhere. Not in a major way, but still. The home loan guidelines are already tough enough, so another degree higher will put more squeeze to getting approvals.

On the other hand, as the national housing market continues to plod along unsteadily, Fannie Mae applying more prudent risk management in mortgage lending is understandable. It's already supported by the government. If it makes more risky loans and they increasingly default, it needs more money from Washington to stay in business. In reality, that means the taxpayer who was approved for a mortgage and subsequently goes bust ends up paying for it himself. Stopping the potentially self-defeating cycle at the first step seems to be the right thing to do.