This is another one of those, boy oh boy blog posts. I get this question a lot. Not only do I get this question but I get it with a boat load of anger built in to it! Believe me, SOME agents can be vicious, mean and really angry when their listings show up on your website.

I should file this post under the things that annoy me tag like my friend The Phoenix Real Estate Guy would likely do.

For the common reader who is wondering how and why this question comes up. As a REALTOR and member of your local MLS [Multiple Listing Service] real estate agents have the ability to advertise listings through the IDX [Internet Data Exchange] agreement that is in place. The IDX agreement is possibly one of the if not greatest things to ever happen in the real estate business. For Team Aguilar, our head honcho Howard Blum is the broker / partner, Carlos Aguilar is a Realtor member / partner [my father] who manages this website. Through his REALTOR membership he is given permission to display listings on www.TeamAguilar.com via the IDX MLS listing feed for San Diego County. Obviously, this provides additional exposure for all listings. One day I am going to write a blog post with an IMAGE / OLD MLS Printout I have. It’s my grandparents MLS printout from 1962 for their home listed here in San Diego that was in a 3 ring binder. Back then, agents in the office would go to the 3 ring binder to search for homes in certain areas. Can you see the difference between a 3 ring binder and an IDX data feed that goes out to thousands of websites instantly?

So getting back to the question now that I have given you the cliff notes on IDX. Why is MY MLS LISTING showing up on your website? I feel like I should say, Why THE HELL is MY MLS LISTING showing up on your website? That is what a couple agents have said to us on the other end of the phone.

Well, the reason your listing is showing up on our website is because you are ALLOWING it to show up. When a real estate agent enters a listing into the MLS they are asked two questions.

- VOW [Virtual Office Website] Yes/No

- Internet Syndication Yes/No

When you say YES to these two items you are allowing websites like www.TeamAguilar.com and thousands of others to display your listings. The official Sandicor IDX rule reads as followed.

Sandicor’s IDX (Internet Data Exchange) rule enables MLS Participants (Principal Brokers) to display each others’ listings on their web sites. The rule is found on Section 12.16 of the Sandicor Rules and Regulations. This is only for internet display; it does not apply to any other type of medium (newspaper, flyers, etc.). Brokers must not have opted out of this program. IDX is considered advertising by the DRE and therefore must abide by DRE rules and regulations.

Now you always have the option to say NO to these and please understand that when you call screaming at us asking, Why is MY MLS LISTING showing up on your website? This is the answer.

YOU CAN ALWAYS SAY NO, or OPT OUT but in my opinion you would have to be a complete idiot to do so or care about nothing more than trying to act as a dual agent on all your deals which happens more then you realize. The IDX rule is the best thing to happen since sliced bread for real estate agents. Why would you cut your listing off from all of the available marketing sources out there? Your #1 objective is to sell your clients home, sell it at the highest possible price and OPTING OUT will limit the number of people who view your clients listing.

CONSUMERS. How do you know if your agent is opting out? Visit a typical real estate agents website like www.TeamAguilar.com and do a search for your home. Make sure you are getting the most exposure possible.

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

Boy o boy do I hear this question a lot, I can’t tell you how many times this comes up and in this case it came up with a local real estate agent I was talking to the other day.

Well, here is my response.

Yes it is perfectly legal for a listing agent to represent the buyer in the state of California but when you do this, you create a dual agency relationship and so your Agency Disclosure has to be properly noted. You or your TC needs to insure that you have all your disclosures in order.

The other issue, and the more important one; California DRE permits an agent to act as a Dual Agent but that does not mean that they allow an agent to be less than Fair and Ethical in his dealings with Buyer, Seller and the other agents involved.  In a case of Dual Agency most companies have very strict policies that outline the procedures for handling a dual agency transaction and some of the big names just won’t do it because of the liability.

Personally I agree with national trends which are that in most states the State DRE does not permit Dual Agency and some states that do permit it do so only if the agents follow set State guidelines regarding such representation.  It is hard to believe that if one agent is representing both the Seller and Buyer that the agent  will be representing each side to the highest standard possible. This is the same principal that applies to Lawyers; no way that the State Bar would permit an attorney to represent both sides of a case, how can he provide each side unbiased representation.

In summary; if we get into situations with Dual Agency we need to represent at the highest  level so that we can never be questioned of our ethical or legal representation of both clients.

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

You may be asking yourself who Janet Yellen is? Well she is the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and she just happened to be in San Diego today to give a speech at the Burnham Moores Center for Real Estate University of San Diego 14th Annual Real Estate Conference.

I try to make it out to this event as often as possible. It’s usually a nice breakfast and for $30-40 bucks you get to hear from some of the financial big wigs we have in this county! Some of the talk can get a bit long and dry but I try to post a few of the points that stick out. Here are a few things from Janet Yellen as well as Real estate mogul billionaire Sam Zell who also gave his outlook on the future of real estate. He was fun and brought a bit of energy to the conference!

First, some of the questions that Janet Yellen commented on during her visit to San Diego. After her speech, she spent a few minutes answering some questions. Here was her take on several questions asked.

What is her take on the economy and what direction are wee headed in?

The finalcial system will, “take a long time to fully heal.” She expects economic growth of about 3.5% this year and 4.5% in 2011. “I’m afraid that the economy will continue to operate well below its potential throughout this year and next, even though the recession appears to be over, it does not mean that we are where we want to be.” She referred to the the economic growth being fairly postive but said it’s overshadowed by a poor unemployment rate of 9.7% which she felt would continue through the year and be reduced to 8% by 2011.

How does she feel about the future of interest rates and the possibility of raising rates?

“When the day comes to start raising rates again, we have tools at the ready, for the time being, the economy still needs the support of extraordinarily low rates.” Later she went on to state, “This is not the time to be tightening monetary policy, but eventually the economy will gain enough momentum and won’t need today’s extraordinarily low interest rates.”

The other interesting speech came from Sam Zell.

Some of this speech was a bit over the top but he made some interesting points especially if your an investor in commercial real estate. His opinion on commercial real estate currently underwater in mortgage balances is that, “If there are opportunities in distressed real estate, it’s in buying the debt in return for equity.” What he said makes a lot of sense. Commercial real estate allows you to be much more creative in a bad economy. You don’t have to wait around for a modification or short sale. Investors will go out and seek investments and search for property they can take a equity position in and work out their own deal.

As for the residential market? He noted that San Diego may be an area that would see a slower recovery. One interesting thing he noted is that whenever single family home owners exceeded 62%, we got into trouble. He noted that this time because of sub-prime loans that number rose to 69%. We are currently at 66% and he felt that we needed to get down to 63-64% before we have a sustainable, affordable single family market.

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

According to the National Association of Home Builders latest report, the home affordability rate is currently at 48.1% for San Diego County.

What does this mean? Home values are slowly increasing and we may be past the peak of affordability which appears to have peaked at 58.8% during the 1st quarter of 2008.

The NAHB housing opportunity index represents the percentage of homes sold that a median income household could afford using standard lender underwriting guidelines. A few years ago we never had to worry about this because anyone who could fog up a mirror could get a loan.

San Diego County has always been an expensive place to live and these numbers are nothing new but look at the chart below to see how much more affordable it is to live in many other parts of the country. You have to ask yourself, do I want to give up Sunny San Diego to live somewhere I could afford a home? Perhaps……..

See Wichita, KS on that list? Our field agent, Cory has a lot of family there and visits regularly but I think he prefers Sunny San Diego over Wichita.

MOST AFFORDABLE – Kokomo, IN is the most affordable place to live in the United States, 98% of all homes sold there are affordable to the medium household income. WOW, when you think about that it would be really nice if San Diego was a little higher on that list. No offense to anyone reading this from Kokomo In, but I have never been there or even heard of your nice affordable city.

LEAST AFFORDABLE – New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ is the least affordable. Only 19.7% of all homes sold there are affordable to the medium household income. WOW, now when you think about that it gets a bit scary. It’s nice San Diego is no where close to that.

DATA SOURCE, National Association of Home Builders

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

As more and more homeowners are going into default, it appears more and more are just walking away from their mortgage.

TEAM AGUILAR DISCLAIMER: Let me state that Team Aguilar or myself are not instructing anyone to walk away from their mortgage and ultimately the one that has to make that decision is you. VIEW THIS CALCULATOR AT YOUR OWN RISK!

There is a new calculator, may not be new to you but it’s new to me and I want to introduce it here. It may help people determine if it makes sense to walk away. The calculator is on the website, www.YouWalkAway.com, here is a LINK to the calculator.

Once you go through and start punching in the numbers it really gets you thinking. As an example I used a very typical scenario that seems very common here in San Diego.

I started by entering a home value of $300,000 with a 1st loan balance of $420,000 and a 2ND mortgage of $80,000. This is fairly common here in Southern California. Many people purchased a $500,000 home with 100% financing using an interest only loan that is NOW worth $300,000 in today’s market. After punching in all the numbers and using a rate of appreciation of 4% which I think is a very fair historical national average it would take approximately 16 years to get back to the break even point. The walk away monthly savings is approximately $700 a month along with a “Walk Away Cash Savings” of over $100,000.

What’s the bottom line? Well if you only planned on staying in your home for a few years to begin with, less then 10 it may make sense to walk away. If you know you are going to live in this home forever and be buried in the back yard then it’s likely that you will be just fine. It’s similar to your retirement account that are in the dumps right now with this market. If your close to retirement you may be in trouble but if you have time and years are on your side you will have to time to recover.

Voluntary defaults happen to be a brand new phenomenon in our society. With the recent collapse in housing, estimates show that as many as ten million families may currently be underwater on their mortgage.

UPDATE: So there seems to be some question about the You Walk Away organization. LET ME SAY that I know nothing about their services or service. I don’t know anything other then what I have read online on some different forums, blogs and message boards. I have no idea what value if any they can offer. I know that the mortgage calculator is unique and it may help you decide what to do. It’s fairly simple and you can create one of your own fairly easily. The bottom line is that you need to look at all of your options and decide what is best for you. Don’t rely on someone else or some organization to do this for you. You should take all the information you can gather, all the options available to you and decide what the best option is for YOU!

Also, a little rant and rave! Another issue really bothering me, LOAN MODIFICATION SCAMS. There are thousands of legal services offering loan modification services right now here in California and I am sure in many other states. The California state BAR is investigating hundreds of them right now. All of the services being offered by these companies are things that you can do on your own. It just requires a little bit of your time. Save your money, I can’t tell you how many times I talk to someone that forked over thousands of dollars just to have their home go to foreclosure with the modification company not doing one thing. I recently spoke with someone that contacted their lender just a few days before their foreclosure trustee’s sale only to find out that the lender had NO RECORD of the loan modification company ever contacting them.

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

Home buyers that take out home loans insured by the government will soon learn that their loan officer or Realtor cannot have anything to do with the ordering or choosing of an appraiser. The change comes months after already making the change to Fannie Mae and most conventional loan programs. The reason for the change is the belief that over the last few years appraisers were pressured into giving a loan officer or Realtor a value they needed to make a deal work. With all of the loan fraud and pressure on overvaluing homes the industry feels this is the root of one of the problems that needs to be corrected.

Moving forward Realtors & loan officers will no longer have the power to order appraisals for FHA-insured loans. What does this mean for the typically consumer? It’s hard to say. One thing is for sure. Appraisers are going to have a hard time being aggressive on their appraisal value. It’s going to be their name and their license on the appraisal and since they have no contact with the Realtor or loan officer they won’t feel the pressure to come in with a certain value.

Here is a brief explanation of what would happen in the past.

Loan officer or Realtor need a value of $300,000 to make a purchase or refinance deal work.

If the appraiser comes in at $300,000, everyone is happy but if the appraiser comes in at a value of $290,000 that throws a BIG WRENCH in the deal! Why would this be an issue?

On a purchase deal it means the seller is only going to sell their home for $290,000 which is $10K less and that means less money in their pocket. The seller may just cancel the deal and wait for another offer to come along at $300,000. Hopefully this appraiser is pushed to come in at this value. Perhaps the agents provide listings of recent sales to help support their sales price of $300,000. Believe me, agents, buyers, seller’s and loan officer’s PUSHED appraisers as much as they could to come in at a value they needed. If a commission was on the line, great lengths were taken to close that deal.

What about a refinance? You have similar things to deal with. Cash out refinance means it’s less money going to the home owner and less money for them to take a trip, buy a boat or just blow in Vegas!

The thing that makes this difficult and why I would imagine appraisers would support this change is that the appraisers who were inflating home values were being rewarded by MORE BUSINESS. (More Likely To Get Repeat Business) It made it difficult for a good appraiser to continue to work when the Realtor or loan officer controlled who they ordered the appraisal from. Do you think a loan officer or Realtor would order another appraisal from an appraiser that prevented them from closing their last deal? Probably not, this was a major problem in the real estate industry.

This would mean that consumer home appraisals are going to reflect the value of a home much more closely since brokers that would usually profit from approved loans won’t be choosing appraisers that could declare higher values.

However, there are certain organizations that state that changes and other attempts to reform the industry of appraisal hurts both appraisers and consumers because the new rules will result in home values that are extremely low since the appraisers are not familiar or experienced with the local markets. If you have appraisers coming from miles and miles away to perform an appraisal they may not be familiar with the area like a local appraiser.

The changes started last year when a code was adopted and made to divide loan officers from ordering appraisals. Although the entire process has been changed, it still remains to be seen whether it was a smart move and only time will tell.

If you are looking to complete a purchase or sale of a home, you shall no longer be kept in the dark when it comes to its closing expenses, thanks to the changes made in the RESPA this year. Loan originators seem to be opposed but it should help even the playing field and help buyers avoid the all too familiar bait and switch policy!

These changes require lenders to completely disclose every single closing expense, including expenses related to getting loans and any estimated expense for settlement, title insurance and the like.

Closing process forms have also gone through changes to make things easier for consumers to fully understand these costs and to compare them with the final closing expenses. This has encouraged consumers to shop around and compare costs from different lenders prior to making a mortgage choice.

Unfortunately, these offered estimates are usually only binding for ten days, so buyers only get several weeks to complete necessary tasks like keeping settlement services and reviewing title reports prior to closing. It would therefore be a necessity to act fast and meet deadlines within contracts of sale.

Because of this, every home buyer should work closely with an expert in real estate to come up with the best strategies in finding the ideal closing service vendor in no time.

Several Tips You Should Follow:

1. Since local customs and laws tend to differ, your agent might strongly recommend you to get optional services like home warranties and inspections. Ask and make sure it makes sense for your purchase.

2.  Buyers who are smart can save tons of money just by finding personal providers of closing expenses to retain quality at a lower cost but this can lead to delays and make it difficult to close on time.

3. Overall, it comes down to the old rule that you just need to read and understand everything you are signing. The item that really concerns me is lenders will have to offer buyers a good faith estimate and it has to remain the same all the way through to the end of the loan. Any unexpected expense will require the loan to go back in to underwriting and cause additional delays.

Make sure you do your homework and find a great mortgage company to work with! Please view the RESPA website for additional information.

Are you looking at homes or condos with an HOA?  If you are looking into buying a home, you may want to do a little more research before you purchase. In today’s real estate market, many HOA’s are underfunded which may require you to make a larger than normal payment to fund the HOA.

A Homeowners Association refers to a legal and formal entity made to maintain a community’s common areas and enforce deed limitations. Their ultimate objective is to protect the values of properties, maintain a community’s appearance and character, as well as meet the expectations of anybody within that community.

Because of this, buying a home with a Homeowners Association could be useful if you want to ensure that your common grounds are maintained, such as community pools and landscaping. However, you should do your research first to avoid getting yourself into undesirable situations because of the rules and financial issues.

Here are several things you should know, learn and explore about a Homeowners Association to help you decide whether this would be the ideal situation for you:

1. Check if any special assessments have been made. Viable funds and studies of reserve could help any community stay away from needing special assessments.

2. Review the funds of reserve, which pay for improvements in the long term, like road paving, pool work, or condominium complex work. Finding out the amount of money that has to be inside the fund might be difficult. However, if you are a buyer, you can find out if your selected Homeowners Association has conducted reserve studies as of late. Such studies will also advise how much money needs to be kept every year to make sure that every need is paid for.

3. Review the charged fees of assessment, which are usually charged by the month, the quarter, or the year. It would be essential to discover exactly which assessments you will be paying for. This usually includes community pools and playgrounds, walking trails and clubhouses, lawn care and landscaping. It might also include the maintenance of common grounds, such as snow removal or trash pickup. If you are aware of this information, you will better understand how much you should budget for these areas that will become your responsibility after buying a home in a certain community.

4. Study the conditions, covenants and restrictions. Now, this might be a problem since you will discover what a community allows and doesn’t allow when it comes to home and yard changes. Many buyers buy homes, only to find out that they can’t add swimming pools or make additions or even plant a certain type of tree! To avoid this, you need to find out the basic rules when it comes to flying flags, satellite dishes, outside antennas, home businesses, patios, fences and pets. It would be absolutely essential to know which rules you have to live by in certain Homeowners Associations.

5. Keep in mind that rules change as time goes by. Because of this, you should periodically review the rules to ensure that you live peacefully within your Homeowners Association. The key in today’s market is to make sure the HOA is funded and has plenty of reserves.

When I heard that Mayor Jerry Sanders and Chargers President Dean Spanos were in serious talks about the possibility of a new stadium located in downtown San Diego, I was THRILLED by the prospect. No offense to the city of Escondido who have been courting the Chargers to move their team there for a quite few years now. It’s just that the Chargers are not Escondido or Chula Vista, and most certainly, not Los Angeles. They are San Diego!

For anyone who has been to Qualcomm Stadium, you fall in to one of two categories:  One type of person believes Qualcomm is an ill-designed cracking slab of concrete with narrow walkways and a cold, uninviting aura. The other type of person is one who has never been to another NFL Stadium to see just how big of a difference a nice stadium can be.  In fact, as far as I’m concerned, Qualcomm and Candlestick in San Francisco are on par with one another and both should be torn down. The Spanos know this and understand this, which is why they want to build a new stadium. But the fact that the city and its taxpayers don’t want to help pay for a new stadium, is the biggest hurdle the Chargers face.

Just because the taxpayers don’t want to help out however, does not mean they are not supportive of Mayor Sanders who is working with Dean Spanos to figure out where the money to build a new stadium can come from. According to Matthew T. Hall of the Union Tribune, one financing option that is being thrown around could come from “selling or developing the city-owned 166-acre Qualcomm Stadium site, which the team would leave vacant.” This is an option where the city can help out without a tax hike. It also brings to light the fact that Qualcomm’s site is HUGE and the proposed site downtown would be much smaller.

The downtown site would be 15 acres directly next to Petco Park that currently includes the city-owned Tailgate Park, the Wonderbread Building, and the bus yard for the San Diego Transit Corp. The beauty of this site, is that the infrastructure is all in place thanks to Petco Park. There’s parking, public transportation set up, and a slew of bars and restaurants in the area that make a killing on game days.  In addition, Hall reports that Charger’s special counsel Mark Fabiani says the downtown stadium makes financial sense “because infrastructure improvements to accommodate a stadium of up to $1 billion elsewhere could cost $200 million, but they are a fraction of that downtown”.

Of course there are naysayers who don’t want to see a stadium go up downtown. Business owners that would have to move, nearby residents who don’t want a huge construction project going on in their neighborhood or the influx of crowds that would be present on game-days.  But I am not going to address such people or such issues, for this is an unapologetically biased blog in favor of a downtown stadium.

Yes, there are hurdles to overcome before this dream can become a reality, mostly of the financial kind. But the city needs this. It needs something it can rally around. Something to be proud of besides the weather, and a beautiful new stadium in the city’s up and coming downtown is just what the doctor ordered.  And can you imagine how much money a Super Bowl hosted downtown would bring into the city?  But all the benefits of a new stadium are light years away. At this point it’s just good to see that San Diego is once again the front-runner for the new home of the San Diego Chargers.

Let’s face it: real estate has been hard this year and because of this, the 2009 Realtors Conference & Expo should be a must-visit, if you are a realtor in the United States of America. No time would be better than now to invest in networking and education for your personal business and you can do so this weekend in San Diego.

From November 13 to 16, the National Association of Realtors will hold the 2009 Realtors Conference & Expo in San Diego, so get ready for the latest upturn in the industry and think about taking part today. This year’s main sessions include:

- One hour with the commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration, David Stevens, who will talk about today’s primary issues such as appraisals, condominium rules, loan limits, and solutions for the insurance fund of the FHA.

- Testing your presence on-camera with the host of HGTV’s Real Estate Intervention, Sabrina Soto, through an interactively simulated home walk-through. Plus, she will share tactics that can be put to use in your personal marketing plan.
 
- A political and legislative forum by political insiders Bill Press and Michael Murphy, who will talk about the ever-evolving political landscape, as well as how this will impact the races of the House and Senate from their very own perspectives.

Plus, you’ll even get the chance to meet William Shatner on Saturday, November 14 from 1 to 4 p.m. If you happen to be a realtor who is also an avid fan of Boston Legal or Star Trek, you will not want to miss out on this opportunity to get his autograph or pose for a photo with him, would you?

Besides, San Diego in itself is worth the time to visit. If you miss the summer weather or simply need to take a break from everyday life, San Diego would be the perfect place to kick back and relax, with November being the city’s sunniest month of the year.

If you’re worried about shelling out too much cash and your budget is quite tight at the moment, here are some ways you can save money on your trip to the conference:

1. Opt for registrations that will fit your personal schedule and needs. Passes for the expo itself are $25, while passes for one whole day are going for $130 and passes for the entire conference are $330.

2. Room with somebody. (There are several low rates still available if you book now.)

3. Take the shuttle. To get to the Convention Center itself, there are complimentary shuttles from various hotels and you can even get a cheap airport shuttle from the National Association of Realtors.

San Diego meetings are always something worthwhile. Recently coined as the country’s top meetings and conventions destination, visitors enjoy exploring this urban playground. Not only will you be surrounded by fun and the sun, but there are tons of attractions that you will love in San Diego, as well. Trust me.