Home Buyer’s Guide

As Exclusive Buyer Agents in an area with a lot of older homes, we end up knowing ans sharing a lot of information about sewer lines.

Here is a link to a list of homes that have had their sewer lines replace. As of this writing it is a little out-of-date, but it at least can give buyers an idea if your street is likely to be a trouble area:

List of homes in the city that have had sewer line work

Here is a document the city put together that discusses Orangeburg sewer line material:

Document on Orangeburg sewer lines

And, here is one of our other blogs where we have a couple of actual sewer line videos:

Another Blog With More Sewer Info.

Sewer lines aren’t the best topic of conversation over the dinner table, but when you are buying a home it is better to know about these types of things before you start evaluating homes!

I just saved one of our buyer clients $150 more dollars by negotiating with the title company over their closing fees.

Here is another example where it is not likely that a regular real estate agent would be doing this because they often generate income from the title companies. Or, they have a “cosy” relationship with a favorite title company that they don’t want to upset.

But this is real. We probably save buyers a couple thousand dollars each year just by using our experience when it is appropriate.

Here is a local attorney’s web page where he notes the same thing: Local Real Estate Attorney on negotiating with title company about their fees

CNN Money came our with their updated “100 best places to live and launch” list yesterday and Ann Arbor again ranked in the top 50. Here is a link to the article: 100 Best Places

The article shows that we aren’t the only ones who enjoy the vibrancy and diversity here!

I was just thinking about the level of technology we kind of take for granted here when a friend who owns a restaurant downtown ask me a computer question. I didn’t happen to know the answer so showed his laptop to one of his customers at the restaurant. The customer was happy to take a look and he identified what the problem was on the spot.

Another example - a few weeks ago I met with two different sets of home buyers. And all three of us had iphones, the newest smartphone trend. Amazing.

I saw this post today from a real estate agent writing about how he was able to negotiate a high price on a home he had listed.

 Note two things:

1. He gets “buyer” and “seller” confused twice.

2. The other real estate agent, a ”buyer’s agent”, discloses how much the buyers like the home.

Both of these things are really bad if you are a home buyer. Exclusive Buyer’s Agents only represent the buyer’s side, and our agents are trained in negotiation so they don’t tell the seller’s agent “my buyers love this house”.

Here is the article:

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Selling your home

March 22, 2008 ·

Our Saline Blog had a post about Saline High School now offering a real estate license class: Saline real estate class

Our Pinckney blog recently had a post on repair credits for home buying.

Here is a quick link: Structuring a repair credit
On the topic of credit repair, one of our buyers recently asked me about raising his credit score. There is one trick I mentioned to him that is easy, beneficial, and really has no downside. That is asking your current credit card companies to increase your limits. (Only do this if you have a good record of payments with them and ideally when your credit usage is half or less than your max on the line.)

90% of the time they will increase your limit on the spot. This makes the actual account balance a smaller percentage of the available limit so you look better in terms of credit scoring!

If you have studied home buying you’ve probably seen a number of authors mentioning that in many markets the best “buyer agent” is the office that is an “Exclusive Buyer Agent”.

Well it turns our a lot of regular real estate agents have read those publications also, but instead of actually making the sacrifices that come with Exclusive Buyer Agency, they just decide to ignore the definition and advertise themselves as being an “EBA”.

It is funny that most of “bogus” agents we’ve seen aren’t even real “buyer agents” claiming to be “Exclusive Buyer Agents” they are “designated/dual buyer agents”.

A top Carolina home buying expert just posted an article on the issue here:

Will the REAL Exclusive Buyer’s Agent Please Stand Up?

It is important to understand the concepts if you are entering the home buying arena.

We had a buyer client recently who had some last-minute difficulty with his loan caused by secondary market changes that just took effect in mid January.

They were using a credible lender that we had introduced them to. Our office had probably done about 10 or 12 loans with this specific loan officer and we’ve probably done around two hundred with the company.

The listing agent was as upset as we were with the last minute problems, but she had the combination of arrogance and ignorance to suggest that because her favorite lender couldn’t touch the rates and fees of the guy handling this loan, that our buyer agent was not handling the transaction properly.

She even thought that our “credible lender” was scamming the buyer because her favorite lender couldn’t compete with the quoted rates and fees.

If the listing agent had a clue she would know that eight times out of ten her favorite lender is not competitive for standard 30 year fixed rate loans. Average yes, competitive no. In this case it made about $5,500 difference to the buyer at closing, but she is so focused on “listing and selling” that she has no idea on shopping and comparing loans.

I guess it is really her arrogance that I find amusing. She lists a ton of property - and sells a lot I’m sure - so she thinks that makes her qualified to understand loan pricing!

I had a similar experience with another listing agent on a home we helped a couple buy on Seventh Street near Pauline. In this case at closing the listing agent said “Oh xxxxx always has the best rates so buyers really don’t have to use lenders from out of the area”. Again, here is a well know real estate agent who has been in the business for 20+ years who was ignorant of basic “Value Differential” mortgage calculations. It was kind of funny at that closing because the buyer was an MBA who knew real well that he had saved thousands by using one of our “credible lenders” who was from another state. I found out recently that they had used the same lender a second time for a refinance and now that they are thinking about buying a larger home they might use them a third time.

It will take a while for the effects to be felt, but the additional student housing developments now proposed or in process in Ann Arbor will have a negative impact on home and condo values in the broader Ann Arbor market.

 Here is a recent article that provides an update Student Housing

As more students move to these developments we will see a softening in the student rental market, which will shift more of those homes back to the owner-occupied inventory.

With the additional campus area homes on the market and without anything to compensate by increasing demand, those values will fall.

We’ve had some recent posts on our Ypsilanti real estate blog site that you might get a kick out of:

1. About taxes going up while assessments are going down.

2. A post about thr relationship of house age and house value.

3. An important article about negotiation in today’s real estate market.

Here is the link:
Ypsilanti real estate blog

Over on our Saline blog there are a couple of posts that you might find interesting:

1. A boneheaded buyer move.

2. An interesting lesson from a home inspection.

3. A quiz for home buyers.

Here is a link: Saline Michigan Real Estate Blog

In one of our other Wayne County Blogs there is a post worth thinking about if you end up negotiating against a lease-to-own buyer:

Seller thinking of renting

There is a post on one of our Wayne County Blogs that helps describe why we like to do what we do and how we are different that regular real estate agents.

Take a look: Loyal To Home Buyers

It is always a bit creepy when a seller or listing agent takes too much interest in a home buyer.

Here is a post from our South Lyon Home Buying Blog on the topic: Creepy home showing story

How do you know when your “buyer agent” isn’t really a “buyer agent”????

This couple in California hired a buyer agent with RE/Max and he reportedly: didn’t bother to tell them about other homes in the neighborhood that were for sale for a lower price, didn’t let them see the appraisal, and even used the relationship to be their loan officer (and probably make another commission from them for that.

Doesn’t sound to nice does it?

Plymouth Home buying Blog

One of the other office blog sites has a good post on the dangers of choosing a mortgage lender based on a banking (non-mortgage) relationship.

http://milford-michigan-real-estate.com/blog

Remember many real estate offices and agents have “captive” lenders where they generate profit from directing you to a lender.

We don’t.

The top buyer’s agents in the country met in Las Vegas recently for their annual conference.

Helping home buyers find and really understand “green” homes was a major focus of the educational sessions.

The conference was at the Golden Nugget hotel and casino where it had been back in 1999. If you are really bored you can see some short video interviews on youtube.com if you search for NAEBA golden.

Here is an interesting article from the Free Press on the difficulties a buyer can face when dealing with a foreclosure of (in this case) a short sale.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080120/BUSINESS04/801200501/1002

Remember, the only way to make sure the real estate agent/company involved doesn’t have mixed loyalties is to use an Exclusive Buyer’s Agent (EBA) firm to help you with your purchase.

Exclusive Buyer Agent companies never list property and never have a seller as a client. Our office is the largest Exclusive Buyer’s Agent in Ann Arbor, but you can find and EBA in most parts of the country through the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. http://naeba.org

In previous posts I’ve mentioned that Zillow can provide a lot of really bad information:

http://annarbormichiganrealestate.com/?page_id=41

http://ann-arbor-michigan-real-estate.com/blog/2007_02_01_archive.html

Here is another example that just came to me today.

 A West side Ann Arbor home owner got a Zillow estimate last year that said their home was worth about $175,000. (At the time that was about 8% to 13% low, as were a number of homes in the neighborhood.)

Well the same homeowner just told me his Zillow estimate now is $225,000! The Zillow value was bad before, but now it has gone in the wrong direction. (The home is probably worth less than $200,000 today.)

 Bottom line: Zillow might be interesting, but do not count on it for decision making in a real estate purchase or sale!

Here is a new tactic we’ve noticed in the Ann Arbor real estate market being used by lenders specifically when selling property they have taken back in foreclosure.

If a buyer makes an offer less than their asking price and they think they might be able to come to terms with that buyer, they reduce their asking price to see if there are any other buyers interested that they can bring in.

Here is an example from the East side of town:

Asking price on foreclosure: $140,000

Our buyer offered $126,000 and there were two other offers, one of which was ridiculously low.

The day after we make our offer, the bank lowers their price to $135,000 to try and attract any other buyers.

We’ve now seen this tactic on multiple properties, and it makes perfect sense from the seller’s standpoint, it is just that we’ve not seen it on normal transactions, probably because normal sellers are nervous about lowering their asking price in case this offer doesn’t work.

So, don’t be surprised if you see this behavior if you are negotiating on a foreclosure.

And if you want the negotiating skills on the largest buyer’s agent in the area on your side, call our office today at 734-662-6240.