Archive for May, 2010

While many experienced real estate agents have a general understanding of the mortgage approval process, there are a few important details that frequently get overlooked which may cause a purchase to be delayed or denied.

New regulation, updated disclosures, appraisal guidelines, mortgage rate pricing premiums, credit score, secondary approval layering, rescission deadlines, property type, HOA insurance requirements, title and property flip rules are just a few of the daily changes that can have a serious impact on a borrower’s home loan financing.

With today’s volatile lending environment, it’s obviously important for home buyers to get a full loan approval which clearly defines all contingencies that pertain to each unique home buyer’s scenario prior to spending any time looking at new homes with an agent.

Either way, we’ve listed a few of the top things your agent should keep in mind while showing you new properties:

Caution – Agents Beware:

Property Type –

High-Rise, Condo, Town House, Single Family Residence, Dome Home or Shoe House… all have specific lending guidelines that can influence down payment, credit score and mortgage insurance requirements.

Residence Type –

Need to sell one home before moving into another? Is a property considered a second home if it’s in the same city?  What if I’m buying a home for my children to live in, it is still considered an investment property?

These are just a few of several possible residence related questions that should be addressed by your agent and loan officer at the initial loan application.

Rates / Locks –

Mortgage Rates are typically locked for a 30 day period, and one of the only ways to get a new rate is to switch mortgage lenders.  Rates also have certain adjustments for property / residence type, credit score and down payment which could have a big impact on monthly payments and therefore approvals.

A 1% increase in rate could literally mean the difference between an approval or denial.

Headline News / Employment –

Underwriters watch the news as well.  Borrowers who work in a volatile industry during hard economic times may have to jump through a few extra hoops to prove that their employment and income is secure.

Job changes, periods of unemployment or property location in relation to the subject property are other things to consider that may cause a speed bump in the approval process.

Title / Property Flip –

A Flip is considered a property that has been purchased by an investor and quickly sold to a new buyer within a 30-90 day period.  Generally, an investor will do a little rehab work, fresh paint, landscaping…. and try to re-sell the property for a significant profit margin.

While it seems like a perfectly fair transaction, many lenders have strict guidelines in place that prevent borrowers from obtaining financing on properties that have a previous owner with less than 90 days of documented ownership.

These rules change frequently, and are specific to particular property types, so make sure your agent is aware of all the boundaries associated with your approval letter.

Homeowner’s Association Insurance –

Some lenders require Condos and Town House communities to have sufficient insurance and reserves coverage pertaining to specific ratios on units that are owner occupied vs rented.

It may also take a few weeks and cost up to $300 to receive an HOA Certification, so make sure your Due-Diligence period is set accordingly in the purchase contract.

Appraisal Ordering Procedures –

Appraisal ordering guidelines are changing quite frequently as regulators implement many new consumer protection laws created to prevent future foreclosure epidemics.

Unfortunately, some of the new appraisal regulations have proven to slow the home buying process down, as well as confuse lenders about the true estimate of neighborhood values.

VA, FHA and Conventional loan programs all have separate appraisal ordering policies, so make sure your agent is aware of which loan you’re approved for so that they document any anticipated delays in the purchase contract.

For example, if an appraisal takes three weeks and the average time for an approval is two weeks, then it probably isn’t smart to write a purchase contract with a four week close of escrow.

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Related Articles – Home Buying Process:

• Home Buying Process
• First-Time Home Buyer Credit Checklist
• Assembling Your Home Buying Team – Knowing The Players
• Important Factors To Consider When Getting Financing On A Foreclosure, Short Sale or New Construction
• Where Does My Earnest Money Go?
• HOA Hurdles to be Aware of When Looking at New Properties
• What You Need To Know About The Home Inspection Process

Seven Things Your Agent Should Know About Your Mortgage Approval is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

If you , you are not alone. In fact Twitter is probably the fastest growing social media that has ever hit the World Wide Web.  The term social media still holds some of the negative stereotypes associated with that term. But thanks to Twitter much of that negative image is beginning to diminish; think about the flow of information during the recent populist uprisings in Iran earlier this year that came via Twitter Here are some statistics from Business Insider that were released almost a month ago at Twitter’s developers conference.

• Twitter has 105,779,710 Registered Users – Just how many people do you think see that billboard, park bench, or phone book add that you PAY top dollar for?
• Twitter is adding 300,00 Registered Users A Day – Approximately the entire population of Albany, New York (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)
• Twitter gets 180,000,000 Unique Visitors – Some perspective, Brazil, the 5th most populated country in the world, has an estimated population of 192,000,000 (Source: Brazilian Official Population Clock)
• Apps are important because 75% of traffic is outside Twitter.com – PREP recently added TweetMeme alongside TwitMe to the available integrations to further the ease of use of Twitter by members
• Twitter receives 3,000,000,000 (BILLION) requests a day (Roughly the number of Tweets read per day) – This is roughly the same number Google receives per day (Source: Search Engine Land, Feb. 23, 2010)

WOW! These numbers may seem incomprehensible because they are so large; the upside to that…because they are so large, there is room for everyone at the ‘Twitter Table’. It would be very short sighted to view Twitter as people only talking about ‘…just washed the car’ or some other type of status update. Twitter is now a megaphone to what is going on in your community or around the world! Though Facebook still commands the spotlight in the social media arena, Twitter is the rising star that will continue to draw that spotlight to itself.

Again I ask: You Tweet, Who Knew?!? So dust off that Twitter account you created months ago and get to Tweeting. It is time for you and your business to shine.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

YOU Tweet, Who Knew?!? is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2012 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

One of our greatest features is the fact that we are constantly evolving. When we come across a great tool, we test it out to see if it fits our real estate network and would be a benefit. What is even better than that is when one of our members sends us a message on a tool they have come across that will be a huge benefit to our site. That actually occurred this morning and I would like to thank Ramona Strojevs of Burlington HomeForYou, your connection to Burlington ON real estate.

Ramona had came across a great application this morning and then pasted a link to that on my own wall on FaceBook. She had found Tynt. I immediately went to work checking out this new potential tool for PREP. My first instinct was that I really did not want to have a new tool that we would have to go through each and every account to get it added to our members’ sites. My first path was to go to WordPress.org and see if there was a plugin for easy integration. Fortunately, Tynt had been integrated into a plugin called easy tynt.

Once I got it loaded into PREP, I went to work testing it out. What I found was just extraordinary to say the least. In today’s world where people take content from your site without thinking much about it, this tool will alert you to that very fact. If you look to the left, you will see a screenshot from the plugin that I took this morning. If you can’t make it out, just click on the picture and it will open to original size in another window. Being able to track the content from my site that has been copied and applied elsewhere on the world wide web is a huge benefit. Also being able to tag that content with a license is an even bigger benefit.

With that said, the benefits do not stop there. Another great feature is the SEO benefits that you can actually track using this new tool. Each and every time that someone copies content from your site, you will get a link back to the original content. The more that this happens, the stronger your content becomes. However, it does not just have a positive effect on your content. It also creates more links to your site. That in itself makes the plugin well worth the time to set it up.

So, let’s talk about setting it up on your PREP account. You can ONLY use this if you have an account that is MAPPED. No sub domains or sub directories can be used. Once you are logged onto your dashboard, follow these instructions:

1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu under ‘Post’ in WordPress.

2. Click on the Easy Tynt settings link in your WordPress settings to configure Easy Tynt. Easy Tynt will not work until this is completed.

3. Visit http://www.tynt.com and log in or register a new account.

4. Chose the options you are interested in. I suggest looking at the Attribution Link. We are using the ‘Attribution No Derivatives’ License.

5. Once everything is setup to your satisfaction, copy the provided “YOUR SCRIPT” code into the Easy Tynt settings in your WordPress dashboard. Hit “Update Options” and you are done!

Now that you have done that, all you need to do is login daily to check your stats. Everything else is done for you. Once again, I would like to thank Ramona for sharing this awesome tool with me this morning.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

PositiveRealEstateProfessionals.com Adds Tynt To It’s Tools is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2012 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

When it comes to landing pages for your site, there are quite a few options. The three main ones that I have encountered are Static, Blog, and Flash. Personally, I hate Flash pages as a landing page, but for the purpose of this article, I am going to keep my personal feelings to myself. With that said, over the last year that our online real estate network has been in existence, we have moved from the Blog Page being front and center to a static page. When we create a new account for our members, a static landing page is standard in our membership fee of $150 per year. So, to get back on track, lets take a look at the three types of landing pages mentioned in this article. A huge advantage to having this type of page is you can actually build a sitemap of your site in a format that is user friendly. When I say “sitemap” I am not referring to a standard sitemap, but instead, an article that links people to the things that they want to find on your site. Also, you can focus on keywords for your site easier.

Static Pages

Typically, a static page is one that remains the same (see image to the right). While you can change the content fairly easily, it usually remains the same. One advantage of this is that the page is cached in the world wide web and typically opens quickly. Static pages can be created easily and saved in databases as html files. The common use for static pages for blog sites is to give the appearance of a CMS (content management system) feel or type of site. This is what is commonly referred to as a website.

Blog Pages

A blog page is common in sites that are built using WordPress, Blogger, Vox, and others (see image to the right). Blog pages are pages which generates a list of your most recent posts or articles and places them on one page. While all of these platforms have a different layouts and functions, the blog pages are typically set to function in the same manner. Posts are kept in a chronological order that you can click on and go to the individual article. The big disadvantage of having this page front and center is that if you are away for some time and do not post, it is apparent to everyone immediately.

Flash Intro Pages

Flash into pages load animated content first while loading the main content in the background. The main problem with this type of page is that NOT everyone has a Flash Player on their computers. Even though that might sound prehistoric, it is a fact. In the end, if they can’t load it, they can’t see it. While Flash pages can be pretty and can also take the site to another level, if no one can see it, then it is as dumb as having a Picasso and leaving it in the closet. For this very reason I think it is bad to have this as your landing page. Another disadvantage to having flash is when people are using dial up (yes, it still exists) then it takes forever for that page to load. Regardless how people are connecting to the internet, they all want a FAST experience. Flash does not offer that.

In closing, the type of landing page that you chose is basically up to you. Your web site developer should be able to expand on this subject more, but I hope that I have provided enough for you to make an informed decision.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Landing Page – Static versus Blog versus Flash is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2012 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Whether you hold classes, set up at local events, or simply want to promote an open house you are hosting then The Events Calendar is the perfect tool for you. This tool allows you to not only add the specifics of your event to both your blog and your calendar, if you enter a specific address it will embed a Google map in your post! If you have experienced underwhelming attendance at any of your events then this tool can help you to get more publicity and provide a map to help boost attendance. In addition to increasing attendance at your event, it will also help to garner more Google juice through the use of Google tools!

See the two images below for both visual and written directions on how to use this tool; clicking on either image will enlarge them. THIS TUTORIAL ASSUMES THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY INSTALLED THE EVENTS CALENDAR.

How To Use The Events Calendar is a post from: Test Account

©2010 Test Account. All Rights Reserved.