Real Estate News About Woodbridge Virginia and Surrounding Communities: August 2008

Four Essential Tips For Your Woodbridge Virginia Foreclosure House Hunt

When you go inside foreclosed homes in Woodbridge, Virginia, follow these three tips and you'll stay safe.

1. Beware.  Most foreclosed homes around the Woodbridge area don't have working utilities.  The banks typically "winterize" the plumbing, so the water is shut off and the potties don't work.

So if you gotta "go", make a pit stop between houses at a fast food shop, or gas station.  McDonald's and Sheetz are everywhere.  If you are a neat-freak like me, and you prefer tidy restrooms, I've found Panera Bread stores and Target stores typically offer sparkling clean facilities.

2.  Homes without electricity may have dark basements, dark utility rooms, and dark bathrooms.  I've seen the occasional toy or record player, and other hazards on a stair step down into a dark basement.    Take a flashlight for each person in your group.  I keep three working flashlights in my car, one for me, and two for a couple.

Remember, the dictionary defines a flashlight as "A cylindrical container where dead batteries are stored until discarded".  So check your flashlights before you go, or you could end up groping around a dark basement.

3.  Some foreclosed houses around Woodbridge may be dirty... filthy... germ kennels... bacterial breeding grounds.  The water is off.  No chance of rinsing your hands.  Simply touching a kitchen counter could trigger an infection that will make your arm fall off before you get to a working sink and soap.

Take a bottle of hand sanitizer, and some paper towels with you to get the sticky stuff you picked up from a doorknob off your hands.  If you forget paper towels, grab a few paper napkins from Micky-D's or Panera when you make a pit stop.

4.  Some foreclosed houses smell bad.... stink... reek.  If the water has been shut off for a few months, the water in the sink traps and potties has long ago evaporated, allowing sewer odors into the house.  If nasty odors don't bother you, proceed.  However, if nasty odors make you gag, wretch, or vomit, I suggest one of the following:

I one saw (smelled) a house that had a chest-style freezer in the basement that was filled to the brim with frozen meat when the bank ordered the power company to shut off the power.  Someone long ago opened the top of the freezer, and left it open.  The stench of rotting meat knocked us off the front porch when I opened the front door.

There you are.  Your essential tips for visiting foreclosed houses in Woodbridge Virginia, or anywhere else.

Call me at 703-590-2252 for a customized list of foreclosed properties in the area. 

 

Opportunities Are Everywhere...We Can Help You Find Your Dream Home.

 

 

 

 

 

Erick Blackwelder or Peggy James of Erick and Company - Exit 1st Choice Realty, Woodbridge VA. Realtors®, call 703-590-2252  list your property for sale or to  purchase a property in Lake Ridge, Westridge, Old Bridge Estates, River Falls, Middle County, Cannon Bluff, Meadowbrook Woods, Blooms Crossing, Manassas Park, Beaver Creek, Hunter's Ridge, Brittany,  Manassas, Montclair, Dumfries, Occoquan, Dale City, Nokesville, or anywhere in Prince William County.

 

Equal Housing Opportunity

Woodbridge Virginia Foreclosed Homes And Short-Sales Can Make You Miserable, Angry, Frustrated

I can think of no way to explain the pain and suffering that is involved with a home purchase that involves a home owned by a bank or mortgage company.

Words don't exist that could demonstrate to you how unorganized, inefficient and ridiculous the procedure is for helping you buy bank-owned property, or homes offer as short-sales.

You may become charmed by the fabulous price of a home you find on the Internet that is on the market as a short-sale. 

Only 5% of short-sales actually sell, and close, and the new owners move in. 

Nationally, 95% of homes offered as short-sales that indeed get a bona fide offer that is accepted by the owner as a contract do not go to settlement.  At some point in the process, the bank or mortgage company that holds the existing note blows the deal.

Only 5% of the homes offered as short sales, that actually get a bona fide offer, accepted by the seller, in fact go to settlement. 

How can that be?

Before I interview a prospective seller about selling their house by short-sale, I do my homework on the bank that holds the mortgage(s) on the property.

You may be shocked to find out that most banks do not do short-sales. 

The list of banks that will cooperate with sellers on a short-sale is a very short list indeed.

Next, I work with the owner to obtain a short-sale approval letter before we list the house for sale.

Sadly, traditional, ordinary real estate sales people do not obtain a short-sale approval because they think that all banks will take a short sale.  Nope.  No.  No way.

Moreover, buyer agents often show any and every short sale to their buyers without calling the listing agent to ask if the short-sale is approved.

You have a 95% chance of writing an offer on a property that will never sell by short-sale if your agent does not pre-screen houses you will see to delete the short-sales that will not be approved by the bank.

On top of that, you will probably have a home inspection on the as-is property and maybe sink in a couple hundred bucks for an appraisal while the bank is watching dust collect on your contract package.

The bank might have even agreed to the purchase price but then changed its mind because an unexpected fee popped up on the settlement statement and they didn't like it, so they bump up the sale price, with no regard for your contract at a specific price.

Just because you have a contract with a bank or mortgage company, don't expect your price and terms to be carved in stone.

Bank Asset Management in-boxes are piled with contracts involving short sales.

Many trees have sacrificed their lives for those piles.

Weeks and months go by with no answer to the question, "Mr. Lender, can I take the burden of this property off of your hands?"

It often takes weeks and months just to get your "package" assigned to an Asset Manager.

That Asset Manager typically has two or three hundred other files on his/her desk.

Banks have NO systems in place whatsoever to process the glut of short sales and foreclosures.

No two banks do anything alike.

Listing agents working with a short sale are consumed with phone call after phone call to the lender, while fielding calls from buyer agents asking for status.  If you are the buyer, you chewed off all of your fingernails weeks ago.

By chance, I strolled by an agent's desk at the office as she made the following phone call.  "Hello, this is Julie Glutz. I am calling in reference to the contract on 123 Blauman Street, file number 255-6555E-LCR2890.  I have left a message on numerous voice mailboxes every day for the past three weeks and I'm just trying to get some indication that the package was received, and who may be handling the package."

After a while it almost sounded like a jilted lover trying to get their boyfriend back. I just need to talk to you, please call me back. Why won't you call me?

At least she got voicemail for a particular person.

Often, the voicemail boxes are full so you can't even leave a message.

Employees at the banks also get shifted around and you end up losing your bank contact or they just quit because they're sick of it, too.

My pal who works in the banking business told me that the Asset Management departments are the place where errant bank employees are sent as punishment when they make a grave error so bad that firing them would be too kind, too merciful.

While all of these shenanigans are going on at the bank, people that desperately need to sell their home are suffering and people that desperately need to be in a home are losing patience.

Many times a buyer is months into the transaction and they just give up.

Then the Asset Manager calls months later and say, "We approve the sale."

In my business, I have an assistant who calls each listing offered as a short-sale to find out if the listing agant has an "Approval Letter" before we show the home to a buyer.  "No", and we don't show the home; "Yes" and we ask for a copy of the letter by fax or email before we show the home.

If the house has gone all the way through foreclosure, my assistant will find out the name of the bank.

If that bank has a record of responding to purchase offers quickly, and operating efficiently, we show it.

However, if the bank has a record of taking a week (or two, or three) to respond to each offer, counter-offer, contingency, we let the buyer choose whether or not they would be willing to ride-out the 90+ days 

They're just ignoring the elephant in the room.

First, they could make more efforts to try to keep people in their home by adjusting their rate or principal.

It has to be cheaper to discount a mortgage or the interest rate than it is to have a buyer default on their loan.

When did banks quit running their business like a business?

If you think the short sales and foreclosures happening to others aren't affecting you, think twice.

The only way to market recovery is to get excessive inventory, the short sales and foreclosures off the market and sold.

It's doable.

The banks are just prolonging the whole sordid mess by dragging out this blood bath with their inefficiency.

What the mortgage industry needs is a hero like a CEO of a bank that "gets it," will take ownership of the situation, man up and champion the industry by creating systems and developing a standard.

Buyer beware.

If you need help buying a foreclosed home in Prince William County I am here to help you.           

Just type out a comment or give me a call....ERICK

 

Opportunities Are Everywhere...We Can Help You Find Your Dream Home.

 

 

 

 

 

Erick Blackwelder or Peggy James of Erick and Company - Exit 1st Choice Realty, Woodbridge VA. Realtors®, call 703-590-2252  list your property for sale or to  purchase a property in Lake Ridge, Westridge, Old Bridge Estates, River Falls, Middle County, Cannon Bluff, Meadowbrook Woods, Blooms Crossing, Manassas Park, Beaver Creek, Hunter's Ridge, Brittany,  Manassas, Montclair, Dumfries, Occoquan, Dale City, Nokesville, or anywhere in Prince William County.

 

Equal Housing Opportunity

Homes for sale in River Falls, a premier golf community on the Occoquan river in Woodbridge are back to 2003 prices.
 

Properly priced homes in picture-perfect condition are selling fast, at or near the asking price.

See Homes Available in  River Falls homes  as of today click here.

Homes priced over the market are sitting, and sitting because Realtors and home buyers have seen the "SOLD" prices, and are bypassing overpriced houses.

"But Erick, won't people make offers if we price it higher?  We can always come down." 

Nope.

Not how it works.

Shoppers and Realtors have too many properly priced houses from which to choose.  They don't even bother looking at overpriced houses because even if they like the house, they don't want to hassle with negotiating the price down to the market.

As we've often heard, "You don't get a second chance to make a good first impression".

 

Opportunities Are Everywhere...We Can Help You Find Your Dream Home.

 

 

 

 

 

Erick Blackwelder or Peggy James of Erick and Company - Exit 1st Choice Realty, Woodbridge VA. Realtors®, call 703-590-2252  list your property for sale or to  purchase a property in Lake Ridge, Westridge, Old Bridge Estates, River Falls, Middle County, Cannon Bluff, Meadowbrook Woods, Blooms Crossing, Manassas Park, Beaver Creek, Hunter's Ridge, Brittany,  Manassas, Montclair, Dumfries, Occoquan, Dale City, Nokesville, or anywhere in Prince William County.

 

Equal Housing Opportunity

 

You can get a monster luxury home or custom home in Woodbridge, Virginia, with every exotic feature you could imagine, for prices that are half of what you would pay for a similar house in Fairfax County.

Some homes are set on wooded estate lots surrounded by lush forest.

  

Of if you prefer waterfront living, you can get homes with views of Maryland across the historic Potomac River, with your own private dock for your boat.

CLICK HERE NOW for your list of custom homes and luxury homes around Woodbridge Virginia with photos, virtual tours, addresses, and directions so you can drive by the homes you like.

Whe you find homes you want to see inside, call 703-590-2252 for a discrete private showing WITHOUT THE LISTING AGENT PRESENT TO PRESSURE YOU OR ASK YOU ANNOYING QUESTIONS.

 

Opportunities Are Everywhere...We Can Help You Find Your Dream Home.

 

 

 

 

 

Erick Blackwelder or Peggy James of Erick and Company - Exit 1st Choice Realty, Woodbridge VA. Realtors®, call 703-590-2252  list your property for sale or to  purchase a property in Lake Ridge, Westridge, Old Bridge Estates, River Falls, Middle County, Cannon Bluff, Meadowbrook Woods, Blooms Crossing, Manassas Park, Beaver Creek, Hunter's Ridge, Brittany,  Manassas, Montclair, Dumfries, Occoquan, Dale City, Nokesville, or anywhere in Prince William County.

 

Equal Housing Opportunity