Pedro Reyes's Discussions

A best time to buy,I did not see the details regarding the home you are talking about, but like the old cliche says, "you make your money when you buy!" Think about it! It makes sense. By this standard, I would not offer 490K in this market. Offer less! Much less! How about an agressive 415K. Maybe you will negotiate it down to 450K. Make 450K your bottom line. If you get it, you get it. If you don't you move on to the next home. Unfortunately, you are bound to find a distressed seller in that same community.Again, I am not sure where you are located at, but if you are in SOCAL somewhere, give me a buzz if you need an agent.Good luck!

The bank must approve the deal. The borrower is sinking and would have said yes to 150K. It all comes down to the bank. If the bank has not seen the offer yet I would expect a counter offer. The messed up part is that you probably have an interest rate locked already with your lender and that lock is for 30 to 45 days. You may have to pay for a rate lock extension. Check with your lender to see what the consequences are if you don't close on time. Your agent needs to contact the listing agent who in turn must contact the bank's asset manager who probably has stacks and stacks of pending short sales on his or her desk.Good luck!

Peanut,Agent from CA here. It seems like you went through alot of hurdles because of the DUAL AGENCY. You seem to have been taking advice from the ZILLOW world very often. You should have used ALMAY to represent you as the selling agent.Almay, I am sure that you have some Financing experience in this state. Peanut, give ALMAY a call. Don't go to a lender that this dual agent recommends.

LOL @ get a room!!!

Hey Justyn, Don't let your wife speak for you on Zillow. Have her get her own account. Change your password. You should probably delete that "Actually my wife wrote it!" You don't want to lose any credibility. No offense by the way. Or better yet, you should just come back with-- "I was just kidding about that sentence." I should be your PR man in AZ. How much are they paying PR guys out in Arizona these days? Maybe I need to pack my bags and head to the desert. Go D'Backs! JK>>> True Blue!

Welcome to the California thread.I welcome all visitors to participate in this thread. I was reading and reading through lots of threads that were posted in other sections and found myself posting replies for agents in Arizona, buyer's in Conneticut, and loan officers from Florida. I found the topics very interesting and found myself relating to a few situations that were posted. This thread is for Buyers and Agents from California as well as out of state Buyers and Agents who just want to get a glimpse of what is really going on in California. Chances are you will find that Us Californians are riding the same market wave that every American is currently surfing. Please feel free to vent your problems, solutions, scenerios, desires (to buy), and enlighten us with any experiences that you may have recently had in the current California market.I am going on two years as an agent. I graduated from UCLA in 1998. Worked as a union organizer with the United Farm Workers, then went into teaching with the Los Angeles Unified School District from 1999-2005. This is when I decided to become a full time agent. I started focusing on loans in September of last year and have been helping people refinance their homes throughout Southern California ever since. The last three months have been tough because the lenders have tightened their requirements drastically, decreasing the pool of qualified borrowers. On a brighter note, "elections are around the corner". I was discussing the current market with a friend and we decided that there MIGHT be some help on the way when the new President is in office. Every candidate is going to become a salesman (or woman) who will pitch about 10 solutions to the current mortgage decline. These solutions might not necessarily create drastic changes but they might create slight changes that will help loan officers, agents and borrowers close on more deals. Once again, have fun on this thread.

Business is much slower these days that the market is tightening their requirements. In this market, finding a buyer is like finding a needle in a haystack. Our goal as agents is to find that needle at all cost. An agent found the needle. This agent in our company just sold a 26 unit apartment complex for 2.1 million. This complex was first listed at 4.5 million quite some time ago. It went lower and lower and finally the buyer low balled, and BINGO, he hit the jack pot. The sellers made a nice profit as they had owned the place forever but wanted to invest elsewhere so they accepted the lower offer and the deal was closed. The buyer, seller, agents and the loan officer were all happy, obviously. Everyone came out a winner because the Buyer is netting a good profit every month on rents, even after the debt service of the loan. A happy ending in a time when a dark cloud hovers over the market. This is micro rather than macro so it might be an isolated case ...or it might not be? I am sure that others have similar stories to tell. The point is that if you take this example and simplify it to a house in Downey, and you can find a meeting of the minds, you will have a happy ending every time if the right deal is struck.Our job as agents and lenders is to look past the pessimistic people that always have something bad to say about everything and anything to cause buyers to look the other way. Like I said before, it takes a meeting of the minds in order to have a real estate contract. A person who wants to buy a house because they are tired of paying rent will find a way to get into a home as long as the mortgage payment works for them. It is common sense that you will have to pay more in monthly mortgage payments than what you would pay in rent for living in an apartment but the bottom line is "you are living in an apartment," with a manager telling you to tell your kids to stop making noise because Downstairs filed a complaint.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/BushMortgageBailoutJustMightWork.aspxHere's Bush's plan. Check the link. I am not sure how close he is to making this happen but it sounds like help is on the way for those borrowers that are in default. This states that the "losses will be incurred by the banks not the taxpayers".

Mayno,Thanks. I agree on your thoughts on LAUSD. I never really left teaching. I switched to substitute teacher once I became a real estate agent so teaching became part time. This way I would have a stream of income as I got this gig off the ground. Since I jumped into the market at the peak, people weren't buying, so I decided to focus more on the financing aspect. I am glad that I never got anyone into an option arm program with the negative amortization. You know the pick a pay programs? One guy told me that he felt bad because he had done so many of those loans when they first came out. I preached against this type of loan because people will always find the easy way out and pay the minimum (option 1) while seeing their balance increase. My recommendation to buyers was and still is the 30 year fixed, whether it is fully amortized for the 30 years, or fixed for 30 years with a 10 year Interest only period. Alot can happen in 10 years. I might start working more days as a sub. Maybe I will bump into some old colleagues who want to refinance their homes if they purchased a home under one of those loans that skyrockets after 2 or 3 years. If you know anyone in SOCAL send them my way. I think that there is a big market right now for refi's to tell you the truth. Alot of people are panicking with the way the market is right now and with the types of loans that they have so they want to switch to something a little more traditional that will give them peace of mind. If it could be done, I'll get it done. If not, I'll tell you so.

ABT2B,No one is attacking me. They are presenting readers on this thread with their opinions on the CA market, and best of all, they are backing it up with LINKS. Links that are very informative and support statements they make. Let me know when you are ready to buy but just know that I cannot work with you as ABT2B, because I hear that you have been really anti-agent and anti-buying. Therefore, I will wait for your name to change to AGT2B (A good time 2 buy). Only then can we work together. But until then, I won't waste your time. Trust me, you will know when it is a good time to buy for you. Maybe right now, it is just a bad time for you. I agree that the current market conditions have alot to do with whether or not people buy or not, but more than anything, it has to do with the actual buyer. For example, the avg price on Los Angeles homes can drop all the way down to 150K, yet this doesn't mean that everyone in LA is going to buy a house. No! There will still be people who don't qualify believe it or not due to millions of factors. Even worse, there will still be people who do qualify, but still won't buy, for whatever reason. I am sure there are some readers out there who will read this and remember a time when they could have bought that Orange county home for 200K but didn't for whatever reason. That probably deserves a self-kick in the butt. It happened to me. Ouch! The point is...when the time is right, you will know. Lots of factors come into play when buying a home, and when you are married, those factors increase twofold (some might say threefold). You not only have to have the desire to buy, but you must also qualify for the loan. It is always best to start with the qualifying process before you start looking for the perfect home. This is always step one for me.One only knows what one wants.