Deal from hell: OVAH!

I'm happy to report that the short sale that's been driving me crazy FINALLY closed. It was a nerve racking week. There were so many different problems with this deal. At one point, my client was bringing 3K more to closing than the original estimate. Yep. You're reading that correctly. We resolved that problem lickety split and my clients brought the original amount to the table. That's not happening on my watch if I can help it. But it closed. My clients are happy and proud owners of a new condo. Yaaaaaa!

While I was being consumed by problems with my deal, some really interesting articles came out in the Post. Kenneth Harney's article titled: "When Default Is a Strategy" is a must read. Who would have thought that people would be using foreclosure as a strategy? Really? I was raised to believe that having good credit was really important. I find it hard to believe that someone would ruin their credit for 7 years on purpose. But that's me.

Renae Merle wrote an article about short sales titled "Coming Up Short, More and More." Since I had just lived through my own personal short sale horror, I found the article informative.

The other article I thought was intriguing was Elizabeth Razzi's post in her blog Local Address. It's called "Appraisal Quality Getting More Attention." On May 1, a new set of appraisal rules went into effect nation wide for real estate agents, banks and mortgage brokers. It's wreaking havoc on the buying/selling process and NOBODY has been happy with it. A lot of people in the industry feel that it's affecting the housing market adversely. Read the post for more details because this has become a HUGE issue when buying and selling a property.

In some good/sad news, Dave Stevens, the President of Long&Foster has been appointed as the new FHA Commissioner of HUD. I'm glad because I think he'll do an amazing job. I'm sad because he was doing a fabulous job for L&F too. He spoke to a small group of us at one of our weekly meetings a couple of weeks ago. I was impressed with his vision for L&F and for real estate in general. He was very engaging and entertaining. Plus he told a funny joke about Sarah Palin. I know, I know. He said the same thing: never mix politics with business. But it was still funny. Good luck Dave!

1221 Havard St. will be Open again on Sunday from 1:30-4pm. Have a great weekend!