Our firm closed a big sale this past week with one of our most important new clients—a young woman on the fast track at a major telecommunications company. In her mid-twenties she is a woman with very little time to house hunt, but with lots of must-haves. Every aspect of her week is planned and we learned very quickly that our time with her had better be meaningful, concise and result-driven. I know that she lives her life pushing herself to work harder, get the best results and then find a way to achieve even more.
How do I know? This client as it turns out is our daughter Breanne, who at 24 purchased her own home without financial help from anyone – once more demonstrating her amazing ability to plan, execute and succeed no matter what the goal. (Breanne called me one day a few years back as a junior at Cal State San Marcos to inform me that she wouldn’t need our full tuition, books and housing stipend any longer. She had it covered.) Pretty amazing, huh?
Breanne’s ARG Realtor was her brother Cameron Abbott, the charismatic, headstrong middle child who at times in their childhood demonized his little sister mercilessly. Now armed with a business degree and wise beyond her years, it seems Breanne was just biding her time to unfold her well laid plans for homeownership with a bit of revenge on her brother!
The sale process had its ups and downs. We wasted five months on a short sale town home only to walk away when Bank of America refused to cover the $8000 in urgent termite work. Breanne stared down the Big Bad Bank and told them they could keep their pest-ridden property, which at the time had been on the market for some 400 days. Breanne does not suffer fools, and her cancellation only confirmed her objectivity. Realtor/Big Brother Cameron, who I am proud to say, traded his former role as tormentor for that of superhero, fired-up the idle search process and mounted a scouring of active, off-market and not-yet-for-sale homes. His wide net caught the winner—a 1919 Victorian cottage with just the right amount of charm and potential. Cameron made a quick end-run around another buyer with some clever contract language and Breanne finally had a solid deal.
Escrow closed a few days early. My husband Michael and I provided the new homeowner with a houseful of gently-used furnishings as an acknowledgment of a daughter whose independence and drive are exceeded only by her kindness, thoughtful nature and love of family.
Wanting to maximize the feedback metrics out of this transaction, I interviewed our 24 year old buyer for this piece.
SD LGBT Weekly: So, Breezy what were the highs and what were the lows of buying your first home?
BA: The lows were working with my brother. Kidding! You don’t really know how hard your siblings work until you’re right there in the middle of a transaction. Add my specifics, such as doing all the work on the cancelled deal; going out and finding a home the exact moment it came back on the market; and winning out over a competing bidder, and I think my agent did a great job. I would warn anyone doing this for the first time to have your agent walk you through it more than once and learn the meanings of words you don’t know. The learning curve is steep! Read everything! Towards the end the stress really got to me. I started worrying about money and wondering whether I had made a big mistake. My lenders Sam Assael and Drew Greene at Steward Home Loans did a great job keeping it all together since I had no problem yelling at my agent. (Laughs) Oh and one more thing? Short sales are NOT short!
SD LGBT Weekly: And the high points?
BA: I liked the fast pace of the search process and learning to compromise and rank my priorities. But the very best thing is that I own my own home! I have so many plans for it. I’m pretty stoked but now it’s time for some fresh goals.
SD LGBT Weekly: Don’t forget to clean out your rain gutters…
Apples To Apples Mortgages?
If you’ve ever seriously shopped mortgages, you have experienced the overload of disclosure paperwork you have to sift through to make a reasonable comparison of loan products. “No more,” says Elizabeth Warren, picked by President Obama to set up the new US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Warren says one of the first issues tackled by the new agency will be the streamlining of mortgage disclosure that will make it easier for consumers to shop mortgages. Right now, the lack of simplicity and uniformity tend to favor large national lenders who often use the voluminous disclosure statements to hide fees and surcharges where they are likely to go unnoticed by consumers. Fixing the problem will make smaller, local lenders more competitive.
Predictably, banking industry spokes-men foretell red tape and delays —two areas in which they have abundant, continuing experience.
Caught Red-handed
Chase Bank was successfully sued by 14 active-duty homeowners who lost their homes to foreclosure while in service to our country. Military families receive certain protections from foreclosure and onerous interest rate charges. Chase ignored the law and took 13 of the 14 homes. It’s not entirely clear that the service members’ homes will be returned to them. Stay tuned.
Big Bad Banking lost a case that may have nationwide implications. The State Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a lower court decision that found for homeowners who claimed Wells Fargo and US Bank illegally foreclosed on homes when the banks failed to prove their legal interest in the underlying mortgages. Expect a raft of similar lawsuits across the country on identical grounds. This should make short sales more appealing to the lethargic loan servicers, but don’t expect miracles.
I have said it before, but it bears repeating: If you’re in imminent danger of losing your home, demand by certified letter that your bank produce the original deed of trust for your review at any foreclosure proceeding. Your bank probably has no clue as to the whereabouts of the documents making foreclosure difficult or at the very least, buying you a bit more time to work on a loan modification.
Jim Abbott is the President/Managing Broker of ARG Abbott Realty Group DRE LIC 1843472. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Natl Assn of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals. He is a former board member at EQCA, SDAR, CAR and a past Library Commissioner for the City of San Diego. He can be reached at info@argsd.com or at his downtown office where his adult children pretend to let him run the company.
