episode 016. Fannie, Freddie, FHA Oh My! with David Garrett, Mortgage Banker

• in this episode, i’m joined by one of my preferred lenders, david garrett. david is a mortgage banker from garrett mortgage, and has been doing loans in california for “a long time now” (his words). he provides loans for residential and as well as commercial properties. listen as we talked about mortgage bankers, mortgage brokers and banks. we also discuss the two large government-sponsored agencies fannie mae and freddie mac and more. getting a loan is not easy but it can be done and IS being done; . for more information about david, you can visit www.garretthomeloans.com

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

episode 015. troy lindquist with alternative energy solutions

• in this episode, i’m joined by energy analyst, troy lindquist, of alternative energy solutions. troy specializes in producing calculation for compliance with california’s energy code as well as provides third party verification and testing for LEED homes as well as other green building programs. listen in as we discuss the importance of sealing the envelope, testing of insulation and duct leakage as well as troy’s recent trip to the burning man festival. for more information about troy, please visit www.title24energy.com.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

Hello and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today I want to talk to you about an article that recently came out of CNNMoney.com and it is titled, “Unemployed? Get a Federal Loan to Help Pay Your Mortgage“. An interesting program and what homeowners will be able to do is apply for a no-interest government loan for up to $50,000 to pay your mortgage and cover your arrears. What it will do is it’s going to offer assistance for up to two years and it will be forgiven if the homeowner stays in the house for five years. Let’s take a closer look.

To qualify for the program, homeowners must live in Puerto Rico or one of the 32 states not in the Hardest Hit Fund area. So, if you’re one of the states in the Hardest Hit Fund area, this program will not be available to you and some of those states include California, Nevada. Florida, Michigan and Arizona, where the original 5 when the Hardest Hit Fund was created in earlier this year in February.

And to qualify for the program if you live in one of those 32 states or Puerto Rico, you have to be at least 3 months behind on your payments but have a reasonable likelihood of being able to make payments again in the near future within two years. And, you also have had to suffer a 15% drop in income, but must have been able to afford your home before the income drop.

It is called the “Emergency Homeowners Loan Program” and they’re expecting to start taking applications before the end of the year, so, you can Google the Emergency Homeowners Loan Program and find out more information about it. And I think over the coming month or so, they’re going to release some more details about it.

That is going to do it for me today. My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

Welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today we have our weekly market report and we’re going to look at the 6 communities of Santa Monica, Westchester, Mar Vista and Palms, Venice, Culver City and West Los Angeles.

And the chart we’re going to look out today is called the “Supply and Demand by Month” and we are going to look at the last 12 months of history.

So, let’s start over here at September 2010. Last month there were 618 homes for sale and 92 homes sold.

Let’s take a look at where we were last year in September; we have 594 homes for sale and we had 108 homes sold in September 2009.

So you can see here the number of homes that have sold (you can follow my cursor across), it’s a little bit up and down; been hovering around the 100 homes per month. Certainly, last January and February, it’s down to about 50 homes per month. Then it is slowly climbing from March, April, May, June, where it was over a hundred units a month. And then in July, August, it started to dip. In September, it’s a little more than August. Be curious to see what happens in the coming months.

And as for the units for sale (the homes for sale), you can see as you follow my cursor, we dipped in December, January, February -which is typically the slower time; we see less activity. Then as summer approaches, you can see a lot more homes are coming on the market and now that’s starting to dip again.

Traditionally we’ll see over the coming months, fewer homes come on the market but with the state of things now, I’ll be curious to see what happens.

That’s our Supply and Demand by Month for today’s Reside Daily Bite. I’m your host, David Doucette, thank you so much for checking us out.

Hello and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. And some very exciting news coming out of the interest rate department last week. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that interest rates have dropped, on a 30-year loan, to 4.19% – that’s the lowest rate we have seen in decades.

And a couple of interesting things about the interest rate, they’re also predicting it may actually go lower. And there’s a program there predicting that the Feds are going to be buying more treasury bonds that’s going to drive down the loan rates even more to try and boost the economy. Some are speculating that it could go lower than 4% on a 30-year fixed; some are predicting it’ s going to hover right around that. Either way, it’s great news for anybody who’s looking to buy a home right now.

And what’s interesting about the interest rates, is last spring the experts were talking about the end of this year the interest rates are going to be up by 6%. So buy now…buy now…buy now. Well, that hasn’t happened, probably because of some kind of double dip that were experiencing, I don’t know. I’m not saying that there’s a double dip.

But I want to put the interest rates in perspective. 10 years ago in October 2000, interest rates were at 7.8%. In 1990, interest rates were at 10.17%. Check this out, in October 1980, interest rates were 13.79%; and October 1981, interest rates were at 18.45%. Now, in October 1981, I was 10 years old, so I have no idea what’s the interest rate and all that stuff is happening. My parents had already bought their house years ago that I grew up in. Crazy, crazy stuff.

Today, interest rates are at 4.19% and predicting to even go a hair bit lower.

That is going to do it for me today, thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

Welcome everybody to the reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. I want to let you know about a podcast that is currently on my website, residerealestate.com/podcast called “What is a short sale?” I have the good fortune of having in the studio (in the office) to interview, Toni Patillo of LA City Short Sales.

Toni is the broker record at Keller Williams, Santa Monica -the office that I worked with. She has been focusing on short sales for the last 3 years. It is 98% of her business right now and she has it down to a system. She has negotiators on her team and she is a fantastic resource; a wealth of knowledge.

I encourage you to check out the podcast on my website, again at residerealestate.com/podcast episode no. 14 called “What is a Short Sale?” We talked about what a short sale is and from the seller’s perspective. If you’re thinking or if you know somebody who’s thinking of trying to do a short sale, you want to hear this episode because we talked about some of the things that need to be in order for you to be considered for a short sale. So, definitely check that out. It’s a great podcast; I think it’s about 40 minutes or so.

And that is going to do it for me today and my name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the reside Daily Bite.

episode 014. what is a short sale? with toni patillo, short sale specialist, la city short sales

• in this episode, i’m joined by toni patillo, short sale guru, la city short sales and negotiator jason jerzewski, as we discuss what is necessary to qualify for a short sale as well as discuss the art of negotiation.  if you are considering a short sale, this episode will point you in the right direction. you can find more information about toni at www.lacityshortsales.com.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today, I want to talk to you about a trend that was reported in the New York Times recently about Refinancing into Shorter Loans and their saying homeowners  are starting to do that and it is becoming more of a trend. And the Gold Standard has always been a 30-year fixed loan. What we’re seeing with refinancing is people are refinancing into a 15-year loan. So, what that means is less time to pay-off their home; it’s going to be higher monthly payments but a lot more of your monthly payment is actually going to go towards the principal on the loan rather than the interest.

And I went to my trusted source on the internet, BankRate.com and they have a comparison chart that you can go and plug in. So, I plugged in for just a $500,000 loan. Today’s interest rate is 3.625% per 15 year and the 30 year is 4.25%; so the 15 year is typically going to run about half a point lower than the 30 year. But your monthly payment on a $500,000 loan (this is just the mortgage itself) is about $3,600; on a 30 year loan, it will be about $2,500. So $3,600 and $2,500; a difference of about $1,100 a month.

So, what that means is (this is where we see the big numbers), total payments are $649,000 on a 15 year loan and on a 30 year loan, $885,000. So, $885,000 up here and $649,000 here. It’s really about $240,000 difference between the 15 year loan and the 30 year loan…so, very interesting.

And what the article says is the people that are doing this are the ones who can afford to do it -typically ones that are making more than $250,000 a year, obviously. It’s going to depend on what area you live in but they’re also saying the people who are doing it are the ones who are pretty secure in their lifestyle and pretty set with the home that they’re in.

And so, I think it’s a great option if you can afford to do it or if you know somebody that can afford to do it. You can save on a $500,000 mortgage. You can save $240,000 over the life of that loan. Plus, in a 15 year loan, it’s now paid off in 15 years which can now free up some money to send 2 boys to college, which is something that I’ll have to be thinking about in about 15 to 16 years.

So, that’s going to do it for me today, I want to thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, we have our weekly market report for our 6 neighborhood communities here on the Westside of Los Angeles: Santa Monica, Venice, Palms and Mar Vista, Culver City, Westchester and West LA. What we are going to look at today is the median sold price of homes last month, September, versus where we were a year ago. So, it’s a good way to get an indication on what’s going on in the market and what’s going on in your neighborhood and you’re going to quickly find out that not all of the neighborhoods are doing the same thing.

So, let’s jump right into it here…we have our Median Sold Price by Month -that is the average sale price of homes that are selling. And we’re looking at Santa Monica first. What you can see here is September of 2010 (so last month right here) compared to September of 2009. The average sale price a year ago is $1.625M. That dropped a little bit to $1.574; change of about $50,000. So, it’s down to about 3% from where we were a year ago. Not a big concern here and you can even see August of 2010 is a good month for Santa Monica.

Let’s take a look at another community…West LA. Again, here we are at September 2010 and compared to September of 2009. In 2009, average sale price was $725,000; September of 2010 is $706,000. Change is about $19,000 or down 3% -again, not a huge concern.

Let’s take a look at another community…and here, we’re looking at Culver City. Average price a year ago is $632,500; last month is $620,000. So, a change of about $12,000 and down about 2%. And you can see the activity in Culver City -it had a very active summer.

Let’s go to Venice. This is where we’re down about 38%. So, average a year ago was $1.125M and last month was $700,000. That’s a change of about $425,000; down about 38%. The reason could be is there’s a multi-million dollar homes on the canals and on the oceans that just haven’t been moving recently. And that may be one of the causes of the drop at 38%. Again, it’s compared to where we were a year ago to where we were last month.

Let’s take a look at Westchester. Westchester is up 9% -it’s been healthy. A year ago, $690,000 and last month is $750,000. So, up about $60,000 or 9%. Pretty healthy for Westchester.

And then Palms/Mar Vista -very interesting. Here we are 2010 of September and here, 2009 September. So, a year ago, we were at $735,000. Now, last month, we were at $880,000. A change of about $145,000 or 20%. Some nice activity with Palms and Mar Vista and you can see here, pretty active summer for Palms/Mar Vista but in September…very active month.

So as you can see, the neighborhoods or real estate is hyper local. The six neighborhoods we’ve just looked at…they all touch each other on the Westside of Los Angeles and you can really see the different activities in each neighborhood. So, when we are hearing home reports in CNN or CSMBC, we have to take that with a grain of salt and remember to look in our own backyard to really get a sense of what’s happening.

That is going to do it for me today. My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

Mortgages: Congress holds conforming loan limits at nearly $730,000

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. And today, some interesting news or some good news coming out of Congress; this was reported in the Mercury News in the Silicone Valley at MercuryNews.com and you’ll see a link to that on my website at residerealestate.com. The Reside Daily Bite will have a link to this news article below the video.

The title is “Congress holds conforming loan limits at nearly $730,000“. That is very good news and it says, “Lawmakers have voted to keep the maximum size of loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration at the current level through the end of 2011.” So, this is really good news for the more expensive areas such as the Bay Area, also here on Los Angeles, on the Westside. This is great news because the average home price right now for single family home, depending on the neighborhood, is around $650,000 to about $800,000. This is a very much needed extension that we received and without it the limits would have fallen to about $625,000.

It’s very good that we have this and I just want to read a couple of quotes. One of the gentleman publisher of a trade publication called Inside Mortgage Finance put a kind of a funny quote… “Nobody wants to oppose or upset the Realtors and the home builders in an election year”. So, it was kind of funny.

They’re predicting it will help about 60,000 borrowers annually. Again, very good news for the Westside of Los Angeles.

That’s going to do it for me today. My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today, we’re going to talk about Zillow and their Zestimates. Before I jump into that, I just want to let you know, if you like the kind of content that you’re seeing here today, you can head over to www.facebook.com/resideFAN and you can like us over there. I also encourage you to send this link to any of your friends and associates who you think might find this information helpful, especially today’s video. If you have any friends that are thinking of selling their home, this is a very good one to send them because we’re going to be talking about Zillow and their Zestimates.

So let’s jump right into it. We’re on the Zillow homepage. Zillow is one of the most frequented US state websites on the internet, with over 12M visits per month -so they got a lot of activity over there. It’s not an appraisal website and I think sometimes, homeowners can think that it is somehow related to an appraisal or the actual value of their home…and it’s not. And now, I’m going to show you why, here in a minute. If you scroll to the bottom of their website, you will see “Zestimate Values & Accuracy” and what a Zestimate is, is a Zillow created thing through some formula that they have come up with and that they have developed. Let’s click on that and that’s going to take us to “What’s a Zestimate?”page- Zestimate home valuation is Zillow’s estimated market value. And they say it’s not an appraisal. It’s only Zillow’s estimated value but what I want to point out here is really the lack of accuracy in this for homeowners trying to establish real market value of their home.

Let’s look here…we have, “within 5% accuracy of the sale price; within 10% accuracy of the sale price; and within 20% accuracy of the sale price; and also the median error”. And you can go and look at your metro areas.

Here, we have Los Angeles – only 30% of the homes or 30% of the time will it be accurate within 5% and that might sound pretty good but I’m going to explain why it’s not in a minute. 54% within 10% of sale price; within 80% accurate within 20% of sale price and a median error of 9.0%; again, this might sound like okay within the margin of error but, within 20% of sale price…if your home is say, have a market value of $750,000. 20% of $750,000 is $150,000, so, it could be between $600,000 and $900,000 -that’s a huge window.

But I want to talk about this 5% column because a 30% accuracy…you might think 5% is pretty good. It’s not. And I want to tell you why. In our marketplace here on the Westside of Los Angeles, homes are selling within 1-2% of the list price -that’s right, 1-2%. So, you need to make sure your home is priced at market value if you want it to sell. What often times happen is, realtors and homeowners will establish a list price above market value and what’s going to happen is that, home typically will sit on the market until they have enough price reductions to bring it down to market value and then it will sell. Again, homes are selling on average within 1-2% of list price.

So, if we look at this 5%…it’s only 30% accurate. I, as a homeowner can’t really count on that at all. Really, the only way to know the real market value of your home is to pay an appraiser to appraise your home or have an experienced real estate agent show you comps of what is recently sold in the area -recently sold, that’s what we want to see (typically within the last 3 months). We could go back as far as 6 months but typically, we want to see what sold in the last 3 months to determine market value.

So, if you’re using the Zestimate, just be careful. And if you’re really thinking of selling your home, do not use the Zestimate; contact your realtor to have them do a comparative market analysis. If you have any questions or comments on this one, feel free to email me david@residerealestate.com. That’s going to do it for me today, thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

Welcome everybody to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and I am throaty; my voice is about 75% and I was out of the office yesterday, so, there was no Bite yesterday. I was home sick and I did have just a little thought of recording a Bite at home but that would have been a disaster so, I didn’t.

Today’s bite is an interesting one. It’s an article that came out last week out of the San Diego Tribune titled, “Downsizing is Booming“. And it’s interesting because the first line says, “Goodbye, McMansion. Hello, bungalow, condo or suburban split-level.” So, what they’re saying is, really, the era of McMansion is over and people are going to be living in smaller homes and being a little more mindful of their space in a living.

That’s a trend I predicted a few years ago and started to see some of that as an architect; and I think we’re going to see more of that as we move along were people, rather than trading up to their homes, they’re probably going to stay in their home and maybe renovate their kitchen or knock down a wall or do something to their existing house. Smaller renovations are kind of what we’re seeing right now as people adjust to the market and to the economic that we are in.

I actually think it’s a good thing. I think it’s an opportunity for us as Americans to reprioritize our habits and a lot of what we’ve been doing. The articles say, “Median home size has dropped 6 percent since 2007, in large part because cash-strapped Americans can’t afford to buy, heat or maintain larger homes.” So, it is interesting when you buy a larger home it’s not just a larger purchase price that you have to deal with. You have the larger utility bills, the heating cost, and the cooling cost. So, a lot of people have been realizing this and what some people are doing in these bigger homes is, they are going to the short sale process (or have gone to the short sale process), renting in the interim and then their plan is to buy a smaller home in a couple of years.

So, I think living within our means is going to be a new cool. It’s a great article actuall…if you go to the San Diego Tribune -titled, “Downsizing is Booming“. It’s kind of a lengthy article but it is really good. And, I think that’s it. I’m about 75% here today.

That’s going to do it for me today, for The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host. Thank you so much for checking us out.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today, I want to talk to you about an article that came out of the Orange County Register last week, entitled, “1 in 3 Unlikely to Qualify for Mortgage“.

So, what they’re saying is, 1 in 3 people will not qualify for mortgage and it was in an analysis that was done by Zillow; and they mentioned some credit score numbers. But what’s interesting is, borrowers with credit scores under 620, who requested purchase loan quotes for 30-year fixed, conventional loans were unlikely to even get a single loan quote on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace; even if they offered a relatively high downpayment of 15-25%.

According to MyFico.com, nearly 1/3 of the Americans, or 29.3%, has a credit score that low. Very interesting. And then it also says, not surprisingly, the analyst found that the lower interest rates went to borrowers who are among the 47% of Americans with primo credit scores of 720 or higher (So 720 or higher, you have a great credit score). And they give a little box here, if you’re above 720, your interest rate could be at 4.3% versus if it’s 620 to 639, you’re at 4.9%. So, a difference of 0.6% – that’s a lot. Let’s see, what Stan Humphries, Zillow’s Chief Economist said, “We’re getting in an area of historically low mortgage rates, reaching levels not seen in decades. Coupled with 4 years of home value declines, homes are more affordable than we’ve seen for years. But the irony here is that so many Americans can’t qualify for these low rates, or can’t even qualify for a mortgage at all”.

So, the lesson in all of these is making sure you talk to your lender -the very first thing you do if you’re considering buying a home. You want to know exactly how much you can afford based on your current income and the money that you earn. So, very first step before you even go out start looking at homes, looking at the right price range, make sure you are working with your lender. If you need any lender referrals, I have 3 very good lenders that I work with.

That’s going to do it for The Reside Daily Bite today, my name is David Doucette. Thank you so much for checking us out.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host David Doucette and today, we have this week’s weekly market report for the Westside of Los Angeles for the communities of Santa Monica, Venice, Mar Vista/Palms, West LA, Culver City and Westchester. You can also visit my website to download and print out this report. And that is residerealestate.com/blog and look for episode 059 and you can download it right there. Alright, let’s jump into the activity today. I want to talk specifically about Santa Monica.

Download the Market Report for the Week of October 2

In Santa Monica right now, we have 28 homes for sale under $1.2 M (the market we’re looking at); so, we have 28 homes for sale. We have 18 that are currently in escrow.  So, they’re in various stages of either home inspections or funding of the loan. We’ve had 17 homes expire or listings, I should say, expire in the last 6 months. We’ve had 54 closed transactions in the last 6 months. And the average sale price is $858,031. The average list price of the sold homes is $867,545. And I explained last week the ratio of the actual sale price to the list price of that sold home –and that’s 98.9%. Again, very important that sellers price their homes at market value. The average square footage is 1,371 sq ft. The average price per sq ft is $620. And the average days on the market is 54, which is pretty good. It’s a pretty active market here on the Westside.

Alright, let’s check out some activity the past week for Sept. 26^th to Oct 2^nd. We’ve had 55 new listings come on the market last week, which is a lot of activity. The week before, we had 40 come on. Also, -which I don’t like to see- 47 price reductions. That’s a lot of price reductions and there’s several reasons why we need to have price reductions but oftentimes, the list price is just unrealistic when it comes on to the market and I think it’s part of our job as realtors to educate the homeowners so we can price their home at market value. Accepted offers last week was 39 -that’s up 6 from the previous week. And then, sold, that is 18 -and that’s up 5 from the previous week. So, good market activity for the week of September 26^th to October 2^nd.

Again, you can download this at residerealestate.com/blog. Look for episode 059. That is going to do it for The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host David Doucette. Thank you so much for checking us out.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite. I am here with Lee Fox of Koodooz and we’re getting ready to record a podcast interview. So, this is a little mini trailer of what you’re going to hear on the podcast. And Lee, what are we going to talk about today?

Lee: I guess it depends on the questions you ask me. We’re going to talk about youth empowerment, philanthropy and how to leverage the passion points of kids to have some community outcome.

David: And tell us in 3 sentences (because we’ve been talking for a little bit,) the mission of koodooz.

Lee: The mission is to heighten awareness for the impact that kids can have. I’d love to give the example of a little girl that wanted to do something for the BP oil spill and she contacted the Audubon society and said, “Hey, I can draw really well”. And she drew greeting cards -here own designs- raised a $175,000 to help rescue animals. So, these are the kinds of opportunities I want to bring to life for all kids.

David: Wow, very cool. So you guys can tune in to the podcast to hear more of these kinds of stories and you can find that at residerealestate.com/podcast and Lee, really quick, how do people find you?

Lee: www.koodooz.com -that’s my website, otherwise, I’m on Twitter @koodooz

David: That’s okay and if you’re wondering what koodooz, how she came up with that, I’m curious too and you’re going to have to tune in to the podcast to find that out. That’s is going to do it for us today, thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite

episode 013. lee fox with koodooz.com

• in this episode i’m joined by lee fox, owner and creative mind of koodooz.com, an online social networking site geared towards helping kids establish goals and become entreprenuers. join us as we discuss the big idea behind koodooz and lee’s passion for helping childrens’ voices be heard today and her mission to help kids find and create their own voice. for more information lee fox, check out www.koodooz.com. if you’re wondering why i am featuring lee fox and koodooz on the reside real estate podcast, the reason is part of my business model is to donate 10% of net proceeds from each transaction to a local charity or organization of our clients’ choosing and this is the first in a series of local organizations that i will be featuring local organizations that i believe are and can make a difference to encourage others in the community to support these local organizations as well.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays. this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

Happy Friday everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I want to talk to you about the Consumer Confidence Index. It’s still going to be a happy Friday after we’re done talking about it.

The Consumer Confidence Index is a number that is used to measure the confidence of how consumers feel about the economy based on their spending and saving habits. It’s a very important number because the Federal Reserve will look at that number when they’re deciding whether to make changes in the interest rate. The stock market pays attention to that number, as well. So, it’s a very important number.

How do we come up with it? Who does it? Well, the Conference Board, which is an independent economic research group, is the ones responsible for coming up with a Consumer Confidence Index and they do that based on 5,000 households; they do it monthly. And the reason I’m talking about this today, is they just released September’s number. It’s down from August by about 5 points. So, where we are right now (September); it is at 48.5. Our Consumer Confidence Number right now, in the United States, is 48.5. In August, it was 53.2. We’ve come down about 5 points.

Now, what does that mean? Well, we have to put it in historical perspective to really understand them. In September of 2000, the Consumer Confidence Index was up around 142. In September of 2007, it was down to about 112. That’s when it really started to quickly go down for about the next year and a half to about 50 or so. The lowest of the Consumer Confidence Index was March of 2009. It was 26.9.  We’ve been making our way up and in May of 2010 (so, May of this year); we were actually at 62.7. We’ve been kind of coming down a little bit since May and hopefully we’re going to see that numbers start to come up. It comes out monthly. It’s very important number to follow and you’ll probably hear it on the news. And, that is the Consumer Confidence Index number.

It’s still happy Friday here. I want to thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

Welcome everybody to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite. The title of this show today is called “Good Realtors Work, Great Realtors Network” and the evidence of that today (you didn’t know that, did you?) is I’m here at a Tweetup event that my co-host, Michele, and myself  put together. We did that to basically take Twitter, bring it offline, make more of a relationship here on the Westside community and build some relationships here.

So, Michele, how do you like doing the group?

Michele: It has been so great and I’ve made so many great friends and so great business relationships and actually got some business from it. I think, small, tight, focused networking is really the way to go. It doesn’t really do any good to meet 50 people in a night and just splatter your business cards all over. You have to really connect with people and find out what people do and how you can help each other.

David: Yeah. And it’s very cool because we’ve been doing this, I think, 5 months now and we’re getting a lot of people coming back. So, it’s a lot of that familiar faces. And Debra, who is one of our members, is doing the presentation tonight. And Debra is…well, I’ll let Debra… what are going to talk about tonight?

Debra: Well, tonight, I’m going to talk about the importance of networking and kind of like what Michele just said –is essential. If you’re going to network, you need to network live, as well as online, and find ways to leverage the real life relationships for online purposes. And when you’re networking online, find ways to expand those relationships. I kind of agree with what you’ve (Michele) just said but I have to add a little caveat towards this because I do the media-bistro networking events and we get hundreds of those. It is okay to meet a lot of people and then, trade business cards and connect with them online (Facebook and on Twitter) the next day. That way, you start developing rapport.  So the next time you encounter the same group of people, maybe you pick 5 or 10 that you meet in the event and develop a relationship. You go and see these people again and then, you pick a different batch. I do these networking parties and it’s so funny…I see my friends, and I give them a hug and say, “Thank you, it’s great that you came. I have to now go talk to people I don’t know”.

David: And that’s really what all this is about. You’ve mentioned it -rapport, relationships. That’s what we are building and that’s what a great realtor will do; because a great realtor needs to be in a community, establishing relationships. So if I need to refer an organizer to one of my clients, I refer Michele or if I need somebody who needs to put a blog together or write, I can refer to Debra. So, thank you for coming tonight.

Michele: And if I need a great realtor, I would definitely refer to David.

David: Oh well… I’ll take it, I’ll take it.

Debra: Yeah, I’m waiting to make my fortunes so I can have you (David) sell me a house and then, you (Michele) can organize it.

David: There you go.

Debra: And in the meantime, if any body needs a personal trainer for writers, my Twitter url is “writeononline”

David: Oh yeah, @writeononline…

Debra:  @writeononline (WriteOnOnline.com) If you’re a writer, an expert, an entrepreneur and you need a little bit of a shove in the right direction, you call me.

David: And what’s your Twitter, Michele?

Michele: I’m on Twitter: @orgmish. That’s o-r-g-m-i-s-h

David: And I’m on Twitter @residedavid. That’s going to do it for The Reside Daily Bite today; thank you so much for checking us out.

I discuss some overall figures, statistics and analysis for Westside housing Market. Also included in the discussion is the recent activity this past week for homes under $1.2 million in the communities of Santa Monica, Venice, Mar Vista and Palms, West LA, Culver City, and Westchester.

Download the Market Report for the Week of September 25

Welcome everybody to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite. I’m your host, David Doucette and today, we have our market report –our Westside market report for the week ending September 25th. We are going to look at homes under $1.2 million in the communities of Santa Monica, Venice, Mar Vista and Palms, West LA, Culver City, and Westchester.

So, let’s jump right into it. We’re definitely seeing some good market activity here on the Westside. Right now, there are 303 homes for sale; for pending escrow, we have 136 homes and what that means is, those are homes that are in the escrow process, homes that buyers have put offers in on and the seller has accepted. So, they’re in various stages of home inspections or getting their loan funded.

We’ve had 147 listings expire in the last 6 months (I think that is a little higher than I would like to see). We’ve had 471 homes closed in the last 6 months; again, this is under $1.2 million in the 6 neighborhood communities. The average list price is just over $754,000. The average sale price (what it has sold for) averaged $743,000. And, the ratio between the two is 98.6%.

Now, I’m going to explain this list price to sale price. Very important, if you’re a seller or thinking about selling watching this, you need to pay attention to this statistic. What the list price is? This is the list price of the home that sold the average (that’s what it was at) –this is $743,000 (it’s what it sold at).

If you look across the board, you can see all of these numbers are within 1-2% of the list price of the sold homes. So, what that means is, homes are selling within 1-2% of the list price of market value. The issue here is, if you’re a seller and you price your home above market value, chances are, it’s not going to sell until you do price reductions to get it down to market value because as you can see by this chart, buyers are buying within 1-2% of market value. So, definitely pay attention to that. The average square foot -the average size of the home- is 1,457 sq ft. The average price per square foot is $515. And, the average days on market is 54. This is pretty good, especially in today’s environment; this is a pretty good number.

And let’s jump over to Westchester here for a second. Look at this, 30 days on the market in this community. The larger home here is 1,652 sq ft, so your money or your purchase price can go a little further in the areas of Westchester (as you can see: $426/sq ft).

Let’s check out some activity this past week. 40 new listings in the market; 27 price reductions (again, I was just talking about pricing it at market value); and, 33 accepted offers (so that means 33 people have opened escrow in the past week). That certainly is a good sign and we’ve had 13 properties closed escrow in the past weeks –that is a good sign as well.

You can find this video, not sure where you’re watching it, but you can find it on my website, ResideRealEstate.com, look under Reside Daily Bite. Look for episode number 55. You can download this chart and print it out so you can keep it as a reference.

My name is David Doucette. I want to thank you so much for checking out, The Reside Daily Bite.

After the successful Coastal Clean Up Day last Saturday, I’m presenting to you the results of the cleanup. The total number of volunteers who came out clean the beaches and some of the peculiar items recovered from different coastal clean up sites.

Hello and welcome everybody to another exciting episode of The Reside Daily Bite and let me tell you it is hot – it is hot today. It’s probably almost 90° here in Santa Monica, so to our friends in the valley…it has to be a hundred. It is hot, summer has finally hit; we’ve had a pretty cool all summer long. So now, September 27^th, we’re having our summer.

So, I wanted to give you the results of coastal cleanup. As you know, I’ve been videoing a little bit–letting you know about that. The totals are in and I’m very excited to report  more than 14,000 participants ( that is more than 14,000 volunteers), which is an all-time number of volunteers, collected more than 100,000 lbs of ocean-bound trash (that is more than 50 tons of trash! )

14,131 volunteers from 9am to noon at 65 sites throughout the county, covering 101 mile. Very cool!

Amongst some of the unusual items found this year are 3 bowling balls cut in half in Coyote Creek Trail and Cerritos; a vibrator discovered in Lake Machado; a goat skin hide and mummified cat in Tujunga Wash; a submerged gas burning stove at the Redondo pier dive site and several crack pipes in Santa Monica, Venice and Malibu. Also, a floating bag of marshmallows in Marina del Rey –a kayak site. It was a record breaking day; a great day for Heal the Bay. I was very happy to be a part of it.

That’s going to do it for me today, on this hot, hot Santa Monica Tuesday or Monday (it’s so hot I don’t even know what day it is; there’s like mirage all around).

My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

episode 012. home staging with annie pinsker brown, stagetosell.biz

• in this episode, i’m joined by professional stager annie pinsker-brown of stage to sell and we talk about the importance and benefits of staging and as a seller, why there’s a need for you to stage your home before putting it on the market.  if you are thinking of selling your home or currently have a home on the market that is just “sitting”, you need to listen to this episode. for more information please visit www.stagetosell.biz

It’s been a huge success – the 26th Annual California Coastal Clean Up Day. Many partook in picking up trash littered around Santa Monica pier and beach last Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010. I interviewed some of the people to ask the kind of trash they found scattered along the pier.

Thank you for all those who came out and contributed in cleaning up California coasts. And a big thank you to HealtheBay.org!

Hello everybody, it’s David Doucette and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite. We are here at Coastal Clean Up, Saturday morning in Santa Monica, California. We’re at the pier and we are cleaning up a lot of trash. We probably had over 400 people come here, so far. I have given probably 30 or 40 safety talks. It’s been fantastic; it’s been a busy morning. And now, we’re going to go interview people; find out why they came down here and find out the kind of trash that they picked up.

–

David: Welcome, we’re here with Nick, who is captaining the dive site here at Santa Monica pier. We’d been pulling out some interesting things. Nick, tell me what you’re looking for as they bring back the trash.

Nick: Well obviously, anything that they find. The point of getting out there today is to bring anything that shouldn’t be in the environment – plastics, bottles, as we’ve seen here, a lot of clothing items and strange rocks with vials taped to them. So, who knows what you’ll find.

David: Yes, we were uncovering a strange rock with a vial and then we stopped because we don’t know what that is. And Nick, is also from Heal the Bay so, we are doing a lot of great work here and we’ll continue to do that. I guess one of the things you’re looking for is any wildlife or crabs that have crawled into any bottles or cans?

Nick: Exactly! That’s one of the biggest problems with the debris when it gets into the ocean –as animals get tangled up in it and lot of times they ride back into the trash bags. So, we want to make sure that all that life does get back into the oceans (got to keep your eye out because there is always some wiggling).

David: Alright, thank you Nick.

Nick: My pleasure.

–

David: Alright, so here we are with my co-site captain, Art. We got pretty much everybody registered. They’re out and about. Now, they are going to be coming back with their bags. Art, what are we going to do?

Art: Okay, so first of all, when they come back, we actually are going to weigh the bags, so we know how much recyclables are were and how much trash are were on the beach. We are also going to pick what is the most unusual something that people had picked up. Actually, as of this point, it is two books from the Santa Monica library; so, those will be returned promptly. Everybody’s having a great time; it’s been a great day out here. I estimate, so far, we’ve had at least 300-400 people. It’s just wonderful; we’re cleaning the beach so families could come out here and enjoy the beach and not have to sit on some cigarette butts, plastics and all these other stuff. So, great day, David’s been great and Christine has been great. So next year, they’ll have their own site.

David: Right! Art has trained as well and now we’re going to get hit with another rush of everybody coming back to weigh their garbage ins. So, let’s go do that. Thank you Art.

–

David: So, here we are looking at some of the debris that the scuba divers pulled out from Santa Monica pier.

–

David: I’m standing here with Satish. And Satish, where did you drive from today?

Satish: From Hollywood.

David: From Hollywood, and how was it out there?

Satish: It was pretty quiet for a Saturday morning, I think.

David: What kinds of things were you finding in your group to pick up?

Satish: It was mostly cigarette butts and plastics like forks and knives and there are a lot of plastic caps, some food wraps but otherwise, we didn’t find anything peculiar or anything very dangerous.

David: Do you want to hold your bag up?  Let us see how big it is.

Satish: This is the recycle one. We have the separate bag for the regular trash.

David: Okay, great! Well, thank you for coming out. I’ll tell you how much I appreciate that.

Satish: My pleasure, thank you.

–

David: Alright, we’re here with some more volunteers, Leo and his group. Leo, tell me where you guys came from and I see you are all “Changing Tomorrow”. Tell me what that is about.

Leo: Yes, that’s “Chances” and actually acquired by Astellas, they are in the business of manufacturing medicines for cancer.  I decided it would be fun to take my nieces and nephew to come out and volunteer. Get away from the city for a bit and help out.

David: And what kinds of things did you picked up today?

Leo: Lot of recyclables, lot of plastics, lot of glass, cigarette butts and pretty much it.

David: Anything unusual?

Leo: Not really, not that I could think of. Crab legs, backbone of something…

David: Is this your first time doing this?

Leo: Yes, sure. Actually, yes it is.

David: So, we’ll see you back here next year?

Leo: I don’t mind. You want to come back? (to fellow volunteers)

David: You had some fun? (volunteers nod) Alright, thank you so much for coming.

Leo: No problem, thank you.

–

David: So what we’re doing now is, Art is weighing each of the bags and we’re keeping a tally of how much trash we are collecting.

–

David: Alright, I’m here with Marianna O’Brien. And Mariana came out today; she’s one of the volunteers. Did you have fun?

Marianna: I did, thanks.

David: What kind of stuff did you pick up today?

Marianna: Lots of little pieces of plastic and cigarette butts and some glass; all different kinds of things.

David: Did you find anything unusual?

Marianna: Toys, like Hello Kitty rings and other products that probably shouldn’t be in the beach.

David: Okay, and you said you’re a teacher here in Santa Monica?

Marianna: I am.

David: Very cool. Did you see any of your students here?

Marianna: I didn’t. I was looking for them but really, I was focused on the ground. At first, I was looking for them but then I got into looking for the pieces of trash. I hope that they’re here. I know Santa Monica high school has a lot of students who come and work with Heal the Bay. So, they’re probably here, I just didn’t see them.

David: Okay, how many cigarette butts did you pick up?

Marianna: Twenty-one.

David: Twenty-one, great. Well, thank you so much for coming out today.

Marianna: No problem, thank you.

–

David: Alright, I’m here with Jeffrey and Ashten, couple more of volunteers who came out to clean the beach today. Did you have fun?

Ashten: Yeah, we did. It was different because I’ve never done this before.

David: What made you  want to come out today?

Ashten: School, my teacher. I’m in marine bio class and she basically told us that, you guys do this to help the environment -with the beaches and stuff- so, I decided to come out today.

David: What kind of stuff did you pick up?

Jeffrey: We got a cigarette tip, not a cigarette –the cigar tip. We found one cigarette butt and we’ve got one bottle. We got like, little trash.

Ashten: Yeah, like little, tiny papers. We actually saw a person who found a Corona bottle, full of beer, in the sand. So that was just like, wow, this makes it a really big change for the environment if people come out and actually do this.

David: It really does. So, you’re going to come out next year?

Ashten: Yeah, I want to. I want to try and help the environment as much as I can especially the beach since we live here;  it’s just, why not take care of it.

David: Cool. Thank you so much for coming out.

Ashten: You’re welcome.

–

David: So here we are, we’re finishing up our Coastal Clean Up Day. They’re still coming in; they’re still bringing their bags in. You can see our bags of trash are growing over here, which is a good thing because a few hours ago that was all over the beach. So, we’re very excited about that and that is going to do it for me today…

Alright, so this is going to conclude our Coastal Clean Up Day. You can see, I am in front of almost 500 lbs of trash that we picked up this morning (that volunteers picked up this morning). And, we were expecting about 300-400 people to show up here at our site –Santa Monica pier. We actually had almost 1,000 people show up. We got them through in a 3-hour period. We had a staff of volunteers here; we had safety talks, which is one of the things I was responsible for. So, it was really great. We weighed all the trash. Everybody had a good time. And, I want to thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

Become part of one of the most participated volunteer marine activity of the year – the 26th Annual California Coastal Clean Up Day. Taking place on Saturday, September 25, 2010 from 8:30-9am until noon. Heal the Bay, Clean the Beaches.

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite – Happy Friday. We’re getting ready for Coastal Clean Up Day tomorrow, which is happening in LA County. And I’m sitting here with my two co-captains Art Salter and Christine Vicente. We’re going to be at the Santa Monica pier tomorrow. Art has been doing it the last 5 years. So, Art, tell us what we are going to do and what to expect tomorrow.

Art: Okay. Well, first of all, Saturday morning, it’s just the first life cart station north of the pier. We are going to be picking up trash to help heal the bay, clean the beaches. We’re going to start at around 8:30 to 9:00 up to 11:30. We’d love everybody to come out. You don’t need any experience. We will have a waiver for you to sign. We will tell you what to pick up, what not to pick up. We’re just going to have a lot of fun. We hope that everybody comes out and helps us pick up trash. We will have certain bags for recyclable and some for regular trash. And, what we will do when we are done (after the people go out, the volunteers to pick up trash) is that, we will weigh the trash and weigh the recyclables. Then, we are going to report to Heal the Bay and if you watch your evening news on Channel 2 or Channel 9, you will see how much trash is on the beaches. It’s pretty amazing what we find at the beach. Even though Santa Monica is a non-smoking beach, we do find a lot of cigarette butts. We find a lot of beer cans plastic holders that the pigeons and other birds chew on. They actually choke on it and die. We try to have a good time; it’s going to be a beautiful day at Santa Monica, so, come on out and help us clean up the beach. Christine, you have anything to add to that?

Christine: I just want to say that I’m really honored to be a part of this and to be learning from Art, the coastal clean up site expert. I’ll be representing Professionals Emerging as Business Leaders Committee at the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and we will be having a nice group of people from Pebble to support the Coastal Clean Up Day; so, this is going to be exciting. We hope you guys come out and help us. Thank you.

Art: Thank you.

David: Alright, thank you guys. Very excited! Come on out tomorrow, 8:30. We’ll be there, look for one of us three at Santa Monica pier. Thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

Here are some tidbits on 2010′s market trends; the main two factors to consider to get our housing market moving; and how realtors can benefit from social media strategies.

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. I’m very excited today for a couple of reasons: (1) you can see we have a new look. We’re a little more widescreen and that is because I have a new flip video camera, the Kodak Zi8. Now, the Kodak is very similar to the Flip video, both are HD but the Kodak has an external little jack that you can plug an external microphone in, like a lapel mic or a boom mic. I really like that feature, that’s why I chose the Kodak.

I’ve also eliminated the Reside Daily Bite intro and the music. So, that really gives you 10 seconds back of your day and I’m happy to do that and I promise to not take that 10 seconds and then, incorporate it into more talking time. So, I really am giving you those 10 seconds back.

What I wanted to talk to you about today is, this week in Los Angeles, it is social media week and a good agent friend, David Bruce, put together a panel the other day called, “Google versus Facebook”. We talked about how realtors can best use the internet and Google and Facebook to really reach out to their sphere of influence and also to reach out to people they don’t know. And DB -if you’re watching -great panel, great job putting that together. DB also invited Rick Cunningham, who is an owner of several West Side Keller Williams franchises. Rick gave his real estate outlook and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today, specifically, the Month Supply of Inventory. The month supply in the West Side right now is about 4 ½ month supply. What that means is, traditionally, if it’s a 6 month supply of inventory or less, it’s a seller’s market –meaning that’s the amount of time it would take to sell the existing inventory. If it is 6 months or more, then, it is a buyer’s market –meaning there’s a lot of inventory out there.

What we’re seeing now, (we’re 4 ½ month supply of inventory) it should be a seller’s market – it really isn’t. It’s a funny market right now. The buyers are on the sideline. The buyers are waiting. There’s definitely activity here on the West side. But overall, in general, the buyers are waiting, the buyers are being hesitant. And there are two main factors, not just in our marketplace but in other areas in California, that are really affecting this and we’ll talk about those. And those two are: (1) the unemployment rate in California is above 12% – and that’s high. We’d like to see that more at 5 ½ % or below. So, we have the (1) high unemployment rate; (2) consumer confidence is low.

What is happening is: we have unemployment high up here; we have consumer confidence low here. What we need to do to get the housing market really moving again: bring down the unemployment rate, bring up the consumer confidence. That will get the housing market going again. We know it’s a funny market. It’s a funny time. This isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to take some time for this to happen. But that’s really what we need to happen. And, that’s really a good indication if you want to see what’s going on and following the market. Really follow our unemployment rate here or maybe even in your own state and also, follow the consumer confidence. That’s really going to help out.

That is it for me today. My name is David Doucette, you can email me david@residerealestate.com. Thank you so much for checking out, the Reside Daily Bite.

This is a tutorial of Top Producer’s Market Snapshot, a unique service I offer to my friends, assoicates, and clients. You can view homes currently for sale and recently sold as well as view graphs and data for market conditions and community data.

Welcome, my name is David Doucette from Reside Real Estate.com and I am here to present to you “The Market Snapshot Tutorial”, which is an awesome tool to help you stay on top of what’s happening in your neighborhood. You can see homes currently for sale; currently on the market; homes that have recently sold; you can see community statistics and all kinds of other good information. The tutorial is coming up, right now!

Alright! The first step in looking at our Market Snapshot is, first, we will receive an email and that will come from david@residerealestate.com and the subject line will read “Market Snapshot”. So, we want to go ahead and click on that. It will bring us to this screen- let us know the report is ready for our review. And then down here…it’s going to tell us some of the things that are included (including data such as sold homes, properties for sale, inventory counts and even days-on-market); so, a lot of good information coming from this Market Snapshot.

Now, we want to go up here to the “View It” button and click that, then, it’s going to bring us to the Market Snapshot “Welcome” page. We’re going to click the “View Market Snapshot”, which is going to bring us to the “Market Snapshot” page. Now, a little orientation here on this page…here is the Market Info tab (and that is currently what we are on). We also have the Community Info tab and the School Info tab. Over here, you can see we have the “Asking and Sold Prices”; we also have “Sold Homes for Sale”; and then we can expand these…and now we have “Asking Vs. Selling Price” and the “Time on the Market”, “Number of Days on the Market” and also, the “Number of Homes”.

Let’s jump back over to our Market Info tab – where we still are. This map is the meat of the Market Snapshot and what you want to do here is, place your cursor in the middle and just move it around and you’re going to see it start to populate. This is in zip code in Santa Monica (90405) and my office is actually located right here on the south side of Sta. Monica airport. So, what we’re looking at here is, -if you look at the key down here…these blue diamonds were listed in the last 14 days; the green diamonds were listed 15 days or more. So, both of these are the active listings currently on the market; and the reds are what had been recently sold. And, what’s really cool about this is…let’s go up here and we can see $1.75M for this house on Marine Street; now, we can “Click to View Details” and this brings up the information. This ties right into our MLS and here’s the description of the home; the number of days on the market (34 days on the market); price/sq. foot, which is one that I’m always looking for to see if something is priced at market value.

What’s great about Market Snapshot -whether you are a buyer or a seller or you’re just a home owner and you want to know what’s going on in your neighborhood, this is a great tool for that. This is why I send this out to my friends and associates; this is just a great tool just to keep an eye on what’s going on. Now, let me zoom in over here…let’s say, I live on 14th Street and I want to see the house my neighbor had just put on the market. So, I can see, “Oh, they put it on for $890,000”. Well, let’s check out this home that has been sold –we know this because it is in red. Let’s “Click to View Details”…this home was on the market for $1.249M for 59 days. It was actually sold above its asking price at $1.275M on July 29th.

And, this is a great tool for the nosy neighbors; it really is, because you can really get a lot of information on what’s happening in your neighborhood. This is why I really like the Market Snapshot. You can also go down to the “Snapshot Scheduling”. It defaults to once a month or every 4 weeks. You can click “Edit the Schedule” and it will bring up another screen where you can change it to: every 2 weeks, every 6 weeks, every 8 weeks or never- if you don’t want to get it again.

I’ll just briefly click on the Community Info tab because I just want to show you this a little bit. Let’s go down here and I’m gonna click on “Shopping and Groceries” and as you can see, we have “Public Services”, “Places of Worship”, “Recreation and Leisure”, and “Food and Drink”. I’m just going to start clicking on a couple of these – and you’re going to see the map starts to populate. How cool is that! So, you can really start to see what’s in your neighborhood and again, we can zoom in and really see what’s going on and…look at that, it tells us what that is and tells us what these things are. So, this is a very cool tool. I hope everybody finds it useful and if you have any questions, feel free to email me: david@residerealestate.com. This is going to conclude the Market Snapshot tutorial and I want to thank you so much for checking it out.

GIVE A GIFT, MAKE A DIFFERENCE:
CLUB PARTNERS WITH KOODOOZ TO DO GOOD FOR HOMELESS YOUTH

A night without a home. . . On any given evening  there are approximately 50 homeless families with children in Santa Monica. To raise awareness around youth homelessness the Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Monica and KooDooZ hosted a “Night without a Home” last Friday. Over 100 Club Kids, volunteers and members of the community came together for a thoughtful discussion and activities around every-day actions we can take to help those in need. The event was held outdoors on the basketball courts behind the main Clubhouse. It was a fitting venue for a talk on homelessness as the fog rolled in and attendees shared blankets and coats to keep warm.

Special guest speaker Jonas Corona, just 7-years old, shared how he has assembled 1,500 backpacks filled with supplies with his organization “Love in The Mirror” for kids experiencing homelessness. Ehecatl Rojas of Los Angeles Youth Network (LAYN), which serves local homeless youth throughout the county, shared characteristics of children in distress and made suggestions for supporting this vulnerable population as part of the discussion. Concerned Club members, some not much older than Jonas, had plenty of questions on what they could do to help.

“Not since the Great Depression have so many kids stood at poverty’s door,” shared Lee Fox, founder of KooDooZ.  “The purpose of the event is to expose the harsh realities of youth homelessness and also to give kids smarter ways to address this humanitarian challenge,” added Fox. Located in Santa Monica, KooDooZ is a cause-based social networking site for “KDZ” (friends , students and agents of change) who aspire to make the world a better place.

After the discussion Club members assembled care packages with handmade cards, personal journals and blankets to be donated to LAYN. Volunteers from local businesses including Yoga for Change, Le Merigot Hotel, Muselli Commercial Realtors, Reside Architecture, Brand Culture, and the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce came out to help with the care packages and to learn along with the Club Kids.

To wrap up the insightful evening participants pulled out more blankets and watched “The Pursuit of Happyness,” starring Will and Jayden Smith. The movie is based on the true story of Chris Gardner , a father who struggled to protect his son from the realities of homelessness they experience after a family crisis.  By 10 p.m. as the movie ended, participants were grateful for the shared experience . . . and to be able to head to their own homes for the night.

According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty 1.35 million children are likely to experience homelessness in a given year (2007). “The Boys & Girls Clubs of America has always offered a safe and affordable place for kids to discover their potential to ‘be great’ and do great things,” remarked Aaron Young, CEO of The Santa Monica Boys & Girls Club.  “I think it is important for our members, families and the community at large to understand more about this population and what we can do collectively to make a difference.”

See photos from the event on our Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=210691&id=157549157887&ref=mf

I discuss the importance of looking at the price per square foot in your neighborhood to get a good idea of market value, especially when your considering buying or selling a home.

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite, I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I’m happy to bring out the board – the board is back! It is Tuesday, so here in LA area, we do – our brokers- open on Tuesdays and I want to talk briefly about the price per square foot.

And what is it? It’s the asking price of a listing price divided by the size or the square footage (gives you the price per square foot). Wherever you are, not just in L.A., you should really be looking at the price per square foot. Some agents are very good at this, some agents are not.

I want to give you a couple of examples. I went and saw five homes today or five I’m going to tell you about (I saw more than that), all in the same general neighborhood. This one at $302/sq ft is priced a little low and the price point, under about 750 thousand is where I was looking today. Another one, we had $438/sq ft, $411/sq ft and $433/sq ft. This is actually about the range of homes in the neighborhood that I was looking at for a 2-bedroom, 1- or 2-bath home.

So, the reason I wanted to record this, is because, I went and saw a house that was not within this range, nor $500, but $695 per square foot. Now, that’s not to say there are no homes in certain areas or in the neighborhood of L.A. that might have that price or that asking price. The majority don’t. If you want to sell your home (2-bedroom, 1-2 bath), generally, you’re going to be in this price range. But the $695? It’s the last home I saw (already I know it may be overpriced), so, I’m expecting a completely done kitchen, a completely done, modernized interior, still, it is overpriced to $695 (even if that was the case!). The kitchen needed to be redone – it was a nice house, don’t get me wrong – but this $695… was overpriced. It should have been in this range or maybe around $500/ square foot.

But the point of this is, for you, the buyer, if you’re working with your agent, make sure you are discussing price per square foot. And what’s funny is the agent told me as I was leaving, “We have priced this aggressively” – those were his words. I bit my tongue and walked out. I certainly didn’t want to get into it; it is clearly overpriced. So again, know your market; know the price per square foot where you’re looking because this bothers me when I see listings like this.

I’m going to do a quick stat – hopefully the tape’s not going to run out. If you remember the stats we did yesterday, we had 124 listings expire in the last six months. We had 20 new listings come on last week. So let’s say, that’s 80 listings a month. Then, it would be 480 listings over the past six months; 124 of those have expired – that’s ¼ of the listings. So, ¼ of the homes you’d be seeing out there might be overpriced. But…that ($695) is overpriced!

My name is David Doucette, feedback 1-800-476-5579. Thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

I discuss some overall numbers for the Westside Market as well as discuss what has happened in the last week.

Happy Monday everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today and on Mondays, what I’m going to do is cover some market analysis of what’s been happening on the market here on the Westside of Los Angeles. I’m going to be doing this every Monday. This report is also going to be on my website (ResideRealEstate.com) and you can check out the blog page.

The areas I’m going to cover (I’m going to stay under the price point of $1.2 Million) are Santa Monica, Venice, Mar Vista/ Palms, Culver City and Westchester. I’m going to give you some overall statistics right now of where we are in the market and then, I’m going to tell what’s happened this past week.

So, where we are in the market right now? There are 259 homes for sale, actively on the market right now. There are 145 homes that are in escrow. There have been 124 homes that have expired in the last 6 months – which I think is a lot (that means, the homes didn’t sell). There could be variety of reasons of why they didn’t sell, but most of the time, it’s because that they were not priced at market value, they were priced out of the market or above market value.

A good agent should help you, if you’re thinking of selling your home, price your home correctly. There’s been 444 homes sold in the last 6 months (again, this is just the communities of Santa Monica, Venice, Mar Vista/ Palms, Culver City and Westchester, under the $1.2 million price point). Average days on the market is about 51 days, as what we are seeing right now.

So, let’s talk about what’s happened in this last week.  New listings: we’ve had 20 new listings come on the market in the past week. We’ve also had 20 price reductions. Remember when I was just saying about the expired listings. These homes that are having the price reductions, they basically came on the market above market value and the sellers were unrealistic or the agents were not properly doing their market analysis to determine the list price. But, 20 homes, just in the past week have had price reductions. I don’t really like to see that but that is the nature of the market we’re in right now.

There had been 32 accepted offers in the past week –so, this is encouraging news. It means escrow opens; so then all the inspection periods and the loan funding and all that are going to take place. And then, we’ve had 10 solds in the past week ( Solds meaning escrow has closed; it’s final; the new owner is moving into the house).

Now, what’s interesting here is, the accepted offers is 32, the solds is 10. It is taking longer for escrows to happen. Typically, it used to be 30 days. We might still be able to get them in 30 days but it’s more often than not, 30 pushing 45 days, sometimes even longer. The banks are just requiring a more sort of thorough process with the lending.

So, here is the chart (hopefully you can see it so the light’s not blinding). So this is going to come out every Monday. I’m going to put it on my blog- ResideRealEstate.com/blog.  I’m also going to put it on my Facebook fan page – facebook.com/ResideFan.

That’s my market report for today. Questions or comments: 1-800-476-5579. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today’s Reside Daily Bite.

Show your support by visiting www.healthebay.org and clicking the alert button and call your senator today! it takes 15 seconds

Happy Friday everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, a couple of things I want to talk about a great organization: HealtheBay.org. And, this flyer right here is for the upcoming Coastal Clean Up which is happening on September 25th from 9 to noon all along the coasts in California. So, if you live near the coast (and it’s also happening in some inland areas as well), I encourage you to check that out and I will be giving more information on future episodes about that.

Speaking of Heal the Bay, there’s a very important bill in the Senate right now (in the California Senate) – the AB 1998. We want this bill to pass because what it’s going to do is have California be the first state in the country to ban single-use plastic bags (grocery stores, drug stores, those kinds of bags). This would be great! There are a lot of organizations behind it, including the California Groceries Association. And we as Californians used 19 billion (that’s with a B!), 19 billion single-use plastic bags a year and many of them are finding their ways into the ocean. If we can cut that out, that would be huge.

For more information, go to HealtheBay.org. On their homepage, go to the right side (there’s an alert button), click that page and there will be instructions; a phone number for you to call your local state Senator and give your support for the bill; and you can also email.

Also, on the HealtheBay.org page is a mockumentary that you should see – the life of a plastic bag narrated by Jeremy Irons.

So hopefully, we can get this bill passed. Tell your friends. If you see this video, share it and get your support behind AB 1998.

My name is David Doucette. Feedback: 1-800-476-5579. Have a great weekend and thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

I’m finally back after a 3 month absence and just finished an amazing 3 days with tom ferry and his success summit! lots of great ideas and topics coming along the way!

Like what you see? tell a friend and check out our youtube channel

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. I am super pumped today; I’m super excited. For those of you who have been following The Reside Daily Bite, you have probably noticed that I have not put out an episode for about 3 months. What happened is, I decided to take a break from all social media, from Facebook, Twitter, The Reside Daily Bite, podcasting and focused on some time management issues; spending some time figuring out how to make all of these to work.

As many of you know, I’m married, have two little boys and trying to find time for everybody has been a struggle. I am in the process of figuring this stuff out. But the reason I’m super excited, the reason I am super pumped is I just finished a 3-day seminar with Tom Ferry. If you don’t know Tom Ferry, he just released the book called “Life by Design” and he is a very big coach in the real estate world. He is also expanding his business in outside of the real estate market. We had just spent 3 days in Anaheim –today was actually day 3. I’m back in my office recording this because one of the commitments that I am making to myself and to you my viewers is The Reside Daily Bite’s comeback. I have a whole bunch of ideas to talk about and I’m really excited about that.

We’ve just spent 3 day masterminding with about 3,000 other agents from all over the country. I think we had a very good showing from Canada and we had, I believe, 1 or 2 people from Australia. Tom called it the “Success Summit” and I would say it was very much a success. I got a lot of great information. I got a lot of homework to do. I have a lot of business planning to do. But one of the things that I thought was interesting (that stuck in my mind) is, to go home and throw out half of your clothes or donate half of your clothes. That’s actually one of the projects that I’m going to work on very soon because I know there’s a lot of clothes that I have in my wardrobe that just take up space in my closet. So, I’m going to get rid of half of my clothes. That’s the challenge for myself right now.

What does any of these have to do with real estate? It’s just I’m excited and you are going to be getting more information from me –market analysis, statistics, short sale info, and foreclosure info. My mind is racing a mile a minute and I should probably just end it right there. So, I am going to do that.

I want to say thank you to Tom Ferry and the Success Summit. I’m sure some of those agents that I met are going to be watching this video because I’m going to tweet it out. I’m going to put in on my fan page. If you want to become a fan: facebook.com/resideFan or you can follow me on Twitter (residedavid) or you can call our voicemail listener feedback line at 1-800-476-5579.

My name is David Doucette and I’m going to see you tomorrow.

Let’s see. I waited until I was 34 before marrying the love of my life and 35 before having our first son. That’s pretty patient. Okay maybe there wasn’t much patience between getting married and having Jake, but I was not the impatient one. Actually neither one of us were impatient, we were just blessed and still buzzing from our 3 week Italian honeymoon. 

There is no debate, however, about our two boys’ patience, or lack thereof. From first waking in the morning and demanding “I want breakfast now” to trying to eat dessert before dinner is done (did I mention our boys really like to eat?), they do not like to wait for anything. And they are not bratty kids, they are very polite and say please and thank you. Maybe they are just hungry all the time?  

But they can be patient about one thing… going to bed at night. They will try every trick in the book to stay up “just five more minutes” or to read “just one more book.” Let’s face it, no one really expects little boys to be patient anyway, right? 

What about us adults? Should we be patient?  

That probably really depends on who you ask. If you ask anyone in the real estate industry, I hope they would say an emphatic yes (dealing with banks is not easy). What about homeowners facing a difficult financial situation? I hope they would realize yes as well, because there are options to help those homeowners but solutions will take time. 

I think Patience is the new cool for the future. It’s something that if you don’t have right now, you should be exploring ways to get some (maybe amazon.com or a yoga retreat in the desert). Just don’t confuse patience with passiveness.   

And if my wife is reading this, I think I continue to prove my patience. I haven’t  bought an iPad…yet. 

david doucette, architect | associate broker
reside architecture & reside real estate  

keller williams santa monica

where does the time go???? it’s been a few months since my last newsletter and i can’t believe the month of may is almost gone. TIME just slips away.

As many of you know i currently produce “the approachable architect podcast” as well as “the reside realtor online radio show”. i’ve also recently begun producing a daily video podcast called “the reside daily bite.” oh yes, and i also run an architecture practice as well as a real estate practice and recently launched residerealestate.com. and did i mention i spend a lot of time on the social media networks?

so how do i find the TIME to do it all? i work A LOT. just ask my wife, wendy and two boys, jake and remy, who haven’t seen a whole lot of their husband/daddy these last few months. i’ve been consumed with the office, getting the real estate side of the business up and running, and the different shows i’ve been producing. as many of you also know, i’m very passionate about the work i do and i love working with people.

BUT my relationship with my family has been taking a back seat. i have not had enough TIME with them. SO what does all this mean?

well, i attended a real estate conference earlier in the week and one of the speakers mentioned what would become my biggest A-HA moment in a long time. he asked the audience the question “how do children spell love?” one would initially think L-O-V-E or maybe L-U-V, but that’s not correct. the answer is T-I-M-E. Bingo! it hit me like a ton of bricks. i shared the revelation with my wife as soon as i got home that night. the next day, at the same conference, i had the honor of hearing gary keller, ceo of keller williams, speak and he, coincidentally, asked the same question, but instead asked “how does my wife spell love?” yup, the answer again was T-I-M-E. i knew at that very moment, the universe was reaching out to me in a BIG way and i couldn’t ignore that. i realized right then and there, i needed to spend more TIME with my family, and needed to figure out a way to do that, but i also didn’t not want to sacrifice my client relationships. so what’s a fellow to do?

i’ve put all the podcasts on hold as that took up several hours a week of time and re-prioritized the way i run my business. i’m going to be creating more systems that will allow me to run a more efficient business AND at the same TIME allow me to spend more time with my family.

my clients will still receive the great service they’ve grown accustomed to and my focus will become much sharper on the business as i scale back the podcasts and time spent on social media. i’ll also be implementing plans to grow the business and recruit great people to help me along the way. have no fear, the podcasts will continue to provide a lot of great content in their existing format, and i look forward to the day when i start turning on the microphones again.

BUT for now, family comes first, and TIME is my NEW FRIEND.

david doucette, architect | broker
reside architecture & reside real estate
keller williams santa monica

episode 011. credit repair with larry and jordan carnahan, american credit repair

• in this episode, i’m joined by larry and jordan carnahan of american credit repair and we talk all about the importance of your credit and credit score and also how to go about repairing your credit. they are also true proponents of customer service and getting the word out to consumers about how they can help improve their lives. for more information please visit www.americancreditrepair.net.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays. this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

I discuss a great resource for credit repair and talk with larry and jordan carnahan from americancreditrepair.net. they are passionate about helping people get their credit back on track. tune in to episode 011. of the reside realtor online radio show.

Hello everybody and welcome to another Reside Daily Bite –Happy Friday! I’m your host, David Doucette. Quick bite today. I just had in for an interview earlier this morning from AmericanCreditRepair.net, Larry and Jordan Carnahan. Let me tell you folks, if you are having troubles with your credit (your credit score is funky), you need to call these people and you can get all the information on my podcast which will be posted later today. I will put a link to this show note but, it’s AmericanCreditRepair.net. Their number: 310-829-9900 and you can talk to either to Larry or Jordan.

We talked about credit repair. It’s a 55-minute podcast interview. We talked about credit scores. We talked about the importance of credit scores and how to start rebuilding your credit. Definitely, you’re going to want to give these guys a listen. The reason why I had them into the office or into the studio for an interview is they did a presentation over Keller Williams, Santa Monica. So, I want to let you know I’m not paid by them…I’m not getting any sort of referral fee by them. I just think it is great information; it’s a great service and they do things a lot differently or they do things differently than 95% of their competition. You can hear all about that in the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show, the podcast that will be episode no.11.

That is going to do it for me today; 1-800-476-5579 or feedback at ResideRealEstate.com. I’m David Doucette. Thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite and have a fantastic weekend.

Here is a great resource for those homeowners considering a “short sale”, www.makinghomeaffordable.gov and the youtube channel video called “your graceful exit”.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I’m going to give you a great website, a great resource if you’re finding yourself considering a short sale situation. Now, if you’re wondering what a short sale is, you can tune in to yesterday’s daily bite when I explained what a short sale is.

The website I want to show you… (And I’m going to do some kind of…my cool camera guy here) the website is called MakingHomeAffordable.gov and it’s a great website. But also, if you go to YouTube channel, which is what this is right here, and search for “makinghomeaffordable.gov”, look for the video titled, “You’re Graceful Exit”. It gives you great information on what exactly a short sale is. Do you qualify? What are the next steps? So, I wanted to share that with you. If you find yourself in the short sale process here in California, I’d love to talk to you and see if I can help you out. You can email me here of course, david@residerealestate.com

If you have any feedback: 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com. My name is David Doucette. Thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

I discuss what is a short sale and the requirements to be considered for a short sale.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. We’re going to do a quick bite today. I’m going to jump on a call but I want to talk about short sales and what exactly a short sale is.

Short sales are often times mentioned in the same breath as a foreclosure, but, they’re two totally different things. I’ll cover what a foreclosure is on another bite but a short sale is essentially when somebody wants to sell their home and the amount that they owe on it is more than what the house is worth. So for example, somebody might have paid $600,000 for their home two years ago, they need to sell it now -it’s only worth $400,000. Now, there’s a gap in that mortgage difference. In a short sale, there are 2 recipes or 2 ingredients that need to be to qualify for short sale.

Number 1: Your house, obviously, has to be under water

Number 2: You as the homeowner have to be in dire state; there has to be financial hardship that you are currently in or it’s coming up, it’s imminent

You need those 2 ingredients to consider a short sale. Let’s say, you owe $600,000 on your house. It’s worth $400,000 but you have $500,000 sitting in the bank. They’re not going to allow you to qualify for short sale (and you need the sell). You could sell it as a normal transaction. And then the $200,000 difference…the bank would expect you to make that up (with the savings that you have).

So, short sales… your house has to be under water -meaning you have to owe more than what the house is worth and you have to be in dire state. You have had to exhaust all of your financial resources –lost your job, a whole host of things. That’s a short sale. Tomorrow, I’m going to give you a great website for short sale information.

Feedback or comments: 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com

My name is David Doucette. Thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

There’s some good news coming from inmannews.com & foreclosureradar.com that indicates the foreclosure cancellations in california have increased 174% over the past year meaning banks are starting to work more with homeowners to avoid foreclosure.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite. We have some exciting news coming out at California today. And I say that like maybe I’m Wolf Blitzer on CNN; but I’m in California (but it sounds better to say: “the news is coming out at California”).

But it is exciting news released from inmannews.com. They talked about an article that came out of foreclosureradar.com and it says, “Loan mods, short sales appear to gain traction in California” and this is really exciting news for distressed homeowners. And what it says is, “Foreclosure cancellations in California skyrocketed 174% year-over-year in April. (Foreclosure cancellations…this is not foreclosure, this is foreclosure cancellations in California skyrocketing 174% year-over-year from last April). What this means is, the banks are turning a little bit and showing they are having a willingness to work more with home owners, either in the loan modification process (meaning, homeowners can modify their loan to more agreeable terms to the homeowner) or to the short sale process (when homeowners are distressed and can no longer afford to make payments on their home and they need to sell for less than what the house is worth).

Tomorrow, I’m actually going to talk a little bit about the short sale process…

And that’s my report for today. Good news: loan mods, short sales appear to be gaining momentum. So if you are in that situation, make sure you talk to your realtor and talk to your lender and see if there is something that you can work out.

Tomorrow, tune in to The Reside Daily Bite because I will talk specifically about short sales. My name is David Doucette. Thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

And, I have to get my comments in there: 1-800-476-5579; if you want to leave voicemail feedback – feedback@residerealestate.com

Thank you so for checking out my Reside Daily Bite.

I discuss a news piece that aired on 60 minutes last night about a new trend of homeowners walking away from their mortgages even though they can afford their home payments because their mortgage is “underwater”.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I’m going to talk about a news piece that ran on 60 Minutes last night. Maybe you watched it; it’s about homeowners who can’t afford to pay their mortgage but deciding not to and just walking away.

Now, a couple of weeks ago, I talked about this exact issue in another episode of The Reside Daily Bite. Essentially, what is happening now is, home values have decreased so much in some areas of the country that homeowners who can actually afford to keep paying their mortgage are deciding to not do that and to walk away. They talked about an area in Phoenix last night and one couple who  made that decision –I think their home was about (they’ve purchased a few years ago) $450,000 and it had dropped to $250,000 or something like that. But there was another couple who bought for over $400,000 and the home value was only worth $85,000 today.

So, it is an interesting dilemma for a lot of people and it sounds like a lot are wrestling with the idea of just walking away from mortgage –walking away from something that they agreed to pay for and agreed to uphold. One of the gentlemen last night talked about that and he was brought up learning the principles and being responsible for your contractual obligations.

The purpose of today is that they talked about an organization –You Walk Away. You can find them at youwalkaway.com and what they can do is really help you navigate through the foreclosure process. Coming from their website, “We strive to help people understand their rights and know their options.”

And if you’ve been watching The Reside Daily Bite, if you’ve been  listening to the Approachable Architect podcast, if you’ve been listening to The Reside Realtor Online Radio Show (if you’ve been listening to the phone ring in the background because I’m going to turn that down…), you know that that’s what I’m about. I want people to have the right information. So for you to decide to walk away…only you can decide that; nobody else can do that for you. But what I want to put out there is, make sure you’re getting the right information so you can make an informed decisions. By all means, go to YouWalkAway.com. They have a free consultation. You Walk Away have supported over 4,000 people to prepare and strategically navigate through the foreclosure process. They have received a lot of press coverage on Good Morning America, ABC Nightline, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News and PR. So, really check them out.

You’ll find, based on the article last night, a lot of the banks are not really negotiating (and re-negotiating) with home owners. They’re really taking a hard line on this stuff, so, I know homeowners are not taking this stuff lightly. And I think it has become a last resort for many because it’s just not making financially sense (or may not make financially sense) to keep paying on something that’s no longer worth that. And if you’re tuned in last week, you know we were talking about negative equity and in many parts of the country, were going to be seeing negative equity until 2015 and in some cases, to 2020.

So that is my spill for today; questions or comments, 1-800-476-5579 or email feedback@residerealestate.com. I’m your host, David Doucette. Thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

I read viewer comments and feedback from the past few weeks. happy friday!

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and once again, it is Friday so, happy Friday to everybody out there. I’m going to try something a little new today. I have my laptop which you can kind of see in the corner of the screen. What I want to do today is to just dedicate it to some viewer comments -I’ve been getting a lot of comments on Facebook (and my Facebook fan page which by the way…you can go to facebook.com/resideFan and you can become a fan there). And as you know, I’m always encouraging comments or feedback and you can send those to 1-800-476-5579 or email feedback@residerealestate.com or you can leave them on Facebook. So, I want to read some of those today and get caught up on that because I want listeners to know that their comments are being heard and they are very much appreciated; I really enjoy getting feedbacks. So by all means, feel so inclined to send some feedback in.

Dorian Cheah wrote on my Facebook fanpage about episode 019. Americans Still Wants a House, with Caution, “Very cool David! I love what you are doing. I find myself looking forward to seeing these in my news feed. Great job!” Because Dorian has become a fan on Facebook, he automatically gets the Daily Bite to his Facebook news feed. Let’s check out another one, my sister, Darlene, on episode no. 021. The Reside Daily Bite – Opting Out from Credit Card. Darlene wrote, “Is that grey hair I see?” and of course I responded, “Oh yeah, a lot of it…salt and pepper…” and Steve Richard wrote, “Salt and pepper is not warmed up to…it is earned”. So, thank you very much for that, both Darlene -of course- and Steve Richard for the “Salt and pepper is not warmed up to…it is earned”; I very much appreciate that.

I had a podcast I did a few weeks ago with Michele Christensen, who is a professional organizer, and she sent me a comment that her mom actually sent to her (in regards to that podcast on the Approachable Architect podcast), “She completely loved it and said you asked excellent questions which made a potentially dry subject interesting and exciting”. She forwarded it to all of her friends, so hopefully that means a few more listeners. So, thank you very much Michele and Michele’s mother for that wonderful comment.

Let’s scroll up to a few more and… Pete Castro, an agent friend over at Keller WIlliams, Santa Monica in response to an article I discussed about renting vs. owning a home wrote, “Great article. Should be effective on would-be renters/should-be buyers open to listening! Good job, David.” Thank you Pete for that and again, this is on the Facebook news feed. And I’m also getting better about my “aahs” if you’ve been following and if you’ve been paying attention and saw me talk about that a few episodes ago. I’m feeling better about it; I’m feeling less (and I was about to say an  “aah”) less ah (see now I completely screwed up my rhythm) and I’m not going to shoot this again -one take, as you know.

Let’s see, my brother, Derek, has chimed in a few times, “Glad to see your wardrobe person is back…yesterdays outfit, not so good ” – that was when I wore T-shirt for casual Friday last Friday. I have one more comment, let me find it here, hang with me…Eric Grodan, who is a good friend  and specializes in putting together trust – and actually putting together our trust – on an article episode Reside Daily Bite – Did You Say Negative Equity Until 2015? That was yesterday’s daily bite. Eric wrote, “Don’t sell for a loss. Rent the house and become a landlord or use the house for business, at least then you can deduct the loss against income”. Great advice Eric; and those are my comments for today, I will do this on another Friday. Maybe one Friday a month I will present to you the viewers’ comments because again, I love to get them and hopefully you love listening to me share them.

So, that is it for me today. Have a great weekend. Have a great rest of the day, Friday. My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

I discussed an article i just recieved from the California Association of Realtors and the findings of a group called First American CoreLogic. The results may surprise you.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. We’re coming to you a little later in the day than usual so I don’t have my northern light as the sun had set; so, I have my artificial light which I use when I shoot these but it’s a little different now. Hopefully the lighting still works.

One thing that I want to talk about today is an article that came out from First American CoreLogic couple of weeks ago and I just received it to the pipeline of the California Association of Realtors and the article is titled “How Long Will Negative Equity Last?” This is the first time I’ve seen a study that has put numbers on exactly how long they think negative equity is going to be hanging around for homeowners and obviously that is going to depend on area markets. They looked at 10 markets. “The First American Core Logic estimates that the typical US homeowner who is in a negative equity position will not experience positive equity until late 2015 to early 2016” -that’s 5 or 6 years away. And again, this is the first time I’ve seen somebody start to put numbers to this and it sounds like it’s a long time away and it kind of is a long time away.

I remembered hearing Suze Orman talked few months ago and she was saying at 2013, 2014, 2015 is when we’ll start climbing out of this mess.

(If you were listening yesterday, off to the side, I’m really trying hard to work on my “aahs” and I’ve been restricting a few of them. I’ve been catching myself so that’s good).

So the negative equity is going to be hanging around for a while and some of the markets they talked about are Boston, Quincy area at 2017; Cape Coral-Fort Myers area, which is been hugely hit in Florida, at 2020; next to us, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario area (east of us here, Los Angeles) projected 2016.

So, what’s the point of all these? I actually don’t have one. It’s information that I wanted to just share and talked about -`this negative equity. Now, if you’re planning on staying in your home for the foreseeable future, this really isn’t an issue; it becomes an issue on paper. But it’s when those people need to sell for whatever reason, that’s when this becomes more of an issue. So, if you find yourself in that situation where you do need to sell, by all means, talk to your local realtor, talk to your local lender and find out what the options are. If you have any questions or comments: 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com

My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out The Reside Daily Bite.

I discussed a recent article in the wall street journal that casts some light on why we won’t see an federal tax extension but also stress why it’s still a good time to buy a house.

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I’m going to talk to you about an article that came out in the Wall Street Journal last week called “Tax Credit Extension? Don’t Bet the House on It” and as you recall a few daily bites ago, we talked about the federal tax credit and the unlikelihood that it will be extended. Let’s talk a little more about that. I just want to expand on it because I thought the article was interesting.

It starts by saying, “The National Association of Realtors touted Thursday’s report that existing home sales rose by 6.8% in March as proof that the home buyer tax credit has been a “resounding success.” Indeed, home resales, which came in at a 5.35 million annual rate, exceeded analysts’ consensus expectations of a 5.25 million annual sales rate.” -if that’s interesting to you. “But there was another message embedded in Thursday’s report: Don’t count on any further extension of the home buyer tax credit, which expires at the end of April.”

And they also talked about…”Industry officials are optimistic that low mortgage rates, improved housing affordability and the continued availability of low down-payment mortgages from the Federal Housing Administration (or the FHA) will be enough to keep buyers in the game during the second half of the year.” That’s what I wanted to really mention here because we talked about the likelihood of the tax credit not being extended. But, it really is still a good time to buy -if you’re in the market for purchasing a home. Interest rates are at a historic low; we know they’re going to be going up by the end of the year (again, we don’t know how much).

The low down payment mortgages, the Federal Housing Administration currently to 3.5% downpayment requirement. There’s talk about that going up and if you’ve been watching the daily bites, I’ve talked about this before; I’ve podcasted about this on The Reside Realtor Online Radio Show (about the cost of waiting). So, it is still a good time to buy even though the federal tax credit is no longer available. If you’re in California, we do have the California tax credit which began on May 1st but that is expected to be depleted in the next couple of weeks as I reported a couple of weeks ago on the Reside Daily Bite. I haven’t actually heard any new information or any new statistics on that but I expect to be hearing something soon and of course, when I do, you will be the first to hear it from me.

So, that is really going to cover it today. Again, the federal tax credit is not extended at this point (as of May 5th) but still a good time to buy.

Voicemail: 1-800-476-5579 and if you want to email your comments…feedback@residerealestate.com (and I think I’m doing better about the leaving the aahs out. We’ll see as I edit this back and look at it). Thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

I discussed what the mls is (i.e. an awesome resource) and how brokers and agents use it as our primary tool for contractual obligations between brokers as well as a database of homes currently on the market and recently sold properties.

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of The Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I am officially going to really work hard to try and stop putting/saying “aahs” in my speech patterns as I do these daily bites. And, it’s going to be hard for me to do that but I’m going to try and probably some of my speech will sound a little jagged because I don’t have the “aahs” as fillers. Bu we’ll see how it goes. So now, I’m going to really work hard to do that.

Today, I want to talk to you about the MLS or the Multiple Listing Service, which many of you maybe familiar with or at least have heard the terminology around the real estate circles. What the MLS does for us is we as brokers and agents subscribe to the MLS and we must be a member of the National Association of Realtors; we must join the MLS.

And the MLS -you’re going to find it in North America and it sets up a couple of things. It sets up (1) that the available properties on the market and allows us, brokers and agents, to search the MLS to find out what’s available on the market; (2) very importantly, it sets up the contractual obligations that we, as brokers and agents, have with each other. For example, if I list a house on the MLS, it’s going to say the percentage of the compensation that I’m going to pay to the broker or the agent who brings in the buyer.

Now, here in Los Angeles, it’s typically going to be between 5-6% that the seller is going to pay to the selling agent or the listing agent and that listing agent typically, is going to split a 50-50 with the buyer’s agent. The buyer’s agent will get typically 2.5%.

So, two real good uses for the MLS: (1) allows us to search the database of what’s available on the market; (2) sets up the contractual obligations that we, as brokers, have with each other. And if you’re working with real estate agent or broker, they can set you up on an MLS guest type set up, where you can actually see the kinds of properties that we can see with up-to-the-minute information. If you’re working with a broker or thinking about it, ask them about being set up on the MLS. There are different services to do that; I use the service “Listing Book” for my clients.

If you have any questions or comments: 1-800-476-5579 or you can email feedback@residerealestate.com
My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

Wall Street Journal: The New Rules of Remodeling

I discuss an article released in the wall street journal last week titled “the new rules of remodelling”.

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I’m going to talk about an article that came out from Wall Street Journal last week called “The New Rules of Remodeling“. And, they talked about a study that was done by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and they’re expecting remodeling to actually accelerate this year.

It’s interesting because I wouldn’t agree with that, from my architectural perspective, because people are realizing that they can’t just now go and buy that bigger home or buy that other home or trade up. They’re realizing that they’re going to be in their home that they own now for quite a while.

And they’re saying, “The opposite is happening: Many people who bought during the boom years are expecting the reality that they won’t soon be able to swap up…In short, they’re stuck”. So, I think we’re going to see smaller remodels. We’re going to see kitchen renovations but not the hundred thousand dollar blow out kitchen renovations as the article mentioned. But people might spend $50,000 and you can do a nice kitchen renovation and possibly take out a wall between a kitchen and a dining room to really open that room up. People are going to be converting…looking for space to maybe make a home office.

So, the articles was released on April 24^th -it is somewhat of a lengthy article; lots of statistics – called “The News Rules of Remodeling”.

I think that’s about all I have to say today, I know there’s something I’m forgetting that I wanted to say but I’m trying to do these on one take. If I think of it after we’re done, I’ll include it in tomorrow’s daily bite.

If you have any questions or comments, 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com. My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

San Franciscio Gate – Will loss of tax credit discourage home buyers?

I discuss an article in the san francisco gate about the federal home buyer tax credit expiring today.

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite. Happy Friday to all of our viewers -love Fridays. Today, I want to talk about an article that came out in the San Francisco Gate today talking about the federal homebuyer tax credit expiring today. And, what it talks about is, “When the federal first-time home buyer’s credit expires today, it will be just the most recent example of the government scaling back its support for the residential housing market. They say, “The end is in sight”.

Obviously, properties needed to be in contract by April 30, today, and then closed by June 30. “California real estate expert said they saw spikes in pending sales prior to the first scheduled credit expiration and in recent months leading up to today’s deadline. They do not expect the federal incentive to be extended again, and some are concerned about declining federal aid.” That is in fact what’s happening; they extended the program in November and they have not extended it as of now. They could always bring it back but my guess is they’re not going to do that; they’re not going to extend it and probably have a wait-and-see period and see how the housing market reacts.

The government is pulling back. “In other recent changes (we talked about this on previous daily bites), the Federal Reserve ended a program on March 31 in which it spent $1.25 trillion to buy mortgage-backed securities.” The article continues, “Without the government support, mortgage rates are expected to rise.” We’ve been talking about that too. We’re expecting them, again, nobody knows but by the end of the year they could be up close to 6% and many people are anticipating 2011 -that the interest rates will in fact be hovering around 6%.

And then they talked about, “tax credits, California first-time buyers have struggled to compete with investors…” This is an interesting point, I think, of the article because what’s happening is first time buyers are competing with investors for some of these lower-end properties -meaning distressed properties foreclosures.

i discuss phase 4 of the home buying process, the closing phase. i also show off my new intro.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today we’re going to talk about the final phase in the home buying process -Phase 4. As you recall in the earlier bites this week, we talked about Phase 1, the looking phase; Phase 2, the finding phase; Phase 3, the buying phase. And today, Phase 4 is the closing phase -very exciting phase. This is where the work really starts to begin once we have that accepted offer.

So, in the closing phase, the very first thing that’s going to happen is the escrow period opens. Typically, right now here in the LA area, we’re seeing between 30 – 45 day escrows. Probably, this is becoming more common if everything is in order and in a nice, smooth transaction -you still might be able to get in the 30 days.

So, couple of things that are going to happen here once the escrow opens is we’re going to have home inspections. That is where the home inspector will come and spend 2 or 3 hours at the property, going through everything and issue an inspection report, often times, right there on the spot.

After the home inspection, we’re going to start removing contingencies. What a contingency is, it is something that we, as a buyer, need to release or remove before the escrow can close. For example, there’s an appraisal contingency – the property that we’re buying needs to appraise at the purchase price; there’s also a loan contingency -we have to as the buyers need to qualify for the loan. And, there are some other contingencies and that may vary depending on what area of the country you’re in or what state you’re in. So, check in with your realtor to find out what contingencies you need to be concerned with.

Then, once our contingencies are removed, the loan is funded. In the Phase 1, when we get pre-approval for the loan, that’s all it is; it’s a pre-approval. It doesn’t mean the loan is funding; it means if we go through and apply for the loan, we should be able to obtain that loan. This, in the escrow period, is actually when the loan is funded and it can typically happen a few days before the closing of escrow. This is a major milestone to have accomplished -when the loan actually funds.

Then, once that happens, escrow closes and this is when the property will change hands. This is now when (if you remember) you can really POP the CHAMP, as we said in the last one because that’s all the room I had to write for. So, you can pop the champagne here when escrow closes.

If you have any questions, any thoughts, feedback at 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com

My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

I discuss phase 3 of the home buying process, the buying phase.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today, we are going to continue with our four steps or four phases of the home buying process. Today, we’re going to be covering step 3 -the buying phase- which can be the most exciting phase for many people. The other day, we covered step 1- the looking phase. Yesterday, we covered step 2 – the finding phase and here we are at the buying phase.

Our agent is hired, we’ve been attending open houses, very important – we are pre-approved. We are ready to start submitting offers.

So, the very first thing that we’re going to do in this buying phase is we’re going to start writing offers. And, one very important point is this “S” right here; we’re going to be writing several offers during this phase. Sometimes, the first offer you’ve put in maybe the one that is accepted but, typically, you’re going to be writing several offers before you have one that is accepted. So be prepared for that.

We are also going to, here in the LA area, have a 3% deposit. It will have to also be submitted with our offer (or within 3 days, submitted to escrow actually). The point is you need that 3% deposit of your purchase price (it needs to be liquid…sitting in your savings account that you can access it and get that 3% in once your offer is accepted). Very important to have those funds liquid and if we’ve been doing our homework on step 2, we’ve already done that.

The next thing is we will negotiate the offer. So, we submit an offer…now, we’re going to negotiate. There might be some back and forth (maybe some sort of negotiations, some counter offers). There’s no accepted offer at this stage; we’re still negotiating. We have a seller who’s interested in our offer and has opened the dialogue but anybody else at this time can come and swoop in and submit a better offer. You would want a good agent who can definitely negotiate for you at this phase.

Then, the offer is accepted. Very emotional experience at this point, very excited and you know what, let’s POP THE CHAMP. So, we’re going to pop the champagne when the offer is accepted. But wait! We’re not ready to do that yet…let’s hold off on that. This is really only the beginning. Once that offer is accepted, the escrow period will open and that escrow period is typically lasting 30-45 days, sometimes longer, depending. There are a lot of things that can happen during that escrow phase and we’re going to talk about that tomorrow -the closing phase.

This is a very important phase, a very exciting phase. But just keep in mind, once that offer is accepted, the work is really just beginning at that point.

Questions or comments… 1-800-476-5579 or feedback to feedback@residerealestate.com. My name is David Doucette and thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

I discuss phase 2 of the home buying process, the finding phase.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today, we are going to continue our dialogue about the 4 phases or 4 stages in the home buying process. Yesterday we talked about the looking phase; today, we’re going to talk about phase 2 – the finding phase; tomorrow we’ll talk about phase 3 – the buying phase and then phase 4 – the closing phase.

So, today is the finding phase. This is an important phase because (1) we’re going to hire our agent. And I have to admit, after I watched or edited the video back yesterday, I was horrified by my handwriting especially with the word “agent”. It was all I could to not shoot that again. But I didn’t because, if you’ve been watching these episodes, you know I’m trying to be less of a perfectionist in certain areas of my life -not all, some I can’t help it but those areas I can help, I’m going to help it. So no. 1, we’re going to hire an agent -very important.

(2) What we’re going to really start doing here is searching the MLS or Multiple Listing Service. So when we hire our agent, they’re going to create a website for you where you can go in and look at exactly what we, as the agents, see. You can really start spending some time online seeing what’s active and what’s happening in the market. Now, sometimes people will think that you hire the agent and then as the home buyer you get to just sit home and watch TV and eat bonbons and expect the agent to do all the work for you. And it really doesn’t work like that and it’s good that it doesn’t work like that because you, as the buyer, you really need to be seeing a lot of houses; you need to be driving into the neighborhood. This is a really important decision. You can’t rely just on your agent to find you the home because the agent may like you may not like. So, it’s important for you to get out there, touch and feel things and really put the time and effort into this finding phase. The more time and effort you dedicate to it, the better results you will get.

So, searching MLS for open houses thus, we’re going to be seeing a lot of open houses in this phase. Some of these, you may attend with your agent, some you may not but we’re going to be seeing a lot of open houses during this phase (very important). We want to see a lot of things. We want to see what we like and if you have your sort of  5 wants and needs, which is what we do, what I do during that buyer’s consultation (that the agent will perform for you). You’re going to be looking at those 5 wants and needs as you go through the home buying process, as you’re touring homes. And you know what, those 5 wants and needs, they may change. You may see something in there that you didn’t think of before that you want (as an additional want). You’re also in this phase, very important -and I’ve talked about this a lot…pre-approval lender. This is so important. You’ve heard me say this over and over again. You have to be pre-approved by the lender at this stage because if you’re not and you’re out looking and you find something you like and you want to put an offer in on it…if you’re not pre-approved, it’s going to put your offer at the bottom of the list. This is because the buyers are going to be competing…especially if it’s a desirable property. They will be pre-approved; they will have gone through the exercise of being pre-approved. So, you want to do that so you can make your offer look as strong as possible when you’re ready to submit.

I mentioned this on the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show, I mentioned this on other Reside Daily Bites because it is just so important -getting pre-approved.

Next, we’re going to get into our serious searching, where we’re really going to be pounding the pavement as homebuyers. Your agent will be working for you as well. But you as the home buyer, really going to be doing a lot of light work here

And, the goal is to move in (once we enter this phase) to your home within 45 to 90 days. That’s the goal. We’re serious here. We know the neighborhood (or two that we really want to focus on but we’re serious – we got laser precision at this point.

And you might spend a few weeks searching, you might spend a couple of months…again, it does depend but in general, by the time you reach this phase, this is how serious we want to be -45-90 days. We want to be living in that new home.
Escrows, we’re seeing right now between 30 and 45 days. With this time frame, maybe  a couple of weeks looking, maybe a month and a half and then 3-45 days is our escrow period and then we’re going to close and then we’re going to move in to our new home.

That’s going to do it for today. If you have questions or comments…1-800-476-5579 or email feedback@residerealestate.com. My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for cheking out the Reside Daily Bite.

In this video, i discuss the first phase of the home buying process, the looking phase. i also announce “the reside daily bite” is officially on itunes. click here!

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Before I get into today’s episode, I want to announce that we are officially on iTunes. The Reside Daily Bite is officially a podcast on iTunes and I’m going to post the link in the show notes where you can click to subscribe to iTunes. So once you subscribe in, as the shows are released, they’ll be automatically downloaded and then you can put them on your iPod and you can take them with you. When you go on that big vacation, you can take the Reside Daily Bites with you and watch them on your iPod, on the plane, relaxing by the pool, where ever you are…in Jamaica…on vacation. So that exciting news out of the way, I will now talk about the 4 main stages or phases of the home buying process. We’re going to be talking about this all week, actually.

Number one is the looking phase; number two is the finding phase; number three is the buying phase and number four is the closing phase. And we’re going to be talking about each of those phases in separate videos or episodes this week.

Today, I want to talk about phase 1 -the looking phase. In the looking phase, what we’re really going to be doing here is just beginning our search. So we’re going to start narrowing down the neighborhoods. We’re going to start getting an idea of where the neighborhoods we want to start concentrating our focus on. We may not know exactly what those neighborhoods are but we can start getting an idea. For example, here on the Westside of Los Angeles, we might know we want to be on the Westside, somewhere that may be Santa Monica, that may be Palms/Mar Vista, that may be Venice…we just don’t know yet. We’re going to start to focus in this stage.

Very important! We’re also going to start talking to lenders and discussing our financial goals and our financial strategies with them because what we want to do at the end of phase 1 is to be pre-approved for our loan and its amount. So then we know exactly what we can afford as we move on to the second phase (the finding phase).

Also, in the looking phase, it is when we’re going to be selecting our agents. We’re going to be interviewing several agents, talking to several agents, figuring out who best can serve our needs. It’s always recommended to at least talk to 2 or 3 and really figure out and see who’s really listening to your wants and needs, and who you think you will work best with because this is a very intimate relationship -this home search process could last a couple of weeks, it could last a couple of months or more. So, it’s very important that you feel comfortable with the individuals or the agents or lenders that you’re working with. And that really is the completion of the looking phase.

So again, what we’re really focusing on is neighborhoods, our lenders and getting pre-approved (our very important goal here), and then our agent. We’re starting to get our team together; we’re starting to focus on the neighborhoods, we’re talking to lenders, and we’re talking to agents. And once we do all that then, we can move in to phase 2 -the finding phase- which we will talk about tomorrow.

One last thing I’ll mention is I did a podcast on the four stages/phases of buying your home and you can find that at ResideRealtor.com, episode no. 3. If you want to hear about all those phases, the episode is I think about 45-50 minutes or so, were I delve into each of the phases and give some commentary there as well.

My name is David Doucette, thanks again for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

episode 010. market happenings with mortgage broker, dean piller

• in this episode, dean and i discuss the current real estate market and talk about the expiration of the federal homebuyer tax credit as well as the future of interest rates.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays. this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

In this episode i explain the importance of not making large purchases on your credit card during the escrow period.

Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and Happy Friday! It’s Friday, I’m always excited on Friday. Yesterday, I received a newsletter from the California Association of Realtors. They send out a newsletter once a week on Thursdays and they had a really good, simple, easy tip that I wanted to pass along specifically for home buyers.

And what they talked about was homebuyers waiting for a mortgage loan to fund are advised to be conservative when it comes to buying new furniture, appliances or the like for the house they are purchasing. So, if you’re in escrow and you’re waiting for your loan to fund, it’s advised to not go out and start charging on your credit card large purchases such as furniture, such as that new refrigerator you’re drooling over, such as that new stove, that new range. Do not be making big purchases during this process, you have to be patient and wait a little bit and here’s why.

It has become standard practice for lenders to check borrowers’ credit scores in the weeks leading up to the closing, sometimes, even the day prior to the closing. These large purposes can use up a considerable proportion of a borrower’s total credit limit which then can lead to a drop in the buyer’s FICO score, which then possibly changes the terms of the loan. And we know there’s more paper work involved in the long process; we know lenders are scrutinizing more things; they’re taking longer to look at things and approve some of these items. So, by all means keep it conservative when you are in escrow and waiting for that loan to fund. If you can wait on making those larger purchases, definitely wait.

That is it for me today, if you have any feedback: 1-800-476-5579 -you can call that feedback line 24/7. You can also email me feedback@residerealestate.com. Happy Friday! My name is David Doucette, thanks for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

In this episode, I discussed a recent AP article that shows the small cost differential between renting vs. owning a home. you can read the artcle here.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I want to talk to you about a recent article, an AP article, out of DailyNews.com that talks about renting versus home ownership. The title of the article is “Should you buy or rent a home? Cost gap narrows”.

The article starts, “Thinking of buying a home? Consider this: The gap between monthly rents and mortgage payments is at its lowest level in 20 years. The study, part of a week-long look at homeownership by the AP, found years of falling home prices and low interest rates have created the ultimate buyer’s market. But while buying is more affordable, it’s not necessarily easier. Tougher lending standards have made it harder to qualify for a home loan. Tax incentives for homebuyers will expire April 30, (we’ve been talking a lot about the federal tax credit) and interest rates are expected to increase this year.”

And the article states, “Psychologically, the consumer doesn’t feel like it’s a great time to buy.” This is interesting…the next paragraph, “The analysis of 45 metro areas found the difference between the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home and the median rent is down to $256.” So really, that gap between renting and owning a home is $256. “The last time that gap was anywhere near that small was in 1993 when it fell to $264, according to the study.”

And another interesting note -for those of you in the Los Angeles area, “Renters will save $1,000 or more a month in metro areas such as Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose.”

And then it goes on to say, “There are still significant tax benefits, including capital gains deductions for property taxes and loan interest. A home appreciates in the long run and acts as a hedge against inflation. And it also helps diversify your assets…” So, I think the moral of this is if you’re considering buying a home, you work with your realtor, talk to your mortgage broker and run some numbers. There are a lot of factors that you will be considering whether you’re renting or buying, and in some cases, it may make sense for you to rent for another year depending on everybody’s situation (every situation is different).

Again, work with your realtor, run some numbers and I think, this is some interesting statistics and we’ll think we’re going to see home values start to go up – at least here on the Westside we’ve seen evidence of that.

And one last thing actually…”Home prices are expected to start rising before rents. This is especially true in coastal markets such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. You’re actually going to see affordability decline in those very traditionally expensive housing markets. It will be more attractive to rent than to buy.”

So, weigh your options. Be an informed consumer; an informed home buyer.

And, my name is David Doucette, thanks for checking out the reside Daily Bite.

I discuss an article about the skinny on those “free” credit report companies. i also give you the website to order your truly free credit report at www.annualcreditreport.com.

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I want to talk to you about pre-credit reports and this is something that I think is important for all of us, as consumers. And there’s an article that came out of the San Francisco Gate a couple of weeks ago titled “Free credit reports not so free anymore“. What this is they’re cracking down the kind of misleading advertising that somebody’s credit reporting services are promoting.

The article starts, “Companies that offered free credit reports appear to be skirting a new federal disclosure requirement designed to crack down on misleading advertising. Under the requirement, companies that advertise free credit reports in connection with the sale of credit monitoring or other products must prominently disclose that consumers can get a truly free credit report from the government-authorized Web site annualcreditreport.com.” So what this means is these companies who are advertising these free credit reports to get you there to purchase the credit score of some other product. If they’re advertising free credit reports, then on their website, they have to put in this disclosure that says you can get a truly free credit report from annualcreditreport.com. They don’t want to have that disclosure so they’re skirting ways to do that. And that’s what I’m going to talk about next.

“Rather than make the new disclosure (which would be the right thing to do), many companies changed their marketing. Instead of offering “free credit reports”, some are charging a small fee or promoting free credit scores, which are not covered by the new rule.” So now they’re going to scores not the reports. Freecreditreport.com, known for its pirates, minstrels and catchy jingles, is doing both. Its Web site now says, “Check your report for $1 and get your score free! Plus, we’ll donate your dollar to charity.” What they are trying to really sell there is the credit monitor and services. Now, “Freecreditreport.com is owned by Experian,  one of three credit reporting agencies (the 3 credit reporting agencies that we have is Experian, Transition and Equifax and it’s important to know of these 3 companies) required by law to offer consumers a free credit report, with no strings attached, once a year at Annualcreditreport.com.” Now, I want you write this website down, AnnualCreditreport.com -that’s where you can go and once a year, you can get a truly free credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus. So, if you haven’t done that in a while, definitely click on that link, go there and fill that out. You want to know what’s on your credit report.

It says, The company “is cleverly taking advantage of gaping loopholes in the law,” says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at Credit.com. The company’s Web ad implies that the government put a stop to its free reports. It says, “Due to federally imposed restrictions it is no longer feasible for us to provide you with a free Experian Credit Report.” Which is completely false. A spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission, says, “We know of no federal restriction that would prevent a company from offering free credit reports; the rule simply requires those companies that do offer free reports to include prominent disclosures.”

So they talked about some more other advertising issues and from web advertising to TV; “Starting in February, companies subject to the law had to state, in all advertising, that “Free credit reports are available under federal law at: Annualcreditreport .com.” Again, that website. “Web advertising must say: “THIS NOTICE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. Read more at FTC.GOV. You have the right to a free credit report from Annualcreditreport.com. Starting Sept. 1, TV and radio ads must say, “This is not the free credit report provided for by federal law” in the audio and visual portion.” So, this credit reporting or this free credit report companies are trying to essentially skirt the law so they can somehow get you to their site to have you purchase their credit monitoring services or other products that they’re selling. The take away in all of these that I wanted to share with you is you are entitled to your free credit report once a year and you can again get that at AnnualCreditReport.com and you will get a credit report from each of the 3 bureaus. You can either do that online or you can download a form. Actually, my favorite way is to download the mail and form from that website, fill it in, send it in and the 3 companies will give you the credit report through mail.

So, that is it on credit reports and we’re going to be talking a lot more about credit and credit scores and credit reports in the future daily bite episodes and probably have a few podcasts centered around that because it’s a huge topic -the credit report, it’s very important nowadays and we’ll continue to be in it; if you listen to Suze Orman or any of the financial gurus, the credit report is huge. If you haven’t polled yours in a while, definitely poll it; let’s find out what’s on there.

If you have any questions or comments, 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com

My name is David Doucette and thank you for joining me today for the Reside Daily Bite.

In this episode, i discuss a recent article at cnnmoney.com titled “getting a loan will be pricier“.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. We have a nice windy, sunny day here on Southern California so, if you hear any noise, any windows rattling…it’s Mother Nature; not sure if any of that will be picked up by the microphone but if you hear it, have no fear it’s just Mother Nature bringing us some very strong winds.

The article I want to talk about today is “Getting a loan will be pricier” and if you remember or if you’ve been following us on episode 22 of the daily bite, I talked about interest rates will rise but by how much and when…and this talks a little more about that interest rates going up. They talked about the Federal Reserve playing a key role in keeping the cost of the borrowing so low and they’ve been keeping Fed funds rate basically near 0% since December 2008 as they worked to really spur the lending and economic activity. But now, they’re saying as the economy heals, that rate is sure to come up, as will the cost of loans. Let’s talk about what’s happening right now, the 30-year-fixed-rate mortgage reached an 8-month high last week averaging 5.21%, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of conforming mortgage rates. Several times in 2009, mortgage rates dipped below 5%, considered to be record lows, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s help. So what we saw in 2009 was that mortgage rates were below 5% for a lot of the time. Now, it’s important to note this is historic record lows and even the 8-month high of last week (5.21%) is still a really low interest rate. And we know it can’t stay there forever; and we know it’s going to be going up and again, by how much and when, that’s what we don’t know but this article talks a little bit about that.

Michael Fratantoni from Mortgage Bankers’ Association says, “Throughout most of the last year we were right below or right above 5%, which really is an extremely low rate, historically” -which we’ve just talked about. “MBA has been predicting mortgage rates would rise, maybe even reaching around 5.8% by the end of this year. And experts predict the rates will range around 6% in 2011.”

So, this time next year, what they’re saying is we’re probably going to be around 6% and that seems to echo some of the other things I’ve been reading and some of what the other experts have been saying. So these historically low rates that we’ve been seeing are going to soon probably be a thing of the past.

Now, with that said, 6% is still a low interest rate but what the article says is, “Mortgage rates can really impact consumers by limiting what they can pay for a home.” And they give a good example that I want to share with you…”Take the $165,000 median home price of existing homes sold in February. A buyer with a 20% down payment would pay just over $725 a month in mortgage payments for a 30-year fixed loan at today’s rate. Raise that rate by a half point, and the same buyer would only be able to afford a home worth $156,000 to keep payments near the $725 a month level.” So, if you reduce the purchase price or the ability for the purchase price by about $9,000 -just that half a point increase in the interest rate.

And then it also talks about credit cards (I’ll touch on this briefly)… The average credit card rate rose to 14.7% last week from 12.55% from six months ago. And we’ve all seen this. I know I’ve seen it and credit card companies are changing their terms and conditions. And they say it’s going to keep going upward a bit, because credit losses aren’t going to improve for the banks until unemployment heads down. And an interesting note, “While new credit card laws passed by Congress in the past year make it more difficult for banks to raise interest rates in several ways, they won’t touch hikes in rates based solely on a financial index. One common index used the prime rate, is at a 3.25% low and is expected to increase.” When that prime rate increases so will the interest rate on the credit cards. Then, they also talk about auto loans…bright spot could be auto loans, which have been at record lows. Auto loans averaged 4.4%, much lower than the 7.3% average back in March 2007 and they expect the auto loans to stay low for quite some time.

That is it, again, further proof or evidence that the general feeling is interest rates are going to rise.

If you have any questions or feedback… 1-800-476-5579 or you can email feedback@residerealestate.com. I’d love to hear what you guys thought of this episode or if you have any other questions you’d like me to address or if you have any ideas for future Reside Daily Bites. My name is David Doucette and thank you so much for checking us out today.

In this episode, i discuss the value in seeking out free information.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and I have to address the elephant in the room. Obviously I got my hair cut, about 30 minutes ago and actually it feels great although every time I go more and more, grey kind of falls on the little cape there. And the guy who cut my hair said they can fix that with this sort of flashback product that they have, but so far, the grey doesn’t bother me and I do subscribe to “Grey makes men more distinguished”. We’ll see if my subscription to that philosophy stays as time moves on. So, I just had to address that.

Then, I also want to talk about home owner education. First thing I want to mention is the first time homebuyer seminar that I’m doing here in our office/studio next Thursday, April 29 from 6:30 to 8:00 in the evening and I’ll have some wine and cheese. Mortgage broker, Dean Piller is going to be speaking about what a mortgage broker does. Heidi Smith from LA Citywide Escrow will be talking about the escrow process. The home inspector may or may not be able to make it that evening. And then, I’ll also be talking about what an agent does -completely free.

So, I do want to let everybody know about that but also I want to let you know that if you’re in the market for buying a home in your neighborhood, find out who’s doing some sort of home buyer seminar. There are a lot of realtors who will do these and I think they are great ways for you, the homebuyer, to get information from (hopefully) credible sources because as you know if you’ve been following in the Daily Bite or on the Reside Real Estate podcast or the Approachable Architect podcast, I’m all about giving out information…giving it freely because I do believe in some ways, shape or form, that does come back to me in the terms of business  and also in building relationship. But I’m just passionate about putting information out there because I think there’s information that home owners need to know, both as an architect and somebody who’s considering doing construction on their home or as a real estate agent and a real estate broker and somebody who’s thinking of buying or selling their homes. So, I’m a big proponent of education and I think if you can find people in your area who are providing those educational services -those free seminars- they may be the people that you end up working with; they also may not. Typically there’s no obligation at these things but for me, in whatever kind of service I’m looking for, if somebody is providing free education, they are taking the time to put together a seminar or put out some sort of content that’s completely free with really no strings attached, that helps that person build credibility in the community and that is what I’m trying to do with the content I produced.

But again, if you’re in an area looking to buy a home, find out who’s the content provider. Find out who’s really reaching out to the community and putting free information out there because the National Association of Realtors is saying that about 90% of new home buyers are going to the internet first when searching for new homes. So that means people just want information, things have changed with the internet and social media now. The hard sell is not really “in” these days; it’s more about providing information and people getting this information, letting them figure out what they need to get that information.

The point is free information is king and I think it will continue to be, for I love doing this, I love putting this information out there.

And I think that’s my daily bite for today. Thanks for checking it out. Thanks for noticing my short hair. My name is David Doucette.

In this episode, i discuss an article from yahoo real estate titled “12 hidden costs to be aware of”. while i don’t believe these costs are hidden, they should be taken into consideration when planning your budget during the home buying process. i keep it simple and short and just name the items. for a complete discussion of each of the 12 items, tune into the reside realtor online radio show, episode 009.

Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I’m going to talk to you about a recent news article that was published in US News last week but I found in Yahoo real estate the other day and the title is “12 Hidden Costs of Homeownership“. It’s an interesting title so I clicked on it and I have to say, I don’t think it should have been called “12 Hidden Costs of Homeownership” because these really are not hidden costs, especially, if you’re working with a knowledgeable and competent realtor -none of these costs should be hidden. So, I do take a little issue of that but it did make me click on the link, so maybe, somehow it worked. But what I did is I recorded today’s podcast of the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show (Reside Real Estate Podcast) about this and I covered each of the 12 in details, so by all means, go check that out at residerealestate.com/podcast and it’s episode 009 and it’s called “12 Costs Buyers Should Be Aware Of”.

What I’m going to do for this day’s daily bite is I’m just going to list the 12 and then, you can listen to do podcast to hear them in more details.

So, the 12 hidden costs of homeownership are: (1) Home inspection; (2) Pest inspection; (3) Appraisal fees; (4) Closing costs; (5) Moving expenses; (6) Furniture; (7) Property taxes and homeowners insurance (and kind of funny order that they put these in because property taxes and homeowners insurance probably should have came before furniture and moving expenses but that is how the article is written); (8) Supplemental insurance; (9) Homeowners association/condo fees; (10) Utilities; (11) Ongoing maintenance; and (12) Repairs. So, those are the 12 issues that a buyer should be aware of. I like everything else in the article other than the title -the hidden costs because again, they shouldn’t be hidden.

By all means, go check out the podcast episode about this because I spend about 30-35 minutes talking about each one of those items in further details.

If you have any comments… 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com. Thank you so much for tuning in the Reside Daily Bite; my name is David Doucette.

episode 009. 12 costs buyers should know about

• in this episode, i discuss 12 costs buyers should know about and take into consideration as they plan their budgets during the home buying process. you can click to read the complete yahoo news article.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays. this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

The $100 million allocated for California’s first-time homebuyer tax credits may be depleted in about 10 to 20 days or sooner, according to C.A.R.’s Economics team.  California’s Franchise Tax Board (FTB) plans to begin accepting applications on May 1, 2010 for tax credits up to $10,000 for first-time homebuyers and for homes that have never been previously occupied.  However, the total tax credit allocation for all taxpayers is $100 million for first-time homebuyers and $100 million for new homes, both on a first-come, first-served basis.

C.A.R.’s forecast of 10 to 20 days to deplete the $100 million allocation for first-time home buyers is based on estimated May sales figures and other parameters.  It does not take into account the possibility that buyers scheduled to close escrow in April may delay closing until May to take advantage of the tax credit.  If a shift in closings from April to May occurs, the first-time homebuyer tax credits may be depleted even more quickly than indicated above.

Applications for the California tax credit must be faxed to the FTB after escrow closes.  The FTB will update its website when the 2010 application form and other information become available.

In this episode, i discuss an article i just recieved from california association of realtors‘ “realegal” newsletter. they are predicting the monies for the first-time homebuyer tax credit will be gone within 10-20 days and possibly sooner. if you’re sitting on the fence about buying a home, you need to watch this now.
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, it’s funny because when I created the idea of the Reside Daily Bite 23 episodes ago, I came up with a list of about 60-65 topics to discuss and what I’m realizing is there are so many good things to discuss, that on my list, I probably have talked 5 of those and the other almost 20 episodes have been things that have just been coming up along the way. So, it’s been really great and this one is one of those…I just went out and was thinking about what I was going to do for the daily bit, came back and this just came to my inbox and this one is really important.

It comes from the California Association of Realtors, from their realegal newsletter, and it’s about the California tax credit. And as you know, if you’ve been listening to previous daily bites, Californians can take advantage of a $10,000 tax credit beginning on May, which is great but here’s the news, the title of the article is “The California’s tax credit monies may go fast”. The $100 million allocated for California’s first-time homebuyer tax credits may be depleted in about 10 to 20 days or sooner…” that’s 10-20 days or sooner according to the C.A.R.’s (California Association of Realtors) economic team. So, the California’s Franchise Tax Board (FTB) plans to begin accepting applications on May 1, 2010 for tax credits up to $10,000 for first-time homebuyers and for homes that have never been previously occupied new construction. However, the total tax credit allocation for all taxpayers is $100 million for first-time homebuyers and $100 million for new homes, on a first-come, first-served basis.

So, C.A.R.’s forecast of 10 to 20 days to actually deplete that $100 million allocation for first-time home buyers, that’s based on estimated May sales figures and other parameters. But this is important… It does not take into account the possibility that buyers may delay escrow closings in April until early May to take advantage of the home buyer tax credit. And if that’s the case, it’s going to be depleted or could be depleted even sooner than 10-20 days. So, I think this is really good information to put out there now. Again, those of you who are sitting on the fence, it’s already April 15 and escrows are typically taking 30-45 days to close. It is possible to close sooner although more difficult but definitely if you’re on the fence and you want to take advantage of these California first time home buyer tax credit, now is really the time you need to do that.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com. My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for checking out the reside Daily Bite.

In this episode, I discussed an article that was printed in the la times today describing the southern california marketplace showing signs of improvement.
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and for those of you who are frequent viewers of the daily bite you’ll notice that I’m wearing the same thing that I wore in yesterday’s episode. I wasn’t going to say anything but I felt like I had to address the elephant in the room. The fact is yesterday I had to stay home and I play Mr. Mom because my wife had to work all day. So today, I’m recording two episodes and releasing one of those as yesterday’s so that’s why the same outfit. And I feel much better that I just shared that with you. One thing before I get to today’s episode, Dorian Cheah, a good friend and a past client actually has a yoga studio -him and his wife, Ally-, YogisAnonymous.com. A very cool, progressive, donation-based studio in Santa Monica. And they’re actually beta testing streaming live yoga class -so very cool. Check that out, YogisAnonymous.com. But Dorian left a comment on the Reside Architecture in reside real estate fan page that I want to show with you. Dorian writes, “Very cool David. I love what you are doing. I find myself looking forward to seeing these in my news feed. Great job.” Thank you for posting that Dorian and if you want to become a fan on Facebook, you can go to Facebook.com/resideFAN -you can become a fan that way and you can get these delivered on your Facebook news feed every day.

Now, I want to talk about an article that just came out in the LA Times titled “Signs seen of a housing rebound in Southern California“. And the article starts off with, “Southern California’s housing market showed fresh signs of momentum in March with the median price and sales pace improving from the same month a year earlier as buyers hurried to take advantage of a soon-to-expire federal tax incentive, cheap prices and low interest rates.” And if you remember a few episodes ago when I had the white board out, we talked about some of those areas, specifically on the Westside, and 5 out of 6 of those areas had seen home prices increased from the same time last year.

The articles continues, “…houses and condominiums in Southern California jumped 14% in March (median price) to $285,000 from the same month a year earlier, according to San Diego real estate research firm MDA DataQuick. In Orange County, the region’s priciest market, the median rose 12.2% to $432,000. Esmael Adibi, director of the Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research states, ‘There is no question that prices at the lower end of the market have stabilized and are showing some increases.’”

They’re talking about “defaults have increased in higher-priced neighborhoods, motivating some sellers to put their homes on the market in those areas. Interestingly, expectations remain mixed about housing’s future as a series of government initiatives to bolster sales and stabilize values expire.” And if you remember in yesterday’s bite (which I actually just recorded a while ago), we talked about that Federal program (basically the Spigot) that has been shut off of that $1.25 Trillion. Also, accompanied with the fact that the Federal homebuyer tax credit is expiring at the end of this month. We’re going to be in a little hold-and-wait period to see what happens but as we had talked about yesterday, interest rates probably will rise.

The article continues, “Foreclosure sales accounted for 38.4% of the Southern California resale market in March, down from 42.3% in February and 54.8% in March 2009.” So that’s positive news. Even though it’s still 38.4%, it’s down from where it was in February by about 4.5% and 14%-15% from where it was this time a year ago. So, that’s good.

“Right now the question is not whether the housing market is in recovery. The real question is how sustainable that recovery is, and that is where the gray area resides,” said Christopher Thornberg, principal of Beacon Economics. “The market is being driven by government policy and not by fundamentals, and now the government is starting to back off.” Again, that was what we’re talking about -that $1.25 Trillion has ended. The Federal homebuyer tax credit will be ending at the end of this month.

And they’re also saying, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is going to be stepping up, tightening its lending standards; so, the effects of that remain to be seen. Of course here in California, we have the 10,000 homebuyer tax credit that we can take advantage of that begins May 1.

So, interesting news coming out of the LA Times today. I think mostly are positive (some of the data) but again we’re going to be waiting to see what happens over the next several months as the Federal government backs off a little bit. But even then, we’re seeing activity here on the Westside.

If you have any questions, comments, anything you notice in your particular neighborhood area that you want to share with us, 1-800-476-5579 or feedback@residerealestate.com. My name is David Doucette and thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

In this episode I discussed several factors that may be contributing to the inevitable rise in interest rates that industry experts are expecting to take place over the next 8-9 months.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I want to talk to you about interest rates and the reality that they will be going up, how soon, how quick, we don’t know and by how much remains to be seen. But we think they will definitely be going up.
And I want to show an article that came out of San Francisco Gate about a month or so ago. It talks about the Federal Reserve and that they’ve been pumping a lot of money into the real estate sector – $1.25 trillion; that program ended last month. Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s says, “Housing has been on government life support, and without it the crash would have been much more severe,” He also states, “This spring and summer as those policy efforts unwind, we most likely will see mortgage rates move higher and more house-price declines.”

And the experts are agreeing “that the Fed’s exit will cause mortgage rates to rise, the big unknown is how severe the effect will be.” Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance states, “There is no question rates have been kept artificially low by the Fed’s heavy buying…My opinion is that rates will go up a full percentage point initially,” meaning that 30-year fixed conforming loans, now hovering around 5 percent, would hit 6 percent.

And that’s what we’re hearing as well; by the end of the year, mortgage rates could be at 6% (we really don’t know). A lot remains to be seen. With that said, I want to give you an example of the difference between a 5% mortgage and a 6% mortgage.

So at 5%, a $500,000 mortgage (this does not include property taxes or insurance, just the straight mortgage), your payment will be about $2,700. At 6%, that same $500,000, your payment is going to be about $3,000. Difference of about ($300 multiplied by 12) to $3,600 per year. $3,600 is a lot and this is for the same mortgage, the house, it’s just a difference between 1%.

Let me just show you what over the life of a 30-year mortgage looks like. You’ll spend a roughly (in a 5% interest in $500,000 loan over that 30 year) $466,000 -just on interest. On a 6% loan, it’s going to be more – it’s $579,000. So, a difference of about almost $115,000 over the life of that loan.

Now, most people stay in their home or move every 5-7 years but when you look at the numbers like these, it shows how much difference between just 1% interest rate can make.

This is really important for the fence sitters and if you are on the fence, especially on the Westside of Los Angeles where we know the Westside is picking up. Couple of episodes ago I talked about areas like Palms and Mar Vista are up about 10-11% from where they were last year. So, if you’re on that situation, you really need to get off your tookus and really take advantage of these rates -that they’re hovering around 5% because in another 8 or 9 months, will maybe be closer to 6%. And as we just talked about, we can see how that can really cost you money.

You can also listen to my podcast with Dean Piller, my mortgage broker, called “The Cost of Waiting” and there are several other factors in there that makes it more expensive the longer you wait.

If you have any questions, comments, anything you notice in your particular neighborhood area that you want to share with us, 1-800-476-5579 or email feedback@residerealestate.com. My name is David Doucette and thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

In this episode, i discuss a great website to opt-out of not only recieving those annoying credit card offers, but also to prevent your credit card companies from accessing your credit report and making changes to your terms and conditions because of something on your credit report.Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I have an exciting web address that I want to share with you and this came as a result of our team meeting, our Keller Williams team meeting, which we have every Monday. We had a presentation by a credit repair company and they gave us a website that I think is a piece if invaluable information and that’s what today’s daily bite is.

The name of the website is OptOutPreScreen.com. This is a centralized service to accept and process request from consumers to opt in or opt out of firm offers of credit or insurance. So what this really means is, when you opt out, for example, it prevents consumer credit reporting companies, such as Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, from providing your credit file information for firm offers of credit or insurance that are not initiated by you. So, those credit card offers that you frequently get in the mail -those kinds of things-, when you opt out, you’re not going to get those.

But, very important, this is also what you’re not going to get, when your credit cards will pull your credit reports and they’ll see something on it and as a result, they’ll raise your rate or they’ll raise your yearly fee or the percentage rate. As you keep paying your credit card down, they also keep taking the balance down because of something in your credit report.

Well what this does, this prevents that credit card company from going and pulling your credit card file. So, this is where I think this is really huge because it has happen to me over the years, where they would pull something and say, “Hey, we’re going to increase your rate by 2% because of something on the credit report.” They’re not going to be able to do that anymore because they’re not going to have access to your credit file to do it.

Again, OptOutPreScreen.com. Let me know what you think, 1-800-476-5579. My name is David Doucette and thank you so much for checking out the Reside Daily Bite.

episode 008. all about mold

• in this episode, i’m joined by john mattoon of mold check professionals. we discuss the causes of mold (hint moisture and lack of ventilation are the main ones), the testing process, as well as the remeditation process. we also discuss how homeowners can take a look around their own home to see if there are any potential places for mold to grow. you can find more information about john and mold check professionals by clicking here.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays. this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

This is just a BIG thank you! to my viewers and followers of the Reside Daily Bite. It’s been 4 weeks since I launched this show and I’ve had a blast. Thank you so much for your support and I look forward to seeing you in the future!
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today, it is TYIF -Thank You! It’s Friday. I say that because this is episode no. 20, believe or not, I’ve been on the “air” for 20 episodes -4 weeks.

This has been really great. Hopefully I’ve been sharing some good information with you. So the purpose of this episode is to thank you for tuning in, thank you for listening, thank you for submitting your feedbacks through Facebook and email comments. It’s really appreciated and I really like building that sense of community and looking forward to have it grow. So, tell your friends, invite your friends, and link your friends to the Reside Daily Bite.

That’s it for today’s show, just a big THANK YOU for you, the audience, for tuning in.

If you have any comments about any of the previous daily bites, feel free to call our voicemail listener line 1-800-476-5579 and you can also email feedback@residerealestate.com

TYIF -Thank You! It’s Friday, have a great weekend and we’ll see you on Monday in the Reside Daily Bite, I’m David Doucette.

In this episode, I discussed a news article recently released by cnnmoney.com, titled “With caution, Americans still want a house“. you can read the full article at cnnmoney.com.
Hello and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today I want to talk about a news article that CNNMoney.com just released on Wednesday titled,” With Caution, Americans Still Want a House“. And the article starts by saying, “Nearly two-thirds of Americans would still prefer to own a home…A nationwide survey conducted by mortgage lender Fannie Mae found 65% of the homeowners and renters believe there is still value in owning a home.”

“Consumers are still committed to owning a home, but are showing increased cautiousness,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae. He goes on to say there has been “rebalancing” of consumer attitudes towards homeownership and Americans are adopting a more realistic approach and are now less willing to take risks. And I think this is a really important point and something to take note of -the mindset of us, Americans, in the idea that homeownership is still a good thing. It’s a very important concept, very important mindset and this is very important to help us get through this economic recovery time.

The survey showed that home buyers are growing more concerned with longer- term priorities, as opposed to the house “flipping” that’s going on in recent years. And this is important because, I think, when we look back on this period 10 to 15 years down the road, this will be the period when our priorities shifted as Americans and what is important to us has shifted. All of a sudden, it’s not going to be important to have the big McMansion; it will be more important to have a roof over our head, not only that meets our needs but also save money -save money for retirement, save money for the kids’ college funds, spend time for the family. I think that we’re going to come to realize that if we don’t already.

And it further said, “Over 40% said personal safety was their main consideration when buying a home, while a third indicated that the quality of local schools was the dominant factor.” Duncan continues, “This survey was done to get a level set about what the public is thinking about housing after the huge disruption. We wanted to understand the current and expected behavior of borrowers, and how to help people who have had difficulties.”

So, Fannie Mae had the survey conducted so they can essentially figure out what’s going on in the marketplace, in the mindset of homeowners and renters, the mindset of Americans about their attitudes towards owning homes and so they can strategize how best to address it.

“The survey showed that 60% believe buying a home today is harder than it was for their parents…Still, about two-thirds of respondents believe now is a good time to buy a house, and nearly one in three said now is a very good time to buy a house. This is nearly as many who said it was a good time to buy in 2003, well before home prices peaked.”

“A full 70% said they believe buying a home continues to be one of the safest investments available.” Again, that mindset, that shift…very important concept to note and I’m glad to see that number as high as it is. The article does say it’s down from 83% in 2003 but given everything we’ve been through over the last few years, I think 70% is a very positive number for us right now.

“Nearly three-quarters anticipate housing prices will go up or stay the same over the next year.” And finally -this is an interesting point, “A majority of respondents said it is unacceptable for a homeowner to stop making payments on their mortgage when the value of the property falls below the balance of the loan, a condition known as being “underwater.”

We talked about being underwater a few episodes ago on the Reside Daily Bite but it’s very interesting to see that and I think that’s a very interesting mindset as well. So for me, if I read between the lines of this article, it’s about mindset, it’s about our attitude and I think it is changing for the better. I’m seeing optimism in this article and it is exactly what we need to see. It’s going to take time but I think we are on the right path with this.

Let me know what you think, call our voicemail listener line, 1-800-476-5579 or you can email feedback@residerealestate.com

My name is David Doucette, thank you for watching the Reside Daily Bite.

In this episode, I discussed the median sale price for single family homes from last year at this time compared to this year at this time in Westside of Los Angeles including the communities of Santa Monica, Palms/Mar Vista, Venice, Culver City, West Los Angeles, and Westchester. statistics courtesy of themls.com.
Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and I’d like to introduce this latest piece of technology to help me better communicate with you, the audience of the Reside Daily Bite. This fancy, new white board with our fancy, new graphics and I’m actually going to use it today because we’re going to talk about the market and how it is hyperlocal. We talked about that yesterday and I want to give you some examples of how it is hyperlocal here on the Westside of Los Angeles and what we are going to be talking about is comparing some statistics from last year up to this time to where we are today.

The statistics are for single family homes, the median sale price, and we’re going to compare that in six communities – Culver City, Westchester, West Los Angeles, Palms/Mar Vista, Venice and Santa Monica; and we’re going to compare that right now!

Alright, so now, we’re going to talk about Culver City. Last year this time, $612,000 was its median sale price; this year, a $685,000 and that’s up 11.84%. This is good news for the Westside; this is good news for Culver City. And again, the median sale price…this is really the percent changed from year to date (2009) to where we were this time last year and to 2010, beginning this year to where we are now.

Let’s take a look at Westchester. So last year (year to date), it is at $640,000; now, $689,500, we’ve gone up 7.73% in Westchester. So again, very exciting.

Let’s take a look at West LA. Last year (year to date), $657,000 median sale price for single family home. This year, we’re at $715,000; that’s up 8.75%. Again, good news for the Westside. The market is active and we here, as realtors, know that.

Here we are at Santa Monica and obviously a little difference here but let me explain. Last year, we were at $1.6 million; now we’re down to just a shy of $1.4 million. A difference of 14.34%. Still healthy market in Santa Monica and again, the average sale price is still almost $1.4 million. The market in Santa Monica is active; there are definitely some higher priced homes north of Montana as they are in Santa Monica, where a lot of those homes are located. This shows the trend that we’re seeing now on the Westside – under a million dollar market is very active. Less active for sure but we’re seeing signs of things picking up especially in Santa Monica, so we hope this will be going up and we’ll keep an eye on that.

Next, let’s take a look at Venice. Last year, $1.215 million; this year, we’re at $1.275 million. Even at this price point, we’re up 4.9% in Venice, so, this is great news. Love Venice; Venice is one of my favorite parts of California. Very hip, eclectic, artistic, very cool community. So I’m glad to see that this is going up. Again, healthy and active for Westside.

Now, let’s look at our last community, Palms/Mar Vista. This is very exciting because Palms/Mar Vista is right next to Venice and Santa Monica and oftentimes, people whose price point is not quite in the range for Venice or Santa Monica will look at Palms/Mar Vista as an alternative. It’s a great community, very “grass roots” community. They do a lot of rainwater harvesting; a lot of drought tolerant gardening in frontyards, lots of farmers market. Love Palms/Mar Vista. Last year, we were at $670,000; now, we’re at $739,500, that’s up 10.29%.

This is very exciting news for us. We’ve looked at 6 communities, 5 have all experienced growth, with the exception of Santa Monica, but we expect that to change. But this is in line of what we’re seeing at our Keller Williams office -multiple offers coming in, the market’s healthy, and the buyers are here.

Is it as easy to get financing as it was 2 or 3 years ago? Absolutely, not.

Is it possible to still get financing to buy a home today? Absolutely!

It might take a little more work. We might have to provide a little more documentation but that’s where your real estate agent and a good mortgage broker or a loan officer is going to help you through that process. So, I’m happy to introduce the white board, hopefully it was enlightening.

By all means let me know what you think, 1-800-476-5579 or you can email feedback@residerealestate.com

My name is David Doucette, thank you for watching the Reside Daily Bite.

In this video, I discussed the term “hyperlocal” and how important it is to think “hyperlocally” when talking about the real estate market in your neighborhood.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. Today, I’m going to talk about a term. I’m not even sure if it’s an official real estate term but it’s a good term and Colette Ching, our team leader over at the Keller Williams – Santa Monica office, had mentioned this last Friday in our podcast interview and the term is “hyperlocal”, which means, what’s happening across this country -when we hear these national headlines, we hear what the National Association of Realtors reports, we hear headlines maybe in the New York Times or in some of the more national publications- the headlines we hear may not be the ones that are applicable to our own, not only city but neighborhood within that city. And that’s what we mean by hyperlocal -very microscopic look at the city and the neighborhood.

I’ll give you an example, the Westside of Los Angeles, which is where I am, we have several communities. We have specific palisades -Palms/ Mar Vista, Santa Monica, Venice, Westchester, Culver City, West LA and each of those communities all have their own, little, unique market going on.

For example, year to date, median sales price from February 2009 to February 2010, Culver City is up almost 12%; Palms/Mar Vista is up over 10%; West LA around 9%; Westchester up 7.5%; and Venice up 5%. So all of these areas are up from where they were a year ago, which is a good sign for us here on the Westside. Santa Monica actually down about 14% (there are a few high-priced zone areas in Santa Monica, they may or may not have accounted for that, somehow, offset).

But we’re seeing activity in the Westside and this may be very different from your local real estate market.

So, if you’re considering buying or selling your home, make sure you’re working with a realtor in your area who understands the concept of being hyperlocal and understands the uniqueness of not only the city that you’re in but also the neighborhood you’re in and what the major cross streets are because here in the Westside, Lincoln Boulevard comes into play. If you’re west of Lincoln Boulevard in Venice, your homes might be higher in price; if it is east of Lincoln Boulevard, it might be a little lower in price. And there are other factors that are going to factor in, of course, but just having a good, specific knowledge of that hyperlocal market that’s in your neighborhood is something that you definitely want to be cognizant of – for lack of better term.

Before I let you go, there are 3 ways to give feedback. One, caller voicemail listener line 1-800-476-5579. You could also email feedback to feedback@residerealestate.com or you could, if you’re on residerealestate.com website, in this right above my finger is the comment hyperlink. So if you click that, a comment box will appear and you can leave a comment that way. I highly encourage you to leave comments or if you have a question or you have a real estate question that you want me to try and answer, feel free to send that in or call that in.

This is the Reside Daily Bite; my name is David Doucette, thanks for joining me today.

In this daily bite, I discussed the interview I did last Friday with Colette Ching, Keller Williams Santa Monica for the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show. We had a great discussion about Keller Williams culture, how the progressive company is one of the hottest brokerages around. We also discussed the Santa Monica office, or market center, and what makes us so strong. Be sure to check out the entire audio interview on the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show episode 007.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today I want to talk to you about a show that I recorded on Friday for the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show (Reside Real Estate Podcast) and I had a very special guest in the studio -Colette Ching. She is the team leader at the office that I hang my license at, Keller Williams, Santa Monica.

So, she came over on Friday and we did a podcast interview. We talked all about Keller Williams’ culture, we talked about her philosophies, we talked about her passion and how she instills that in the agents that work with her.

It was really great. It was a great interview. I was very excited to be able to sit down with Colette and have that time to talk about all that because it was a big decision for me to hang my license over there when I decided to expand the Reside branch. So that’s really what this daily bite is about -it is to let you know we recorded that.

You can also see a video recording on the blog. It is not as a good as the podcast but the audio is still pretty good. I missed hitting the record button in the first few minutes, so if you watch the video, you’re going to miss a few minutes of the interview.

By all means, check out the podcast which is of great quality. It’s the full length podcast; I think it’s about 40 to 45 minutes. Episode no. 007, check that out.

Also, I want to encourage you to give our voicemail listener line a call at 1-800-476-5579. I’d love to hear your feedbacks and we can incorporate them into either the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show (Reside Real Estate Podcast) or right here on the Reside Daily Bite; either one would be great, love to have that. My name is David Doucette, thanks for checking it out today.

this is recorded video of my podcast interview with colette ching, keller williams santa monica. i hit the video record button a few minutes after it started so you won’t see the intro here. the audio is pretty decent here, but be sure to check out the professionally produced audio only version/podcast on the reside realtor online radio show episode 007.

episode 007. keller williams + colette ching

• in this episode, i’m joined by one of my favorite peeps, colette ching, team leader of the keller williams santa monica office. She is a source of inspiration and positive energy and creates a nurturing environment for agents at the santa monica office. we talk about the keller williams business model and how there are over 600 market centers in north america. we also talk about why the KW business model is different and how and why we are growing as a company while other brokerages are downsizing (superb training is one reason!) Colette is tuned into the marketplace as evidenced by the statistics she shares with us and she also gives her agents the power to be the best they can be. feel free to send comments by calling our voicemail listener line at 1.800.476.5579,  clicking the comment link above, or sending an email to david@residerealestate.com.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays.this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

In this video I discussed my inspiration for “The Reside Daily Bite”, Gary Vaynerchuk and his book “Crush It”!
After spending one evening reading the book, I knew I had to create a daily video blog. Gary talks about pursuing your passion and how to leverage social media. I’m 3 weeks in and I am loving it! Also, you can check out Gary’s www.winelibrarytv.com.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and it is Friday and I am really excited. I’m excited for today. I’m excited just in general and one of the things why I’m excited is I want to tell you about this book, “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuck. You can get it on Amazon for about $13, go buy it, it’s a great book. Very thin though but a lot of good information here called “Crush It: Cash In on Your Passion”. He really talks about being passionate about what you do and also using social media to leverage that passion.

So why I’m excited is, if you ask me two and a half weeks ago, “David, would you think you’d have a daily video blog?”, I would have said “No, I wouldn’t have really thought about it” but then I came across Gary’s book, read it on Friday night, two weeks ago actually, read the whole thing in one sitting all hundred and thirty pages or so; decided Saturday or Sunday then, “You know what, I’m going to do  a daily video blog” and that following Monday, the Reside Daily Bite was born. So, thank you Gary for the inspiration to do that.

And because this is episode no.015…it’s actually been 3 weeks. Forget my two weeks…it’s been 3 weeks. See, I’m so excited I forgot how many weeks it has been. As I’m talking to you, I’m thinking of doing another take but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to let this roll; I’m really working hard on it.

So thank you Gary, yes, 3 weeks ago. This is episode no.015 of the Reside Daily Bite, how cool is that! I’ve enjoyed doing it and obviously, I’m going to continue doing it. It’s been a lot of fun. Hopefully, I’ve been sharing some good information and I’m going to start encouraging listener feedback. You can call our voicemail listener line at 1-800-476-5579 and that is all I have for today, have a great weekend and we’ll see you on Monday on the Reside Daily Bite, I’m David Doucette.

In this video, I gave a quick overview of FHA loans.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today I want to talk to you a little bit about FHA loans and what all that means. The FHA or the Federal Housing Administration is a division of HUD and from their website I want to read a couple of things…

It’s part of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. FHA provides mortgage insurance on single-family, multifamily, manufactured homes and hospital loans made by FHA-approved lenders throughout the US. Borrowers obviously need to meet certain requirements to qualify for the insurance but lenders bear less risk because FHA will pay the lender if the homeowner defaults.

So this is an important concept, if lenders (be it Chase, Wells Fargo or Bank of America) are making what we call FHA loans, those loans are essentially insured by the Federal government, the FHA program. But because of that, some of the guidelines might be a little stricter or there might be more red tape involved. Currently, the FHA has 5.2 million insured single-family mortgages in their portfolio.

So, let’s talk about their requirements for an FHA loan because it’s a good option for first-time homebuyers who don’t have a lot of money for a downpayment. And the minimum downpayment requirement for FHA loan is 3.5% down and many people might not be aware of this. Many people might still be thinking we need to have 20% down by a home where in today’s market you necessarily do not. If you go to FHA loan route, you could have as little as 3.5% down. Also, your FICO score should probably be a minimum of about 620. I’ve heard in some circles 580 but that sounds a little low. It’s more like 620.

It’s typically going to take longer to close in an FHA loan because there is just a little more paperwork in such involved. It might take a minimum of 45 days to close an FHA loan. There is also a loan type for the FHA program called the 203K and that’s for home improvement. There are different guidelines for that but that are an option for homeowners looking to purchase a home and also want to do some work on that home.

At our office at Keller Williams, we have a couple of loan officers over there for Bank of America and they are telling us now that essentially 50% of their business is in fact FHA loans and they’re expected to see more of that as we move through this year.

An interesting note is if you’re considering an FHA loan, the condo building needs to be approved for FHA financing. So if you’re thinking of that, make sure you’re talking to your realtor or your loan officer.

One word of caution, some listing agents -the agents who have the property for sale- might be a little afraid of offers that come in as FHA loans because they might have had a bad experience with FHA loans in the past. Make sure your realtor/real estate agent and your loan officer are very proactive if you’re submitting offers that are FHA loans.

And one of the things I’ll mention is, in LA County, FHA loans should qualify up to $729,750 for our area. You can go online and check your area because the limits will differ by county. You can check out FHA.gov, which will redirect you to the HUD website. Little difficult to poll some of the information; you might be better off doing a Google search to find some more information on FHA guidelines. By all means, talk to your realtor and your real estate agent and also your loan officer and your CPA.

Thank you for tuning in to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette.

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT UPDATE TO RESIDE DAILY BITE 012.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; My name is David Doucette and today  I want to talk to you about what I talked to you yesterday and the tax credit available specifically for first-time home buyers.

Yesterday, I’ve made very clear that it is not possible to qualify for both the Federal tax credit and the California tax credit at the same time, and I was mistaken. You actually can, in a very small window, and I’m going to explain that right now.

To qualify for the Federal tax credit, we know that we have to be under contract by April 30; and to qualify for the California tax credit, we need to close escrow on or after May 1.

So what that means is, if we get into contract within the next 30 days (essentially in April) and we close on or after May 1 escrow, we may qualify for both the Federal tax credit of $8,000 and the State tax credit of  $10,000 -that’s potentially an $18,000 tax credit that may be available to us.

So, I want to clarify that from yesterday. Again, if you get in this window, you get a property under contract by April 30; you may qualify for both tax credits. That’s a really big deal and I think a good incentive for some of the fence sitters out there. By all means, consult your CPA or your tax attorney to find out if these programs apply to your specific needs.

My name is David Doucette, thank you for watching the Reside Daily Bite.

PLEASE SEE RESIDE DAILY BITE 013 FOR AN UPDATE ON THIS VIDEO and how you may qualify for both tax credits. In this video, I incorrectly stated that it’s not possible to qualify for both but the California Association of Realtors just released information to show how it is possible and this is covered in episode 013.

In this video, I discuss and compare the federal home buyer tax credit with the California home buyer tax credit. Be sure to consult with your tax attorney or CPA to find out if the tax credits apply to you.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; my name is David Doucette. Today, I want to talk about the comparisons of the California and Federal home buyer tax credits. And this came up yesterday in our Keller Williams team meeting, and our broker record Martin Mead had put together a table for us to outline the comparison chart and I wanted to share that with you today.

Let’s talk about timing first because this is actually the most important and I’m going to explain why in a second.

The Federal tax credit expires on April 30, 2010- almost a month from now. The property needs to be under contract by April 30, 2010 and closed by June 30, 2010. Meanwhile, the California tax credit begins to take place on May 1, 2010 (the day after the Federal tax credit expires). And this is very important, the timing of this and I’m going to explain that and use an example in a little bit.

If you’re a first-time home buyer, you can claim up to $8,000 from Federal tax credit and that’s a lump sum. In the California tax credit, you can claim up to $10,000 over 3 years – so it’s going to take 3 years to get that $10,000 back- and that’s 5% of the purchase price up to a maximum of $10,000. That’s for the first-time home buyer. For new construction, there is no Federal tax credit for that.

The California tax credit is also going to apply up to $10,000 for that portion over the next 3 years. And if you’re a previous homeowner, for the Federal tax credit, you can claim up to a $6,500 tax credit. In California tax credit, there is no tax credit for previous home buyer.

Now, a couple of things I want to mention (and this is very important). As first time home buyers, in Federal we have an $8,000 tax credit available to us right now that expires on April 30. On May 1, in California, we’re going to be able to claim an up to $10,000 tax credit. I was on a real estate forum last night  and a mortgage broker posted an article stating that California first-time home buyers are going to be eligible for an $18,000 tax credit and that’s just not true, it’s misinformation and here’s why: it goes back to the timing. The Federal tax credit expires on April 30 while the California tax credit comes into play on May 1; so there is no overlap. There is no way for a California first-time home buyer to qualify to both Federal tax credit and the California tax credit. It’s a very important distinction to be aware of because my guess is, depending on what circle you’re running and you may hear more about somebody claiming that you can claim up to an $18,000 tax credit, is just not true.

Now, if the Federal program gets extended (which we don’t know right now if that’s going to happen or not) then, that would be a possibility but right now, absolutely not.

But I think the California tax credit is a good thing for first-time home buyers because I know there are a few out there who might feel missing out on the Federal tax credit by not acting soon enough but if they did, they’ll still be able to qualify for the California tax credit which actually may mean more money -up to$10,000. It’s just going to be dispersed over a 3-year period. And by all means, consult your CPA or your tax attorney or your financial consultant to find out the details of these programs. I just wanted to give you a broad overview and clear up that timing issue of the $18,000 which is something that is not available.

My name is David Doucette, thank you so much for joining me on the Reside Daily Bite.

In this episode, I discussed the 6 factors that may make buying a home more expensive in the upcoming months.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today’s episode is going to be part 2 of “The Cost of Waiting” and why I’m doing this again is because last Friday, we had my mortgage  broker, Dean Piller, in here and we briefly talked about the cost of waiting. Then, we recorded our show, the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show, and really got a lot out of that in terms of the costs of waiting and picked up key points or key factors to look for on the coming months. So, I wanted to incorporate those in today’s show because they are so important. That is episode no.006 of the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I encouraged you to do that and you can find that at ResideRealEstate.com/podcast.

But the 6 factors are:

1. The federal tax credit, which is set to expire on April 30. We don’t know if that’s going to be extended; and that’s an $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers and $6,500 for non-first-time home buyers.

2. The FHA is talking about raising the requirements for the downpayment. Now it’s currently 3.5%, meaning you have to have 3.5% down of the purchase price. They’re talking about raising those requirements to 5%, which would mean you have to come up with a little more money to get into the game, so to speak.

3 & 4 have to do with private mortgage insurance and if you’re financing more than 80% of the purchase price of your home, you’re going to have to pay private mortgage insurance. So both the upfront cost will be going up and also the monthly costs. For example, on a $500,000 mortgage, your private mortgage insurance might be around $250; when it goes up, it’s going to go up to probably about $400 or thereabouts. So it’s going to go up around $150 every month.

5. The interest rates -they’ve obviously been at historic lows for quite a while now. They’re hovering around 5%. Some industry experts are predicting that they could go up to as much as 5.75% – 6% by the end of the year. Now this is the most significant factor in my mind because what that means…on a $500,000 mortgage, if interest rates go up 1% that’s going to add about  $400-500 on your monthly payment every month. So it’s about $6,000 or so a year. That is, I think, the most important element in all of these -the interest rates.

Finally, the 6th item is the values of homes. I believe they’re going to start going up. We know they’re going up here on the Westside of Los Angeles and the county. Other parts of the country are going to be a little slower before they start going up. Some experts are predicting the bottom is going to hit the first quarter of 2011 but I can tell you based on what we’re seeing here in Los Angeles, we’ve already hit the bottom and things are starting to go up. Agents in our office are already seeing multiple offers.

So, those are 6 key factors. Again, (1) tax credit; (2) the FHA possibly raising the downpayment requirements; (3) upfront mortgage insurances are going to go up a little bit; (4) the monthly insurance mortgage is going to go up a little bit; (5) the interest rates -very important; and (6) values. Six items to look at and this cost of waiting exercise.

My name is David Doucette, thanks for watching the Reside Daily Bite.

episode 006. the cost of waiting

• in this episode, i’m joined once again by mortgage broker, dean piller. listen in as we discuss the costs of waiting to purchase a home, this may surprise you. there are 6 factors that will make the home buying process more expensive in the near future, including the homebuyer tax credit is set to expire, FHA may be raising their minumum down payment requirements, private mortgage insurance will be increasing, interest rates will be going up (some predict by as much as 1% by the end of the year), and home values may be increasing. this is a must listen episode for anyone sitting on the fence of the home buying process. feel free to send comments by calling our voicemail listener line at 1.800.476.5579,  clicking the comment link above, or sending an email to david@residerealestate.com.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays.this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

In this episode, I’m joined by my favorite mortgage broker, Dean Piller. Dean came to the office today to record “The Reside Realtor Online Radio Show” and it gave me the idea to introduce Dean to the Reside Daily Bite crowd.

We briefly talk about the upcoming radio show in which we talk about “The Cost of Waiting” to purchase a home. The federal tax credit is set to expire, FHA may be raising the downpayment requirements, private mortgage insurance will be increasing, interest rates will be going up, and home values may be rising. This is a great episode for those of you sitting on the fence. You can listen by clicking episode 006. — The Cost of Waiting.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today, I’m joined by one of my favorite mortgage broker, Dean Piller.

David: Dean, thanks for joining us.

Dean: Thank you.

David: And Dean is actually here today because we’re getting ready to record our podcast of the Reside Realtor Online Radio Show and the title that we’ve just decided upon is, “The Cost of Waiting“. And Dean, what are we going to be talking about in that episode?

Dean: Well there are some economic realities to waiting. The market could go down a little bit but as we’ve seen it now, it’s starting to go up and that moving up, coupled with high interest rates (which are guaranteed to be coming down the road), you could be, as David said, in on a $500,000 house paying $400-500 a month more by waiting. Plus, the taxing, the government giveaway is going to be expiring June 30. When that happens, you’re going to lose that $8,000 tax credit. So, there are a lot of costs here.

David: And the FHA requirements, the downpayment may be increasing, so, this is really going to be an episode for the fence sitters; definitely tune in to the Reside Daily Bite. You can contact that at DeanPiller.com

Dean: That’s correct.

David: My name is David Doucette, thanks for joining us today.

In this video, I discussed the option of using pepper spray as a personal safety item in your home as well as an ingenious “call police” sign that should be in every vehicle.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and in today’s show, I’m going to talk about a couple of personal security items that we can use for personal security measures.

And the reason why I’m doing this show today is because last week at our Keller Williams Santa Monica weekly team meeting, this gentleman spoke afterwards and his name is Byron Walls from CaliforniaCrimeFight.com and this by no means a commercial for CaliforniaCrimeFight.com. He did a presentation about personal safety and I actually purchased one of the kits that he was selling, so, I just wanted to share some of that information with you.

He was selling one which is a blend of the most powerful CS teargas and the hottest OC pepper with an ultraviolet dye in a penetrating, nontoxic solvent-based for instant action to sting eyes, nose and mouth; so basically, a very potent pepper spray.

He also sells a family kit- which is what I purchased. There are 4 of these large bottles and then there are 2 keychain models. I think these are really great and here’s why.

You can keep these in your house. You can keep them just next to your bed. You can hang them up high if you want to keep them out of reach of children. But what’s interesting about this product -the large bottle-, Byron claims it will spray 12-15 ft and it’s completely nontoxic, so it will incapacitate the victim for 20 minutes, which give you plenty time to get out of the house. It’s nontoxic, nonlife-threatening so there will be no damage to the victim; so, you’ll hesitate less to use this in situations you’ll be more prone to use this -which will be good.

And he also gave an example; as a woman, if you’re home alone and the cable guy is coming over, keep one of this close by.  I think it is a good tip.

And here’s the keychain model. This is a nice reminder to be prepared. We don’t what to think about necessary things happening -our home being broken into while we are there. It is good to be prepared for peace of mind -it’s really what this is. It’s not commercial; it’s just good information that I found from our team meeting.

One really cool thing that I like is this sign. We received two of these -a Call Police sign. I thought this is a really simple idea. If your car breaks down, you’re in a highway and for whatever reason your cell phone dies, nobody’s probably going to stop to help you, a good Samaritan is going to see your car especially at night. The only person that would stop is the bad Samaritan. So, what this “Call Police” sign does is if you’re in that situation, you tape this to your back window and cars going by would likely call 911 and the police would show up shortly thereafter. And Byron told a few stories of women being stranded for 5-7 hours before anybody would stop and help them.

I think these are all good stuff – the pepper spray and the Call Police sign. I think you can buy these individually too but I like the family kit. You also had a sticker that you can put on your door or window to make it look like you have an alarm system.

That’s our show for today; I’m David Doucette and thank you for joining me.

LA Marathon 2010 from DocuCinema on Vimeo.

my friends, lee schneider and tabby biddle, made this video of the marathon for me and i was very touched so i wanted to share it on the reside daily bite. this was at mile 23.

Today, I joined my son’s field trip to the Griffith Park Observatory, a Los Angeles icon and one of southern California’s most popular attractions. The observatory recently underwent a multimillion dollar renovation and it was great to see the new and improved observatory. All of us had a blast and will be coming back again soon. My youngest son, Remy saw many “moons” and “space”. Click the link for more information on Griffith Park.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and I’m joined by my two restless boys, Jake and Remy, who are ready to explore the Griffith Park Observatory which is where we’re coming  to you from right now, just north of downtown Los Angeles. Griffith Park recently went a major renovation and I’m excited to go in and see it.

And of course, James Dean filmed “Rebel without a Cause” here, so, we’re going to go in and have a look around.

David: So Jake, what do you think so far?

Jake: Happy, happy, happy…

David: Here we are in the planetarium -Water is Life, Take 2…

David: We thought our boys are so heavy but they only wiegh 10 lbs on the moon. What do you think Jake…10 lbs?

Jake: Cool.

David: Here’s a shot from the observatory looking at downtown Los Angeles in a gorgeous day.

David: Alright!  Did we have fun everybody?

Jake and Remy: Yes!

David: Yes. That concludes our episode of the Reside Daily Bite; my name is David Doucette. I want to thank you guys so much for joining us today…and I’m going to catch Jake before he falls out the side…

I participated in an amazing event yesterday, the 25th running of the Los Angeles Marathon. It was a great new course, called “the stadium to the sea”. It began at Dodger Stadium and ended at the Santa Monica pier. Spectators lined the whole route and cheered on us runners, for them I am very grateful. There was a lot of love in LA yesterday and I’m so proud to be part of it.

Hello everybody and welcome to a very special edition of the Reside Daily Bite; where coming to you on Sunday live from the finish line of the Los Angeles Marathon here at Santa Monica pier. Myself and other 25,000 other runners just ran 26.2 miles from the streets of Los Angeles. We started at Dodger Stadium and we went through Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the city of Los Angeles and then in the city of Santa Monica.

-Three words to describe route: A-MA-ZING and here’s my son Jake…

-Is that three words Jake?

(laughing)

It was just another reason that I love living in Los Angeles. So, if you’re thinking of relocating to Los Angeles, by all means, feel free to email me david@residerealestate.com and next year we can run the marathon together.

This is the Reside Daily Bite; I’m David Doucette, thank you!

episode 005. real estate news, monthly update

• i’m experimenting with a new format, called real estate news, monthly update. once a month, i will be discussing recent real estate news. in this episode, i discuss articles featuring content related to short sales and foreclosures. feel free to send me comments and let me know if you find this format successful by either clicking the comment link above or send an email to david@residerealestate.com.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays.this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

The Reside Daily Bite goes on our first location shoot and I had a lot of fun! I’ll be running the Los Angeles marathon, along with 25,000 other runners, this Sunday. The marathon will begin at Dodger Stadium and travel 26.2 miles through the streets of Los Angeles and end at the Santa Monica pier. This is one of the many reasons that I love living in LA!

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and we are on location here at Santa Monica pier. We’re only a few hundred yards away from the finish line of the Los Angeles marathon, which is happening this Sunday. I’m happy to say, I will be running in it.

So, we’re going to have the after party here at Santa Monica pier, along with other 25,00o runners. And right now we’re going to head down to pick up our race packet.

Here we are at the expo, down at Dodger Stadium and we’re going to go pick up my racing packet and bib right now.

Race route:

So here we are at Dodger Stadium and we will be going through downtown, down Hollywood Boulevard, Mann’s Chinese Theater, down Sunset, down Santa Monica, Rodeo Drive right here, Santa Monica Boulevard and down San Vicente, all the way to the beach and then the Santa Monica pier. Right there -26.2 miles!

Alright, so we got our expo pack, I got my bib number, I’m ready to run on Sunday; what is all of these have to do with real estate? It’s one of the reasons I love living in Los Angeles. Come out and see us at the finish line on Sunday.

In this segment, titled “News on Friday”, I discussed three articles that discussed that state of the real estate market and homeowners’ struggle with making payments on homes that are “underwater”. This video turned out longer than anticipated, but in an effort to do things on the first take, I didn’t want to go back and shoot a shorter version (I’m trying to be less of a perfectionist and the Reside Daily Bite is challenging me). On future news on Friday segments, I will be just featuring one news article. I’d love to hear what you think about this segment so please leave a comment by clicking on the comment tab above the video.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today’s segment is a segment that I called “News on Fridays”. Even though today is Thursday, I wanted to bring it to you today because tomorrow, we’re going to go shoot some footage of them setting up the finish line of the LA marathon (which is happening on Sunday which I’m running in). So very excited about that. And that’s what we’re going to do for tomorrow. But I do want to start the news on Friday’s segment.

I’m going to talk about a couple of articles. This was recently in the San Francisco Chronicle titled “Strategic Defaults on Homes on the Rise” and what they’re talking about in this article is a couple of interesting facts, “Of all U.S. mortgage holders, about one quarter, or 11.3 million households, are underwater”. Now what underwater means is it’s a term used when somebody owes more on the house than what it is worth and it’s something we’re seeing more frequently now especially for people who bought within the last 3 or 4 years.

For example, 3 years ago, somebody might have purchased a home for $500,000 -that’s what their mortgage is- but because of the economic down turn, the value of that house today is only $400,000. So, they are said to be underwater. Now, if somebody is going to be staying in their home for the long term (5-10 years), it really isn’t an issue, it becomes an issue really just on paper but for somebody who is wanting  to move or needing to sell, it becomes more of an issue.

And the article talks about strategic defaults that are resulting in foreclosure and how many homeowners are opting not to make their monthly mortgage payments. They discussed if homeowners say they want out, banks typically encourage them to market their property as a short sale which is when the property can be sold for less than what is owed on it.

And we’re going to be seeing more of the short sale terminology. For example, if somebody owes $500,000 on their house (but it’s only worth $400,000), the homeowner can put it on the market or can list it with an agent and the bank can accept that short sale. But there are a lot of stipulations for that to even happen and it has really to be a financial direct situation or distress, I should say, for the homeowner.

And something else I thought was interesting in this article: TransUnion, one of the 3 credit reporting companies, noticed a striking change in recent months -that people are actually paying their auto loans and credit cards off first before their paying their mortgages. And that’s a huge shift from recent times and typically, the payment hierarchy would be that people will be paying their mortgage first. And their saying, the reason for the shift is that consumers who are upside down on a mortgage, when they encounter adverse circumstances, they are less likely to make a rather large payment on a home that is not worth what it was when they (bought it).

–

I want to read another article, this is from the LA Times, and this came out recently. It talks about a couple who have not made a home payment in 16 months and they live Paris, California. They talked about more people are continuing to default on their home loans — but lenders are backing off a little bit on forced evictions allowing many people to remain in their homes,  essentially rent-free.

“Several factors are driving the trend, industry experts say, including government pressure on banks to modify loans and keep people in their homes.” So, the banks are working with homeowners to try and keep them in their home and it really is in the bank’s interest to do this because they really do not want these homes back, they do not want to foreclosed, they have a surplus of inventory now.

“Areas like Southern California’s Inland Empire, Nevada and Arizona, lenders are loath to depress housing prices further by dumping more properties into a weak market.” And a spokesman from Chase says allowing borrowers to stay in their homes helps protect the bank’s investment as it negotiates with the homeowners. This is an important concept because if a homeowner is still living in the home, there’s less chance of vandalism, there’s less chance of damage to the property. If the bank was to foreclose on it then it is vacant then it’s more prone to vandalism and essentially more expensive for the bank to maintain and keep until the bank can sell it.

An also interesting point here is that in California, a firm by the name of ForeclosureRadar, who tracks a lot of the foreclosure statistics and notice of defaults, says right now it takes an average of 229 days for a bank to foreclose on a home in California. So, that’s 229 days that a bank is taking after they send a notice of default -that is up from 146 days in August 2008.

A year and a half earlier, it was taking 146 days; now it’s taking an average of 229 days and they go on to say, “”For some reason, banks are being more lenient with homeowners who are behind on their loans; whether it’s a strategy to try and slow down the volume of foreclosures or simply a matter of the banks being able to keep up with volume is something that banks only know for sure.”

And a spokeswoman from the Bank of America says, “Lenders say the trend reflects their efforts to work with borrowers to modify loans to avoid foreclosure. They continue to exhaust every possible option to qualify customers for modification or other solutions.”

I think there is a willingness on the part of banks to work with distressed homeowners. I think we’re going to see more of it. The short sale process right now can take anywhere from 3-6 months. It’s a long, laborious process and lot of red tape still involved. It’s not an easy solution yet.

–

But another article recently printed in the New York Times called “Program Will Pay Homeowners to Sell at a Loss” talked about the Obama Administration. They’re saying “more than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure.”

“Taking effect on April 5, the program could encourage hundreds of thousands of delinquent borrowers who have not been rescued by the loan modification program to shed their houses through a process known as a short sale, in which property is sold for less than the balance of the mortgage. Lenders will be compelled to accept that arrangement, forgiving the difference between the market price of the property and what they are owed.”

And a senior Treasury adviser says, “We want to streamline and standardize the short sale process to make it much easier on the borrower and much easier on the lender.” This is really a big deal and I hope that this can work out; I hope they can really streamline the short sale process.

And here’s an example of why they really need to do this:  it is highlighted by a routine case in Phoenix. A real estate agent has a house he is trying to sell on behalf of its owner, who owes $150,000. He has an offer for $48,000 (which is a hundred thousand dollars less than what he owes), but the bank holding the mortgage says it wants at least $90,000. The frustrated owner is now contemplating foreclosure.

Now I don’t know what that house is worth in the area, maybe it is only $48,000, and if that’s the case, the bank has to really take a hard look at their demands for wanting $90,000 and why they want that.

But the point is that this is going to help banks streamline the short sale process because we really need it. They also talked about the incentives – if they prove successful, the short sales program could have multiple benefits, there is the prospect of getting more money with a sale than with a foreclosure (for the lenders); for the borrowers, there is the likelihood of suffering less damage to credit ratings because the short sale is better on your credit report than a foreclosure.

They also talked about the benefits of which to communities. It will mean fewer empty foreclosed homes; because once a home is foreclosed on, that means it goes back to the bank -the bank owns it and now the bank has to fix it up and try and sell it. The banks have a lot of inventory and I don’t think they want to take on more. And I think that is why they are letting homeowners stay in their homes longer and trying to work with them. And I think this year; we’re definitely going to see more of this.

One thing I do want to point out about the short sale, as the spokeswoman in this article from Wells Fargo says, “This is not an opportunity for the customer to just walk away. If someone doesn’t come to us saying, ‘I’ve done everything I can, I used all my savings, I borrowed money and, by the way, I’m losing my job and moving to another city, and have all the documentation,’ we’re not going to do a short sale.” So the banks are saying you need to meet these really financial distress criteria to be considered for a short sale.

If you find yourself in that situation where you are behind on your payments for whatever reason, definitely seek out a local real estate agent to discuss the options because certainly a short sale is much better than a foreclosure -definitely take those steps to do that.

If you don’t know where to go, feel free to email me david@residerealestate.com. The office I work with, Keller Williams, have over 600 franchises or locations in the country, and I can try and point you in that direction. Don’t do just do nothing, which I think a lot of people feel the tendency to do because they don’t know what else to do and they sort of give up. Talk to an agent, talk about the short sale process and they will be able to give you more information on that.

I want to thank you so much for joining me today and please be sure to tune in tomorrow when we will have some exciting footage from the finish line of the Los Angeles marathon.

This episode was prompted by an event that happened yesterday while I was editing episode 002. The Reside Daily Bite. After hours of fooling with a 2 minute video, I thought about how persistence, patience, & flexibility could or should apply to the home buying process. By the way, I did get episode 002 released yesterday as planned, and yes, persistence did pay off.

Hello and welcome everybody to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette. I had another show playing for today but something happened yesterday that prompted this idea.

The show today is about PERSISTENCE, PATIENCE and FLEXIBILITY. The reason I want  to talk about that today is, yesterday, if you recall, I was excited, it was Tuesday, it was broker’s open and I was going to get on the MLS after I released the Reside Daily Bite yesterday. I planned my open house search for yesterday.

But what happened is, the video was going to be posted by 9 o’clock in the morning and then I was going to do my research and then I was going to go to my open houses. But what happened is I had some video editing problems that I had to download some additional software. I had to go online; I was monkeying with a bunch of different things to get the video right because there was a hissing/scratching sound in the video. The original video was fine but it was in somehow during the editing process. It took a while to get it figured out -to get it resolved. Long story short, it was about 2:30 in the afternoon when I actually finally posted that, so needless to say, I didn’t make it to my open house yesterday.

It really got me thinking how that relates to the home buying process. What we really need, especially as a home buyer is, we need to be persistent. We want to be persistent to make sure we’re looking at open houses, we’re researching neighborhoods, and we’re driving around the neighborhoods and at different times of the day -evenings and weekends. Definitely want to make sure we’re doing that, so, we need to be persistent.

We also need to be patient as home buyers because it can be a long, emotional process. The more patient we are, the better the process can be, the more realization that we need to be patient. Things are not going to happen quickly.

And the flexibility is also a very important factor because you as the home buyer, you will have your wishlist, you’ll have your 5 wants and needs. The reality is there is no home out there that is going to be the perfect home for you. It’s not going to fit 100% of your wants and needs; maybe we get to 85-90-95% but it’s unrealistic to assume or to think that we can get to a 100%. I think that’s where flexibility can come in to play.

So, we can be persistent and always communicate with our agent during this process. We can be patient and letting the process happen while staying on top of it, making sure the agent is keeping us informed because once you get an accepted offer on a property, it’s going to take 30, 45 to 60 days for that house to actually close -for it to become your. There are a lot that goes on in that timeframe. That’s where the patience will come in.

And again, the flexibility -finding the right home for us.

So what did I learn from yesterday? I had to be persistent -went online several times; downloaded a couple of tips from programs to finally get this thing to work. I had to be patient as I was waiting for all the stuff to download. And I had to be flexible because I shifted the rest of my day around yesterday.

The lesson for me was to stop editing videos on PCs and go get an iMac. So an iMac is in my near future.

My name is David Doucette and I thank you for joining me today.

In this video, I describe what a “Brokers’ Open” is, complete with air quotes, and why it can be a good idea for a potential homebuyer to visit a Brokers’ Open in their area.

Hello and welcome everybody to the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and today is Tuesday (March 16 to be exact). And Tuesday is an exciting day for us in the “biz” because Tuesday is the day that we have what we called the “Brokers’ Open”.

What that is, is an open house for brokers; and typically when a new listing comes on the market or an agent who has a new listing, they will traditionally show it first on a Tuesday to the area brokers to try and generate some buzz and then they’ll have the official open house on Sunday.

Now, brokers’ open or caravan…they are not just for realtors. If you’re a home buyer and you’re looking for a home and you have some time on a Tuesday (they are between 11 and 2 here on Los Angeles area), you’re more than welcome to stop in and check homes out. You don’t have to be intimidated and in some respects, you may get a little better service from the agent holding the open house because they are going to be really excited to have a potential buyer in there to talk about the house.

Brokers’ open -if you see them in your neighborhood, feel free to stop in. And I’m excited I’m going to get on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) right now, search the homes, and build my itinerary that I’m going to go look at. And I’m going to probably see about (depending on what’s on the market) 15-20 homes in that 3-hour period. Very excited.

Brokers open – if you see it, go check it out. Thanks for stopping in!

In this premier video for the reside daily bite, I described what to expect from this video series including releasing 5 episodes per week including homebuyer and seller education and tips, as well as highlighting areas in the greater Los Angeles area including Santa Monica and the “Westside”. I am really excited to be bringing this format to my audience! Please feel free to leave any comments by clicking the comment tab above the video. Thanks for tuning in!

Hello and welcome everybody to the very first, the premier episode of the Reside Daily Bite; I’m your host, David Doucette and I am excited to be bringing you this video blog series. I’m very passionate about real estate, about education, about encouraging and entertaining and inspiring. I’m passionate about all those things and the video blog is going to allow me another avenue in which I can feed you information. So I’m really excited about this. This is going to be released daily -5 times a week.

I’m going to be talking about buyer education and buyer tips, seller education and seller tips and I’m also going to be taking the video camera to the streets of the Westside of Los Angeles -the area I love the most; Santa Monica is great, Palms/Mar Vista is great.  I’m going to be showcasing you cool things about the area. We have Santa Monica pier. We have the Promenade of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. We have a lot of Farmers Markets in the areas. So, I’m going to be showcasing that as part of the video blog. Also, I’ll be bringing in cool elements in the greater of Los Angeles area as well. I’m really excited about this video blog; I’m excited to have you tuning in.

You can also check out at reisderealestate.com under the podcast tab, I have what I called “The Reside Realtor Online Radio Show”  (now, The Reside Real Estate Podcast) and this is a weekly audio podcast of more education and more tips. It’s high, high quality audio and you can subscribe to that at my website or through iTunes and we’ve released 4 episodes so far. I talked about what an agent does, how do you work with an agent . I talked about how to get pre-approved. The 4 steps in finding a home and then I just released one called “The Buyer’s Consultation“, So, that is going to be released weekly.

Again, you can check that out at the podcast tab at the residerealestate and then of course, this video blog, you can subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s up on the left corner of your screen. It’s definitely on that left sidebar so, hit that RSS subscribe button and then you can automatically be notified when these updates come out.

I’m thrilled. I’m glad to have you as audience and can’t wait to wake up tomorrow morning and do another video post of the Reside Daily Bite. Thank you so much for joining me today.

episode 004. the buyer’s consultation

• in this episode, i discuss the importance of the buyer’s consultation and why you should make sure your agent performs one. i walk through the format of my consultation which includes contact info, lender info, general questions about price range and size of home, location, lifestyle, interior and exterior features, and most importantly, your 5 must haves. this is a very important episode for anyone considering purchasing a home.

like what you’ve heard? please submit a review to itunes.

LIVE! on fridays. this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

“Your presentation last night was so great….I hope you continue to do it, I bet it will be very helpful in hooking up hopeful buyers with what seems like a great team of resources! I’m impressed with your knowledge, not to mention your great marketing sense…I am always so excited to meet innovative business people who work smart to get the word out about their services.”

Diane Pirritino

“Thank you so much for allowing me to attend the first time home buyer seminar at your office last evening. I thought it was fantastic. Though I was generally familiar with the home buying process, the format of your program, with the individual speakers, gave me a much better understanding of exactly what happens, why, and by whom. I also think it’s great that you’re doing the podcast and radio show, both from the educational aspect, and for marketing.”

Elizabeth Quinn

“Thanks again for offering that seminar. It was really great. Some stuff we knew, some we didn’t. Plus it’s a great way to get in touch with the professionals out there. I hate to have to go to people that I’m not the least bit familiar with. And overall it was inspiring.”

Mariah Williams

here’s the info for the next seminar, i hope to see you there!

the next seminar is scheduled for thursday, march 25, 2010 from 6:30 – 8:00pm w/ wine, cheese, and healthy snacks.

this seminar is FREE. seating is limited and reservations are required. please email david@residerealestate.com to reserve your spot today!

march’s topic is “first time home buyer’s seminar”

 we will be discussing all things related to purchasing your first home including;

• how do i work with a real estate professional
• how do i obtain financing?
• what is the escrow process all about?
• what happens during a home inspection?

we will have 4 guest speakers discussing their field of expertise;

• david doucette, licensed real estate broker and owner of reside real estate
• mortgage broker
• escrow officer
• home inspector

episode 003. 4 steps in buying your home

• in this episode, i read some great comments from my recent first time homebuyer’s seminar and also discuss in detail the 4 steps involved in buying your home, including step 1 – the looking stage, step 2 – the finding stage, step 3 – the buying stage, and step 4 – the closing stage. this is also the first episode that was streamed LIVE! on the internet.

LIVE! on fridays. this podcast will be broadcast LIVE! on friday mornings, time to be determined. join us LIVE!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

that’s a question i have been pondering for a few months. the people i have talked to believe there may be a wait and see period for many would be buyers after the credits expire and homebuying may slow a little bit, but no one really knows. the latest on the tax credits is, if you have an transaction under contract by april 30, 2010 and it closes by june 30, 2010, you can qualify for the tax credit.

i came across a good article at palletenterprise.com (of all places) that addresses this same topic and also gives some great insight and also lays out a couple of different scenarios based upon unemployment, which is improving, and the role of FHA loan requirements, to name a few. you can read the full article here. 

i’d love to hear how you think the housing market might be performing later this year. what are you noticing in your neighborhood?

episode 002. applying for your loan

• i introduce one of my three preferred lenders, dean piller of community national mortgage. dean will be joining us once a month as a co-host to keep us  abreast of the current and latest trends in the mortgage industry. in today’s episode, we discuss what you need when considering applying for a loan as well as touch on the topic of the importance of your credit  report and what your credit score means to a lender.

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to purchase a home? i specialize in working with homebuyers and first time buyers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

i’ll also have mortgage broker, dean piller, discuss different financing options, as well as provide an overview of the loan funding process. heidi smith from la citiwide escrow will be discussing the escrow process and john larocca of larocca inspections will be discussing the home inspection process. more information can be found here, seminar.

please RSVP to 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

1. prices to bottom
2. mortgage delinquencies up
3. foreclosures move upstream
4. mortgage rates to rise
5. buyer’s market remains
6. modification plan could be modified
7. FHA lending standards may increase
8. tax credit available through june
9. markets will vary a great deal by region
10. mobile maps can help

the most interesting item to me is item #4, mortgage rates to rise. mike larson of weiss research states that because of “the unwinding of this Fed program, the improving economy, and mounting concern over government deficits could push rates on 30-year, fixed mortgages to roughly 5.5 percent by mid-2010 and close to 6 percent by the end of the year, almost all signs to me point higher.” this is a great reason, along with item #8, tax credit available through june,  to consider purchasing a home in the next couple of months. you can read the full article by clicking here.

if you need assistance with any part of the home buying process, including finding a great lender, feel free to email me at david@residerealestate.com.

episode 001. what does an agent do?

• in this premier episode, i discuss what is a podcast as well as what to expect from the reside realtor online radio show. i also describe what a good real estate agent does or should be doing.

enjoy this first podcast and i look forward to your comments and questions!

REAL ESTATE SERVICES: are you looking to buy a home or sell your home? i specialize in working with buyers and sellers on the westside of los angeles. contact me to schedule a free 45 minute buyer’s consultation. i can be reached at the studio at 310.391.9191 or david@residerealestate.com

please contact me if you need help in obtaining financing as i have three great referral sources that i use.