Priority Tasks For Your Move in

Moving into a new home is an exciting time, and you're probably daydreaming about decor and
paint schemes and new furniture. But before you get into the fun stuff, there are some basics you should cover first.

Change the locks
Even if you're promised that new locks have been installed in your home, you can never be too careful. It's worth the money to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that no one else
has the keys to your home. Changing the locks can be a DIY project, or you can call in a locksmith for a little extra money.

Steam clean the carpets
It's good to get a fresh start with your floors before you start decorating. The previous owners may have had pets, young children, or just some plain old clumsiness. Take the time to steam clean the carpets so that your floors are free of stains and allergens. It's pretty easy and affordable to rent a steam cleaner-your local grocery store may have them available.

Call an exterminator
Prior to move-in, you probably haven't spent enough time in the house to get a view of any pests that may be lurking. Call an exterminator to take care of any mice, insects, and other critters that may be hiding in your home.

Clean out the kitchen
If the previous occupants wanted to skip on some of their cleaning duties when they moved out, the kitchen is where they probably cut corners. Wipe down the inside of cabinets, clean out the refrigerator, clean the oven, and clean in the nooks and crannies underneath the appliances.

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I Live Here, I Work Here, I Am Here To Serve You!

With Great Expectations,

Stacey L. Fiore, P.A.
World Renowned Real Estate
(954) 658-8336
www.StaceyFiore.com

Five Money-Saving Green Upgrades

Going green is great for the environment, but that's not the only benefit. When you make green upgrades in your home, it can also lead to some major savings.

1.  Solar panels: The upfront cost is big, but the long-term savings are huge. Solar panels will cost several thousand dollars to install, but ongoing maintenance costs are very low, and a typical system could save you hundreds of dollars per year. You can even sell your surplus electricity.

2.  Wood furnace: Wood-burning furnaces are relatively inexpensive, and though the yearly savings aren't as dramatic (about 10% on heating bills), it adds up over the long run.

3.  Insulation: There's a good chance your insulation isn't very efficient, especially in older homes. Look into installing floor, cavity, wall, and loft insulation to reduce your heating bills.

4.  Rain barrels: Rain barrels are extremely inexpensive, and provide gallons of free water to use when you wash your car or water your garden.

5.  Geothermal system: OK, so the price tag is scary at first. A geothermal system uses the earth's temperature to heat and cool your home, but can cost $30,000 to install. But tax credits allow you to get a lot of that money back, and the energy savings average about $1,900 per year. If you plan to be in your home for a decade or two, it's a great investment.

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I Live Here, I Work Here, I Am Here To Serve YOU!

With Great Expectations,

Stacey L. Fiore, P.A.

World Renowned Real Estate

(954) 658-8336

www.StaceyFiore.com

What Affects Property Values?

Some of the features that increase property values are obvious-like a remodeled bathroom, a modern kitchen, or a sought-after neighborhood. But here are a few features and circumstances you have not have realized can affect property values.

1. The neighbors: Not every neighborhood or community has an HOA that can keep the neighbors from going overboard with decorations or neglecting to care for their home. Homes adjacent to crazy neighbors can potentially be undervalued.

2. Trendy groceries and coffee: Recent statistics suggest that if your home is a short walk from popular grocery stores like Whole Foods or coffee chains like Starbucks, it can actually appreciate faster than the national average.

3.  Mature trees: A big beautiful tree in the front yard is enviable, and it's not something that can be easily added to any home. Homes with mature trees tend to get a little boost in value.

4.  Parking: This isn't too much of an issue if you live in the suburbs or in a rural area, but residents in dense cities can have real problems with parking, and homeowners might need to rent a spot just to guarantee a place to park each night. That's why having guaranteed parking in urban areas will raise property values.

5.  The front entrance: First impressions matter to buyers-many will cross a home off their list within 10 seconds of stepping through the front door. An appealing front door, a friendly entryway, and a functioning doorbell are all necessities for getting top dollar.

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With Great Expectations,

Stacey Fiore, Realtor

World Renowned Real Estate

www.StaceyFiore.com

https://www.facebook.com/staceyfiorerealestate/

(954) 658-8336

FHA to Lighten Up On It's Condo Financing Regulation

Congressional Democrats and Republicans haven’t agreed on much lately, but they’re together on one issue that affects condominium buyers and sellers across the country: The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has bungled its condo finance program.
In a rare moment of bipartisanship before heading home for the summer, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that will require the FHA to lighten up on its condo financing regulations and make low down payment FHA loans more available to the people they are supposed to serve — moderate-income buyers, many of them minorities and first-time purchasers, who turn to condominiums as their most affordable option. The vote in the Senate followed a 427-0 vote in the House earlier this session.
Passage of the legislation came after several years of complaints by housing, community association and other groups about FHA’s overly strict requirements. Critics pointed out that FHA once was the go-to source of condo financing for first-time buyers, but since 2010 its role has shrunk drastically. FHA helped finance 80,000 to 90,000 condo mortgages a year during the previous decade and a half, but more recently production has dwindled to barely a quarter of that volume. FHA condo lending in the first three months of this year plunged by 8.6 percent from the previous quarter, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. In the final quarter of last year, volume declined by 20.3 percent from the third quarter.
The agency’s restrictions on condo community eligibility for financing became so onerous — requiring complicated re-certifications of entire developments every two years — that thousands of condo associations abandoned the program. According to the Community Associations Institute, fewer than 14,000 of the 152,000 condo associations in the U.S. are now eligible for FHA loans. Individual units are not eligible for FHA financing unless the entire association’s finances, reserves, insurance, budget and other items have been approved by the government.
The bill (H.R. 3700) aims at correcting a number of key problems by:
— Ordering the FHA to streamline the entire re-certification process for condo associations and make compliance “substantially less burdensome.” Condo experts predict this alone could convince significant numbers of associations to return to the FHA fold, thereby opening up sales and purchases to thousands more condo units.
— Reducing the minimum owner-occupancy ratio from the current 50 percent to 35 percent, unless FHA can provide justification for a higher percentage. Seth Task, a realty agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Professional Realty in Solon, Ohio, says the 35 percent ratio will allow “substantial” numbers of developments that can’t quite meet the 50 percent test to get back into the FHA program. In an interview, he cited the case of an elderly condo owner who listed her unit for sale with him recently, but the owner occupancy ratio in her development was 49 percent. Ineligible for buyers using low down payment FHA loans, she tried unsuccessfully to sell and ultimately had to accept an offer $10,000 below what she could have obtained if her building qualified for FHA financing.
— Allowing transfer fees. The legislation directs the FHA to stop rejecting condo communities because they collect small transfer fees when units are sold. The funds collected are used to support association activities — they benefit all residents. FHA will now have to follow the lead of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of whom consider community-benefit transfer fees acceptable.
— Providing more flexibility on the amount of commercial space permitted in condo developments. Some urban condos are designed for mixed-use — residential and commercial combined — because that’s what makes economic sense in their locations. Under current rules, some of these developments are ineligible because FHA considers their commercial component excessive. The legislation directs the agency to be more flexible and to take the local market context into account.
Will these changes be sufficient to revive FHA’s sagging condo program? “We are cautiously optimistic,” said Dawn Bauman, senior vice president at the Community Associations Institute, which represents nearly 34,000 condo communities and management organizations. Rita Tayenaka, past president of the Orange County (Calif.) Association of Realtors, told me the bill “is a good thing but will not be the end-all” in resolving FHA’s condo woes.
Most analysts agree that the actual effects will depend on two things: how quickly FHA puts its revised procedures into the field, and whether thousands of condo associations who’ve fled the program conclude, “OK they’ve cut the red tape, maybe it’s time to jump back in.”

Article by Kenneth R. Harney July 29, 2016 in The Real Deal

Posted by Stacey L Fiore, P.A.
Home Marketing Specialist - World Renowned Real Estate
We provide above average 7 star service!
www.StaceyFiore.com

Mortgage Rates Near Record Lows

When mortgage interest rates slide close to all-time lows — as they have since the Brexit vote — do you sit on the fence? Or do you ask yourself: Are there financial opportunities today that didn’t exist for me when rates were higher by half a percentage point or more?

Last week, according to Freddie Mac, 30-year fixed rates dropped to an average 3.41 percent, just above the historic low of 3.31 percent set in November 2012. Fifteen-year fixed rates, popular with homeowners seeking to become mortgage-free faster, dropped to a stunning 2.74 percent. Five-year Treasury-indexed “5-1” hybrid adjustables, which carry a fixed rate for the first 60 months then morph into one-year adjustables, hit 2.68 percent.

If you’re a potential first-time buyer or a homeowner considering whether to refinance, or if you’re thinking about trading up or downsizing, rates this low could be worth your attention.
Consider these illustrations of what a half-percentage-point cut in rate can mean. They were provided to me by Mike Fratantoni, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association.

[More Harney: Buyers should be wary of houses that are marketed as energy-efficient]

Say you’re buying a home costing $239,700 with a 5 percent down payment. A drop in rate from 4 percent to 3.5 percent would save you nearly $100 a month in principal and interest. If you’re buying a house with the current median-size purchase loan amount of $299,900, a half-percentage-point rate drop would save you about $1,500 a year in principal and interest, or $125 a month.

If you live in a metropolitan area such as Washington, New York, Boston, San Diego, Chicago or Miami, where median prices are much higher, the savings on a refinanced mortgage that flow from a decrease in rate of just a half a percentage point would run substantially higher.
There’s another impact of falling rates: They lower the amount of qualifying income you need to get a loan.

[Mortgage rates tumble to near-record lows as reverberations from the Brexit vote continue]

Say you sought to purchase your first home for $241,000 this spring at a rate of 4 percent with a 20 percent down payment. Your application was declined because your income came close to what the lender required but didn’t quite hit the mark. However, at a 3.5 percent rate, you don’t need as much income to qualify. According to Danielle Hale, managing director of housing research for the National Association of Realtors, a half-percentage-point drop in rate reduces the minimum qualifying income to buy a house by roughly $1,000 per $100,000 in home price with a 20 percent down payment. On a $241,000 house, a rate cut from 4 percent to 3.5 percent would lower the qualifying income you need by $2,626.

Savings like that matter not only to first-time buyers with modest incomes but also to the owners of moderate-priced houses and condos who are seeking to sell to those previously locked-out purchasers. A successful sale may then allow the sellers to buy another house — a nice win-win.

[More Harney: Groups say Fannie and Freddie are gouging home buyers with add-on fees]

Not surprisingly, the rate declines are triggering boomlets in new mortgage applications, which rose by 14.2 percent last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The association’s refinancing index jumped even more — 21 percent — and the purchase loan index was 23 percent higher than the same week in 2015.

Mike Eastman, vice president and senior loan officer at Washington First Mortgage in Fairfax, Va., told me “the phones are ringing” both for home-purchase loans and refinancings. He described what an applicant with a high credit score in a $600,000 house in Virginia could save by opting for a “5-1” hybrid: $171 a month, or $10,260 less in principal and interest during the first 60 months. That’s real money, he said, and “people should look at these [hybrids]” because they carry low rates and can be useful in a variety of financial planning situations.

How long are mortgage rates likely to remain at or near these levels? Nobody knows. But Sean Becketti, chief economist for Freddie Mac, says post-Brexit capital markets are “skittish,” and “we don’t expect any meaningful, sustained increases in the near term.”

So take a hard look. Describe your situation and goals to one or more competent loan officers. They’ve got computer software that can quickly give you the answers you’re after: How much of a rate decrease do I need to justify doing a refi? How long will it take me to recoup the transaction costs via the monthly savings? Does my income finally qualify me to buy the house I want?

Article by Kenneth R. Harney July 13 @ 7am in the Washington Post

Posted by Stacey L. Fiore, P.A
Home Marketing Specialist - World Renowned Real Estate
We provide above average 7 star service!
www.StaceyFiore.com