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10 Tips: to ensure a hassle free home buying experience
November 10, 2008
This is an excellent article that was written for the Sunday – November 8,2008 edition of the St. Petersburg Times News Paper.
Ok, so no one can can guarantee a hassle free experience when it comes to mortgages especially in today’s climate. However, as a home buyer in the Tampa Real Estate Market, or just about anywhere for that matter one can definitely make life much easier on themselves and help to ensure a smooth home buying process by checking on a few details up front. Then when you and your buyers agent locate the home of your dreams the process will go much faster. If your new home research is here in Tampa, then the Future Home Team at Greater Tampa Bay Real Estate can also assist in ironing out any last minute details or issues you might have questions with.
So here’s a quick synopsis of the 10 Tips to help ensure Buyers are prepared.
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Check your credit score. Your score will impact the interest rate on your mortgage in a big way.
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Seek help if you’re new at this. First-time home buyers’ programs can help people who have credit problems or limited savings to find loans with better interest rates than they might otherwise find.
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Get pre-approved for your mortgage. A pre-approval letter from a mortgage lender is a requirement in a loan market like this.
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Don’t borrow more than you can afford.
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Search for the best possible rate and loan terms.
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Beware of toxic loans. Be careful with adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, that will cause your mortgage payment to jump to a potentially un-affordable level in a few years.
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Remember those closing costs.
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Factor in other big expenses.
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Work with a buyer’s agent. *
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Don’t break the bank. Make sure you have money left in your savings account after you buy.
*The experienced Future Home Team at Greater Tampa Bay Real Estate can assist you with the 10 Step Process. As your Buyers Agent they will represent you from the start of your search, and ensure that you are 100% satisfied and happy in your new home.
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WERE BACK !
October 30, 2008
Welcome back to our Greater Tampa Bay Real Estate site. As of this post we are on the eve of our offical re-launch of the Greater Tampa Bay Real Estate – BLOG -
We have spent several months working with our design team at Virtual Interactive Systems to get the right look and feel to this site. We wanted to be able to keep the blogging portion of the site yet we also wanted a more traditional feel of a Real Estate Web site but, we did not want a boring old static site or cookie cutter site like so many Real Estate sites that still exist in our market. Our goal is to re-enable our client base and re-energize the communications standards we set out with early on with our first blog site.
Yes, it has been some time since be posted to the old blog. With all the bad news on the economy, we just kept our heads down and ploughed right along vowing to continue to work our best with our clients and to go back to the designers on retooling our site. We now have a portal that we can use to better communicate with our current client base, potential clients and well anyone that wants to know more about buying or selling their residential real estate in the Greater Tampa Bay Area of Florida.
Stay tuned, we have a bit more tweaking on this new platform, and quicker than we have a new president we will be up and running full steam with all our listings, new content every week - including much more video in and about the Tampa area. Starting off with our very own – Meet your Future Home Team Video right on our front page. Be sure to check it out and don’t forget to sign up for our Email News letter while your at it. Just click the link rigth above the video.
NAR/DOJ settlement: Much ado about nothing ?
May 31, 2008
Seems that the Economy and the Political scene in this hot election year has caused the DOJ to re-think their approach on the battle with the National Association of Realtors. The case was settled this week or rather it appears that the DOJ gave up, because they did not want to seem unsympathetic to the plight of the industry as a whole, given the political climate et all in the U.S. right now.
The reason I and others say gave up is because, we do not think that the DOJ went far enough into really scrutinizing the MLS control issues.
One thing they did do was help free up the hold on VOWs, and that in it self may not have been a good thing depending on how you view the situation.
So what is a VOW anyway ? A VOW is basically a Virtual Office. One description I have often heard is in reference to the difference between an IDX platform and a VOW. VOWS differ from IDX by essentially taking the IDX platform at least one step further.” VOWS are “private business platforms that are designed to facilitate actual transactions” by registering consumers and delivering them as leads to other companies and sales agents, in some cases.
Here’s one of the key-issues that was discussed by NAR and various Multiple Listing Services on how VOWs operated.
“Some MLSs have objected to VOWs putting information on sold, expired or withdrawn listings on the Internet, saying that it makes it easier to mine data that belongs to their members.”
The settlement, in effect says the Internet and innovation is going to be supported, and you have to allow competition to come into this space. Some brokers don’t like the changes and are trying to protect their business. This says you have to compete fairly.”
To put it in laymen s terms.
If a consumer visits a Realtor or Brokers web site with MLS listing data supplied in an IDX (Internet data exchange) format, most likely the consumer will be able to browse and research data without being required to verify an email address or create a log-in account. However with a VOW site, the consumer has to create a log-in, or leave identifying information to be able to access the data.
One such site is ZIP Realty, whose CEO made the comment’s above. On their site you can enter search criteria for an MLS search however, you cannot view any details of that data, including pictures on their site without registering first.
Only time will tell now how NAR and the MLS’s continue to move forward in the integration of technology
One thing is for certain though, and that is that the monopolistic polices adopted by some MLS boards will continue to garner scrutiny by other state and federal agencies. In that venue the Justice Department is currently engaged in a lawsuit over policies adopted by an MLS in South Carolina, as an example, and the Federal Trade Commission is engaged in a lawsuit with a Michigan MLS.
If you interested in more details on the major talking points, I will defer to the excellent post by non other than Mr. Greg Swain of the Bloodhound Blog.
Look here for the details of the DOJ/NAR proposed Final Judgment,
In closing, I must confess that, Greg’s blog is what I one day aspire to be when mine grows up. Maybe not on this blog, but then again you never know ?
DOJ sets sights on more MLS boards
May 8, 2008
As the DOJ case against NAR enters into a critical path this summer, the DOJ is starting to take aim at other players in the MLS game. This is only the beginning and it is very apparent to many, that NAR’s iron fisted rule on the MLS will not come out of this unscathed.
Having interacted with over a hundred of the top MLS’s through the United States I can say from my perspective, that this is going to be welcomed with open arms for those wanting to open this up to the masses and to help create a free and unfettered access to this data. The way it has been controlled has got to change. The times and the technologies brought to bear in today’s digital world that we live in are also changing and this is another one of those changes that is coming soon to an MLS Board near you.
Barry Cunnigham over at the Blood Hound Blog wrote a great post on the latest foray into this battle The War Against The MLS Continues | The MLS Must Fall!.
It is worth reading and before you comment, you should arm yourself with the knowledge of actually reading the content of the complaints as filed by the DOJ (links are in the posts – his and mine). Also, be sure to check out the article I wrote back in February 2007 that goes into more background and details on this. MLS Data compliance and NAR vs. DOJ
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