It has been a good Christmas Season. I just got back from two days away visiting family in the Sierra foothills. Cold, but no snow. Warm inside with great-grandparents, grandparents (me included), parents and children all gathered for the holiday fun and joy. Lots of good food and love in several helpings. I got my […]

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My long-time friend, Don Signer, has set up a web page and started a blog. The first entry makes me sad. Don is the owner of Signer Buick-Cadillac in Newark, Ca. The only Buick-Cadillac sales point ever in the Fremont, Newark, and Union City area. I was manager of a bank in Fremont when I first […]

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Procrastinate:  to defer action; to delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.
 
Procrastinator or smart buyer? Smart buyers don’t procrastinate. They wait for the market to hit bottom. They wait for prices to get as low as they are going to go. Then they buy their house and ride the tide of increasing value as […]

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The California Association of REALTORS®, through its Housing Affordability Fund, is offering a new Mortgage Protection Plan. What is the Mortgage Protection Plan? The Plan offers a combination of involuntary unemployment, accidental disability and accidental death protection for qualified first-time home buyers.
Through the program, first-time home buyers who lose their jobs or become accidentally disabled […]

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If you answered the above questions by saying “A long sale” you are wrong. A short sale IS a long sale! (Of course, we are talking about real estate, not stocks and bonds.) When I say long, I mean as in a long time…months, in fact.
Some time back, I told my wife that I was […]

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Mortgage rates have been low for a while. They remain low. Unusually low. Attractively low. You don’t really expect them to stay this low forever…do you?
A recent article in The Business Journel, covering the Triad Area of Greensboro and Winston/Salem , North Carolina stated that ” Freddie Mac says the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 4.78 percent this […]

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Maybe you have already heard this news. In fact, I would be surprised if you have not. I think it is still worth repeating because it is so significant for so many potential buyers. In fact, this can make the difference between potential buyers and actual buyers.
The federal government is offering to help you buy […]

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My local newspaper reprinted Martin Luther King, Jr’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech today. Here is the on-line version from my paper in which the YouTube video of King delivering the speech is included. Is is slightly less than 18 minutes long.  http://tinyurl.com/9cryep
What a wonderful way to revisit an event that helped to […]

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My real estate sales team has a listing that is a condo complex in San Leandro, Ca. There are 14 units, of which 5 have been sold.
Lenders have long had a guideline that any given condo complex must be more than 50% owner-occupied in order to achieve the acceptable risk level for making a loan for […]

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Are you a real estate investor? How many properties do you own? Do you have a mortgage on these properties? Well…if you have 4 or more mortgages, then you better be ready to write a check for the full amount of your next purchase. Yes…it does not matter if your credit is good and you […]

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