Last Friday (November 6), President Obama signed legislation into law that both extended the existing $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit and added a new tax credit for some existing home buyers.

Here is a summary of the extended and expanded tax credits:

First time buyer tax credit:

This was extended to May 1, 2010:  A tax credit of 10% of the purchase price of a home, up to $8,000, may be claimed by first-time buyers for the purchase of a primary residence. As long as you are under a binding purchase contract by April 30, 2010 – and close on the transaction before July 1, you can probably claim the credit.

A first-time buyer is defined as someone who has not owned a home in the past three years.

Income limits were increased to $125,000 for singles, $225,000 for married couples filing jointly.

The purchase price of the home can not exceed $800,000.

Existing home owner credit:

If you have lived in your home for five consecutive years out of the last eight years and are buying another primary residence, you may qualify for a tax credit of 10% of the purchase price, up to a maximum of $6,500.

The May 1 / July first time limits apply to the existing buyer credit as well.

The $125,000 / $225,000 income limits and $800,000 max purchase price limits also apply.

The existing home owner credit became effective “on the date of enactment” – November 6.

Of Note: Continue reading this post

After seeing a Senate vote of 98-0, the House approved the extension & expansion of the home buyer tax credit by a vote of 403 to 12.  The overwhelming bipartisan support was applauded by the NAHB and the National Association of Realtors® (NAR).

The new bill extends the expiration of the current $8000 tax credit to first time home buyers purchasing a principle residence.  The bill further expands the credit to include existing purchasers who have owned and occupied a primary residence for the past five of eight years.  Existing purchasers will receive a credit of $6500.

The income restrictions on qualifying buyers have also been increased.  Single filers earning up to $125k/year are eligible for the full credit, and those earning up to $145k/year are eligible for a partial credit.  Joint filers are eligible for the full amount with a combined income of up to $225k, and eligible for a partial if earning up to $245k.

The new law has seen wide support, especially from the real estate blogging community. Continue reading this post

These are the words that my first broker had for me after I closed my first deal. As luck would have it, I was in for quite the ride for my first deal and at times I thought there was no way I could actually get it closed and even worse, there was no one or nowhere I could turn for all of the answers.

It involved foreign terms to me at the time like elevation certificates, flood plains and settlement statements. Most of us who have done this for a while have had transactions where we just thought the changes would never end, but, when my broker told me “every deal was different,” I thought twice before continuing on in my real estate career.

Surely things wouldn’t always be different and if they were, I would never be able to learn enough about how to be a great real estate agent so I might as well quit now!

If you are a new agent, there is no need to have the fear I had. Instead, think of the fact that every deal is different as a blessing. Every new transaction will open up for you new and creative ways to make transactions work.

Even as real estate agents (not brokers) what we are really doing is “brokering” a transaction between a buyer and a seller.

In today’s market, things can often times become more complicated than in the past because of fickle buyers, short sales, foreclosures and wounded sellers who have seen their retirement accounts slide away right alongside the equity in their homes. These situations can make real estate in today’s environment tricky and deals harder to hold together.

Frequently, less than usual situations risk tearing apart transactions that sometimes seem only to be held together by our will. Continue reading this post

It’s a typical scenario: you get an email from a couple wanting to see a home. Adrenaline surges as a closing check flits across your mind. You eagerly set up an appointment, drive across town, show the property at the appointed hour then set up another appointment to show them more homes on the weekend.

Friday comes and you get an email with 17 MLS numbers they’d like to see. A small gnawing feeling starts working at corner of your stomach as you realize you need to do some educating. You dive into the list and quickly discover that 14 of them are short sales that can be shown by appointment only. That uncomfortable feeling in your tummy is expanding into a minor digestive disorder as you get ready to start making the calls to set up the appointments.

I could go on with scenarios all too common for too many REALTORS® … ending with the unreturned calls, failure to respond to emails and finally the devastating realization that the clients you’ve been carting around for the past three months have just purchased a home from another agent at an open house.

You’ve just been managed.

From the first moment you come in contact with a prospective client, they have expectations. In many cases, these expectations are not based on reality: they’ve been garnered from conversations with their friends, reading posts on sites like HomeGain, Zillow and Trulia and by watching HGTV. Often, their expectations are way out of alignment with reality. It’s up to you to manage their expectations and direct them forward in a positive manner. You’d think it would be easy, yet statistics state that by the time a buyer gets to you, they’ve already been in contact with numerous other Realtors. How do you get this food chain to stop with you?

Bottom line: if you don’t mange your buyers, they will manage you. Right out of business.

In reality, I’ve discovered that most buyers want to be “managed.” Used in the right context, the word “manage” is a good thing. Continue reading this post

I thought it would be worthwhile to show agents, particularly HomeGain BuyerLink and AgentEvaluator members, some true stats of Internet leads (from one Realtor to another).

My goal in gathering this data was to discover  home buyer tendencies.  I randomly took 100 of our sales this year to come up with the following stats.

I figured it’s roughly 50% of our sales this year and would be a great sampling.

The main findings were the following:

Average Number of Days to Purchase: 180.5 days

Quickest Sale: 5 days

Longest Sale: 539 days

(Last year we had approximately 20 sales from leads that were from the year 2004.)

Number of Closed Leads with Phone Numbers: 88

Number of Closed Leads with no Phone Number: 12

(This is a tough number to quantify as many of our Agents put the phone numbers in the CRM once they have obtained it.  When I worked on this stat two years ago, we were at 25% of our sales came from leads with no phone number.  I believe we are most likely still around that level.)

Continue reading this post

We have polled home buyers and sellers once again and we’re sharing the results in order to help our AgentEvaluator® agent members better meet the needs of prospects.

We sent our survey to more than 14,000 home buyers and sellers who came through AgentEvaluator in the last year -– some who closed with a HomeGain agent and some who did not choose a HomeGain agent.

5 Useful takeaways from the survey that all AgentEvaluator members should read:

1. Consumer Feedback on agents is one of the top things homebuyers and sellers are looking for when they use AgentEvaluator.

• Takeaway: If you don’t have consumer feedback (reviews to say what a great job you’ve done as a Realtor) entered in your profile, get some entered today. To upload reviews, go to the Consumer Feedback section of your Proposal Templates page.

2. Most of the consumers who worked with a HomeGain agent chose that agent because of their personal response.

• Takeaway: As shown in both this year’s and last year’s survey, personalization has consistently been the most important reason consumers select HomeGain agents. If you ARE NOT personalizing EACH proposal to address the specific situation of the prospect you’re responding to, you should start today.

3. Most consumers expect to receive their proposals within 1 to 3 days. Continue reading this post