Deerfield IL Short Sales

Short Sales

What is a short sale?

A Short Sale is when the lender agrees to accept less than what’s owed on a mortgage that is secured by real estate via a sale of the property to a third party. With this agreement, the lender releases the borrower from the mortgage, thereby preventing foreclosure.

What are the benefits of a short sale to the homeowner?

The seller wins by avoiding foreclosure by selling their home before the foreclosure auction even if they owe more than its worth. If they were to sell the house the traditional way with a realtor without a short sale, typically they would have to bring tens of thousands of dollars to the closing to sell their own home. This is not an option for them because they are in foreclosure and don’t have any money. The lender typically will pay closing costs & commissions in a Short Sale to avoid foreclosure.....the Banks do not want to own your home.

What are the benefits to the lender?

The lender wins because they are getting some of their bad debt paid off. You see, when a lender has delinquent loans on their books, it affects how much money they can lend out in new loans because they are regulated by the FDIC. So the more bad loans they can get rid of, the more good loans they can then go ahead and acquire.
Also by taking a home to auction, they can lose tens of thousands of dollars.
So it’s a huge cost savings to them to do a short sale before the auction occurs.

What are the benefits to the buyer?

The buyer can get a great price, sometimes below market value.

Eric is a Certified Distressed Property Expert and also has his NAR Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource Certification. He has the knowledge & training to help.

For more detailed information on short sales please email or call 847.337.7090

Thank You,

Eric P. Egeland
RE/MAX SUBURBAN
847.337.7090
NorthShoreREO.com



Primary IL Service Areas: Libertyville 60048, Wheeling 60090, Deerfield 60015, Buffalo Grove 60089, Vernon Hills 600061,Lincolnshire 60069, Chicago Lincoln Park 60614 Lakeview 60657, West Town 60622, Bucktown-Wicker Park 60622, Long Grove 60047, Arlington Heights 60005, 60004, Prospect Heights 60070, Palatine 60067, 60074, Lake Zurich 60047, Lake Forest 60045, Northbrook 60062, Rolling Meadows 60008, Elk Grove Village 60007, Mount Prospect 60056, Highwood 60040, Libertyville 60048, Mettawa 60048 60045, Green Oaks 60048, Highland Park 60035, Glenview 60026 60025, Mundelein 60060, Fort Sheridan 60037, Des Plaines 60016 60018, Park Ridge 60068, Schaumburg 60173, Lake Bluff 60044, Barrington 60010 60011, Wilmette 60091, Winnetka 60093, Hoffman Estates 60179, Golf 60029, Niles 60714, Morton Grove 60053, Grayslake 60030, Gurnee 60031,Kenilworth 60043, Skokie 60077, Round Lake 60073, Round Lake Beach 60073, Kildeer 60047, Hawthorn Woods 60047, Deer Park 60047, Prairie View 60069, Glencoe 60022, Kenilworth 60043, Inverness 60010, Wauconda 60084, Johnsburg 60050, Schaumburg 60195, Algonquin 60102, Lisle 60532, Wadsworth 60083, Elmhurst 60126, Crystal Lake 60012, Lake in the Hills 60156, Antioch 60002, Saint Charles 60174, Downers Grove 60515, Hinsdale 60521 60522, Western Springs 60558, Clarendon Hills 60514, La Grange 60525, Frankfort 60423, Mokena 60448, Wheaton 60187, Bannockburn 60015, Riverwoods 60015, Burr Ridge 60527, Lake County, Cook County, McHenry County, DuPage County



If you need service in an area that is not listed above please contact us & we may be able to accommodate.

$8,000 Tax Credit

The proposed $15,000 tax credit to anyone buying a new primary residence is NOT part of the stimulus plan, as everyone had hoped.

However, here are some details on the new $8,000 refundable tax credit and the $7,500 tax credit that it replaces.

1). In the stimulus bill that is likely to become law this week, there is an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers who purchase a home from January 1, 2009 through December 1, 2009. This is a tax credit, not a deduction. First-time homebuyers reduce their tax bill by the amount of the credit. If they owed $5,000 in taxes, they would receive a refund of $3,000.

2). Single buyers can not make more than $75,000 adjusted gross income per year to claim the full tax credit. Similarly, married couples can only claim the maximum $8,000 if they earn less than $150,000 per year

3). The tax credit is available only to first-time homebuyers. A first-time homebuyer is someone who has not owned a home in the last three years. For example, if you sold a house on May 4, 2006, and you haven't had an ownership stake in a home since then, you are eligible for the tax credit if you close on a home after May 4 this year.

4). If a spouse owned or co-owned a home in the last three years, neither is eligible for the tax credit. This means they aren't eligible for the tax credit if their spouse was previously married to someone else, and that couple owned a home sometime in the last three years.

5). The tax credit is 10 percent of the home's cost, up to $8,000. If married filing separately, each spouse's maximum credit is $4,000.

6). The $8,000 tax credit does NOT have to be repaid if you buy the home in 2009, with this exception: If you buy the house this year, and you sell it within three years, you have to repay the tax credit. You repay it in a lump sum the next time you file a tax return.

7). As of today, if a first-time homebuyer bought a house between April 9, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2008 they still have to repay the $7,500 tax credit over 15 years. This may change....

Eric P. Egeland
RE/MAX UNITED
DeerfieldsAgent.com

Market Recap

If a retailer wants to stimulate sales, what does he do? He lowers prices. It's a simple, yet powerful, principle of economics that we've been proselytizing over the past two months, and for good reason, it works. To wit: The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that its index of pending home sales, which measures contracts signed but not closed, rose 6.3% to 87.7 in December. Year-over-year, the pending-home-sales index was up 17.5% in the West and 1.6% in the South. Even more encouraging, the index's numbers reflect the most favorable combination of home prices, mortgage interest rates, and family income since tracking started in 1970.

Lower mortgage prices have contributed greatly to improving housing affordability. The prime 30-year fixed-rated mortgage has been floating below 6% for the past three months. But the mortgage market's contribution could diminish in the near term. Recent news that the federal government is seeking ways to lower mortgage-rates further sounds like a positive, but could actually be doing more harm than good. Yes, lower rates are a good thing (and we understand the NAR supports intervention to push rates lower), but if people are always anticipating lower rates, they hesitate to act today. Let's not forget that mortgage rates in the 5% range are darn-good rates, and even those can be readily refinanced if the feds succeed in pushing rates down.

While housing prices and mortgages have trended lower, unemployment has trended higher. Jobs, or the lack thereof, is the monkey wrench that could conceivably grind the housing-recovery gears to a halt (operative word being “conceivably”). On that front, there was much media teeth-gnashing and lamenting last week because the unemployment rate rose to 7.6% on 598,000 lost jobs in January.

How did the financial markets react to the “dire” unemployment news? The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged ahead 150 points in the first hour of trading. Like we stated last week, many economists view the recent job cuts as a bottoming of the recession, not an omen of things to come. It appears the stock market shares the same view.

Eric P. Egeland
RE/MAX UNITED
847.337.7090
DeerfieldsAgent.com

WaMu goes down

And yet another one bites the dust. Washington Mutual was last week’s casualty in a financial saga that has seen Lehman Brothers and IndyMac driven out of business, and that has led to the hastily arranged rescues of Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns.

In what is by far the largest bank rescue in U.S. history, federal regulators seized WaMu and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to J.P. Morgan. WaMu’s breathtakingly swift collapse was triggered by a wave of deposit withdrawals as many investors – proving to be prophetically right – believed the end was near. The good news is that all WaMu depositors will have access to their cash; the bad news is that holders of $30 billion in debt and all common shareholders will end up with nothing.

To get an idea of how fast and furious WaMu’s fall from grace was, last September its stock was changing hands at $35 a share. In Friday’s trading, it was changing hands at $0.16 a share, and that’s probably overvalued. The irony, if there is any, is that WaMu rejected a takeover offer from J.P. Morgan in March that valued the savings and loan at $4 a share.

Unfortunately, Washington isn’t doing much to assuage concerns of very nervous capital markets. The Bush administration wants Congress to authorize a $700 billion debt issue to allow the government to purchase collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that banks can’t sell except at large losses, including mortgage-backed securities backed by poorly performing loans. While Democrats say the plan should include direct help for troubled borrowers and protections for taxpayers, some Republicans want any government program to be aimed solely at unfreezing the credit market’s institutions. As of week’s end, the two sides were at an impasse.

Eric P. Egeland
RE/MAX UNITED
847.337.7090
DeerfieldsAgent.com

Weekly Mortgage Recap

An anemic economy, sinking home values and soaring gas prices pushed consumer confidence to its lowest level since 1992, the U.S. Confidence Board reported last week Many news outlets jumped on the news, spinning it to suggest the economy is spiraling downward like an unimpeded helix.
But maybe things really aren't all that dire. Gross domestic product – the output of goods and services produced by labor and property – increased at an annual rate of 1.0% in the first quarter of 2008, according to final estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In comparison, GDP increased only 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2007. The data suggest economic growth is accelerating.

Perhaps consumers would feel more upbeat if they knew that existing home sales are stabilizing, with sales rising 2% in May from April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.99 million units. At the same time, inventory of existing homes fell 1.4% to 4.49 million units in May, which represents a 10.8-month supply at the current sales pace, down from a 11.2-month supply in April.

The Federal Reserve appeared upbeat by switching its focus to abating inflation from inflating the economy. But although the Fed said it expects inflation to moderate "later this year,” it admitted that it is concerned over “continued increases in the prices of energy and other commodities.”
Credit markets didn't appear too terribly concerned about inflation; mortgage rates finally held firm for a week, with the prime 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 6.62%, the prime 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 6.19%, and the prime 5/1 adjustable-rate mortgage averaging 6.28%, according to Bankrate.com's weekly survey.

Eric P. Egeland
RE/MAX United
847.337.7090
DeerfieldsAgent.com