Your home's value is in your hands

Most of  us know that the value of our home is pretty important.  If you don’t know exactly what your home is worth, then you need to come see us at the San Diego Business Showcase.

Your home’s value is important

Since much of an average homeowner’s financial portfolio is tied up in the value of their home, knowing exactly how the market is affecting that value is important.  Will you be able to access funds from your home?  Are you upside down?  Can you take advantage of loan programs, equity financing or other tax planning techniques to better use the value of your home?

Free Home Valuation

Come to our booth at the Del Mar Fairgrounds on April 7, 2010, between the hours of  2 p.m. to 7 p.m.  We’ll offer you a complimentary valuation of your home, answer questions you may have, or just talk about the housing market here in San Diego.  We’re experienced real estate professionals who know what you need to know, and how to make it easy for you to get that information.

Sign up for VIP Treatment

Take advantage of signing up early, and receive VIP access to reports and valuations for you home and those homes of interest in your neighborhood.  Head to The VIP Real Estate Opportunity at our website, and get yourself on track for having information available 24 hours a day.

If you want a question answered immediately, just give us a call at 760-802-9713, and we’ll be happy to help.

 Think you have this much time to sell your home?

Are you coming to the San Diego Business Showcase? I’m hoping you’ll say “Yes”, and mostly because if you have been sitting on the fence, wondering whether you should sell your home now, I want to be able to meet with you and give you a number of reasons why now truly is the time to sell.

Home Prices are NOT going up…any time soon

That’s what I truly believe based on my experience and knowledge of the San Diego real estate market.  Any by real estate market I mean your home! I hope that you will take the time to read this article by Jeff Brown, a well respected Realtor in San Diego. This guy absolutely nails it for those of you who love financial analysis. Even if you ultimately find points of disagreement, it’s something you should be thinking about, and how that will affect your home value, your investment portfolio value, and the value of all of your undertakings in the next several years.

San Diego Business Showcase is the place to discuss selling your home

Let’s go back to my initial question.  Do you think you have this much time?  It’s a rhetorical question, of course, since you don’t, but because we have been taught to believe that we have all the time in the world to watch our home values increase, we only have to sit back and wait until the inevitable happens. 

I really want to meet with you, talk, network, explore your ideas, the data, and the reasons why you may want to sell your home now rather than wait until the next big increase in property values. 

And I think that doing this while visiting San Diego’s premier business networking eventwill help you put the issues related to home values in a unique perspective you can’t get just by reading, perusing the Wall Street Journal, or even the internet.  Coming to this event is inexpensive (just $10 to get in…and there’s food as well). 

Give me a call, or email me at DonReedySanDiego@gmail.com  I’ll send you some information, as well as an entry into a drawing for some really cool prizes we’re giving away. 

A Sandi Hadley Team Home….by Don Reedy

MLS#: 100042987

$895,000  Valley Center, CA 92082

Property Description: This home has it all!!Like having your own resort with this fabulous fully fenced & gated home featuring pebble tech pool with swim up bar,2.18 acres lushly landscaped with well water for irrigation,built-in BBQ center, spacious patio area,views of the mountains & hillsides,storage building for yard equipment & covered RV shelter which can house 6 or more cars.Home features spacious gourmet kitchen with granite counters, great room & luxurious master suite.

Hi, I’m Don Reedy, and I am one of the professional real estate agents working with Sandi Hadley.  I specialize in executive homes and equity sharing, and am one of the Valley Center Realtors working with the Sandi Hadley Team.   If you want to know and experience buying or selling a home with one of the most successful and professional group of Realtors in the country, then this is the spot to stop and buy your ticket.

Let me send you some more information today.

My friends and colleagues, Greg Swann and Cathleen Collins, manage and operate one of the finest real estate companies in America. Their home is in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and they excel in just about every aspect of helping a homeowner sell their home.

Recently Cathleen wrote an article outlining why it’s so very important to get just the right Realtor to list and sell your home, particularly if the sale is going to be a short sale. Here in North County San Diego, with a market similar to that in Phoenix, Cathleen’s advice is just as important, and just as valuable.

Here’s what Cathleen has to say. Read it, and enjoy a professional clearly detailing how and why to make this difficult kind of real estate transaction the best it can be.

It’s tough out there, everybody knows that. Your house may not be worth even half what you paid for it, and you’re having trouble keeping up with the payments. It could be your situation is so dire as to boil down to two choices: Let the bank foreclose on you or try to do a short sale.

What’s a short sale? If you could sell your home for what it’s worth today, you would probably have to come “short” to the closing table: The amount of money you could bring back to your lender from the proceeds of the sale would be less than you owe.

Are banks willing to do this? Yes, in principle. The bank reasons that it can get more money for a home that is still being cared for, as compared to yet another vacant lender-owned home.

What about you? Is a short sale to your advantage? Here’s your bottom line in both cases: Zero dollars and zero cents. That’s how much you’ll receive when your house sells.

So why should you prefer a short sale to a foreclosure?

For one very simple thing, because it’s the more responsible thing to do. You can’t pay your mortgage, and that’s a tragic turn of events. But by helping the bank effect a short sale, you’re doing what you still can to honor your obligations.

Even more important, a successful short sale can be less damaging to your credit than a foreclosure. You’re going to take a hit on your credit rating, either way. But the worst consequences of a short sale could be over in two or three years, where a foreclosure may wreck your credit for five years — or even longer.

On balance, a short sale is probably the better idea. Here’s the next question: Does it make any difference to you which Realtor you hire to list your home for sale as a short sale?

Remember that net figure: Zero dollars and zero cents. Since you won’t be getting any money from the sale of your home what difference does it make to you which Realtor sells it?

As it turns out, it makes a lot of difference. For one thing, no short sale is secure until it is closed. There is always the threat that the bank will go ahead and foreclose on you. You need a Realtor who can put matters in motion quickly, so you can complete the short sale before the bank gets tired of waiting for its money.

There’s more. Many Realtors treat short sales like a red-headed step-child — a slap-dash listing effort focused more on adding to their listing inventory, rather than actively selling your home. But the faster your home sells, the more money it is likely to command — which will make your buyer’s offer that much more attractive to the bank.

So what will make your home sell more quickly?

The answer? Marketing.

Where you and your lender see a short sale, your buyer sees a home. And guess what? Your buyer is seeing a lot of really grungy homes. Dirty. Missing appliances. Crowded floor to ceiling with personal possessions. Even though you have no equity in the property, your marketing problem is no different than in a normal equity sale: How do you get buyers to prefer your home over all the others available on the market?

And this is why it matters which Realtor you choose to list your home as a short sale. Your net might be zero dollars and zero cents, but you still have a lot to lose. The faster your home sells, the more money it will command, and the more money your lender stands to get, the more likely they are to approve your short sale.

It’s that simple. Working with a better Realtor — better not just at the mechanics of short sales but also at the mechanics of marketing — will bring you better, faster, happier results.

This is not a joyous event in you life, that’s understood. But working with the right Realtor on your short sale will help you make the best of a bad situation.

Am I blowing my own horn? Oh, you bet! I have advanced designations in short sale negotiation and management, and I’ve developed an extensive praxis for successfully marketing homes. I’ll bring every bit of this expertise to bear in getting your home sold as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

What’s the cost to you? Zip. Nada. Nothing. We typically charge our sellers an up-front retainer from $1,500 to $2,500. But they’ll be seeing cash at the closing table, and, if you go ahead with a short sale, you will not. We’ll take our compensation from the proceeds of the sale at Close of Escrow, and we’ll pay the buyer’s broker as well. You have nothing to lose by choosing a better listing agent — and a lot to gain.

So let’s talk, shall we? Give me a call at 602-369-9275 (Outside of Arizona? Dial 1-800-508-5430). or email Greg or myself and we’ll get together to figure out the best short sale strategy for your home.

Want to short sell your San Diego Home?

If you live in North County San Diego, and want to take advantage of what Cathleen and Greg do in Phoenix, then please contact me by phone right now.  Just pick up and call 760-802-9713, or click on the Contact Us button above to email.  Remember, there’s never a cost for our advice, and always an experienced ear to listen to your questions.

Don Reedy – Part of the Hadley Home Team

Since Sandi Hadley is one of the premier real estate agents in all of San Diego, and one of the nicest as well, I thought it would be nice to introduce you to her.  Without further todo….

Sandi Hadley

Meet Sandi Hadley…

Experience

Sandi Hadley is a full time, professional REALTOR® specializing in North San Diego County including San Marcos, Carlsbad, La Costa Valley, Escondido, Vista, Oceanside, Valley Center, Encinitas, Bonsall and Fallbrook.

Honors

A consistent multi-million dollar producer, Sandi has been named Number One Agent in the San Marcos Office for dollar volume transactions and Number One in closed transactions. Sandi ranked #17 for number of closed transactions within Prudential in San Diego County, out of 1800 agents for 2008. Sandi Hadley also earned the Legend Award for being Prudential’s prestigious Chairman Circle for 11 years in a row– 1997 to 2008. Sandi also received the PREA 100 Award for being no. 65 in the company out of 45,000. This places Sandi in the top 1% of all Prudential agents nationwide.
Although she is one of the area’s top producers, Sandi is also dedicated to her clients. That dedication has been rewarded through the “Excellence in Service” Award for Customer Service and recognized by San Diego Magazine for Customer Service 2009.

Education

Believing that education is one of the keys to success, Sandi has worked to achieve three of the real estate industry’s most prestigious professional designations. Her GRI designation indicates that she is a Graduate of the REALTOR® Institute. The CRS designation after Sandi’s name shows that she is a Certified Residential Specialist. This designation is awarded only after a rigorous course of study and documented experience and is held by fewer than 3% of all REALTORS® nationwide. Sandi is also designated as a “Fine Homes Specialist” and “Resort & Recreational Specialist”. Other courses that Sandi has taken to help her in assisting clients in the most efficient manner include:
* VIP Sales Associate Course
* 1031 Exchanges
* Marketing Techniques for Today’s Market
* Secrets from the Archives of a Marketing Genius
* Joe Stump’s 4 Day Marketing Workshop
* Howard Brinton’s “All Star Power” 4 Day Workshop

Personal Information

Sandi Hadley came to real estate from a long and successful career in business. For 18 years, she was the owner of Linger Awhile, a chain of gift stores in San Diego County. Sandi owned three permanent stores as well as several seasonal shops at Christmas. Prior to that time, Sandi was a stockbroker. She was, in fact, the first female partner in a securities firm to go public in the United States.

Memberships

In addition to being a top-notch professional, Sandi is also a concerned member of the community. She is a member of the Board of Directors for Project Concern International and past member of the EYE Counseling and Crisis Center. She is a past Board Member of St. Clares Homes For Battered and Abused Women and also a past Board member of Harmonium. In honor of her commitment, Sandi was given the Volunteer of the Year Award in 1994 by the Philanthropy Council and Woman of the Year award from Womens Impact Network (“WIN”) 1997 for giving without expectation. She supports her husband who is a Board Member of San Diego Youth and Community Services.

Want to see how much we can do for you to sell your home? Contact us at the Hadley Home Team to tell us how. If you’re reading to start looking for homes to buy, then get your FREE VIP Membership to preview homes in all of San Diego County.

Don Reedy - San Diego Realtor

Who is this guy? First of all,. I want to talk about myself in the third person. Anyone know the name for this?

Okay, here’s the deal. This guy is pretty goofy, pretty intelligent, and pretty interesting. Sure, he looks a bit on the “outer limits” side of life, but then, looks are almost always deceiving.

Don Reedy is a guy who really cares about what’s happening to you, to your friends, your neighbors, and to the whole world. He cares, and just doesn’t know what to do about all of it….but he does know what to do about some of it.

I’d like you to start following Don in Buy Half A House and here at San Diego Equity Facts. See if you don’t find common ground with this common sense guy. See if you don’t find a will to participate, rather than a will to abrogate. See if you like him.

Most of us know that to buy a home we talk to a knowledgeable lender, arrange for a loan, and then off we go to either purchase the home, refinance the home, or take out an equity line of credit.  But who knows about the Reverse Mortgage?

A Loan Program for Seniors

Reverse mortgages are government backed loans made only to seniors (62 years of age or older), who own a home and have equity in that home.  There are lots of formulas that determine what kind of benefit the senior can get. (Remember this is a government program)

If the senior has sufficient equity, the reverse mortgage will pay off any existing loan on the property, allocate some of the equity back to the senior for whatever  purpose they want, and STOP ALL FUTURE MORTGAGE PAYMENTS! 

You heard me right.  Never make another mortgage payment.  Think what a relief that could be to a senior who has a limited income.  Remember that taping into a home’s equity in today’s market is almost impossible, so a senior who has $200,000 in equity finds that those monies are literally tied up, unreachable, and of pretty much no use to the senior to use for any purpose whatsoever.  If, however, the senior takes out a reverse mortgage, they will have no further mortgage payments (and all that money in their pocket), and usually a significant amount of cash that can be invested, spent or tapped as income on a monthly basis.

Sell Your Home Now – Buy Another – Make NO MORE MORTGAGE PAYMENTS!

But that’s not all.  If a senior wants to sell their current home, and buy another home using some of the proceeds they get from that sale as a downpayment on another home, the Reverse Mortgage program named HECM is almost unbelievable!

Under HECM a senior can sell their existing home, pay off the current loan on that property,  and then take the government benefit (Reverse Mortgage) allowing them to buy another property and NEVER, EVER MAKE ANOTHER MORTGAGE PAYMENT ON THE NEW HOME THEY PURCHASE.  Remember that even with great credit and a substantial downpayment, seniors may find it impossible to qualify for a loan to buy even a modest sized home.

Call to learn more about Reverse Mortgages. STOP MAKING MORTGAGE PAYMENTS!

In this video I talked with Caryn Leventhal, the owner of Senior’s Choice Handyman Services, about what she does, why she’s so good at what she does, and how that can really benefit you if you are thinking about buying or selling a home in North County San Diego.

As a Realtor I see many homes that would fetch much more from potential home buyers if just a few simple repairs had been done. I also see quite a few homes that can be “updated” with just the change of a screen, a switch, a fan or a little paint. See if your home would benefit from spending a little time with Caryn talking about how to make your home a nicer, and safer, place to live.

The Art of the Bloodhound

What follows is a reprint of a post I made as part of the contributors to the Bloodhoundblog in Phoenix.  I was honored to ask to write among this diverse and talented group of writers, and what follows is a comment I had on the topic of transparency. It seems that transparency has become quite the word to bandy around these days, and as someone who wants you to appreciate how important it is for your real estate professional to really “get it”, I thought you might enjoy experiencing how I think about communicating to my friends, family, and to my clients. 

 This is actually a post about transparency, but as you’ll see, I am not a big fan of the ‘word’ itself. The idea of belaboring a word all of you seem to take for granted came about as I was talking with Scott Schang a few days ago. We were just enjoying each other’s company, doing real work, a lender and real estate guy talking about the industry, our own ideas, sharing and laughing, scribbling notes and taking stock of the ideas that just never seemed to quit coming.

For me transparency is about saying what you want to say, showing what you want to show, sharing what you want to share, and doing it in a manner and method that is most likely to allow the reader or listener to understand. In order for that to happen the writer or creater of thoughts and ideas, facts or fictions, must decide up front HOW they will present the information.

Let me give you some examples.

Greg Swann – “I write well. I’m a tough read here, but I can be much, much more difficult to read. I understand grammar the way other people understand cars or football or cooking, and I can build perfectly valid sentences in English that almost no one can understand, much less diagram. The English language is like Jazz to me, and it ripples and rolls through my head all the time, making connections like lightning strikes that take many paragraphs to explain to other people.

Brian Brady – “I posed this question at Unchained Phoenix ‘09 and you would have thought I asked the REALTORs to walk on coals…at first. A few bright agents listened to my reasoning:”

Geno Petro – “When I awoke from my dehydrated coma and rack focused my blurry vision toward the general direction of the deactivated alarm clock on my night stand, the numbers 7:07 burned my retinas digital red. I jumped up in a virtual panic, threw on a suit and Hermes noose, splashed on a handful of Bulgari, gargled a Red Bull and Diet Coke highball and flew out the door in search of my car. Alas, God was looking out. I located the salt and cinder mottled vehicle less than a half block away, albeit double parked beside an alley dumpster with two City of Chicago orange tickets taped to my windshield and emergency flashers just barely groaning. By yet another whit of Divine intervention, the engine turned over on the first twist of the key. I tossed the tickets into the glove box with all the others and tore westward toward the highway from my lakeside apartment.

Jeff Brown – There’s a better chance of a million monkeys in a room full of computers writing Romeo and Juliet than you finding the perfect property with all the perfect circumstances attached to it, and owner financing.

Decide what you’re Point B is, and what kind of property will best get you there. Buy the best properties you can locate in a reasonable time. They’ll close escrow. Then….

Live your life.

Repeat until you see the sign for your Point B turnoff.

Retire.

Send me a card from (insert your favorite ‘paradise’ here) saying “wish you were here.”

Ryan Hartman – Just watch him speak to you with his own medium.

Oh, I could go on and on, but if (as Greg says once in a while) you’ve read this far, then you can’t help but see that each of these guys is telling you exactly what they want to tell you, in exactly the way they process information, and with such clarity and focus that all it takes at the receiving end is a string and a can attached to your ear to understand.

What about me?

I really want to write with Civility.  I know its value, but sometimes I’m just pissed off.

I really want to write with Clarity.  The reader is deserving of that, but sometimes my mind just wants to wander around spinning tales.

I really want to write with Brevity.  I value your time as well as my own, but sometimes I want to go on and on, not making sure so much that I’m understood, but making sure I can purify my thoughts and get them on the record just in case there’s not another chance.

I really want to write with Passion.  No “buts” needed with this one.  

How you say_What you say_Is really important. Pay attention to the How you say part. It will make you “transparent”, and you’ll never have to say the word. It will define who you are so that you can give and get the most from those you touch. It will shape your message, and the answers you get back.

Finally, if I’m poetic, do not distain me should you be analytical. If I am analytical, do not dismiss me because I lack sensitivity. If I am philosophical, do not judge me because you lack the purity of thought, sensibility of argument, or historical perspective from which to understand. Let me be. I am who I am, nothing more.  Ergo sum Bloodhound.

Get Title Insurance – Things can go wrong!

Forgery

Ever sign your spouse’s name to a check?  Ever had a friend sign your name to something  just because it was easier?  Well, when you’re buying a home, forgery is not a pretty word, and some of the ugliest stories have happened between family members.  Title insurance professionals will tell you that forged deeds, loan documents and other claims against a property happen all the time.  A little anger, mixed with the thought that their crime will get “lost in the paperwork” make for hundreds of stories about relatives and friends who forge a document, and in so doing, create a situation where the ownership of the property is in question.  Those questions bring lawyers and lawsuits, and if they can’t be resolved, then the person riding to the rescue on the white horse is your Title Insurance Company.

Liens

Homeowners get work done on their homes.  Happens on a daily basis, and most of the time the work gets done, paid for, and all is well and good.  But you may know that sometimes work gets down, usually by a General Contractor, and when the contractor does not get paid, that contractor will file a lien against the property for the amount of the bill.  That lien is a recorded document (that means that the document is “recorded” by an official of the governmental body in the location of the property, and it is done so that an official record of the claim or transaction can be referred to later on).  It can happen, however, that the current homeowner does not disclose the lien, and that means that a subsequent buyer will still be responsible for payment to the contractor.  It is also quite common for the mechanic’s lien to never be filed properly at all by the contractor.  Enter Title Insurance to the rescue.  A title search will usually turn up these recorded claims, and they can be dealt with before the sale.  Again, buyer saved from a potential crisis down the road.

Competency

 If you’ve ever had an elderly parent, or suffered through an incapacitating injury to a loved one, then you will know that mental capacity can be diminished or destroyed, cutting that person off from being able to perform the usual tasks we take for granted.  So, let’s say that grandpa, who has been forgetting things and making multiple mistakes in the daily tasks he had once found easy, signs over the home to a neighbor “because they asked him to.”  This may not get recorded, and if it does, is it really a legally binding contract due to the fact that grandpa was of diminished capacity?  The answer is……..don’t know, but you’re going to have legal problems, and again, title insurance will insure against a negative outcome. 

More about title insurance…..

 Contact me if you want to find out specific answers to your questions. My team at California Title Company have all the answers, a willingness to help, and a desire to see that you don’t fall prey to any of the situations above.