Join Brian and David Wickert as they deliver the latest home purchasing trends and offer tips to help your next sale or purchase be smooth and affordable.

This week on the Accunet Radio Show:

Tune in to hear about potential rate changes in the first week of July, latest updates, and find out which mortgage lender has your best interests in mind (and which ones don’t).

This week’s highlights

• Mortgage rates are low — but that might change as soon as Monday. Ever wonder how mortgage rates are determined? Tune in to find out!
• Other mortgage lenders don’t always have your best interests in mind, and might even leave you with a denied loan after you have an accepted offer.
• It’s a great time to purchase a moderately-priced home, but if you’re trying to sell your home in the $700,000 – $900,000 range, you’re facing a harsh buyer’s market.

Client Update: Burned by the Rocket

We received a call on Thursday from a past customer of Accunet whose stepdaughter had chosen QuickenLoans (owner of Rocket Mortgage) to finance her and her husband’s first home, which happens to be a duplex. Needless to say, it didn’t end well.

The client called her stepfather in tears, saying, “Rocket Mortgage said they won’t lend to me,” despite the fact that she already had an accepted offer. The only way they could approve the loan, they said, is if her mother cosigned.

Now, FHA loans are great, but Rocket Mortgage conveniently forgot to mention a few key pieces of information before their client made her offer:

• When you have a cosigner on an FHA loan, you need to put 25% down (and not everyone has $100,000 laying around).
• They’ll take into account the non-borrowing spouses’ debts (which, in this case, included hefty child support).
• FHA loans require a 1% payment of outstanding student loan debt on top of other payments (which would add $1,500 to her monthly payments).

Unfortunately, by the time we got the call, there wasn’t too much we could do. The client had been duped into making an offer they thought they could afford, leaving them high and dry.

Bottom line:  Don’t fall for the rhetoric; Let us help you make the right decision, and lock down a home you know you can afford before it’s too late.

Trying to get a loan without help is like trying to perform your own heart surgery. It’s a disaster.

Listener Call-in: Nepotism in Real Estate

Question: Are real estate agents allowed to represent clients they have a prior relationship to (a friend, relative or spouse)?

Answer: Yes! But the information needs to be disclosed. The owner of Accunet Mortgage and Realty Advisors (Brian Wickert) has represented multiple family members when purchasing homes, and each time, he’s been required to explain the relationship in the offer. The only restriction is when the buyer is related to the seller. In these cases, conventional loans work normally, but FHA loans require a 15% down payment.

Tip: Family members (let’s say a parent selling a home to their child) tend to think giving a bargain price is a good idea. It’s not. The best thing to do is set the price at market value, gift the equity, and avoid private mortgage insurance (PMI) altogether.

State of the Market in Brookfield & Elm Grove

Recently, Brian’s friend started looking to sell their home in the Brookfield/Elm Grove area. The home is in the $700,000 – $900,000 price range and is 15-25 years old. Out of curiosity, we investigated the market for this range in this specific area, and what we found wasn’t exactly surprising: Expensive homes are hard to sell.

In the Brookfield/Elm Grove area, there are 27 homes with active listings in the $700,000 – $900,000 price range, and 6 currently have offers. In June, only 2 homes in that range sold — classifying this as a textbook buyer’s market with a 10-month supply.

Why are more expensive homes harder to sell?

Well, if a buyer is going to dish out close to a million dollars on a home, they tend to be pickier. Or, even more likely, they’re going to opt for a newly constructed home to avoid having to make any compromises with a pre-built home.

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