Ilyce

Ilyce Glink Show Notes - February 7, 2010 - Stock Market Update, Unemployment Update, How to Invest In 2010 Discount LAST WEEK. Stock market was down for the week, and down 7 percent from the high in January. The President submitted a budget for $3.8 trillion that provides some cuts but portends a huge deficit. Nine million housing units are for sale, out of about 130 million total. Those numbers mean home values will probably decline again. FREE BOOKS AND EBOOK DEALS. Last week for the 50% discount to the HOW TO INVEST YOUR MONEY IN 2010 Event/Atlanta.

Ilyce Glink Show Notes - February 7, 2010 - Stock Market Update, Unemployment Update, How to Invest In 2010 Discount LAST WEEK. Stock market was down for the week, and down 7 percent from the high in January. The President submitted a budget for $3.8 trillion that provides some cuts but portends a huge deficit. Nine million housing units are for sale, out of about 130 million total. Those numbers mean home values will probably decline again. FREE BOOKS AND EBOOK DEALS. Last week for the 50% discount to the HOW TO INVEST YOUR MONEY IN 2010 Event/Atlanta. For more show notes and helpful links, visit Ilyce's blog. Listen to the show here or download from iTunes. Tune in live Sundays at wsbradio.com

Whey you go out and buy real estate, you should make sure you understand the process of buying a home and surround yourself with a competent real estate attorney, real estate agent and mortgage broker or lender. You should do that and more if you decide to move forward and buy a short sale home or even a foreclosed home. Now more than ever, buyers need to use caution before buying a home.
You might not think that you need an attorney for the purchase or title insurance or a real estate broker, but if you don't know what you are doing, you might pay dearly.

$8000 First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit Has Time Restrictions
If you're looking to take advantage of the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit or the $6500 long term (move up) (repeat) home buyer tax credit, you'd better hurry. You have to have a contract signed in hand soon and you must close on the home by June 30, 2010. You also must meet the income restrictions of the tax credit and other requirements, including that the new home purchased must be used as your primary residence. If you purchase the home and rent it out, you may have trouble qualifying for the tax credit.

The real estate market is in such flux, that several years ago home buyers would never consider walking away from their obligations and walking away from a mortgage. However, times have changed and more and more home owners see less of a stigma attached to walking away from a mortgage. As falling home prices have decimated the real estate market in some parts of the country, people view the ability to walk away from a mortgage as another option along with bankruptcy, negotiating for a loan modification and refinancing a loan. Years ago, people viewed bankruptcy as a morally bad thing to do. But with more and more people suffering in this recession, walking away from a mortgage is seen more as somewhat unusual but not necessary as a morally bad thing to do.

When a loan servicing company goes out of business, you would think that the troubles would be over for those borrowers that had been dealing with that lender. Think again. Taylor Bean and Whitaker Mortgage Company went out of business last summer. Their customers are still feeling the pain. They may have new loan servicing companies, but the new loan servicing companies won't honor the amounts these borrowers paid TBW in their escrow accounts. You would think that escrow accounts (money held by a lender in trust on behalf of their borrowers) for the payment of real estate taxes and insurance premiums would be safe. But those accounts are frozen. You'd think that the federal government would have a law on the books that forces lenders to keep those accounts safe and segregated and readily available to transfer from one lender to another. And yet, months after TBW's bankruptcy, customers are still waiting for money, answers and are suffering with increased payments to their new loan servicers.

While you may buy vacant land to build a home in the future, some real estate investors and speculators, purchased vacant land with timber on it to sell off the land or timber in the future. Now the real estate market has changed along with the housing market, and the value of vacant land has decreased. Worse, for those people that purchased the land for the value of the timber, wood prices have gone down as well. Now, real estate investors have to decide whether to keep the land and timber for a time in the future when prices will have recovered or take their losses now.

You might want to think about a loan modification as similar to a loan application with additional paperwork. Most lenders can give you the package of information they will need to get a loan modification started and processed. If you were able to apply for your mortgage loan, you should be able to get results in your loan modification on your own. While you may want to hire an attorney to assist you in the loan modification, the companies and attorneys that are helping in loan modifications are billing anywhere between $500 and $3000. At this point, we have not seen evidence that lenders are granting more permanent loan modifications to people that have hired attorneys or loan modification companies over people that have completed the loan modification process properly and have followed up with their lenders.

MoneyWatch Ask The Experts: Jill Schlesinger, Jack Otter, and Ilyce Glink Talk Housing Market. The federal government has poured trillions of dollars into the U.S. housing market in the form of tax credits and the purchase of more than a trillion dollars in U.S. housing-backed securities. Is that what's propping up the housing market? Last week, Ilyce was in New York at MoneyWatch.com headquarters and taped this podcast with Jack and Jill.

Real Estate Update - Ilyce Glink and Jill Schlesinger of MoneyWatch.com Discuss The Housing Crisis. I spent some time shooting video and recording a podcast with CBS Editor At Large Jill Schlesinger. We talked about the housing and credit crisis, real estate and what's coming next.