Green remodeling can pay off — not only in lowered utility bills, but also in buyer appeal when the property is sold.

Here are some green things to consider.

• Site selection. Prefer infill development instead of a new subdivision in a far-flung new suburb that gobbles wetlands and displaces animals.

• Energy-efficient products. Choose Energy Star appliances, double-paned windows, low-flush toilets, and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

• Spray foam insulation. Seal the home with insulation that doesn’t let the heat or cooled air leak out.

• Sustainable wood flooring. Select flooring certified by Forest Stewardship Council, which protects forests by managing the amount of wood harvested annually.

• Locally made products. Buy products made less than 250 miles away to reduce transportation costs. Granite, for instance, is generally imported from afar.

• Nontoxic paint. Use paint that is low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) —chemicals that evaporate into the atmosphere. Look for Green Seal certified brands.

via St. Petersburg Times, Susan Thurston (12/28/07)

Good home maintenance is key to creating and preserving a home’s value. Not to mention, it also impresses potential buyers.

Here are five basic steps that every home owner ought to take — before spending money on dream bathrooms or gourmet kitchens.

1. Safety. Make sure smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are installed and in good working order. Check fuel-burning appliances to make sure they are properly vented and no gas connections leak. Make sure the electrical system is adequate. Flickering lights and popping breakers are the sign of a problem. Anchor handrails and grab bars adequately.

2. Preventive maintenance. Repair any leaks in the roof, seal gaps in the siding, paint bare wood, replace damaged decking, patch cracks in concrete, and caulk around tubs and showers.

3. Conserve energy. Install a programmable thermostat, weatherstrip doors and windows, fix leaking faucets, upgrade insulation, and replace leaky windows.

4. Go green. Consider environmentally friendly materials for windows, doors, siding, decking, fencing, roofing, flooring, and insulation.

5. Improve comfort. Get rid of clutter, open up spaces, update window treatments to allow in more light, and organize closets and storage.

via The Associated Press, James and Morris Carey (12/29/07)

PMZBuzz has been informed by the GRI (Graduate, Realtors® Institute) program that they have no sign-ups for the GRI Series to begin in Lodi January 17^th, 2008.

If you are intending to take the course and receive the designation, you need to register ASAP – or the course will be cancelled.

Topics for the course – which is held one day a month – are: Strategies for Success, Purchase Agreement, Environmental Concerns, Trust Funds, Fair Housing, Real Estate Marketing, Investment Properties, Taxation and Exchange, Agency & Ethics, Legal Issues, Financing and Technology.

Signup today and earn this prestigious designation!

Call or email LAR for complete registration information: 209-368-5316 / lodiaor@softcom.net.

Freddie Mac has launched an anti-fraud video on YouTube^TM in an effort to warn troubled borrowers about the dangers of falling victim to con artists promising to help them avoid foreclosure through various fraudulent workout options.

Click here to view the video.

Click here to visit Freddie Mac’s Avoid Fraud website.

Checking out CNN.com this morning, I noticed their feature story was in regards to the real estate market.

CNN reports that the S&P/Case-Shiller® index of 10 major cities fell 6.7% in October compared with a year ago.

What is the S&P/Case-Shiller® index? According to Standard and Poors website:

The S&P/Case-Shiller® Metro Area Home Price Indices are designed to be a reliable and consistent benchmark of housing prices in the United States. Their purpose is to measure the average change in home prices in a particular geographic market. They cover ten major metropolitan areas (Metropolitan Statistical Areas or MSAs), which are also aggregated to form a national composite. The indices measure changes in housing market prices given a constant level of quality. Changes in the types and sizes of houses or changes in the physical characteristics of houses are specifically excluded from the calculations to avoid incorrectly affecting the index value.”

What does this mean for you? This means now is an even better time to buy than ever before!

Real Estate Agents, take advantage of this time to let your clients know about the deals that they can get right now when buying a home or investment property.

Buyers, check out PMZ.com and start looking through the thousands of homes on the market, ready to sell, at great prices. If you’re looking for even better deals, check out our exclusive list of bank owned properties at BankOwned.PMZ.com.

Click here for more information on the S & P/Case-Shiller® indices and what they mean.

via CNNMoney.com

Real estate professionals and police on Long Island, N.Y., where there have been a string of burglaries at open houses, offer this advice for homeowners and practitioners concerned about security at their open house events.

• Before the open house, start at the front door and imagine you’re the criminal coming into an open house. What items of value could you quickly and easily put in a pocket? Remove these valuables from the home and put them in a safe deposit box or at a trusted friend or relative’s home.
• Examine locks and latches on all doors and windows in case a burglar uses the open house as an opportunity to check out the place in advance.
• If the property is large, have at least two practitioners in the home during the open house, each with cell phones with numbers set to speed-dial 911 or another emergency number.
• Ask visitors to provide identification when they sign in.
• Keep control of the number of people touring simultaneously. If there are more than one or two couples, ask the others to wait outside or in the garage. Or set up appointments in advance.
• Don’t allow yourself to be cornered in a room with only one exit.

Via Newsday

President George W. Bush signed legislation into law on Thursday that will ease the tax burden for home owners who have had debt forgiven on a mortgage due to a foreclosure, short sale, or deed in lieu of foreclosure. The bill — Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act — has been supported by NAR since the 1990s.

“The president offered a Christmas present to many people who have suffered the agony and humiliation of losing their home,” said NAR President Dick Gaylord in a statement. “Today’s bill will ensure that any debt forgiven on a mortgage secured for a principal residence will not be taxed. This is very significant legislation.”

The tax code used to require a lender who forgives debt to provide a Form 1099 to the IRS stating the amount the borrower had been forgiven. If the property was sold at foreclosure or was sold for less than what was borrowed, that difference was considered income and subject to the tax.

“We have always believed that it is clearly an issue of fairness and of not kicking people when they are down,” Gaylord said. “By making the forgiven debt taxable income, individuals in already unfortunate situations most likely faced IRS actions because they did not have the money to pay the additional taxes. This legislation will relieve that additional burden and may also encourage families to work with their lender to negotiate terms, knowing they will now not be subject to an IRS bill.”

Other Legislation Making Its Way to the President

Also, this week, the U.S. House passed two other bills — which have already passed the Senate — that could have a big impact on the real estate industry.

The bills are:

• Mortgage Insurance Tax Deductibility. This bill makes mortgage insurance premiums tax deductible for all mortgages originated for the next three years. Mortgage insurer Genworth Financial estimates that this tax break is worth $350 to the average taxpayer who has purchased a home with less than 20 percent down.
• Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. Federal backstops for terrorism insurance, passed initially after the Sept. 11 attacks, have been extended for another seven years. The bill also expands the program’s protection by including domestic terrorism. The insurance and real estate industries have pushed for an extension, saying federal guarantees to help cover catastrophic losses are crucial to stimulating the investment needed to spur economic growth.

via Realtor.org

Out of 15 different teams comprised of other local real estate brokerage, mortgage, and escrow companies, PMZ ranked number one this year in the annual Lodi Association of Realtors^® Can Stacking Competition for Charity.

This was all made possible by the valiant efforts of our PMZ ladies, Pam Harmon, Darcy Wendt and Kim Dale. Interestingly enough, this is reportedly only the second time the championship trophy has left Lodi since the competition was born.

Through the efforts of Harmon, Wendt and Dale, and other sponsoring companies, LAR was able to raise $18,000 dollars for donation to charitable organizations.

I can’t help but wonder, where the PMZ men were during the competition? Perhaps we will hear from them a little later on in the season? How about a little friendly competition?

‘Tis the season.

Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan wrote a lengthy explanation of his view of the current mortgage crisis for The Wall Street Journal.

“The crisis was an accident waiting to happen,” Greenspan writes. “If it had not been triggered by the mispricing of securitized subprime mortgages, it would have been produced by eruptions in some other market.”

Here are some other key passages:

• “I do not doubt that a low U.S. federal-funds rate in response to the dot-com crash, and especially the 1 percent rate set in mid-2003 to counter potential deflation, lowered interest rates on adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) and may have contributed to the rise in U.S. home prices. In my judgment, however, the impact on demand for homes financed with ARMs was not major.”
• “Demand in those days was driven by the expectation of rising prices — the dynamic that fuels most asset-price bubbles. If low adjustable-rate financing had not been available, most of the demand would have been financed with fixed rate, long-term mortgages. In fact, home prices continued to rise for two years subsequent to the peak of ARM originations (seasonally adjusted).”
• “The current credit crisis will come to an end when the overhang of inventories of newly built homes is largely liquidated, and home price deflation comes to an end. That will stabilize the now-uncertain value of the home equity that acts as a buffer for all home mortgages, but most importantly for those held as collateral for residential mortgage-backed securities. Very large losses will, no doubt, be taken as a consequence of the crisis. But after a period of protracted adjustment, the U.S. economy, and the world economy more generally, will be able to get back to business.”

Via The Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

Online real estate firm Redfin offers seven recommendations for selling a home faster and for more money.

The seven tips come from an analysis of academic research, multiple listings service data, and from information posted on Redfin’s various Web sites.

1. Don’t overprice your property. According to a 2002 academic study of 3,490 California listings, homes without a price reduction sold for 97 percent of the initial list price, whereas homes with a price reduction sold for 88 percent of the initial list price.
2. Set your price to show up in Web searches. A September 2007 Redfin study analyzed how online search filters affect traffic to a listing. Because real estate sites filter on price in $25,000 or $50,000 increments, listings priced at or below these thresholds — $250,000 rather than $251,000, or $325,000 rather than $326,000 — get as much as 7.1 percent more online visits.
3. Debut on Friday. A December 2007 Redfin analysis of its online traffic for 119,079 listings across seven markets found that listings that debut on Friday get on average 7.7 percent more visitors in their first seven days than those that debut on the worst day, Thursday.
4. Get sellers engaged with your agent. According to several academic studies, motivated, active sellers are able to sell their property as much as 30 percent faster.
5. Market the property online. Promoting a listing on Web sites beyond the local Multiple Listing Service can drive a significant number of new online visits to a property. A December 2007 analysis of 121 Redfin listings found that promoting the listings on Craigslist resulted in an average of 6.8 online visits to the property for each Craigslist promotion.
6. Have sellers stay put. The study of 3,490 California listings, cited earlier, found that vacant homes were 9.5 percent more likely to undergo a price reduction.
7. Wait to list your property until neighboring foreclosures are off the market. According to a November 2007 report from the Center for Responsible Lending, a foreclosure costs neighboring home owners an average of $5,000 when listing their property.

Source: Redfin (12/14/07)