Actually, these thoughts are from other agents as well - not just my own (gotta get that disclaimer in here pronto!).
While dropping in at the office to pick up my mail yesterday, I had a chance to chit chat for a few minutes with a couple of agents. These were folks that've been "in the business" for years and years. They've seen versions of this market "adjustment" before. Nothing quite like this, but definite slow downs where listings just sort of sit. And Buyers were scarce. Compared to them, my almost five years in the business makes me a baby agent. They're both positive "can do" kind of people full of ideas and suggestions, so I always cherish the chance to hear their perspective.
So with a grateful nod to them for their thoughts, I'm going to try to turn their ideas, and a couple of my own, into a blog entry here. And I thought it would be interesting to gather yet a few more of your own ideas. Maybe we should package them all up and send them along to Mr. Obama. They can await him front and center on his desk on January 21st when he sits down after recovering from his inauguration bash the night before.
•1. Make every mortgage assumable. Hmmmmmm. We don't see many of these mortgages around here anymore. Haven't seen assumable loans for years from my limited experience. This is an interesting thought. This could mean that a troubled homeowner could "walk away" from making payments on a house after a buyer qualifies for and agrees to just "take over the payments." Now, some sort of consumer protection mechanism would need to be in place here, I would think. I mean, I see a potential for some ne'er do well to come in and just cause all sorts of havoc. But I kinda like this idea. Why not?
•2. Rather than give money to the automakers, give every single person of some sort of driveable age some money to buy a new car. The amount mentioned was $25,000. Let consumers go buy up all the car stock sitting around on dealer lots. Get rid of the surplus. Then the automakers would have enough money to build new cars. And folks in the auto industry would still have jobs - and the rest of us would be driving reliable new vehicles. Whew. $25k apiece. That's a lot of money. But then again, so is $17 billion to continue to build cars that will sit on parking lots somewhere.
•3. Here's another one: Allow everyone with a retirement account of some sort ... say a 401k ... to withdraw penalty free ONE TIME ONLY up to maybe $50,000 to use towards buying a home. Well, this is a good idea too. But this only helps folks that have retirement accounts. These are savers - admittedly a very good crowd to target. I mean these should be "safe" mortgages, wouldn't you think? And then these home buyers would be vested in their own homes in some form, so maybe less likely to default. I'd like to add to this idea and say that these would have to be for primary residences rather than investment properties. I dunno. It just seems to me that this is where the sticking point might be. I'm working with both buyers and sellers that want to buy/sell but there's no assistance of any sort out there to help them with massive downpayments. Well qualified credit wise, but no available cash.
•4. Okay, this one's mine: How about requiring banks/lenders/investors/whomever to approve or disapprove a short sale within, say, 90 days. Period. No excuses. Make it mandatory. With some sort of teeth. I know there're additional approvals involved from the mortgage insurers and investors, but make it work. Either approve an offer as written or come back with an alternative. Pronto. No more of this months and months and months of waiting only to have a buyer walk away because they're tired of waiting for a black hole to respond. Let's get this inventory off the books and put people into them. So prices quit falling. And houses quit going all the way through foreclosure, which further erodes sale prices of other homes.
•5. Hubby says: How about another tax rebate? In cash. To everyone that grosses, say, less than $500,000 a year. That's over 18, whether they live with mommy and daddy or not. Even the college kids spend money and make money. Let's give them back some. I don't know ... let's give them a big number, maybe $5,000 each.
•6. Here's another one: Let's take a good hard look at the cost of higher public education and balance it out a bit. Student loans are ridiculous (spoken from the mom of a college kid). Maybe require those "golden" coaches making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (and more!) to take a pay cut. Back down to no more than, say, $500,000 a year or so (I like that number-gads one oughta be able to live on that kind of money, wouldn't you think?)
•7. Oh wait ... one last one and then I'll quit. This treatise is changing form here and I don't want to get too far side tracked. But this is a personal soapbox issue: Before laying off folks because "of the economy," require that all executives making more than $500,000 (see there's that number again!) take a pay cut. Period. Nobody gets fantastically wealthy budget balancing through "downsizing." Everyone keeps their jobs. Folks keep working.
So that's it for today. Blast away. This should be interesting.
Your Dedicated Realtor & Active Rain Blogger, working the Auburn, Kent, Renton, Maple Valley, Federal Way, Covington, Puyallup, Sumner, Bonney Lake, Lake Tapps, and north/northeast Tacoma areas.
Just a quick observation today as I get out of the house and back to the office. Traffic is fast. Moving with a purpose. As I go into a few shops for essentials (time to refill the pantry!), I'm hearing louder voices than usual - and a sense of "let's get going!"
In the past few months I've found myself working more and more with first time homebuyers. As part of our first "meet and greet," a lot of counseling occurs. Not only do I have an opportunity to meet the entire family, which is sometimes just the Buyer, but we go through some basic mortgage qualification, a discussion of lenders and basic loan types, how a transaction proceeds, the purpose of title, escrow, a couple of the most commonly used purchase forms, and so on.
"I just really want to move into my own place. I've been renting ... (or living at home, etc.)" This often goes hand-in-hand with "I want to be able to paint the walls, have a dog, make some noise, do my own thing"
