Today’s lending standards may require you to create a paper trail for deposits and withdrawals in your bank accounts; provide a statement from your employer that says your job is secure; contact the IRS for certified copies of your tax returns; and the list goes on.

Different loans have different requirements but there are at least 10 things every buyer needs to know before they apply for any mortgage. This list has been around the internet a few times but it’s always a good review. Violating any one of these “commandments” could prevent you from achieving your dream of home ownership.

The 10 Commandments for Getting a Mortgage:
1. Thou shalt NOT change jobs, become self-employed or quit your job.
2. Thou shalt NOT buy a car, truck or van (you may have to live in it!).
3. Thou shalt NOT use credit cards excessively or let current accounts fall behind.
4. Thou shalt NOT spend money you have set aside for closing.
5. Thou shalt NOT omit debts or liabilities from your loan application (they’ll turn up eventually anyway).
6. Thou shalt NOT buy furniture before you buy the house!
7. Thou shalt NOT originate any inquiries into your credit – i.e., no new credit cards, no new “same as cash” purchases.
8. Thou shalt NOT make large deposits without checking with your loan officer – by the way – “large” could be $100.
9. Thou shalt NOT change bank accounts.
10. Thou shalt NOT co-sign a loan for anyone.

Bridge at the Wannamaker North Trail

My son and I tried out a new bike trail this afternoon. It was such a great experience I had to share.

The trail is called the Wannamaker North Trail. It’s an 8-mile loop and part of the Charleston County Parks system. Access to the trail is located off of Westview Boulevard in Goose Creek.

There are several things I loved about the trail. First off, it’s convenient. The trailhead is about a mile from grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, etc. It will be pretty easy to come home from work, throw my bike in the back of the truck, and be on the trail in 15 minutes. But when you’re on the trail it looks and feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere.

Secondly, there’s a forest road that runs right down the middle of the winding trail, so if you need a shorter route or you have an emergency you can get out quickly.

Wannamaker North Trail – view from the “Mommy” trail.

Another thing I loved is what I refer to as the “Mommy” trail. The Wannamaker North Trail offers lots of twists and turns and high berms and dips and there’s a leg of it that’s high and narrow. Most of the time, however, riders can choose to bypass the technical stuff. I hung in there for the majority of the trail but passed on the very rugged, high and narrow part. My son took the high road, I took the low road – and we could see each other the whole time.

Because there are so many opportunities to choose your own route, you can make this trail as hard or as easy or as long as you want it to be. I think very experienced riders will enjoy it just as much as we did, and we are fairly inexperienced.

There were just a couple negatives about the trail. One was that I could hear the ice cream truck circling the neighborhood next to us the whole time. It kind of killed the idea of getting lost in nature. The second was that there were more ticks than I have ever seen in my life. We never sat down in the woods but while I was there I brushed about a dozen off of me and when I got home I found about a half dozen more.

If you like to ride, give this trail a shot. Let me know what you think of it.

Map of the Wannamaker North Trail

]]> http://agentinthecreek.com/2012/05/21/new-trail-for-charleston-mountain-bikers/feed/ 0 Agent in the Creek Bridge at the Wannamaker North Trail Wannamaker North Trail Map of the Wannamaker North Trail http://agentinthecreek.com/2012/05/19/why-real-estate/ http://agentinthecreek.com/2012/05/19/why-real-estate/#comments Sat, 19 May 2012 03:27:47 +0000 Stephanie Davis http://agentinthecreek.com/?p=906 ]]> My schedule allows me to volunteer from time to time at the nearby elementary schools where my kids are students. Today was Career Day at my son’s school. It gave me an opportunity to revisit the reasons I chose real estate as my career field.

I spoke to five groups of students. I told the first group I got into real estate because of the flexible hours and unlimited income potential. Plus I wanted to be my own boss and use the skills I had developed as a marketing professional.

The second group got roughly the same speech as the first. In between groups I would think about what I said to the last group and considered how I might improve my presentation for the next group.

As I was speaking to the third group I realized the reasons I got into real estate are not the same as the reasons that keep me in real estate. So I started sharing with the students the reasons I continue to do real estate.

It’s a wonderful feeling to sit at the closing table with first-time home buyers and watch them sign mortgage papers with tears of joy and disbelief in their eyes. It feels like I’m really making a difference when I sell a house for a family that can no longer put food on the table, much less pay a mortgage.

There are few careers that put you right in the heart of a family like real estate. Real estate agents have the privilege of helping people achieve their biggest dreams in life, and helping them navigate through the darkest days of death, divorce, and unemployment.

So for the students who missed it: Time and money may get you in to real estate, but the people you help will keep you there.

Home buyers want to purchase a house in a neighborhood where there’s great curb appeal all around. In fact, the look of the neighboring houses may be more important than the house they actually buy. Why? They know they can control (improve) the look of the house they buy; for the rest of the neighborhood, however, what you see is what you get.

If you’re worried about the home values in your neighborhood, do your part to attract home buyers who appreciate a nice looking street and are willing to pay a little more to live next to houses that look a little better than the next neighborhood.

Remember that home buyers drive through the neighborhoods they’re considering several times before they make their decision on which house to buy. Court these buyers (your new neighbors). Create urgency (and a higher offer) by showing them a neighborhood where people are friendly, the grass is cut, the chores are done, and life is good.

Since I got my license five years ago, our market has been in a decline. There are signs now that we are bouncing along the bottom in terms of pricing, but we are not out of the woods yet. Inventory is down (see my previous post) and buyer traffic is up, but we still need to be smart about pricing.

As this chart shows, which was created from statistics in the Charleston MLS, sellers who price their homes correctly when they first come on the market get about 95% of their asking price – and they sell in about 57 days! On the other hand, sellers who want to “test the market” and start with a high list price spend 379 days looking for their buyer – and they only get 83% of their asking price.

Let’s put this in perspective with real numbers. Let’s say your mortgage balance is $170,000 and your house is worth $200,000. Consider these two scenarios:

1. Let’s say you price your house at $210,000 to “see what happens.” By the time you chase the market down with price reductions to get a buyer to make an offer, it will have taken you 379 days to find your buyer and your offer would be $182,700, netting you $164,430. This means you would need to bring $8,270 to closing in order to pay off your mortgage.

2. Now let’s say you price your house at $200,000. Buyers in the market who are looking for a house like yours see it come on the market and know instantly your price is right. You receive an offer (maybe several!) within 30 days. At 95% of list price, your offer would be $190,000 and you would net $171,000. After paying off your mortgage, you would take home $1000!

Which scenario would you prefer? Call me at 843-870-0890 to see how your house fits into this model.

This is a positive sign for the market, since supply and demand drive sales and value. If demand for housing stays the same – and it has year-over-year (see chart, below) – we should start to see home prices firm up and then rise.

Keep in mind that within the Goose Creek real estate market there are many, many micro markets… contact me for a free snapshot of yours.

Goose Creek Sales & Inventory 2010-2012. Source: CTAR MLS

If you’d prefer to see this information in graphs for a year-over-year comparison, please click here: Goose Creek Sales & Inventory History 2010-2012

The REALTORS® of Distinction award recognizes Charleston REALTORS® who have achieved the top 10% in sales production, met additional continuing education requirements, and adhered to CTAR’s strict code of ethics.

Her 2011 sales production puts Davis in the President’s Circle category, which means she closed $5,800,000 – $7,999,999 in volume and/or 20-29 units (sides).

The Post & Courier will publish the full list of 2011 REALTORS® of Distinction in late February.

Vickery's

Even without the snow, Christmas is a magical time of year here. It’s warm so people are out and about, enjoying the weather and their time off. These are some of my favorite things about Christmas in Charleston.

James Island County Park offers one of the best light displays in the country, called the Holiday Festival of Lights. They have a 3-mile loop set up with thousands of lights in the form of everything from a candle stick to replicas of the old and new bridge over the Cooper River. Cars line up and crawl bumper-to-bumper through the park to enjoy the lights, the music, the activities, shops, and a visit with Santa.

Speaking of lights, it seems like there are more houses with lights on here than anywhere else I’ve lived. The restaurants and businesses around town hang lights as well. There’s something special about a palm tree and Christmas lights. Last night we enjoyed the lights and palm trees on the deck at Vickery’s on Shem Creek.

Maybe it’s because I’m older or maybe it’s because there’s a bigger push nationally now than in the past, but Toys for Tots seems to play a larger part of Christmas here than other places I’ve lived. Nearly every school, store, and office is a collection site, and nearly every box is full.

And finally, one of my favorite things to do in the South this time of year is go to oyster roasts. Thankfully, oyster roasts continue on until April – but they start in the fall and they make a great Christmas party. The act of eating oysters provide a unique opportunity to gather and bond with complete strangers. It’s an event that pulls folks together like none other.

In these final days of the Christmas rush, Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope you’ll get a few minutes to stop and reflect on what made 2011 a year you’ll never forget. Thank you for reading the words I write and for supporting my business. May you have the best year of your life in 2012.

I find that when people don’t know someone they trust who can provide a product or service they need, they are willing to work with someone based on transferred trust. Transferred trust is where you trust someone because someone you trust told you you could. It’s like having a friend give you the answer to the bonus question on your final test.

In a business like real estate there are opportunities to connect consumers with other business professionals every day. We recommend home inspectors, lenders, insurance providers, moving companies, storage companies, hotels, restaurants, and so on.

My clients, family, and friends are happy when I can make their problems go away by giving them a name and number to call. Once they’ve made the decision to use the information I’ve given them, they know they can sit back while their problem goes away.

I don’t recommend people I don’t trust or haven’t had a positive personal experience with, unless someone I trust has said it’s okay to do so. In the world we live in it’s so easy to get tangled up with the wrong people. Doing so can have a small impact on us, such as paying a few extra dollars we didn’t need to pay, or a huge impact, such as losing an opportunity to achieve our dreams.

Successful business people realize products don’t attract sales. Service does. If I recommend someone who fails to increase the trust between me and the person I told to call them, I stop recommending that person. For a list of my most trusted resources, please click here.

I can’t blame anyone for what happened but me. My client was a first-time home buyer who was doing her best to go with the flow. She had followed all the advice I gave her from the day we met all the way up to closing, which was today.

Last week I went over with her what to expect this week. I told her there would be a walk-thru with the builder, that there would be a re-walk with the builder, that she needed to contact her utility companies to establish services, and that I would be calling her to set a time to go over the settlement statement as soon as I received it from the attorney.

Several times this week I contacted the builder’s agent and the attorney to let them know I wanted to see the settlement statement and asked when they thought it would be available.

This morning I was still trying to chase it down.

I’ve never worked with this builder or this attorney before – and I don’t work this way. I make sure my buyers know how much money (if any) they’re bringing to closing and I make sure they know exactly what they’re signing before they ever sit at the closing table. Showing up blind at the closing table is a no-no.

At the re-walk an hour before closing I let my buyer know we were still in the dark on the settlement statement, and she said she’d been getting calls for the last day or so from people telling her she needed this much, no that much, no this much money for closing.

I was already upset I hadn’t seen the settlement statement one hour from closing. Now I find out everyone has seen it but me.

On the way from the walk-thru to the closing attorney’s office I called the closing attorney – again – to see why I still didn’t have a copy of the settlement statement. She said there had been changes to it since my phone call one hour earlier.

No wonder people think buying a house is stressful: NOBODY SEEMS TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON!!!

When we got to the attorney’s office I got a copy of the settlement statement and sat down with my buyer to go over it with her privately. Sure enough, there were still mistakes that had to be corrected. Closing was delayed 30 minutes. The buyer’s stress level soared higher. This is not professional.

When everything had been signed and it was time for the buyer to hand over her check, the attorney refused to take it because it was a money order. Real Estate 101 says money orders are not accepted at the closing table.

Who had been calling my buyer for the past day and messing her up? How am I supposed to keep her straight when I don’t know someone else is giving her bad information?

From now on, my buyers will know right up front to HANG UP when someone other than me calls and tries to advise them on closing… and delete the e-mails! Today would have been a pleasant, enjoyable experience had I been allowed to do my job. Instead, my buyer spent three hours waiting around the attorney’s office, then the rest of the afternoon trying to get her money back from the money order she’d been told she could use at the closing table.

She never even went to her new house.

Don’t let your closing experience get sabotaged by people who don’t have the answers – even if it’s the attorney calling, your lender, or the builder – regardless of what they’ve said, call your REALTOR® to confirm. Everyone else means well, but she’s the only one who’s been with you from the beginning, who knows what you’re thinking, who knows where you are with things, who knows what you need to know, and who knows what you don’t need to know. She’s going to troubleshoot for you, find the mistakes, and FIX THEM so you have nothing to worry about but packing boxes.