Avoid the Top 10 Mistakes Sellers Make

There are plenty of quick reference sites that do the best they can to help give good advice on real estate related topics. One of the more talked about topics is pitfalls sellers make. Below is a very easy to understand short video on the subject. Thanks TechKnowBabble!

TechKnowBabble: Avoid the Top 10 Mistakes Sellers Make

Santa Barbara Foreclosures For June

Before I get in to my comments about foreclosures in Santa Barbara, I would like to say we were pretty busy folks in June. Closing a number of sales as well as processing quite a few refinance escrows. Many of the people I speak with seem to have a little better outlook on real estate in our fair county.

Enough of my observations for now!

As you all are probably aware of by now the foreclosure process starts with the recordation of the notice of default. In Santa Barbara County we have been experiencing a record number of them being recorded. Our all time high was 414 in February and since then we have fallen off of that a bit, and June was 332. It would appear to me that we are going to bounce around the 300 number for a while.

If you want to watch this number day by day you can do so at the county website, which updates their information between 4 and 5 each day. Got that straight from the webmaster.

The next step in the process is the recording of the notice of trustee sale. June was 232 which is down a bit from the high of May, 273. No big surprises there since the NOD's reached 414 about 90 days ago. That is about the time frame you might expect the notice of sale to appear.

The last step in the process is when the bank takes back these properties, and that is when the Trustee's Deed gets recorded. June was at 145 which isn't even close to the highs of July, August, and September of last year.

All in all, it appears to be kinda the same ole same ole when it comes to how many foreclosures are showing up. The only thing that I'm not sure of is if these numbers are being affected by some of the loan modification programs that are in place. It would appear that a smaller percentage of properties are going back to the banks, but I will be more comfortable saying that with a few more months of numbers.

Enjoy your July 4th Weekend!

No, I Can't Give You Any Documents!

I started in the title business 28 years ago. Those were the good old days. I began in customer service for Safeco Title Co. and delivered all kinds of documents and reports. One of those reports was called a property profile.

The property profile in those days included a copy of the tax roll and a grant deed and maybe a printout of some sales comparables for the area. All of these were printed from microfiche and certainly took time to put together.

Over the years these property profiles have grown to include;

• neighborhood information
• demographics
• copies of open trust deeds
• sales comps and maps that locate those comps
• plat maps
• aerial maps

Yesterday was a huge announcement in my world. The department of insurance issued an opinion almost all of these tools we have been supplying we are now no longer allowed to provide.

The only item our compliance people are letting us supply now is the tax roll information. This seems crazy to me, 28 years ago when I first got in to this business I was able to provide more than that. In order to get any of these documents in the future someone has to actually be in an escrow with us.

So a realtor can not ask us for a copy of a grant deed before going on a listing appointment to make sure they are meeting with the correct parties. We can no longer send someone a copy of a notice of default or a copy of a trust deed which have always been used to help the consumer.

We are being told that our customers only option is to sign up for a service that will cause them to pay for these documents. I worry about these services having the necessary expertise to deliver the correct documents. After all it takes our people years of training to find these documents before making copies of them. I am truly concerned that this could be a real problem for consumers.

My thoughts and concerns don't matter though!

The last 24 hours has been filled with delivering this message to our many customers. They have all been great and didn't take any shots at the messenger (me).

Many customers had one question I honestly don't have a real good answer for. That question is why can't you give us copies of deeds or maps? These are some of the very basic tools that we have readily available.

Maybe one of you reading this has an answer. I would love to hear it.

For those of you in California I would also love to hear what your title company representatives are telling you.