The listings are coming!

As we leave the holiday season and head for the Spring our inventory here in Marin will increase more and more with each passing week until we peak in August or so. This week we had twice as many new listings as last week. Next week should be even better.

I promised a look into short sales so here we go! Short Sales have been very frustrating for buyers these past couple years. They can take anywhere between 3 months to 1 year or even more....there is nothing short about them! If a homeowner owes more than their house is worth (they cannot pay their mortgage anymore due to some sort of hardship) and they want to avoid foreclosure, they can attempt a short sale. Imagine if say "Bob Smith" owes 500K on his home in Petaluma. It is now only worth $350K. He puts it on the market and hopes the bank will eat the $150K (plus closing costs and back taxes). Once he has a Buyer he submits it to the bank along with his personal financial information and hardship letter. The bank then assigns someone from their loss and mitigation or short sale department who orders and appraisal etc... The process usually take a long long time...sometimes ending in foreclosure. The good news is that new government regulations are streamlining the process and soon (starting April 1st) the process is going to be standardized and much faster......we hope. I will keep you in the loop!

Whoa!

This week just flew by! Listings in Marin are just starting to come back on the market. Many Sellers take their homes off the market for the holidays and then re-introduce them in Jan. and early Feb. There were tons of new listings this week, but only about half were actually new listings. From here until August we will have more and more listings new listings.
Next week I will be explaining the mystery of short sales.