Zillow.com Advice

On Trulia.com, anyone can post questions and have agents and real estate professional answer their questions. This is concerning a very frustrated woman who has made 3 offers on a bank owned property to no avail. Come to find out the listing agent wrote an offer for one of his own buyers and their offer was accepted and was less than her final offer. She becomes slanderous of the other agent in her question (which is why I'm not posting her question verbatim), but I attempt to get to the bottom and find a solution.

Here was my response:
It is extremely difficult when dealing with banks, and circumstances (no responses) like what you have explained happen often in the reo world. I coach buyers in these situations to place their strongest offer initially because I have seen this happen often. Banks have many reasons they accept the offers they do, they are under no obligation to respond quickly to your offer, and they are not likely to negotiate with you, when you place a low offer in the first week or so of an REO listing. 

Here are a couple questions that could help us see why you did not have your offer accepted:

- How long was the property on the market?

- Was your offer a cash offer?

- What was the home worth to you? 


These are important, because if the property was on the market for a very short time, and you were willing to pay $65k for the home, your initial offer should have been between $60k and $65k. List price is essentially irrelevant in these situations because homes that scream value will sell at or above list price 95% of the time. 

note: Some banks require the home to be on the market a certain amount of days before they will even look at the offer. Often 10-13 days. 

Was your offer a cash offer? This is important because I have seen the banks accept offers, that are not necessarily the highest offer, because it is cash. This could be the situation on yours. This is why I encourage buyers to make a strong offer initially, because you can encourage the bank to make a quicker decision, drastically increasing your chances getting an offer accepted. 

I hope this helps. 


You can read her questions and other answers by clicking here.

On Location: Tuscawilla Golf & Country Club

 On our journey to cover everything around town that makes Winter Springs and

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Oviedo jive, we are making a stop in the heart of Tuscawilla. The Tuscawilla community began development in the early 1970's and the Country Club and Golf Course were built in 1973. Since this point in time the community has thrived, drawing residents from all over the country. 

    Having lived in the area for nearly 20 years I, personally have never golfed at the course but have been there for weddings and like events throughout the years. The country club has taken a strong role in marketing to new homeowners in the area and has teamed up with us at Coldwell Banker by giving 6-month memberships to new homeowners effective from the purchase date on their new homes. From what I have seen during the interviews and tours of the course, they will continue to attract new members because there is nothing not to like about the facility.  


The course has breathtaking views as you drive through the unexpected rolling-

Florida hills, there are activities for everyone, and a great staff as you will see in the video. If you are interested in more information or a tour of the course and facilities or having an event held on site let me know and I will gladly put you in touch with Lindsay Kaye, the Membership Director, or Kelly Besser, the Catering/Event Manager. 

Enjoy! 

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What is a Zestimate???

This is a great article of Zillow.com that explains how they arrive at their "Zestimate" value on homes, and other tools they have available. Enjoy!


The Zestimate (pronounced ZEST-ti-met, rhymes with estimate) home valuation is Zillow's estimated market value, computed using a proprietary formula. It is not an appraisal. It is a starting point in determining a home's value. The Zestimate is pulled from data; your real estate agent or appraiser physically inspects the home and takes special features, location, and market conditions into account. Variations in price also occur because of negotiating factors, closing costs, and timing of closing. We encourage buyers, sellers, and homeowners to supplement Zillow's information by doing other research such as:

    * Getting a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) from a real estate agent

    * Getting an appraisal from a professional appraiser

    * Visiting the house (whenever possible)

    * Creating your own estimate using the My Estimator home valuation tool


What's the Value Range?

The Value Range, which is related to the Zestimate, shows the high and low values of a home (e.g., Zestimate is $260,503; Value Range is $226,638-$307,394). The Value Range can vary in magnitude depending on our historical ability to estimate similar homes. A bigger range indicates less data or more volatility in the data. A smaller value range means we have lots of information to help compute the Zestimate and Value Range.

My Zestimate is too low - or too high. What gives?

As we said, the Zestimate is a starting point in figuring out the true value of a house. For one thing, the amount of data we have affects the Zestimate accuracy. If your home facts are incorrect, you can update your facts, which may affect your Zestimate value. Also, we've never been to your house, never seen your expertise with colors and landscaping. So we've given you a way to consider them (and other things) in calculating a home's value. Use the My Estimator tool to create your own estimate. If you are estimating your own house, you can even make your estimate public, which is extremely valuable if you're posting your home for sale.

How does the amount of data affect it?

For example, the number of transactions in a geographic area affects how much we know about prevailing market values of homes there. The more transactions, the more data and the more accurate the Zestimate will be. Also, we use public data for house attributes, and some areas report more data than others. The more attributes we know about homes in an area (including yours), the better the Zestimate. Remember that homeowners can also update their home facts if they feel they are incorrect, and they may affect the Zestimate value.

Is a Zestimate an appraisal?

No. The Zestimate is not an appraisal and you won't be able to use it in place of an appraisal, though you can certainly share it with real estate professionals. It is a computer-generated estimate of the worth of a house today, given the available data. Zillow.com does not offer the Zestimate as the basis of any specific real-estate-related financial transaction. Our data sources may be incomplete or incorrect; also, we have not physically inspected a specific home. Remember, the Zestimate is a starting point and does not consider all the market intricacies that can determine the actual price a house will sell for, such as entertaining offers, negotiating, closing costs, timing, etc.

How do we come up with the Zestimate?

We compute this figure by taking zillions of data points - much of this data is public - and entering them into a formula. This formula is built using what our statisticians call "a proprietary algorithm" - big words for "secret formula." Currently, we calculate a Zestimate for more than 70 million homes and have data on 20 million more. 

What's in this formula?

One eye of newt ... Actually, it's less wizardry than mathematics. When our statisticians developed the model to determine home values, they explored how homes in certain areas were similar (i.e., number of bedrooms and baths, and a myriad of other details) and then looked at the relationships between actual sale prices and those home details. These relationships form a pattern, and they used that pattern to develop a model to estimate a market value for a home.

Is that all there is to it?

That's oversimplifying something that is incredibly robust and sophisticated, but it's the basics. Hundreds of home details feed into the formula and the home characteristics are given different weights according to their influence in a given geography and over a specific period of time. And, because the details are always changing, the Zestimate is extremely timely - it indicates the value of a home based on the most recent data available in an area. We receive new data and update the Zestimate regularly to capture new sales in a neighborhood. However, there is a delay between when the county is notified of a transaction and when we find out about it. We might not know for some time about the sale of that house down the street from you that happened last week.

Why do I see home values for the past?

We not only have Zestimates for homes now, we have used massive computing cycles to go back in time to generate historic Zestimates as well. Sound hard? It is, but it's critical because it allows you to see how a home (or an area) has appreciated in value over the years. You can see a home's appreciation in a chart that looks just like a stock table. Your home is, after all, a major asset in your overall portfolio.

How accurate is the Zestimate overall?

Our accuracy depends on the home data we receive; see our Data Coverage and Zestimate Accuracy table to see how accurate we are in your area. (You can refine the Zestimate using the "My Estimator" tool, adding things you may know about but we don't, such as remodeling information.) When it comes to unique homes (e.g., luxury mansions, unusual designs) we are less accurate in our Zestimates.

Who calculates the Zestimate and how do they do it?

We don't have homing pigeons flying from land parcel to land parcel to come up with the Zestimate for a house, but we DO have statisticians who work all day - and some nights - with a huge amount of data. They live and breathe valuation models and tweak algorithms to get us closer to actual market value.

But you don't know about my granite kitchen counter and my river view!

It's true, we've never been to your house, never seen your expertise with colors and landscaping. Only you know those things. So we've given you a way to consider them in calculating a home's value with the My Estimator tool. Enter an address for any home, then click on "Create an estimate." My Estimator will walk you through the steps to adjust your valuation.

Can I use the Zestimate to get a loan?

No, you can't. To get a federally guaranteed loan, a law called FIRREA (the Federal Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act) requires an appraisal from a professional appraiser. The Zestimate is our estimate of fair market value, a starting point for home buyers and sellers and anyone just plain interested in the value of houses. You can use it in negotiating, in judging market trends, and in calculating all sorts of things for your personal purposes. But, if you needed a loan or help in understanding the ins and outs of financing, please visit our section on investing.

Where does all the information come from? How can you know all this stuff?

It all comes from public data. The data is public because it's a consumer's right to have access to information about what is to be their most important investment - their homes. What? You've never seen it? That's because it is hard to find and hidden in multiple sources. Zillow has done the legwork for you by getting huge amounts of data from many sources and creating something unique that the public sources don't provide - a Zestimate of your home based on the public data.


*Source: http://www.zillow.com/wikipages/What-is-a-Zestimate/

Inspection Day

Men vs. Women in Homebuying

Closing Day...

Selling a condo? Better hope it's on the 'approved' list...

By Lew Sichelman

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Question: I own an apartment in a condominium development that I am trying to sell. I have a potential buyer who wants to use an FHA loan because of its low down-payment requirements, but he says my project is not on FHA's "approved" list. That strikes me as somewhat discriminatory, so my question is, does the FHA have such a list? And if it does, how come my condo isn't on it and how does it get on it? Thanks. W.F.

Answer: The Federal Housing Administration does indeed maintain a roster of approved condominium and townhome associations. Because of new rules which went into effect in February, if your development does not appear on the FHA's roster, your potential buyer will not be able to use an FHA-insured mortgage to purchase your unit.

Now the entire development has to apply to FHA for approval before any single unit can appear on that ever-so-important "approved" list. To apply, an association has to submit its entire set of governing documents, insurance, budgets and recorded maps.Under the new edict, the agency eliminated "spot approvals," which allowed individual units to become approved for government-backed loans without requiring the entire development or association to go through the approval process.

Before giving its blessing to a property, the FHA wants to be assured the financial condition of your association is strong and that there is no discriminatory language in the governing documents that would violate federal law. Consequently, it can be a long road for your association before you can pack up, move out and let a new owner move in.

There are other rules, too. Certain types of lawsuits -- the association cannot be involved in construction defect litigation, for example -- are verboten. Also, at least half the units must be owner-occupied, and no more than 10% can be owned by one person.

While an association can certainly attempt to obtain approval on its own, I'd suggest that it turn to a firm that offers such services. Navigating the intricacies of the application process and deciphering the complex web of legislation, regulations and guidelines is not for the faint of heart. Companies like FHA Pros (www.fhaprosllc.com) can much more efficiently handle the process.

Of course, not all associations can immediately jump on the application bandwagon. Often, the decision to become FHA-eligible has to be brought up at the next HOA board meeting. If that's the case at your project, you and your fellow owners can initiate the process. But again, once the board gives its okay, I'd recommend looking for someone to do the nitty-gritty dirty work for you.

Update on aid for struggling homeowners

Though the government's latest effort to save the homes of underwater borrowers who owe more than their houses are worth is voluntary, lenders contacted by the Government Accountability Office say they support the initiative, which is set to be implemented this fall.

Lenders like the program, which would allow any borrower to refinance into a new mortgage, this one insured by the Federal Housing Administration, because it lets them off the hook should borrowers default on their new loan, GAO said in a report earlier this month. Under the plan, which I want to stress is open even to borrowers whose current mortgage is not insured by the FHA, the government would bear the risk, not the original lender.

According to the initial program description, lenders must agree to write down the principal balance of the original first lien by at least 10%. The Treasury Department has designated up to $14 billion for the program.

But there's a catch. Isn't there always? Actually, there are several catches, but most importantly, borrowers have to be current on their payments to qualify. So if you are hoping to take advantage of Uncle Sam's largesse, keep making your payments if you are current and get caught up if you are behind.

Some of the other rules also might limit the number of borrowers who qualify. For example, the new mortgage cannot have a loan-to-value ratio of more than 97.75% of the property's current value. And if you have a second mortgage, the combined loan-to-value ratios of both the first and junior liens cannot be greater than 115% after you refinance.

Also, your loan application will have to be fully documented and supported by, among other things, tax returns, income and employment verifications and a new appraisal. And finally, unless you have a particularly strong record of making payments on time, your total debt, including car loans and credit card bills, cannot exceed 50% of your income.

Again, these are the preliminary parameters that were mentioned when the program was originally announced. They could change. There could be more hoops, or less, so stay tuned to this station for further information.