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Dawn Sells San Diego

Kensington Home for Sale in San Diego

November 18th, 2009

Kensington Real Estate in San DiegoSan Diego Real Estate Blog

       

1934 Kensington Home for Sale – This Spanish Architecture Home has all the charm you would expect in this history rich part of San Diego County. This home has 4 bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms and is over 2,500 Square Feet. There is 1 bedroom and 1 full bathroom downstairs. This 1930’s Kensington home has a large family room that is open to the kitchen. Original wood floors add to the charm of this San Diego gem. If you would like to view this Kensington home make sure you contact us right away. Priced at $749,000.

      

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed. 

Twitter San Diego Real Estate

November 18th, 2009

San Diego Real Estate Dawn Sells San Diego on TwitterSan Diego Real Estate Blog 

Twitter San Diego Real Estate

Follow Dawn Sells San Diego on Twitter

You can follow Dawn Sells San Diego on Twitter. Our San Diego Real Estate Twitter has all of our blog posts tweeted as well as all information pertaining to the San Diego Real Estate Market, News and Trends. Twitter is a great way for us to stay in touch with home buyers and home sellers in San Diego County.

We also keep you updated on foreclosure and short sale properties that we are selling and up to date information on the latest foreclosure and short sale news. Twitter is an excellent micro-blog for getting San Diego Real Estate Tweets out fast to our followers. If you want to follow the best San Diego Real Estate on Twitter make sure you follow us.

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed. 

Dawn Lewis at the Realtor Expo in San Diego 2009

November 13th, 2009

San Diego Real Estate Blog – November 13, 2009

Dawn Lewis stopped by the National Association of Realtors NAR Realtor Convention and Expo that’s being held at the San Diego Convention Center. Dawn took some video footage to upload to YouTube to share with other Realtors and everyone else interested in this great event for Real Estate Agents. Enjoy the videos of the NAR Convention and Expo 2009 event that San Diego is very proud and honored to be hosting. Stop by if you can and check it out.

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

San Diego Foreclosures

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San Diego Foreclosures            San Diego Green Homes

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed. 

San Diego Obama Home Rescue

November 13th, 2009

Loan Modification Chart Department of TreasurySan Diego Real Estate Blog

CNN Real Estate has two interesting articles on the Obama Home Rescue Plan. The first article titled “Obama home rescue: 650,000 get help” talks about how bank are helping home owners stay in their homes by modifying their home loans. The article states in many places about these 650,000 homeowners being put into a “trial loan modifications under the president’s foreclosure rescue plan”. Basically the homeowners are not really getting a loan modification their just getting a trial loan modification. Here are a couple of excerpts from the CNN article:

Some 650,000 troubled borrowers have been put into trial loan modifications under the president’s foreclosure rescue plan, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.

That number represents 20% of eligible homeowners at least 60 days behind in their payments, according to the Treasury report. This is up from 16% a month earlier.

Despite the progress, housing counselors say the number of people falling into foreclosure vastly exceeds the ranks getting assistance. The number of filings hit a record high of 937,840 in the third quarter, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed homes. That’s a 5% increase from the second quarter and a 23% jump over the third quarter of 2008.

The $75 billion Obama plan is “lagging behind the massive number of foreclosures that continue to pile up,” said John Taylor, head of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

But administration officials have said that the program, which was projected to help up to 4 million homeowners, is on track.

The rescue tries to keep borrowers in their homes by adjusting monthly payments to no more than 31% of a borrower’s pre-tax income. Servicers, borrowers and investors can get financial incentives to participate.

Administration officials have been pressuring loan servicers to ramp up their modification efforts. Many people have complained that financial institutions lose their paperwork, transfer them repeatedly between departments and require that they fill out applications again and again.

But the rising unemployment rate is prompting more homeowners, even those with strong credit histories, to fall behind on payments. And the president’s plan is not designed to help the jobless.

At the end of the article in the article there was the sentence:

What’s becoming even more important is how many people in trial modifications receive permanent adjustments.

The words “permanent adjustments” went to another article titled “Long-term Obama loan modifications prove elusive”. This article talks about how many of the trial loan modifications are not and will not turn into permanent loan modifications. The loan servicers state that they are having a hard time getting the homeowners to send them proper paperwork to complete the process. Here’s some information directly from the article:Obama Loan Modification Plan

Half a million people are now in trial modifications under the Obama administration’s mortgage rescue plan, but getting them permanent help is proving to be difficult.

The foreclosure prevention plan, which reduces eligible borrowers’ monthly payments to no more than 31% of their pre-tax income, requires homeowners to make three on-time monthly payments before they can receive a permanent modification.

Loan servicers use the trial period to verify borrowers’ income and ascertain whether they can handle the reduced payments.

But servicers say they are having a tough time collecting the necessary documents to determine whether troubled borrowers should receive permanent adjustments. They contend that some homeowners aren’t sending in their tax returns, bank statements and pay stubs. Borrowers, on the other hand, complain that their paperwork is being lost.

The Obama administration recently made several changes to the program to give the transactions more time and streamline the plan.

Last month, it extended the trial period by two months to give servicers more time to collect the documents. And last week, it announced that servicers could automatically move qualified borrowers into permanent modifications without their signatures.

The Treasury Department said these moves should make it easier for qualified borrowers to get permanent modifications, according to a spokeswoman. Officials are discussing ways to make it even easier, she said, including allowing servicers to access tax records directly from the Internal Revenue Service.

It is in servicers’ interest to convert eligible borrowers since they only get incentive payments when the modification is made permanent, the Treasury spokeswoman said. Plus, if the government finds institutions to have wrongly denied swaths of people, it could impose penalties.

“Treasury is also working intently with servicers to help ensure that they execute in helping more borrowers convert to permanent modifications,” she said.

Who’s to blame?

Servicers say they are wrestling with getting the completed documents they need to put borrowers in permanent modifications.

At JPMorgan Chase, for instance, representatives call and send letters to homeowners detailing what they still need to mail in. The bank says it has improved its system for collecting paperwork so that lost documents are not the problem. The issue, it says, is that homeowners are simply not sending in what’s required.

Many borrowers are growing increasingly nervous as they near the end of their trial modification periods with no decision from their servicers.

Jim Copley, a Minneapolis homeowner, was given a trial modification five months ago. He found he could no longer afford his $1,650 monthly payments after the housing collapse decimated his home-painting business.

After receiving a temporary adjustment that cut his payments to $955 a month, Copley sent his servicer, Bank of America, all the required income documentation in June. He was shocked to learn two months later that there was some paperwork missing. He called again and was told that his file was, in fact, complete and that he should continue making reduced payments until he was told otherwise.

The loan modification HOPE from the Obama Administrations seems to be again lots of HYPE and falls in with all the other UTOPIA DREAMS of the current leadership. Everything is a temporary fix. We need permanent solutions. Let’s let things run their course without big brother intervention and economics, good and bad, will cycle through. I wonder what’s next.

 CNN Articles

 http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/10/news/economy/obama_mortgage_plan/index.htm

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/16/news/economy/Obama_modification_program/index.htm?postversion=2009101611

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

San Diego Foreclosures

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed. 

2010 San Diego Real Estate Market

November 12th, 2009

2010 San Diego Real Estate MarketSan Diego Real Estate Blog

2010 San Diego Real Estate Market

I know it’s still 2009 November and it might be a little early for 2010 San Diego Real Estate Market predictions but I think I’ll give it a shot. 2010 in the San Diego Real Estate Market should show more foreclosures than we had in 2009. In 2009 many foreclosures were held off of the market due to the moratoriums. Now that many of the foreclosure moratoriums are lifted the banks are gearing up to get the REO’s off of their books. 2010 in San Diego and many parts of the country will be known as the year of the “Last of the Foreclosure Market”. There will be more foreclosures after 2010 into 2011,  2012 and 2013 but 2010 will be the last big year for foreclosures.

There will still be more short sales and some banks are moving faster on them. There’s lots of talk about the short sales being streamlined and moving through the system faster. In 2010 it might just be a lot of false hope in this area. I hope I’m wrong and we see the short sales as a whole (not just select banks) move through the system fast and to a sale but it might just be a lot of hype. Systems like REOTrans are setting up to do short sales but I’ll believe the push towards short sales over foreclosures by the banks when I see it.

For homebuyers in 2010 it should be a delight with more inventory coming into the San Diego Real Estate Market. In some price ranges like the lower end first time home buyer prices under $400,000 there still will be a fight with other buyers to get the homes. There are way too many buyers and investors in the under $400,000 range in many areas of San Diego County that will keep this price range in very short supply in 2010. The upper end in non-coastal areas will still slide a little lower in 2010. We’ll see how this worked out in 2011.

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

San Diego Foreclosures

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed. 

San Diego Realtors Conference and Expo 2009

November 12th, 2009

William Shatner in San Diego 2009 Realtor ConventionSan Diego Real Estate Blog

San Diego is the location for the 2009 Realtors Conference and Expo that is set to kick off this week at the San Diego Convention Center. San Diego is called Americas Finest City and for many Realtors who haven’t visited San Diego before they’ll see why. The weather here has been great and unfortunately some colder weather is due in the next few days. But compared to the rest of the country it will still be very nice.

Realtors coming to San Diego will be treated to a world class city and a world class event. The 2009 Realtors Conference and Expo is shaping up to be the best ever. William Shatner of Star Trek and other TV shows and movies is slated to there at the National Association of Realtors booth on Saturday between 1 and 4. NAR never disappoints at this event and the list of celebrities and speakers is long and famous. If you’re a local San Diego Realtor stop on by and say hi. If you’re flying in from somewhere else enjoy my home town, San Diego.

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed. 

Extended First-Time Home Buyer $8,000 Tax Credit

November 9th, 2009

San Diego Real Estate Blog

The First-Time Home Buyer $8,000 Tax Credit was just extended until April 30, 2010 by the U.S Congress.

US Government 2009

Expands the credit to grant up to $6,500 credit to current home owners purchasing a new or existing home between November 7, 2009 and April 30, 2010.

Here is more information about how the Extended Home Buyer Tax Credit can help prospective home buyers become part of the American dream.

Who Qualifies for the Extended Credit?

First-time home buyers who purchase homes between November 7, 2009 and April 30, 2010.

Current home owners purchasing a home between November 7, 2009 and April 30, 2010, who have used the home being sold or vacated as a principal residence for five consecutive years within the last eight.

To qualify as a “first-time home buyer” the purchaser or his/her spouse may not have owned a residence during the three years prior to the purchase.

If you or you have purchased a home between January 1, 2009 and November 6, 2009, please see: 2009 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit.

Which Properties Are Eligible?

The Extended Home Buyer Tax Credit may be applied to primary residences, including: single-family homes, condos, townhomes, and co-ops.

How Much Is Available?

The maximum allowable credit for first-time home buyers is $8,000.

The maximum allowable credit for current homeowners is $6,500.

How is a Buyer’s Credit Amount Determined?

Each home buyer’s tax credit is determined by 2 additional factors:

The price of the home.
The buyer’s income.

Under the Extended Home Buyer Tax Credit, credit may only be awarded on homes purchased for $800,000 or less.

Buyer Income

Under the Extended Home Buyer Tax Credit, which is effective on November 7, 2009,  single buyers with incomes up to $125,000 and married couples with incomes up to $225,000—may receive the maximum tax credit.

These income limits have changed from the 2009 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit limits. If you or your client purchased a home between January 1, 2009 and November 6, 2009, please see 2009 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit.

If the Buyer(s)’ Income Exceeds These Limits, Can He/She Still Get a Credit?

Yes, some buyers may still be eligible for the credit.

The credit decreases for buyers who earn between $125,000 and $145,000 for single buyers and between $225,000 and $245,000 for home buyers filing jointly. The amount of the tax credit decreases as his/her income approaches the maximum limit. Home buyers earning more than the maximum qualifying income—over $145,000 for singles and over $245,000 for couples are not eligible for the credit.

Can a Buyer Still Qualify If He/She Closes After April 30, 2010?

Under the Extended Home Buyer Tax Credit, as long as a written binding contract to purchase is in effect on April 30, 2010, the purchaser will have until July 1, 2010 to close.

Will the Tax Credit Need to Be Repaid?

No. The buyer does not need to repay the tax credit, if he/she occupies the home for three years or more. However, if the property is sold during this three-year period, the full amount credit will be recouped on the sale.

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

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Birch Aquarium at Scripps in San Diego

November 9th, 2009

Birch Aquarium San Diego WhalesSan Diego Real Estate Blog

I’ve been going to the Birch Aquarium at Scripps in San Diego for years. Recently I decided to take my 1 year old granddaughter there to see the fish. She first saw the huge whale fountain when you walk up from the parking lot towards the aquarium and her face lit up with excitement. What a day we had. She loved it. The Birch Aquarium is located at 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla, CA 92037 and is very easy to find off of Route 5. The Aquarium is part of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

At the lobby of the aquarium is a large cylinder tank of fish, I believe they were anchovies and they swim in a circle and are really cool to watch. There are many tanks of fish and other sea life and the main aquarium is huge. There is a really neat area in the back of the aquarium where you can touch the sea creatures in the tide pools. If you’re looking for a great way to spend the day in San Diego make sure you visit the Birch Aquarium.

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

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Channel 10 San Diego I-Team

November 8th, 2009

San Diego Real Estate Blog

I just got finished watching an excellent report on Channel 10 News and I wanted to share it on my Blog because I think it’s worth watching. The show was a half hour and this is only one of the segments. It was very informative about San Diego real estate, auctions, loan modifications, and investment properties.

This story is called:

Builders Default On Land, Able To Buy It Back Cheaper At Auction

http://www.10news.com/video/21522316/index.html
 
Lauren Reynolds
10News I-Team Reporter
_____________________________________________________

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed. 

Escondido Renaissance Faire San Diego 2009

November 8th, 2009

Escondido Renaissance Faire San Diego 2009 Green ManSan Diego Real Estate Blog

Escondido, CA. November 2009

We decided to go checkout the Escondido Renaissance Faire at Felicita Park in Escondido in North County San Diego. The Renaissance village known as “Village of Falconbridge” had an admission price of $16 per adult. I thought it was a little steep for a ticket but after seeing how much it took to put this event together I thought it was well worth the admission price.

Felicita Park itself is covered with large oaks and Sycamore trees and is great outdoor park in San Diego. This event had a true feeling of a Medieval Village complete with knights, Ladies, and everything you would expect. Most people were dressed up in medieval attire and really looked good. There was entertainment, like sword fighting, battles, singing, shoes and lots of other festivities. Lots of merchants and food too.

If you missed it in 2009 make sure you visit the Escondido Renaissance Faire at Felicita Park in 2010.

Some Videos from the event.

If  you need help buying or selling a home or condo in the San Diego area make sure you contact us we’re your San Diego Realtor.

San Diego Foreclosures

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All Information is believed to be correct but not guaranteed.