realtor

[Anonymous]

hi everyone. let me tell you my story first. i have already been pre-approved for 146,000, trying to buy in san bernardino county, california. i have the down payment and the closing costs, but its seems my real estate agents isnt very interested. ive been looking for about four months and every time i contact her through email or phone she hardly ever responds. ive asked her to put a couple of offers for me and she always gives me negative feed back. she tells me all the houses are being bought up by cash investors, and that its going to be almost impossible for me to get a house using fha. is anyone else having this problem. should i change my agents, thanks.

[MonkeyMan17]

Dump the agent....easy call

lots of agents looking for bidness

[Anonymous]

drop the realtor.

One thing I should mention that your realtor may have right in a way though, is that when you know you are competing against cash buyers (and often the opposing realtor will tell you this), you can not expect to underbid the property.  The realtor is right that in 95% of the cases, a REO bank will accept the cash offer over the FHA loan unless you make it worth their while.  SO you better be 10-15% higher than what you think the cash offers are going to come in at if you want to be realistic.  If you REALLY want a particular house, offer market value.  Alot of people are out there trying to underbid in houses with FHA loans (here in SoCal..I live in Temecula) and are not accepting the fact that most banks do know what their homes are worth now (that was not true 18 months ago as they were still asking too much more often than not).  Banks are willing to take more of a loss for a quick sale with no contingencies, but if they have to go the FHA/VA/USDA route they are going to want market price.

SO, get a new realtor for sure

be up front about what you are looking for and your expectations.  (my main one was I expeceted all calls/email to be returned in24 hours max, especially if it had to do with a new listing or a bid going in)

make sure the new realtor is comfortable with FHA loans and is going to work for you

then both you and the realtor make aggressive bids.  There are alot of epople jumping back into the investment game right now out here so as said before, you have to beat them by a decent margin for the bank to hassle with your deal.

[happy0510]

Dump...Dump...Dump that S-Bag.

I am in the SGV and FHA as well.  My Realtor is awesome to say the least.  It may take a few months, but that's the way it is. 

We have come across the cash buyer thing as well.  Hang in there!!

Let us know what happens!!

[Anonymous]

hi everyone. i get the feeling that this is just chump change to her. but, thanks for the help,  mickie, happie, monkeyman. can anyone refer a decent real estate agent. thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

Get rid of her!

Chump change or not that doesn't mean you deserve less!

My current agent helped my wife buy a bank owned home 10 years ago for $18K while she was in school! You NEVER got the impression she was doing less than 110% and she was always available. She helped sell the house 5 years later for $85K and it had inspection issue/termites. She took care of it all.  Again she didn't make a huge amount of money. She routinly sells $1.0M+ homes.

Fast forward to today and we're closing on a $625K house with her.  She never knew the day would come where we would be buying a much more expensive house. I can call her, email her, text message her ANY time I'd like and she will happily respond. She does 100% of ALL THE WORK that was needed to buy this house. She's been to town hall, the DEP, the soil testing service, met with an engineer, etc, etc, etc. We've been looking for 6+ months going out every Wednesday to look at houses. When it's all said and done when you factor in how much time she's spent with us it's not going to be a whole lot of money.

You want someone who's going 110% all the time for you.....not because of the money but because he/she doesn't know how to do it any other way! 

[Anonymous]

you will find that realtors who are lazy and do not like to stay on top of stuff will shy away from FHA or other gov't loans because:

to get the better deals, you need tp be ready to move quick

the realtor needs to be able to respond quickly to situations/listings

the realtor also needs to be able to very accurately guage the local market. 

Realtors that can do this seem to have no problem getting people into homes with FHA loans.  But you have to be able to move quick.  Get offers in within 24-48 hours of a house coming on the market (before the investors start showing up) and hopefully get under contract before alot of cash offers or investors take notice.  That is how we got ours.  We went the day it went out on the market.  I wrote on offer right there at the house with our realtor before my wife had even seen it.  Then she met us there when she got off work.  We then drove the offer over to the other realtors office and handed her the paperwork (she was local realtor obviously) and got to talk to here about the property a bit.  I think our quickness, fair but no BS offer, and personal contact by both us and our realtor is why we got the bid.  There was an offer higher than ours, and several cash offers lower than ours but we got it. 

[Anonymous]

thanks for the feed back you guys.

[Red22]

I'm in the SBDNO county as well and have been looking.  My agent responds when I call or email.  I just emailed him a new listing yesterday(4/20/10) and he responded within the hour and we are going out today....the agent was ready to go yesterday, but I couldn't make so today(4/21/10) it is. 

I suggest finding a new agent. No response is no excuse!!