Charm City Baltimore Real Estate: Baltimore, Maryland Real Estate & Homes

The internet has certainly revolutionized the way that people shop for real estate. It has also made it much more likely that inaccurate, out-of-date, and even fraudulent information makes it into your inbox. Here’s a primer for the homebuyer in the Internet age.

The MLS
Before the Internet was born, listings were literally kept in a book — available at each real estate office — containing the listings that office’s agents were presenting to the public. Searching for a home meant a lot of driving around looking for signs, visiting offices to look at the listing books, and a reliance upon the agent knowing what was available that met your criteria.

Once the Internet was widely available, the real estate industry was one of the earliest players and multiple listing services quickly got their member brokers to agree to make everyone’s listings available to the general public. Brokers also wanted to make the MLS available on their own websites, and so an Internet Data Exchange agreement let the number of sites who carried listing data multiply quickly. National search sites, such as REMAX.com and Realtor.com, started to bring together listing data from all across the country. Others came up with the idea to offer computerized property evaluation services, and another group of sites let customers who had visited certain properties blog about their impressions of it, so that the next buyers who came along could read about the property’s weaknesses and strengths without stepping foot inside it themselves. The modern Internet is bulging at its virtual seams with real estate related data of all kinds.

Buyer Beware
The problem is that some of that information is garbage. While many sites are great at importing new data, old data sits around long after its useful. Buyers I work with will often come to me with questions about a property they found on one website, but not on another. When I investigate on the MLS directly, I’ll find that the property isn’t actually for sale. Sometimes it was withdrawn, or the listing expired, months ago. In one recent case, the property had been sold two years earlier!

Another major source of inaccurate information are the property evaluation websites. Several recent studies have found large margins of error in these computerized estimates of value. On the largest of these sites, their zesty evaluations were routinely off by over 7%, and you had a one in eleven chance that your estimate would be off by a whopping 25% or more. Now, if your house is worth $200,000, a 7% routine error equals $14,000!

The newest trend in real estate sites are the blogging sites where, in theory, you learn details about properties that the bloggers have visited. However, there are no methods to prove that these visits actually took place, or that the blogger might not actually be the seller of a competing property down the block who went online to trash the competition.

The Solution
The best way to make sure you do not use wrong information in your home search is to ask your real estate professional for the sites that offer data of the highest integrity. In my practice, the sites I recommend are all ones that I know import information on a daily basis directly from our MLS and routinely remove listings that are sold, withdrawn and expired, such as the two largest national sites I’ve mentioned above, Realtor.com and REMAX.com. If you’re looking primarily for local data, then the best site is HomesDatabase.com.

A new service from our local MLS offers even better data, however. Many local real estate agents have subscribed to Listingbook, which taps directly into the very same MLS data that agents themselves use. I’ve been making this available to my buyers for about six months, with great satisfaction. Data is refreshed every 15 minutes, and the interface is intuitive and flexible. You’ll find many links here on www.charmcityrealestate.com that will allow you to open your own search using Listingbook. (Including that one!)

Northeast Baltimore has the quiet, green streets of a well-established suburb, but all with the convenient location you’d expect from a city address. This single-family Cape Cod has had all of its mechanical systems recently replaced, with the added upgrade of Central Air Conditioning. The Master Bedroom Suite has been renovated and a private full bath added with dressing area. Relax downstairs in the den in a comfy chair and your favorite TV program, or on the private deck in your shady back yard. Park several cars in the private drive, and wonder how all those other people survive in crowded city housing!

Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 2

Listed at $198,900

This property has a WalkScore ranking of 60 (Somewhat Walkable).
Click here for more information and the location of local resources.

Slide Show:

Everyone has read or heard of the problems in the housing market. But most of the news articles and commentary have focused solely on the single family home situation, whether townhouse or detached. The economic recession and foreclosures have created significant problems for condominium owners and buyers that have not been as widely publicized. So if you own a condo, or think you might like to, you should pay attention to these issues before you want to sell or buy.

Condominiums became popular as the price of owning a single family home grew, giving first-time buyers an option to become homeowners. Owning an apartment in a larger building, however, brings a secondary player into the process: the condominium association. The association is in charge of caring for the building itself, for the benefit of each individual unit owner. When a buyer goes to their bank to buy a condo, the bank not only has to approve the buyer for the loan, they also have to look at the condo association to make sure that its being well run, and is doing a good job of looking out for the property in which the bank will be investing the buyer’s mortgage.

For that reason, lenders and the Federal Housing Administration maintain lists of “approved” condominiums for which they will approve mortgage loans. The criteria for this approval are important, and should be examined by every condominium association Board of Directors and considered — along with their condo bylaws — as an important guideline for their operations. When your association falls off of these approved lists, it becomes much more difficult for your unit owners to sell their homes, which means prices fall and you have a group of unit owners who are not very pleased with your stewardship of their investments.

So, what are these criteria? Here are some of the items that can severely jeopardize your association’s ability to be approved:

• pending litigation against the condo association, or by the association against the builder/developer.
• 15% or more of the owners being delinquent on their condo fees, even by just one month.
• a high percentage of investor-owned units, or one entity owning more than 10% of the units.
The exact percentage varies, depending upon the type of loan or the lender, but in general terms
an association should keep a watchful eye on the number of investor-owners, and make sure that
the public record is correct as it classifies which units are owner-occupied and which ones are not.
• lack of a reserve fund equal to at least 10% of the annual budget.
• lack of necessary insurance coverage, both property and flood insurance.

If your condo association has issues with any one of these bullet points, it could mean that buyers will have a difficult time getting financing to move into your building, and that your current owners are unable to sell quickly and for the best value.

One other item for condo associations to consider: are your condo fees themselves becoming barriers to buyers? For instance, if a typical buyer interested in your building can afford a total monthly payment of $1,500 — including taxes, condo fees, insurance, principal and interest — they most likely can’t afford to purchase a unit and live in your building if the condo fee is $500 a month. Yet, I’ve seen the number of non-luxury condo buildings in the Baltimore area with condo fees far above $500 per month growing in number, squeezing out the buyers in need of financing that they rely upon to absorb units for sale. With those buyers no longer in the picture, your building now has to rely upon cash-rich buyers and investors as purchasers, prices have to fall to reduce the cost of financing, or the units may go unsold and your current owners move out and rent their property, becoming investor owners. If your condo association hasn’t submitted its subcontractor agreements or management contracts to competitive bidding in a few years, its time to do it. Saving money and lowering condo fees — while still maintaining and caring for the property — will be essential exercises for every condo trustee!

** Richard Pazornik of SunTrust Mortgage provided essential lender information for the writing of this article. He deserves my deepest thanks for sharing his expertise.

When this townhouse is your home, shopping, fine dining (or a quick meal), museums, theatre, concerts, and more are all just a short stroll away. Whether your itinerary includes the newest exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the String Quartet that’s performing the next Shriver Hall concert, the latest literary sensation at Barnes & Noble, or just a cup of Starbucks Latte, everything is so closeby. And so is the quiet of your backyard garden!

Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 1

Offered at $249,900

This property has a WalkScore ranking of 92 (Very Walkable).
Click here for more information and the location of local resources.

Slide Show:

As we begin the last month of the year, I wanted to review where we stand in the real estate world, both nationally and in Maryland. 2010 will be a critical year for many of us, not only for those involved with property, but for the economy in general.

We’re certainly better off in this holiday season than we were a year ago. At the end of 2008 the country felt like a roller coaster car speeding down the tallest slope with no brake and nobody at the switch. Right now, 2009 looks like the turning point, with the economy beginning its long climb up the next hill, real estate stabilizing and just in need of a little push to get back on the track. But there are several issues looming for next year which will really determine how things go for the forseeable future. Here are a few lumps of coal for your stocking:

• A recent Washington Post article quoted a national survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association which found that more than 14 percent of borrowers were in trouble on their mortgage. That translates into 7.4 million households either currently delinquent or in the foreclosure process, the highest level this particular survey has ever recorded. That means we have not seen the peak of foreclosures — and with unemployment continuing to rise the numbers will only get worse.
• The Baltimore Sun, again using information from the Mortgage Bankers Association, reported that in Maryland roughly 10 percent of homeowners deemed good credit risks were in trouble with their mortgage. We’re not talking subprime mortgages here, the widely known source of the financial troubles, but prime borrowers. Again, blame rising unemployment which has destabilized the family budgets of people who have had a history of prudent financial management. In round numbers, this adds 77,000 homeowners to the list of those at least one month behind on their payments.
• Recent widely reported gains in regional home sales and a decrease in the housing inventory seems to be coming from short sales and foreclosures going under contract (and not necessarily going to settlement). From my anecdotal sources, traffic on regular owner-occupied listings — where a bank is not involved — is practically non-existent. This means that unless you’re in distress and buyers smell blood, they aren’t interested in seeing your listing. And, as we saw in the last item, there could be 77,000 more properties on that distressed list that we have to work through next spring.
• Most of our buyers, especially first time homebuyers,  in the last year have used FHA loans because they had the least stringent requirements for credit score and money down, and allowed more generous assistance from Sellers. So while the extension of the tax credits until the end of June, 2010 is a wonderful thing, it seems to be coming with a simultaneous tightening of credit from the FHA. The Washington Post reports that new FHA guidelines currently under development will raise the amount of money required from buyers — from 3.5% of the purchase price to 5% of purchase price — while cutting the allowed Seller contribution in half (from 6% to 3%). Not only will this shrink the pool of qualified buyers considerably, the FHA will also raise the capitalization required from lenders who issue FHA insured loans — a move that will most likely cut the number of loans available, if not the number of lenders who will consider issuing them.

Certainly the situation in residential real estate is worrysome as we head into the new year. But it might not be the most dangerous. Many experts are warning that the biggest problem looming on the horizon is in the commercial real estate market, as last week’s potential meltdown at Dubai World illustrated. While that particular sovereign wealth fund made European markets tremble, and we were told that the US market has little exposure to it, there are enough potential problems here at home to make us weak in the knees. Moody’s Investor Services reported last week that it expects the value of US commercial real estate to continue to fall well into 2011. This is on top of losses in this sector which have already totalled 42.9% since the peak in 2007. The total devaluation from the peak may well reach 55% before things begin to turn around.

The determining factor in these losses? Yep, you guessed it… unemployment. With fewer people working, office spaces and commercial spaces don’t need to be as big. Demand for office buildings drops, and fewer companies are growing and demanding more space from their landlords. Also, with more people encouraged to buy homes and get their tax credit, demand for multifamily rental units has also dropped, hurting landlords’ cash flow and making it more difficult for them to keep up on their mortgages.

Now, with all this coal in your stocking, remember you can’t really burn it anymore to lower your heating bills. Global warming, you know. Ho, ho, ho.

The Senate of the United States has passed legislation that not only extends the $8000 tax credit for first time homebuyers, but that expands the stimulus and offers a $6500 credit for current homeowners (who have been in their homes at least five years) to sell and move up into a new primary residence. Both of these would be available for contracts ratified by the end of April, 2010 and that settle before the end of June.

When I called for the extension and expansion of the credit in this blog a few months ago, not many of my colleagues gave the proposal much chance of actually coming to pass. Thank goodness there was one civic minded Republican and former Realtor, Johnny Isaacson from Georgia, who was able to give a bi-partisan impetus to the measure and who has championed it through. The House of Representatives now must pass the bill and send it to the President, who has indicated he will sign it.

Hopefully this will coax skittish buyers back into the market, and give encouragement to the many families who are sitting tight in their now-too-small homes to jump into the real estate market to move up.

Housing led us down into this mess, and in order for public confidence to stabilize and for people to start feeling better about the economy, housing must lead us out. This bill is good, public-spirited legislation that points out the constructive role that the government can play in economic affairs, if politicians could simply get their own ambitions out of the way. Its too much to hope that this effort will lead to other bi-partisan efforts. But that is what the country needs right now.

A drop in consumer confidence frustrates the market as autumn settles in and buyers disappear.

For a transcript of this podcast, please email me at charmcityrealestate [at] verizon [dot] net.

Most real estate and mortgage professionals I’m acquainted with have had a disappointing autumn, at least as far as first-time homebuyers are concerned. When Labor Day had passed, we all felt that the Fall Market would bring a crush of new buyers who would be eagerly cramming our hallways to get a look at homes so that they could settle in time to qualify for the government’s tax credit. And in the first two weeks of September it started out that way.

And then something happened. No one is sure exactly why, but the enthusiasm waned. Interested buyers decided to postpone their search, or just disappeared altogether. Then in October the statistics — which always lag the event — started to shed some light: consumer confidence was starting to drop again. What was the reason?

The economy was continuing to shed jobs in numbers that, although declining, were still worrysome. But that had been the case throughout the summer, when the numbers were much bigger, and the buyers were out in force then.

September was colder and wetter than normal, and put everyone in a wintertime huddled pose on the street. But would chilly days be enough to keep interested people from getting money back from Uncle Sam?

Controversy erupted over whether or not the tax credit would be extended into next year, or even broadened. But would that cause people to postpone, or to hurry up and make sure they got theirs — just in case it went away completely?

Or, was it something even more personal? Was it the fear that began to seep into people’s minds as epidemic reports started to fill the news, and more untimely swine flu deaths caught the attention of the media? Certainly, most first-time homebuyers are going to be in the age group that has been identified as the most susceptible to this particular flu bug.

Its unlikely that we will ever have really clear data. But I’m putting my money on the pigs.

Second of three podcasts presenting an overview of the material presented at an in-person buyer seminar. In this episode: searching for the right home and writing the offer to purchase.

For a transcript of this podcast, please email me at charmcityrealestate [at] verizon [dot] net.

This is the time of year when people just sit inside during the dog days of a southern summer. High humidity, hot temperatures, and a city where not everything is air-conditioned all combine to slow down real estate activity. Even in good years, beach vacations and summer camps tend to slow down every business, and ours is no exception.

But this year is not so bad. That’s an incredibly good sign, given the market slump we’re coming out of. Federal homebuyer incentives are encouraging traffic through listings, and a wary sense of confidence that things are slowly getting better are having an overdue good effect. Cross your fingers that the fall market, which usually starts about Labor Day, will come roaring back.

I’d write more, but its just too hot.