A new buyer came to me the other day… actually, I was picking up my open house signs, she liked my aura and said I had something positive about me and she asked me for my card. Anyway, she is interested in finding a property in the $100,000 range. Suprised to say, there are over 15 condo’s available in Santa Clara County in that price range. Amazing!

The condo’s tend to be in the eastern area and over 20 years old. I am happy to send you a list of them if you are interested.

From my in house lender at Intero Jadell Schadewitz jschadewitz@theloansource.com there is good and bad … mostly good news on the horizon…

There are greener pastures ahead of us in the Real Estate business in 2009.  As of Monday January 5th the Federal Government has started buying Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage securities at a very low price.  This action has brought tremendous support to conforming mortgage bonds this week.  The Fed plans to buy mortgage securities for the next six month and essentially force mortgage rates to stay low for that period of time.  There was talk of them doing this for 1 year, but the latest seems to be for six months.

What does that mean to you and me???  Well basically we will probably see the lowest 30 year fixed confirming interest rates in our life time.  Forget about the all time low, this will be a record breaking year.  And that means people will be buying!  Now is the time to get out there and meet some buyers in the conforming loan price range. This range is basically $695,000 and below purchase price for those with 10% down, and $781,000 purchase price and below for those with 20% down.  This is based on a max conforming/jumbo loan of $625,500.  I would be out meeting people in the price range as much as possible.

Now for the not so good news.  You and your buyers must come to expect massive volatility in mortgage rates and processing turn times for the next two months.  Here’s the problem we are facing as lenders right now.  The rates should actually be even lower than they are today, but they are artificially high due to a couple reasons.  First, is that the lenders have hemorrhaged losses and are trying to take some profit off the table while its available.  The second and most important reason the rates are artificially high is because the lenders can’t possibly handle the volume of people who want to get a loan.  So in order to slow down people from submitting applications they will increase rates.  We even saw a lender this week completely cut off locks mid day because they just can’t handle anymore.  Because of this phenomenon lenders can quote 5.0% in the morning and 5.875% in that afternoon on the same day, and thus the massive volatility.

How did it get this bad with lenders being backed up?  Well lenders have been cutting cost for the past year by laying people off.  Everyone from loan originators, underwriters, doc drawers, funders, and processors.  In addition to that about 70% of the institutions have gone out of business in 2007 and 2008.  That leaves the people left to handle all the demand, and it’s not nearly enough.  I talked to one lender who is currently doubling their staff to try to keep up.  I personally believe it will be at least two months until the lenders and staff up and get caught up with the demand.

Time to buy is drawing near my friends!

Today, I made a big move to Intero Real Estate. I look forward to continued success in real estate with the support of Intero. Basically, I moved right across the street! Easy and wonderful offices!

Holiday spirit is in the air- smells like PINE! Lots of neighbors were busy putting up lights this weekend! I delivered 17 trees to my neighbors and many of them quickly put lights put them up and covered them with lights. The tradition for Willow Glen, in case you are curious, is to have them 6 feet from the sidewalk and have a white light on top. Whatever you do, enjoy it, we are very lucky to live here!

Holiday spirit smells like PINE!

Check out this cool article I found from my friends at Lookiloos.com. Great way to be green if you have the green…

I am suprised that this house is still for sale! So much charm, old world feel, history, beauty, LAND, details. Love this house!

Check out this link for more information about the historical aspect of the house! Historical 1252 Cherry Ave

People often ask how sales are and how Willow Glen is doing. In a nutshell, Willow Glen had 8 sales in the last week. The week before it was 6 sales. There were two sales over a million $. The first one was at 1115 Carolyn Ave. with a list price of $1,979,989 3,825 sq ft. The other was at 1821 Campbell Ave. listed at $1,689,000. So sales are still happening.

The count of how many houses are on market in WIllow Glen is a bit higher than most realtors would like at 259. Healthy number is 225 for WG.

The rose garden realtors tour is in its infancy right now with about 12 realtors touring all the new Rose Garden listings every first and third Wednesday morning. The week of Oct. 15, our first house was A STUNNING home at 915 Chapman St. 6077 sq. ft. house with Four bedrooms and 3.5 baths tennis court, pool and huge game room. Priced at $2,850,000 this house really has it all! I know I could live there and be happy!

Check out this amazing bonus room being used as an artists room. This picture does not do it justice!

Today was the first tour for the Rose Garden area of Willow Glen (especially close to my heart as I got married at the Rose Garden). Here we are at Zanato’s at Naglee and Bascom.

The tour consisted of 9 homes and was organized and led by Nora Sandoval with the well respected Sereno Group. For the first tour, I was impressed with the fact that close to 20 agents attended. We were all seasoned agents and were really looking to bring value to our clients through knowing the newest properties on market.

As always there are some amazing properties available in San Jose. The total inventory for Santa Clara County is 6360 (4823 single family homes and 1537 for condos). Sales for the Willow Glen area of San Jose have dropped to 7 from 13 last week. The count of how many houses are on market for Willow Glen (area 10) is 256 (last week it was 249). A balanced healthy number is 225 for Willow Glen, so as suspected with this crazy economy, we are still out of balance and it is still very much a buyers market.

Two houses that peaked my interest on the Willow Glen (San Jose) tour Thursday. The first was 1302 Mildred Ave.

A beautiful colonial home- unusual for the Willow Glen area. This 2850 sq ft. home has a wine cellar, 6534 sq ft lot, beautiful details and finish work and a 1000+ ft basement (imagine the possibilities!!). Walk to town on a prime street! Listed at $1,699,000.

My other top pick is listed by one of my good friends at Coldwell Banker Anne McDonough at 1015 California Ave.

Most realtors thought of this house as a tear down as it needs a lot of work and has some serious foundation issues. It is a 2 bed 1 bath 1200 sf ft home on 8300 sq ft. lot. PRIME tree lined street, walk to town and parks. It is listed at $800,000. I will be keeping my eye on this one as $800,000 may be a bit steep for builders right now.

What is your favorite listing? How much do you think builders will pay for a tear down on a prime street in Willow Glen?