One of a kind Custom New construction home with 3 car attached garage and brick paver circle drive. Not a detail was missed in the making of this lovely home. This home boasts 4 bedrooms, 5.5 stunning bathrooms with a full finished lower level with wet bar. Stunning kitchen has maple olive 42inch cabinets and high end stainless steel appliances with Granite countertops with cold water faucet on island, double oven and range hood over island, and lovely turret style eating area with wall of windows. Beautiful contemporary fireplace, separates the kitchen from the 2 story family room with sliding door access to your awesome brick paver patio with outdoor fireplace. A 2 story foyer graces you as you walk in to this gorgeous home and leads you into your oversized living room that is pre-wired for a plasma and next to a large separate dining room with lovely moldings and chair rail. Two of the four bedrooms have their own private balcony and every bedroom has their own private full bathroom. The finished lower level has an exercise room, wine cellar, and lovely wet bar. Lower level is also pre-wire for theatre surround sound. Come view the many pictures this home has to offer at www.helenoliverihomes.com and call today 847-967-0022 to schedule a private tour of this wonderful home.

This property is exclusively listed by Helen Oliveri of Keller Williams Realty. For a private showing call 847-967-0022 or email helen@helenoliveri.com .

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Be it the real estate market in 2009 or any other real estate market for that matter, the structure of a real estate purchase contract offer can be the difference in it being accepted or rejected.

No, the offering price is not the only factor in negotiating a contract to purchase a home.

Regardless of the number of pages in the sales contract, a contract offer can be broken down into 3 separate parts which can be important to the seller: Price, Terms and Conditions.

Each has to be satisfactory in order to obtain seller acceptance. In some situations, full price offers are not acceptable due to the buyer’s terms and conditions in the contract offer. In other instances, contracts get accepted and signed even though the offer was much lower in price than other competing offers, but was more favorable for the seller in terms and conditions.

What then is the secret in preparing and submitting a contract offer to buy real estate? This is where the value of an experienced REALTOR and Buyer’s Agent is with providing assistance in preparing and structuring the contract offer in a manner that does not create questions or concerns for the seller and their listing agent when it is presented to them.

There is more to purchasing a home than just looking at houses, whether the home is in Iselin or Colonia, New Jersey, in Middlesex County or any other state for that matter.

The first step toward purchasing a home is obtaining Mortgage Pre-Approval from a reputable Mortgage Lender (Mortgage Pre-Approval Versus Mortgage Pre-Qualification), and be sure a copy is included with the contract offer. Why? The first question to be asked by the seller and listing agent at a contract presentation will be “Does the buyer have Mortgage Pre-Approval? And this is where the benefit of a Mortgage Pre-Approval letter provides advantages over a standard Pre-Qualification letter.

Secondly, there is no cardinal rule that there must be some fixed amount that a seller will negotiate from their asking price. Home buyers need to obtain factual sales information about the market area, and section of Town, they are considering buying in before submitting an offer. While it is very likely that sale prices have declined in the past few years, they have not dropped equally in all Towns and in all neighborhood locations.

Remember Economics 101 from Grammar School: “What’s true of the whole may not be true of the parts.” That is what I am referring to here. Real estate values are local, and various factors influence market value such as buyer demand, amount of homes for sale, mortgage rates, local economic conditions and so on and so on. As important, similar design and size homes may differ in value due to condition and improvements.

In preparing a contract offer, it is important that a buyer obtain a Market Analysis for the property being considered. A report like this can be prepared by the buyer’s agent and it should contain information comparing similar properties which are active on the market for sale, homes which expired and did not sell in the past six months, under contract sales and closed sales in the past six months. This information should also provide the asking price history and days on market before sold. With a report like this, a buyer can then have a better understanding of the real estate market and be better prepared when submitting a contract offer.

It is highly recommended that buyers obtain a blank contract of sale and addendums early in the home searching process. Contracts can be intimidating to many buyers. It would be much better to review the contract documents in advance of making a contract offer. Making a contract offer is an important decision. Being properly prepared is an important aspect of making a successful contract offer.

Thirdly, buyers should be completely aware of their personal finances and the total costs of purchasing a home. Buying a home involves down payment, expenses occurred during the purchase, such as mortgage application fee, inspection fees, and closing costs. It is important for buyers to obtain the estimates related to transaction expenses and closings costs. When a buyer is not properly prepared for expenses like these, they could have an affect on exactly how much a buyer has for the down payment which then could affect how much is needed in a mortgage to complete the purchase.

Buyers should be educated and informed when making an offer to buy a home.

Surprises are for birthdays, not buying a home!

D. Fialk

The key to understanding what’s happening for housing and real estate right now is to remember this: In a recovery that’s just getting going, don’t expect all the economic arrows to point the same way at any given moment.

The latest numbers on housing sales, prices, mortgage rates and foreclosures are great examples of that point:

Sales of existing houses came in on the upside for May, with a 2.4 percent increase nationally over the month earlier.

That’s the first consecutive monthly gain in resales in the U.S. since way back in September of 2005.

But then again — last month also saw sales of newly-constructed houses fall by six tenths of a percent, as low-priced foreclosures swamped the market and pulled buyers away from builders’ showrooms and subdivisions.

Meanwhile, prices in both the resale and the new construction segments continued to head downwards. According to the National Association of Realtors, the median home sale price in May was $173,000, 16 percent below what it was a year earlier.

The number one reason for the drop, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, was the heavy presence of foreclosures carrying rock-bottom prices in many markets.

Nationally, one of every three homes that went to closing in May was a “distressed” situation — foreclosure or short sale. In some hard-hit areas, the percentage was much higher — well over half.

Prices won’t really stabilize until foreclosures fall to a much lower proportion of total transactions.

Now, on the other hand, there were scattered reports of resale prices beginning to get a foothold. For example, in the Tampa Bay metropolitan market on Florida’s west coast, median prices jumped by four percent. They were also up slightly in Orlando.

On the sales side, Florida markets were red hot, with record increases in closed transactions. Florida as a whole saw a 16 percent statewide gain in May. But Broward County sales were up a phenomenal 47 percent and Orlando condo sales were off the charts for the month — up 206 percent!

Looking ahead, mortgage rates appear to have at least temporarily reversed their recent increases. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the average 30-year fixed rate loan went for 5.4 percent last week — that’s down from 5. 5 percent the week before and close to 6 percent just a few weeks ago, based on quotes from major lenders.

Thanks to slightly lower rates, homebuyers continue to pour into the mortgage market. Applications for home purchase loans were up by 7.3 percent last week, pointing to continuing strength in sales during the coming several months.

K. Harney

In a move to ward off foreclosure, a luxury condo developer has turned the units intended to sell for more than a quarter million dollars into a homeless shelter with the help of a New York-based nonprofit.

The Brooklyn units come complete with granite counter, terraces, marble bathrooms and walk-in closets, according to the New York Daily News, and the city is paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars per month ($90 per unit per night) to house homeless families in the city.

“City officials said the condos – which couldn’t attract buyers in the fizzled housing market – are part of an effort to help an “unprecedented” number of homeless families who have ended up on the street because of the tough economy,” according to the report.

It’s the first time luxury condo has gone homeless shelter, according to Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. Avi Shriki, the developer of the project, says leasing the building for the next 10 years to the Bushwick Economic Development Group, a non-profit homeless shelter group, was the best Plan B he could find.

He can pay the mortgage with the deal and still keep the building, instead of going into foreclosure.

M.A. Carr

Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s controversial new appraisal rules are now coming direct attack by the biggest lobby on Capitol Hill – the National Association of Realtors.

Though the association is saying nothing publicly, officials have confirmed to Realty Times that they are gearing up for a fight in Congress and elsewhere to derail the “Home Valuation Code of Conduct” (or HVCC) for 18 months.

The code, which took effect May 1, has been widely criticized for raising appraisal costs to consumers, encouraging the use of inexperienced appraisers willing to work for rock-bottom fees, and for giving too much control to unregulated “appraisal management companies,” some of them owned by major mortgage lenders.

The Realtors campaign is targeted initially at Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s chief regulator – James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency – and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo’s office drafted the HVCC last year as part of a settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Cuomo threatened to subpoena Fannie and Freddie executives as part of an investigation of the companies’ appraisal practices. No evidence that an investigation actually took place or turned up problems has ever been made public.

In a call to action memorandum to state Realtor association leaders last week, NAR laid out a strategy of fly-ins to lobby Congressional representatives, and said the association would pursue a legislative fix on the HVCC issue if Lockhart and Cuomo declined to go along with the idea of an 18 month moratorium.

The legislation could take the form of either a stand-alone bill or an amendment that could be attached to an appropriations bill already moving through Congress with a high likelihood of passage.

In identical letters to Lockhart and Cuomo, Charles McMillan, president of the National Association of Realtors, complained that the HVCC is causing significant problems for home sellers and agents – “delays in closings and cancelled sales, which result in artificially low existing home sales.”

In an unusual move June 23, Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the association, attributed a lower than expected increase in existing home resales in May to appraisal problems caused by the new code.

“Lenders are using appraisers who may not be familiar with a neighborhood, or who compare traditional houses with distressed and discounted sales,” said Yun.

In his letter to Lockhart and Cuomo, McMillan said the heavy involvement of lender-owned appraisal management companies leads to conflicts of interest. The association wants regulators – or Congress – to prohibit lenders from using any appraisal report from an appraisal management company where the lender, or the lender’s affiliate, has an ownership stake in the management firm.

K. Harney

Leaking toilets result in six billion gallons of water loss every day according to Richard Quintana, founder of AquaOne Technologies. That astonishing figure is a real problem with financial and physical effects. Here’s how the water gets washed away. Quintana says there are more than one billion toilets in the U.S. and, according to the American Water Works Association, one out of five leaks. The toilets can lose anywhere from 30 to 500 gallons of water daily just from a small silent leak that is the size of a staple.

According to a report from the Associated Press, handyman jobs are increasing for practical repairs like leaking toilets. These days, in a tough economy, homeowners are trying to preserve their homes and to conserve wherever they can. But, Quintana says it’s not just water loss which translates to financial loss that can hurt homeowners. Leaky toilets lead to black mold and even injuries.

“A senior who had a problem with his toilet getting plugged walked into the bathroom and didn’t notice the water on the floor and had a slip and fall injury,” says Quintana. Due to his age and the injury, the fall landed him in a nursing facility.

That’s why Quintana promotes the use of a small product that’s the size of a goose egg. The product, H2Orb, is a water management system that has a sophisticated microprocessor in it to help with toilet overflows and water loss by detecting, identifying, and resolving toilet malfunctions. The product was initially designed for use in senior housing and assisted living facilities but today it’s being used by homeowners to ward off toilet troubles.

Quintana says the product not only stops overflow but it also tells you where a leak exists. “It can tell you if you have a silent leak. A silent leak is often from a flapper that’s closed but it’s [slightly] warped,” says Quintana. The flapper is the part of the rubber mechanism on the flush valve that seals water into and out of the tank when the toilet is flushed. A silent leak can cause significant water loss.

“The H2Orb can tell you exactly what needs to be taken care of in your toilet. It will show you an icon on the device screen telling you to change a particular part,” says Quintana. The device actually sounds an alarm and stops the water flow. For more information visit “A toilet overflow creates a tremendous amount of property damage and one leaky toilet alone can cause that in your home,” says Quintana.

Here are a few tips to help prevent water loss and leaks.

1. Check toilet for cracks. Even a tiny crack in a toilet can cause significant water damage that may not be visible unless inspected thoroughly.

2. Make sure the base of the toilet is sealed using special waterproof caulking.

3. Replace flappers every two to three years or as needed.

4. Install appropriate device to detect leaks and manage possible toilet overflows.

5. Check for toilet sweat. Not a pleasant concept, it can cause water damage. In regions where the water coming into the toilet is colder than the humidity in the room, the toilet can produce condensation and leave a puddle of water behind the toilet.

Toilet insulation kits are available. They provide rigid pieces of foam that fit inside the tank and prevent the cold water from touching the tank walls. Or you can buy a new toilet with an insulated tank.

P. Chongchua

Now, mortgage modifications can include second mortgages — not just first mortgages — and cash incentives are sweetening short sale deals, thanks to new efforts by the Obama Administration.

The new efforts give some homeowners a second shot at a home-saving loan modification, especially if they were originally turned down — or turned off — because the second mortgage (piggy back, home equity loan or line of credit, etc.) impeded the process.

Other homeowners may now be able to take the short sale escape route from unaffordable mortgages that could otherwise wind up in foreclosure.

Second mortgage modifications

Loan modifications are designed to make the home loan more affordable, typically by reducing the interest rate, extending the term of the loan and, less often, by reducing the principal. They are not refinanced mortgages, which pay off the old mortgage with a new mortgage.

Under Making Home Affordable’s new second-lien program, borrowers whose first mortgages are modified will automatically have payments reduced on their second mortgages as well, provided the first and second-mortgage lender participates in the program.

Twelve mortgage servicers currently do. Among them are large banks including, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Countrywide, Citibank, Chase and others.

Eligible homeowners looking to modify their first mortgage must be an owner-occupant of the home; have an unpaid principal balance that is no more than $729,750; have a loan that was originated on or before January 1, 2009; have a mortgage payment (including taxes, insurance, and home owners association dues) that is more than 31 percent of their gross monthly income; and have a mortgage payment that is not affordable, perhaps because of a significant change in income or expenses.

Under the new second mortgage program, in addition to lowering the payment, lenders can also opt to erase a borrower’s second mortgage in exchange for a lump-sum payment from the government.

New short sale incentives

Short sale incentives were among recent refinements to the Obama administration’s housing rescue programs.

In a short sale, the lender closes the mortgage in return for whatever sale price the homeowner can net. However, the difference is sometimes considered income for which the selling homeowner may be taxed. It’s important to include a tax professional’s advice in the deal.

Under the new short sale incentive, lenders can receive a $1,000 payment from the U.S. Treasury for allowing the owner to sell the house for less than the amount owed on the mortgage and for accepting the proceeds as full repayment, rather than treat it as a short sale.

Lenders can also receive $1,000 for accepting a deed-in-lieu transaction, in which the deed is simply transferred to the lender instead of going through a costly foreclosure.

Homeowners who agree to short sales or deed-in-lieu deals can receive up to $1,500 in closing costs. To help stop second mortgages from blocking the deal, the Treasury will pay second lien holders up to $1,000 to relinquish their claims in such transactions.

B. Perkins

It might sound a little surprising, but in investment real estate, residential lots are hot, especially in markets that saw the highest peaks and the worst busts during the past three years.

On Florida’s west coast, Gary Tasman of Cushman & Wakefield affiliate Commercial Property Southwest of Florida, says bulk purchases of developed building lots are “really brisk right now” with prices in some local areas nearly doubling from their low point.

The reason: Home builders are now looking ahead to 2010 and 2011. They see the rebound already taking shape. And they need well-located lots ready to go for the future construction they’re planning.

The best deals are bank-owned lots taken back in foreclosures from earlier, unsuccessful developers. They often come with bare-bones pricing, but Tasman warns that rising demand – from builders and investors – is putting pressure on those prices.

For example, in Cape Coral, some lots that once were selling at $5,000 to $6,000 now command $9.000 to $10,000 or more, Tasman told Realty Times in an interview last week.

In other boom-to-bust-to-rebound markets – Arizona and California for instance – similar land rushes are getting underway again.

Gregory Vogel, CEO of the Land Advisor Organization, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, says demand for bulk-sale, deep-discount residential lots is now, in his words, “nothing less than stunning.”

Publicly-traded builders are scooping up developed lots by the hundreds in REO transactions, he told Realty Times, and are then “land banking” them for their own building – or for resale to other builders or investors – in the coming several years.

In one recent sale, Communities Southwest bought 891 foreclosed single family lots from Bank of America for $8.3 million. A major land banker in its own right for the past two years, Communities Southwest now is marketing about 2,000 lots – primarily targeted at builders gearing up for better days ahead.

But there’s an important factor to keep in mind if you’re looking to invest in residential lots in the coming months: There is virtually no financing available for developed lots. So-called “A-D & C” loans – that’s acquisition, development and construction – are few and far between from banks or other conventional lenders.

So buying lots at deep discounts – attractive as it may be — is an all-cash investment activity. You go in with your own bucks. Or you partner with equity investors who know good timing when they see it.

K. Harney

The most bearish of Wall Street economic analysts have made the same point for the past 18 months. There’s no recovery or rebound in the housing market, they said, until home builders start building again.

Hey there bears, here are the numbers you asked for: Last week the Commerce Department reported an unexpectedly large increase in new single family home starts during May – up by seven and a half percent.

That was the THIRD consecutive monthly gain in single family starts. Total starts, including multifamily apartment starts and condos, were up by 17 and a half percent!!

Not only were starts up a lot, but so were other key indicators of future home building activity: single family permits, which surged by about 8 percent. That was the second straight monthly gain in permits – and points to at least moderately higher starts in the coming six months to a year.

On top of the good news about new construction, which has clearly been the weakest segment of the housing market since 2007, we also got some other positive reports last week:

Consumer confidence, which is extremely important for home buying, was up again for the fourth consecutive month, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey.

Even retail sales were up slightly — and that’s an important sign that people are slowly coming out of the shell they’ve been in since last Fall, and are now starting to spend money again.

The latest inflation readings — both the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index — were down slightly in May. Despite rising gas price, a dollar bought a little more in goods and services last month than the month before. That’s good.

The National Association of Home Builders now projects that the current recession will end in the second half of 2009, with a one point five percent growth rate in the overall economy between July and December.

Finally, mortgage rates took a slight dip last week after several weeks of increases. Fixed thirty year rates averaged about 5.5 percent last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, after climbing to 5.6 percent the previous week.

Many lenders had actually been quoting much higher rates – all the way to 6 percent – because of inflation fears in the bond market.

We’ve definitely got to keep our eye on mortgage rates, but otherwise the rebound appears to be underway.

K. Harney

There’s no question about what had Washington buzzing the most last week – and that buzz is likely to continue for months.

It was the unveiling of President Obama’s far-reaching plans to reform the U.S. financial regulatory system – including important changes affecting home mortgages and real estate.

Though the plan is aimed mainly at banks, hedge funds, Wall Street and insurance companies , it also focuses on protecting consumers who take out mortgages, credit cards and other forms of debt.

Obama wants to create a new super-department – called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency – that would have the power to review, regulate and even ban loan products considered too risky for the mass market consumption.

It would be able to oversee first and second mortgages marketed by any source – from banks to mortgage companies, credit unions or brokers.

For Realtors, builders and mortgage companies, the new agency would take over a slew of important legal powers. For example, it would become the sole regulator for RESPA – the federal Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.

That law, administered by HUD since 1974, covers many key aspects of the home buying process – from the upfront “good faith estimates,” or GFE, disclosures to the settlement sheet itself.

Equally important, RESPA bans kickbacks, sets guidelines for title insurers and settlement service providers, and creates complex rules governing all “affiliated businesses” in the real estate, mortgage and title fields.

Under the Obama plan, all this would be shifted from HUD to a new, potentially more aggressive consumer protection agency.

The new department would also get full authority over the Truth in Lending Act from the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission.

It would also be the sole regulator for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act – all of which are now in other agencies’ bailiwicks.

The White House white paper covering the plan said the new agency “should give consumer protection an independent seat at the table in our financial regulatory system.”

Though real estate and mortgage trade groups generally made muted comments on the Obama plans, bankers came out swinging.

Edward Yingling of the American Bankers Association said his members “are dumfounded by the scope” of the consumer protection agency – creating a whole new layer of oversight and bureaucracy.

“It’s not like the current regulators don’t (already ) have all the authority they need,” he said.

K. Harney