Skip to main content

Jumpin' Jack Cash (Posted November 28, 2016)

It’s always interesting when you learn an odd little fact you didn’t know before it ‘s like the universe is sharing a little secret with you.  Generally speaking, it’s a “fact” that has absolutely no bearing on the direction of your life or your ability to get a better job, but it’s still fun to know.  Let me give you an example:

Back before he started hanging out with super models and being the unofficial poster child for Botox, Mick Jagger had been accepted into the London School of Economics.  In fact, even after reuniting with Keith Richards (they had been friends in grade school) with the idea of starting a band, he attended classes as an undergraduate at LSE with the plans of becoming either a journalist or a politician.  I guess the groupies for journalists and politicians aren’t quite as thick on the ground as they are for a rock n roll icon. 

Now, it’s not likely you’re going to walk into the office one morning and find everyone gathered around the boss’ office worked up into a slight frenzy, and when you ask Phil in accounting what’s going on, he’ll say, “The boss says he’ll give a big fat raise and a promotion to the first person to name the college Mick Jagger attended before he started the Rolling Stones with Keith Richards.”  But the next time you’re watching concert footage of Mick strutting across the stage and singing “Start Me Up” and “Satisfaction”, you might muse to yourself: “Wow!  I wonder what Brexit would have been like under the guidance of The Right Honourable Mick Jagger.”  Boggles the mind, right?
 
Here’s a little bit of trivia that will not only boggle your minds but could actually have direct bearing on the direction of your life, whether you’re an agent or a prospective homebuyer: in parts of Arizona alone, over 85% of the homes qualify for down payment help.  In Florida, Texas, California, and Illinois just to name a few others those percentages range between the 80s and 90s.  Did YOU know that? 

All too often, when agents are asked by their clients about the availability of down payment help, they’ll respond by saying they think the clients don’t qualify because they make too much money or the house in which they’re interested isn’t located in the right part of town.  Sadly, all too often, these statements are made incorrectly and without even checking and the clients take their word for it.  There are many reasons this occurs, but the most common reason is simply due to the fact the agents don’t have the time to keep up with the changes in these programs. 

“Down payment assistance tends to suffer from lack of awareness,” Mark Hughes of First Team Real Estate, in Irvine, California, told RealtyTrac in 2015. “Guidelines and specifics tend to change with economic swings. Agents typically don’t keep up with the changing requirements,” he said.

The same thing happens with prospective buyers BEFORE they even approach an agent: they’ve had certain things incorrectly drilled into their heads about down payments that they preemptively exclude themselves from considering the housing market.  To use the slogan from the Arizona state lottery: “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

There’s a lot of money to be saved and houses to be purchased by first-time homebuyers with the help of these down payment assistance programs.  Give us a call to learn about what’s available to you.  We’ll tell our multitude of groupies to have a cucumber-infused mineral water so we can concentrate on YOUR needs. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Definition of Insanity (in Real Estate)

More than a couple of years ago, I witnessed something that makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.  Having lunch at a local restaurant, I spied a real estate agent and a loan originator having what I would characterize as a “first date”. I couldn’t help but overhear little snippets of their conversation, and as far as I could tell, things were going relatively well . . . at least until the agent asked the LO this question: “So, do you like to sit at open houses with agents?”  I immediately looked to the LO’s face awaiting the response.  I didn’t need to hear another single word coming out of the LO’s mouth because his face said everything:  you would have thought the agent had asked him if he enjoyed bobbing for apples in a pool of acid judging by the look on his face.  While his face was communicating complete revulsion, his lips said, “Yes, of course.”  And that’s when I looked over at the agent’s face to see, ...

Time for a New York-Style Housing Fix

Previously, I’ve written about a man who works in our office who lived in New York City back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s – let me assure you that while that does seem like a very long time ago, it’s not nearly as far bac k as when the wheel was invented and humankind learned to harness the power of fire. If you’ve been to New York City recently and blissfully walked around Harlem to get chicken and waffles at Sylvia’s on Malcolm X Boulevard between 126 th and 127 th Streets or stopped in at Keybar on 13 th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A to wedge yourself into a cozy corner next to their notable fireplace, you wouldn’t get a sense that these areas were once . . . not as welcoming and glitzy as you now see them. Our office mate has told some fairly interesting stories of living in those and other areas of New York City that give a much different sense.   In the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, no matter how many great things you heard about Sylvia’s food, 127 th Str...

Change: the Only Sure Thing

Which headline is better for grabbing your attention and prompting you to read the article to which it’s attached: “Credit Reports to Exclude Certain Negative Information, But Read on to See if This Even Applies to You” or “ Credit Reports to Exclude Certain Negative Information, Boosting FICO Scores”?   Obviously, the former is less than tantalizing while the latter makes you say, “Tell me more!”   I was in the “tell me more” camp, and the folks at The Wall Street Journal sucked me into their vortex. The development, set to go into practice on July 1 st , is certainly a departure from how the Big Three (Experian, TransUnion , and Equifax) have done things in the past, but it’s not going to wave a magic wand and make bankruptcies, foreclosures, short sales, etc., go away.   It’s sort of a bittersweet development.   Let me explain: Many tax liens and civil judgments will be removed from people’s credit reports if they don’t include a complete list of a...