Great Loan Opportunity for First Time Buyers in Loudoun County

Beth Perry of Suntrust Mortgage has brought to our attention a great new loan for first time home buyers in Loudoun County.  Here is her description of the loan and its details:

Loudoun County has just released a New "First-Time Homebuyer" program to help increase Home Sales in the area as well as make housing affordable to buyers.  In partnership with Virginia Housing, the County is offering a 1% reduction to their current fixed rate. With this reduction it brings their current 30 year fixed rate as low as 5.375%. 

They offer 100% financing with No Mortgage Insurance or Second Trust  which adds to the homeowners monthly savings.  With the current market changes it allows 100% financing to buyers with a middle credit score of 660 and as low as 620 with 5% down and a maximum Loan Amount of $417,000.

It really opens up the door for first time buyers!  In the past First-Time Homebuyers were limited to Condo’s and lower-priced Townhomes. Now they can even consider a Single Family Home!  This is a limited time offer for these funds until the 30th of June.

For more information or to get in on this program, here is Beth’s contact information:

Office # 703-464-4346

Cell #703-408-7346

Elizabeth.Perry-hauser@suntrust.com

Or you can always respond here and we can answer any questions you might have.

Sellers - How Do Buyers Search For And Find YOUR Home?

Most sellers in Loudoun County, as well as neighboring counties and everywhere else in the world, wonder how and where today’s buyers search for and find their new home. Why? Because they want to know how today’s buyers will find their home (and buy it, of course). If you do not market in the places where today’s buyers search for homes, you will lose very valuable exposure and have a very tough time selling your home. Savvy sellers and real estate agents will know the answer to this million-dollar question and will focus their marketing so that it’s appropriate to today’s buyer’s search methodology.

So how and where do today’s buyers, in general and specifically in Loudoun County, Virginia, search for and find their new home? Here are some stats based on our research and that from other sources:

• 85% of home buyers used a real estate agent to search for a home
• 80% used the Internet to search for a home (up from 77% in 2005 and steadily growing)
• 22% used the Internet to get neighborhood information (a key component in a home search)
• 47% found the home they purchased through a real estate agent (we still have some value)
• 25% found the home they purchased through the Internet (and rising)
• Two of the most important features while browsing for homes on the Internet are photos and property information (why it baffles me that some listings still have no pictures or incorrect/incomplete information)
• 72% actually drove by or looked at a home they found online (they weren’t stalkers after all)
• 46% walked through a home they found online (Internet marketing actually works)
• Only 47% of buyers found a virtual tour helpful (mental note - "make virtual tours better")
• Less than 15% found their home through a sign in the yard (and the number is declining)
• Less than 5% found their home in print media (and the number is declining as well)

(Check out "Related Articles" at the end of the post for the full set of stats)

As you can see, the majority of today’s buyers utilize the Internet to search for and find information on properties as well as to research neighborhoods.  And a growing number found the home they ultimately purchased online. If your home does not have adequate Internet/web exposure, you may lose potential buyers to your competition.

And just placing your home on the local MLS, Realtor.com and Homesdatabase.com no longer works. There are a growing number of listing sites such as Trulia, Zillow, Google Base and others that buyers are using to search for homes. If you’ve never heard of these names, you should start checking around. Trulia already has over 1 million listings, Zillow’s listings are growing daily and Google Base has tons of listings and is expected to release their Google Real Estate beta site shortly.

And if you think that just listing you property on those sites will do the trick, think again. Make sure that you and/or your agent focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your/their personal real estate site/blog as well as their listings. Where your property comes up in a search for homes with your county, city, zip code, community, street and actual address as a key word makes a huge difference. There are many ways to achieve SEO, but that’s a lengthy discussion for another day. 

Now let’s not forget the stats about how only 47% of buyers are happy with the virtual tours and that the top two things that make a difference to them are photos and property information. Make sure that you have as many pictures up as allowed by each site, that the pictures are of decent quality, that the information on the property is complete and accurate (buyers hate sellers and agents who lie or stretch the truth) and that you have a good virtual tour and/or video tour of your property. There’s nothing worse for a seller than having a buyer find their home online, but click right past it because some or all of these things are lacking.

So now that you know how today’s buyers are searching for and finding their new home, analyze what you’re doing to get in front of them and get their attention.

1. How does your marketing plan stack up against that of other properties/your competition?
2. If you’re using an agent, what are they doing to get maximum Internet/web exposure for your property?
3. Does your agent have your home uploaded on all the currently available sites such as Trulia, Zillow, Google Base and the twenty-some others?
4. Does their site/blog rank anywhere on the first page of results if not the very top 3 to 5 results for real estate property searches in your area/community?
5. How do your pictures, information and virtual tour stack up against your competition?

If you’re a seller with a home currently on the market, you’ll either be patting yourself on the back and/or applauding your real estate agent for being on top of all these items or your scrambling around to do them or you’ll be calling your agent as soon as you finish reading this sentence. Hopefully, it’s the former…

For the full set of buyer and seller statistics, check out - Statistics About Home Buyers, Sellers, Blog Readers and Bloggers

Related Articles: Just How Important Are Property Pictures

Robert Melton’s Catalog Of Local Real Estate Blogs

In October 2006, Robert Melton cataloged 500 real estate blogs to watch. On April 9th, he updated the list in order to celebrate the first day of Project Blogger and the list now stands at 750.

Thank you to Robert for including Loudoun Stats as well as our other three blogs, real/diaBlog, The Ashburn, Virginia Community Blog and BlogBack in the original and updated list.

You can find the list on Robert’s Pittsburgh Homes Daily blog. The local and national  blogs on the list provide a wealth of resources for consumers and professionals alike.

2007 Loudoun County Tax Rate Set At 96 Cents

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a tax rate of 96 cents after cutting $19 million from the school system’s proposed spending plan. According to the Board of Supervisors, had the county kep the tax rate at 89 cents, $76 million would have been needed to be cut from the school budget.

The 2007 tax rate will be the highest for a county in Northern Virginia:

• Arlington: 81.5 cents (proposed)
• Fairfax: 89 cents (proposed)
• Prince William: 78.7 cents (proposed)
• Loudoun: 96 cents (approved)

The drop in the housing assessments due to the recent real estate market conditions almost cancels out the tax rate increase, but not quite. Home owners in Loudoun County will see their tax bill rise by an average of 1 percent over last year.

Out of curiosity, how does one need to cut $19 million from the school budget when the tax revenue from home owners will increase by 1 percent? Does anyone else feel like we’re missing some important details that the county needs to share with us?

Loudoun County Foreclosure/Bank Owned Property Update

As of this morning, the percentage of properties for sale that are in foreclosure/bank owned in Loudoun County, specifically Ashburn, Sterling and Leesburg is:

• Ashburn - 5 percent
• Sterling - 11 percent
• Leesburg - 11 percent

This is an increase over last month and the highest in several years.

One reason why the perecentage is increasing is because we’re looking at the active properties. More new foreclosures are coming on the market than are selling.

These bank owned foreclosures are not selling nearly as quickly as the other properties because they are not yet priced at a point that makes them very appealing to investors or home buyers. Once you factor in what it would cost to bring them up to the standards of comparable properties, you’re just below or at the same total cost. The difference is that you can just buy a move-in condition property and save yourself the time and hassle of getting contractors out to fix it.

Now, as far as a rental investment, there are some that are appealing. With the amount of rent you can bring in based on the current rental market along with the price point and the monthly payment based on a 20 percent down investor loan, you would break even if not have positive cash flow. But once again, we go back to having to spend the time and energy to fix it up along with at least one if not two months worth of carrying costs (PITI and HOA dues). It seems that most investors that are in it for the long haul (rentals) are not willing to spend this kind of time and energy.

The reason why these foreclosures are still not priced aggressively enough is that the banks have not been beat up enough to drop the price to where the market will absorb them. Once they carry these properties for an extended period of time and the number of foreclosure they have goes up even more, they may start to realize that they need to adjust the prices in order to get the properties off their books.

Time will soon start taking its toll on banks though. We’ll start seeing foreclosures/bank owned properties coming down in price and banks will start accepting offers that they’re currently rejecting because they’re "too low".