Bank owned home buying questions – Temecula Valley – California

I received a few great questions from buyers over the past few days and I would like to share two of them.

Question: Why did my agent tell me that my offer was accepted and then I found out it was not after I already scheduled a home inspection?

When you submit an offer on a bank owned home and you are told your offer is accepted and you don’t have a copy of the fully executed contract in your hand (that is a contract with your signatures and the banks)… you can still lose the home to another buyer—that is, once you have the banks signatures on the contract, counter offer and addendums the bank will stop looking at other offers. The banks are giving buyers anywhere from 5 to 10 days to remove inspection contingencies so I know it is tempting to schedule a home inspection, and to pay for the termite report, but hold off until you have a fully-executed contract. If you don’t wait you could be out a few hundred dollars or more.

Question: My offer was accepted why hasn’t the status changed from “Active” to “Pending” in the MLS?

Assuming this is a bank owned home ~ this question fits well with the first question. It all depends on the banks procedures and policies. For example, bank “C” (I don’t want to list the name of the bank for liability reasons) has recently been sending the counter offer to the buyers already signed by the asset manager approving the sale and once the buyers put their signature on the contract it is now fully-executed. In this situation they usually change the status quickly.

For the most part listing agents have to wait for the asset managers to give them permission to change status. Sometimes they wait till escrow has been opened, or until the “good faith deposit” has been received, or sometimes they even wait till all inspection contingencies have been removed by the buyer. It all depends on the bank and their policies. You can always ask your agent, once you are under contract, to ask the listing agent when they are going to change the status…

Happy 2009! My New Blog Format for Information on the Temecula Valley’s Real Estate Market.

Happy Real Estate New Year!

Well, we are 6 days into the New Year and most of us have made our resolutions and some of us have already broken them. One of my New Years resolutions is to be diligent about posting my blog once a week… However, I would like to add a little twist to my blog; I get questions from buyers and sellers all the time about market conditions in the Temecula Valley and I spend quite a bit of time responding to these questions via e-mail or phone conversations.

What I would like to do is take one week a month and share this information in my blog. If you are game to have your questions answered for everyone to view please visit my website http://www.gatlinrealestate.com/ and send me an e-mail with your questions and be sure to specify that you give me permission to post it to my blog. I think this will be very informative for other home buyers or sellers in the Temecula Valley.

This type of blog might help home buyers or sellers get their questions answered without feeling obligated to talk with a real estate professional and this will give me the opportunity to talk about issues that I might have not thought to write about. I think this will be a win-win situation.

With that said I would like to add a DISCLAIMER: I keep saying “in the Temecula Valley” because I do not sell real estate in all locations in California and market conditions and values can vary from county to county. I specialize in the Temecula Valley and I know this market! I don’t want to assume other areas are similar to ours and therefore would appreciate no nasty e-mails telling me what I say is not true for your specific location... I am aware of this. However, I am an expert with California Real Estate Ethics, Practices, and Regulations in general so these types of questions I would be happy to address.