Tag: John Conde realtor

Orlando Home Builders Association Changes Name and Moves to a New Location

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

The Metro Orlando Home Builders Association wants to turn a new leaf and several changes are underway as part of its efforts to re-brand itself. The professional trade association that leads the Orlando real estate industry was established in 1953. Since then, it has governed and regulated several aspects of the city’s housing market including Orlando short sales, services of listing agents, and Orlando’s public-education programs to name a few.

The association revealed some of its re-branding initiatives on February 27, when it revealed plans to change the name from Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando to the Greater Orlando Business Association.

Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando moves to new headquarters

On the same day, the association also broke ground on what its new headquarters is going to be. The association is currently headquartered at 544 Mayo Avenue, Maitland but will ditch the 30-year-old venue and move to the new office in 1000 Sanford Avenue as soon as the construction work is done. The new headquarter will sit at the site donated by Charles Clayton III – the previous president of the Home Builders Association and also a long-standing member of the association. In addition to a changed name and a changed location, the association is also set to sport a more environment-friendly and greener office.

Word is, that the building at 1000 Sanford Avenue will file for a green certification with the regulatory bodies, including the Florida Green Building Coalition.

President Nathan Cross talks about right-sizing offices

Nathan Cross, President of the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando said the association wants to right-size its offices so that the changing needs of staff, as well as the real-estate business, could be better matched. Moving to a new office was part of the right-sizing efforts.

Ensuring construction projects will create new jobs for construction workers. According to listing agents in Orlando, new opportunities for the local material suppliers. With new infrastructure development projects underway in Central Florida, including the SunRail passenger system, the real estate market of Orlando is expected to bring in worthwhile opportunities for architects and engineers.

The Home Builders Association has been an important part of the real-estate scene in Central Florida – participating in and regulating important industry events and initiatives through its councils and committees. How the re-branding is going to affect its reputation and standing in the market remains to be seen. https://orlandorealtyconsultants.com/

Let's Keep In Touch!

New ORC Form Lead

"*" indicates required fields

Orlando Real Estate Industry Basks Under the Glory of Reduced Foreclosure Rates

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

CoreLogic has some great news for Orlando realtors and the Orlando real estate industry in general. The American business intelligence agency that provides financial and real estate information and analytics to businesses and the feds, reports that the foreclosure rates of real estate properties in Metro Orlando reduced again in December 2013.

This brings in a ray of hope for real estate agents in Orlando who have been worried for quite some time due to the high rates at which properties in the city get foreclosed. Even with a  decrease in the foreclosure rates in December, Orlando still sports foreclosure rates higher than the national average.

Foreclosure rate 3.65 percent down from same time a year ago

 

CoreLogic reports that 6.69 percent residential properties in the Sanford-Kissimmee-Orlando area were  slapped with foreclosure in December 2013 – 3.65 percent down from the foreclosure rate in December 2012 (10.34 percent).

CoreLogic, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange as CLGX also reported that the national average of residential-property foreclosures for December 2013 was 2.09 percent. Further, the report also revealed that homeowners of the Metro Orlando area had become more regular with their mortgage payments.

The delinquency rate dropped by 4.53 percent in December 2013. CoreLogic reported an 11.04 percent of mortgage payments coming in later than 90 days in December 2013. A year ago mortgage defaulters in the Metro Orlando area peaked at 15.57 percent.

As is the case with foreclosure rates, the Metro Orlando mortgage delinquency rates top the national average of 5.03 percent this year. Back in 2012, the rate stood at 6.40 percent for the same month.

Orlando realtors anticipate improved sentiments in near future

 

The health of a state’s real estate market greatly influences the health of the overall economy of the state. Listing agents in Orlando reveal that reduced foreclosure rates in Metro Orlando is promising news for the Orlando real estate market because it not only signifies that the housing market is improving, it also helps boost the values of other residential properties.

Add to it the fact that lowered foreclosure, as well as mortgage delinquency rates, are elementary proof that the market is less distressed and the financial status of homeowners is improving.  You’ll know why real estate agents in Orlando are tying this news to the hopes of a stronger market and more buyer confidence in the near future.

Let's Keep In Touch!

New ORC Form Lead

"*" indicates required fields

Florida’s Housing Market Recovery Still Intact After October Hesitancy

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

 Florida’s housing market has been seeing great development in the recent past, even though this recovery process paused in October. According to Florida real estate agents and builders across the state, the underlying trend of recovery is still improving despite October’s setback.

The October setback for Florida’s housing market

Prices and sales were slowly scraping their way back to normality from the housing market collapse. The lower interest rates were doing well to lure buyers looking for their first home. Price appreciation was also doing a great job to boost move-up purchases from buyers who could sell existing homes that were bought in the last few years, without incurring any losses.

However, October presented a few obstacles in this steady recovery process. The partial shutdown of the government that lasted for two weeks seemed to have affected the confidence of consumers. The recent spike in flood insurance costs also hit the desire for customers to buy homes in coastal communities. Along with these reasons, seasonal trends of home-buying injured the number of sales when compared to the buoyant market in summer. Even though sales percentages were up from last October, the pace was slower than a 36% year-to-date growth recorded by the Florida area president of David Weekly Homes.

The housing market is recovery still recovering strongly

Recovery had taken a rapid and noticeable growth spurt in May, though October made itself a nuisance due to dramatic cost spikes in insurance as federal subsidies fell away. There were insurance bills that topped $10,000 which easily scared off prospective buyers. Such insurance bills effectually took away a large provision of inventory from the market. However, even though October was regarded as a small “hiccup” in the recovery progress, buyers are now focusing on newer homes that are less affected by these insurance premium increases. Thanks to this, November sales were off to quite a good start.

Price appreciation has started to bring move-up buyers and sellers back onto the market as their home equity returned. One-time homeowners that were subject to Orlando short sales and foreclosure have now repaired their credit enough to enable them to buy again. Even though it is quite normal for the market to dip at this time of the year, the government shutdown did not help. The biggest problems that are being faced right now are the job markets and consumer confidence. Builders are also not producing as fast as they once did. However, there are many Orlando realtors that remain very optimistic concerning the industry.

Let's Keep In Touch!

New ORC Form Lead

"*" indicates required fields

Top Orlando Realtors Work Harder During The Holidays

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

With the holiday season among us, it seems that buyers and sellers take a vacation from buying and selling just like everyone else. With all the distractions that the holidays have to offer like shopping, dinner parties, celebrating, traveling, etc. Many Orlando realtors welcome this time of year to enjoy some much-needed downtime with friends and family. Real estate professionals know that once all the holiday distractions disappear that it’s back to work as usual because historically that’s what happens. This is why Top Orlando Realtors never stop working and even work harder through the holidays.

Marketing your business and keeping up with the competition is no easy task but it’s by far the most important. The fact that the phone doesn’t ring as much during the holidays allows for top real estate professionals to work even harder so that when things go back to normal again they find themselves ahead of the game instead of having to play catch up. I hate coming back from a long vacation to face an even longer to-do list. It makes me feel like I need a vacation!

 Catch up on your Blogging

With the phone not ringing as much, it also provides more quiet time during the day which is perfect for writing articles for my blog, like this one. It’s a lot more challenging keeping up with a daily blog when you have to follow up with 20+ Orlando short sale files every day. I get my best ideas when I have silence and the more silence that I have, the more I write.  As a matter of fact, I usually do enough writing during December to cover my company blog all the way through the end of January freeing up more of my time to work on other projects.

A Great Time to Sharpen Your Real Estate Marketing Tools

It’s also the perfect time to knock out some things that I’ve meant to get to for a while like revamping my website by changing over to a new theme with responsive capability. This means that when it will be user-friendly on all devices including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Have you ever gone to a website on your smartphone and you can only view a small portion of it?  It’s very frustrating… you have to manually scroll over to see the information one tiny section at a time. Not only that, but the new Google algorithm “Hummingbird” is supposedly going to start penalizing websites that aren’t mobile-friendly moving into 2014.

Thank Your Real Estate Clients From 2013

Working as full-time Orlando Realtors, we depend on our clients for 100% of our income. I think it’s very important to reach out to those people that have bought and sold properties through us during the past year. Not just so that they refer their friends and family to us but because it’s just the right thing to do. After all, if it wasn’t for our clients, we wouldn’t be able to survive.

That being said, I would to thank all of our clients from this past year for choosing https://orlandorealtyconsultants.com/ and putting your faith in us to handle one of the most important transactions of your life. Thanks to you it’s been a fantastic year for us. It’s been our pleasure to serve you.

Happy Holidays!

Let's Keep In Touch!

New ORC Form Lead

"*" indicates required fields

Cash Incentives for Short Sales Continue

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

 Cash Incentives for Short Sales

It appears that new short sale guidelines that have been put into place continue to make it easier for distressed homeowners to get relocation assistance after completing the short sale on their distressed property. Mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have launched a new short sale program allowing the homeowner to complete a short sale and receive cash incentives without missing any mortgage payments….It’s about time!

I don’t know why this hasn’t always been the case. I believe that as long as the homeowner can prove a valid hardship, then why force them to miss payments if they’re willing to work with the bank sooner than later. For one thing, the lender loses less money. Why would you want the homeowner to miss at least one or two payments before allowing them to start the process if they’re willing to start the process while continuing to make the payments? I think that if this were the case then there would be a lot less distressed homeowners doing a strategic default.

[HAFA] The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program provides distressed homeowners with cash relocation incentive of $3,000.00. The problem is that the guidelines have several restrictions that many times kept distressed sellers from getting the assistance they so desperately needed.

B of A, The nation’s largest loan servicer offers the HAFA program in addition to several other in-house programs. Its most popular program is the “Cooperative Short Sale Program” which has an “Enhanced Relocation Assistance” that ranges anywhere from $2,500 to $30,000. Just this past year we were able to qualify 3 of our Orlando short sale clients for the $30,000.00 cashback at closing. Bank of America has recently launched the enhanced program on a national level. This program applies to pre-approved short sales, these are short sales that are started without there being an offer to purchase. The amount of the incentive is based on the value of the home.

 

WILL YOUR LENDER COOPERATE?

There are some who will tell you that banks would rather take a house to foreclosure or modify the loan than approve a short sale. This just isn’t true, it costs a lender a lot of time and money to take a house through the foreclosure process and at the end of the day, it’s just a numbers game.

The truth is that short sales net lenders twelve to twenty-five percent more than they would make from foreclosure because of the time and money that it takes to not only regain control over the property, but to make any repairs, market and finally resell the house. And as far as loan modifications are concerned, over half of them default within the first year then ultimately turn into short sale or foreclosure.

Lenders have finally figured this all out and that’s why they are constantly streamlining there process and continue to create enticing offers to help out distressed homeowners. By completing a short sale, a distressed homeowner can avoid going through a foreclosure and limit the damage done to their credit.

 

 

 

Realtor in Orlando, FL

Let's Keep In Touch!

New ORC Form Lead

"*" indicates required fields