Garage Door Styles Website

http://www.bobvila.com/articles/2449-garage-doors-101/pages/1

This is a great article about garage doors.  I learned alot and think you will too.  I guess I'd never given much thought to how much better a house can look with great doors.  I know I notice a houe looking bad if the doors are in disrepair, but never knew changing the style could make so much difference.

Here in Amarillo we pretty much all have the same type doors, not much difference in style, but maybe we should look into making the style of the door match the design of the house. 

New FICO scoring could change things!

If you want to buy a house, you must stay aware of what your FICO score is.  However now there is going to be a a new way to check it, and it will pick up late property taxes, liens placed on your property, etc.  This may not sound like a big deal.  But...

Scenario.  You make your house payment faithfully every month.  Your servicer takes the money and puts it into the escrow account.  Let's say the tax bill comes, the person who handles this quits, a new person comes in and not trained properly and the taxes don't get paid on time.  That will show up on your FICO score even if you made your payments on time!!

Let's say you own a property that sides to a busy street.  You are good to mow your lawn and your house has great curb appeal.  However, outside your fence by the busy street the weeds grow up and you might even get a pesky letter from the city.  Eventually you get out there and mow, or one day it is mowed and you don't know who did it.  Later when you check your FICO you could find a bad mark for the city having it mowed and putting a lien on your property.  In the past this would not show up.  I sold a trailer park and at closing found out the city had put a $75 lien on my property for weeds outside our fence.  If this new way of doing FICO scores had been used then, my credit score would have gone down.

So be- aware - stay vigilant.  Check your scores regularly and get the annual free report so if there is somethign on there that could ruin your scores you will know it, and if there are errors, you can get those taken off. 

Remember without the right ### on the FICO, you can't qualify for a mortgage loan. 

Home Staging Tips When You Sell Your Home

GREAT ARTICLE that Prudential made available to realtors.  Hope you get some good information from it.  August 10, 2012 --Realty Times Feature Article byCarmen Coker Home staging typically removes personal mementos, religious objects, and cultural items, helping prospective home buyers to feel at ease and to visualize their own belongings in the space. If you are a home seller, the good news is that there is one sure-fire, simple, inexpensive way to supercharge your home staging efforts - organize! However, organizing and decluttering aimlessly isn't enough. It's essential to organize with one goal in mind, and that is to create a sanctuary where potential home buyers can easily imagine themselves living, working, and playing for years to come. Here are the top five residential "trouble spots" for clutter, and what you can do to organize them. 1. The home office The problem: Big libraries with books, magazines, and files as well as big electronics like computers, printers, and shredders mean little extra, useable space. The solution: Toss magazines and newspapers first, as they are normally the easiest to part with and will give you a motivating "win" to start. Give away unwanted books to charity. Switch out a desktop computer for a laptop, opening up more room. Dust, label, and arrange the computer cables in an attractive manner. 2. The bedroom closet The problem: Closets always look too small, especially to the ladies. The solution: Remove out-of-season clothing and accessories, and place them (neatly!) elsewhere in the home or a storage unit. Relocate or purge any items that don't belong in a clothes closet, like sports equipment, papers, and junk. Then situate the remaining in-season items as if on display in your favorite store or magazine. 3. The kitchen The problem: As the heart of the home, the kitchen sees high-traffic volumes – and it normally looks worse for wear. The solution: Make your kitchen into an orderly command center. Remember: you want to make sure that your kitchen has everything you need to survive a crisis, not that your kitchen has just survived a crisis. Remove any small appliances you don't use on a daily basis. Chuck the junk mail, and use a tidy basket to hold bills and other essential paperwork. Clear the table and counters of anything "cluttery." 4. The garage The problem: The garage is a catch-all for... well, everything. The solution: Pull everything out of the garage, purge the clutter, and then separate the remaining items into categories like auto accessories, camping equipment, yard tools, recycling containers, etc. Find a home for and use tasteful storage to display each category. The key to organizing a garage is to make use of the elevated space, like the walls for storage racks and ceiling for a false attic. 5. The yard The problem: It's easy to ignore the dead patch of grass in the backyard because you have more pressing matters, but the outside of a home is reflective of the inside of a home. The solution: Have a "discovery session," where you walk around your house making a list of necessary outdoor improvements. Then schedule a daily to-do on your calendar, or outsource the tasks, until all items are crossed off. Bonus: The details The problem: If the would-be home buyer discovers you've skimped on the details, it takes the trust out of the buyer-seller relationship. The solution: Create a "house handbook" that includes information about the features of the home, like a list of paint colors by room, vendors for housecleaning and lawn care, maintenance records, and manuals for the appliances included with the property. Taking care of the details demonstrates to the home buyer that you have responsibly taken care of the home while it was in your possession. Prospective home buyers will be quick to judge your house, both inside and out, for any flaws. Following the above organizing tips could reduce your listing time on the market and help your house fetch more than one not properly staged.

HOW LONG AFTER FORECLOSURE TO BUY HOME.

How Long Do I Have to Wait?

The question concerning people who’ve had a foreclosure, short sale or bankruptcy is when they will be able to qualify for a mortgage loan. It takes different amounts of time to heal credit scores based on the event.

The following chart is meant to be a general guide for how long a person might have to wait. During this waiting period, it’s important that the person be current on all payments and maintains a history of good credit.

	FHA	VA	USDA	FNMA/Freddie Mac			Jumbo
Foreclosure	3 years	2 years	3 years	7 years			7 years
Deed-in-Lieu of Foreclosure	3 years	2 years	3 years	2 years<80%	4 years81-90%	7 years> 90%	7 years
Short Sale	3 years	2 years	3 years	2 years<80%	7 years81-90%	7 years> 90%	7 years
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy	2 years	2 years	3 years	4 years			7 years
Chapter 13 Bankruptcy	1 year	1 year	1 year	2 years			7 years

A recommended lender can give you specific information regarding your individual situation and can make suggestions that will improve your ability to qualify for a mortgage. We want to be your personal source of real estate information and we're committed to helping from purchase to sale and all the years in between.

How to Manage Your Insurance Deductible.

Managing Deductibles

The purpose of insurance is to shift the risk of loss to a company in exchange for a premium. Most policies have a deductible which is an amount the insured pays out of pocket before the insurance starts covering the cost of the loss.

In the process of managing insurance premiums, policy holders often consider adjusting their deductibles. Lower deductibles mean less money out of pocket if a loss occurs but obviously, results in higher premiums. Higher deductibles result in lower premiums but require that the insured bear a larger amount of the first part of the loss.
A small fire in a $300,000 home that resulted in $2,500 of damage might not be covered because it is less than the 1% deductible. If the homeowner can afford to handle the cost of repairs in exchange for cheaper premiums, it might be worth it. On the other hand, if that loss would be difficult for the homeowner, a change in the deductible could be considered.
It is a good idea to review your deductible with your property insurance agent so that you're familiar with the amount and make any changes that would be appropriate.

Researching on the Internet

Well, I've spent so much time researching on the internet all my mom's problems, that my fingers are in pain.  I think I've now got arthritis in them. 

First I use to research dimentia and the 7 stages to check where she is at.  Pretty solidly in stage 5 at this point, with 2 stages to go from what I read.  It's really sad when she asks how my dad died and who all was there.  Also sad when she can't remember where she lived when her nephew was born and when that was or what his initials stand for.  Dimentia is not a disease you would wish on anyone.

Next I researched kidney failure.  I was at Furrs Cafeteria eating lunch when I got a call from the head nurse at her nursing home telling me that Mom is in stage 4 of 5 stages of kidney failure.  Seems the doctors have known that for 8 months and just completely lied to mother when she insisted her problems stemmed from her kidneys.  They told her that her troubles were from the next up, not the neck down, and all the time they had the results showing stage 4.  At stage five you go on dialysis or get a kidney transplant.  At 89 she's a little old for a transplant and dialysis will be really rought on her body.  She says she would rather put her trust in the Lord to heal her kidneys or him decide when to take her.  I'm leaning that way too, because according to my research and the head nurse and a friend of my sister-in-law, whose mother is on dialysis and whose father refused it after seeing what it did to his wife, it would be so bad for her.  She's be nauseous, vomiting, headaches...etc. 

Researched online some geneology, looking for Mom's half sister's death and burial place.  Found out she remarried her first husband, J. R. Martin, and lived and died in Walters, OK, where they had lived 70 years earlier.  She died 5-5-93 and he died 2 years later.  Haven't found her son, V. W. Martin yet, so if you know him, have him get in touch with me at Prudential Ada Realtors in Amarillo, TX. 

Researched Mom's half sister's second husband's burial and found he and Grandpa Whitten are next to each other in the Roscoe Cemetery and they don't know anything about them; so maybe I should write them and give them some facts on these two men. 

You certainly can find alot of things on the internet.  Even found out how to find a house yesterday.  I'd been to the country 2 times and drove and drove, and never found it.  Then I did Mapquest and found it immediately. 

I know buyers usually find their homes online before they call a realtor and then even once they get a realtor, they call and tell them what other houses they want to see that they found online. 

I guess encyclopedias will go out of business since everything is online now.  But boy do my fingers hurt!!  Just getting old, I guess.

FHA Streamline Refinancing

The government came up with a streamline way of refinancing a pre-existing FHA loan.  Here are some of the rules:

 . The mortgage to be refinanced must already be FHA insured.

	The mortgage to be refinanced should be current (not delinquent).
	The refinance results in a lowering of the borrower's monthly principal and interest payments, or, under certain circumstances, the conversion of an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) to a fixed-rate mortgage.
	No cash may be taken out on mortgages refinanced using the streamline refinance process. However, to make things tight again, Wells Fargo has decided to only do it for pre-existing customers, their own servicing portfolio.  Other banks are following suite, and making the same decision.  It appears they don't want to have to hire new employees to handle the increased business, so rather than this program succeed, it'll probably just be a stop gap, helping only a few people.  But as a realtor, we need to let people who are having trouble making their payments know there is a way to get relief.  Go to their own servicer and apply for a streamline FHA refinance.