• Normally done within 5 days of closing, I prefer to do it right before closing or the night before depending on what time closing is.
• You will retest appliances, heating, cooling, plumbing, and walk-through the property to look for any damage or taken items.
• If any repairs were requested as part of a home inspection negotiation, receipts should be provided so you can see and/or test that the repair was completed.
• You’ll want to make sure nothing was left behind, both for the owners and because you don’t want to deal with other peoples trash and having to get rid of any big items.
• If any issues arise, we call those “walk-through items” and then you have a few decisions to make:

1. If something is broken that wasn’t at the time of the home inspection, the sellers can either give you a credit at closing towards the repairs, or
2. They can escrow funds, meaning put $X into an escrow account with the settlement attorney who will pay for the repair upon completion and refund any used portion back to the seller, or
3. The seller can take care of it after closing (this is usually dependent on the relationship during the transaction…)
4. The buyers can take it as is if they wish (for example, if they were going to remove or replace it anyway)

• Either way, the point of the walk-through is to make sure you’re getting the property in the condition you expected to.

The walk-through is the final step in the process before you go to closing and get the keys!

Answer: Wednesday, Thursday and lately Friday

Here’s why:

1. Broker’s Open: Every Tuesday, there’s a slew of open houses for real estate agents to preview houses coming on the market that week. Usually agents will do the broker’s open before they list the property in the MLS. Sometimes it’s to get feedback on pricing, sometimes it’s just to showcase the house to prospective agents. Either way, if they’re doing one it won’t actually be listed until after this.

2. The Internet: most properties will do an open house on Sunday of the week the property is listed. For marketing purposes, when we put the listing in our local MLS, it takes 48 hours for the information to propagate to the other sites, such as Washington Post, Trulia, Zillow, etc etc. There’s hundreds of sites, and they pull from new data entry. In order to make sure the information is widespread, you want to make sure it gets on the market before the weekend when people start searching for new listings.

3. Most buyers tour homes on the weekends, keeping a list of places that come on during the week. You will notice very, very few homes that are listed on a Saturday or Sunday. That’s because most people will already have their list together of places they want to see. Then they debrief on Sunday and/or Monday after they’ve had some time to consider what they’ve seen.

4. Monday’s are catch-up days. You’ll rarely see a slew of new properties on Mondays because most people are catching up with the weekend work. Either following up with agents who showed the house over the weekend, or going over any offers they got over the weekend from buyers. You will see Mondays are highly active for properties going under contract.

1. If you’re getting a mortgage, find out what the guidelines are for your particular lender. Every lender has different requirements. Specifically, some say it must be at least 90 days from the last sale in order for you to buy it, or if the value has increased more than a certain percentage you may need to pay for 2 appraisals. These are the two most common I’ve seen, but every lender is different, so find out before you even move forward to avoid problems later on.

2. Get copies and/or research all permits. I can not stress this enough – LOOK UP the history of the property. If it’s not easily accessible online, call the county and find out. If things weren’t done with a permit or weren’t done to code, you’ll have HUGE issues when you go to sell it or when an appraisal is done. So rather than getting through a home inspection and paying all this money only to find out later on, find out upfront.

3. Get a home inspection. It’s pretty – there’s granite, stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors, hooray! That doesn’t mean it’s structurally sound or the flippers didn’t cut corners when they were redoing it quickly to resell. Have a qualified inspector check out the house. Most flip properties will have a few unfinished details that they’re expecting you’ll find on an inspection and they’ll willingly fix it. But if you don’t know enough to look for things, you’ll learn the hard way that pretty doesn’t always mean done correctly.

The answer? When you have a contract or are close to one.

In the beginning, you’ll get pre-approved for a mortgage from a lender. Whether it’s one of your own or someone your agent recommends. They’ll have all of your paperwork and run your credit. They’ll be the ones who issue the pre-approval letter we’ll use to submit your offer. They usually give you an estimate upfront of a hypothetical property using average numbers to give you an idea, but until you have a specific property in mind, the numbers will vary.

Estimates vary on sale price, seller credit, property taxes, condo/hoa fees, and the length of time to close. Interest rates change daily, so what you’re quoted today, won’t necessarily be the same when you actually go to lock in your interest rate for closing.

That’s why it doesn’t make any sense to compare lenders and rates prior to contract time. Once you actually have those numbers to provide, you’ll be able to compare apples to apples. Then you can see who gives you the best rate and the best deal…this is where I generally say go with your gut. If you like a lender better, but another lender gives you a better rate – see if the one you like can match it. You’ll be getting the best of both worlds – the lender you like, with the rate you like!

The credit was yours to keep if you maintained the property as your principal residence for 36 months from your date of purchase (closing date). Meaning, if you bought your property on April 15, 2009, you must live there until April 15, 2012, otherwise you’ll have to repay part or all of it.

Now that you’re nearing the 3 year mark, your options for those properties are:

-You can use them as a rental property

-You can sell them and move on to something else

But whatever the date of the lease is or the date of the closing of your sale, it must be at least 36 months later to the DAY.

Read more here.

My response: “Nothing…’tis the season.” With a caveat.

The general rule of thumb is that people tend to move every 5-7 years, I would say that might be sooner in a condo (people outgrow space, want more pets than the condo allows, want outdoor space, whatever the reason). So for this example, 1800 Wilson was built in 2007 – we’re just at that 5 mark now, so you can expect to see people start turning over. You’ll also notice that the bigger buildings generally have something for sale at any given time. For example, Clarendon 1021 has nearly 500 units in the condo, so it’s no surprise that you’ll see at least a few on the market year round. In smaller building, like the Hartford in Clarendon, the building only has 70 units, so available condos in that building are rare.

Here’s the caveat: you’ve all heard that Spring is the busy season for real estate. So don’t be surprised when you see a few at a time pop up during February – June. Some people wait for this exact time frame to put their condo on the market, knowing they’ll have the biggest pool of buyers. ‘Tis the season!

If there’s a sudden influx that makes you raise a red flag, here’s what I would look into:

1. Nearby construction. What’s being built? What’s being proposed?

2. Special Assessments. This is a one-time fee (or sometimes they break it up into 2 times, but it’s 1 project) paid by each condo unit owner, in addition to your regular condo fees. This is usually for a project such as window replacement, elevator damage, etc. It’s voted on by the unit owners.

• You  must be under contract by the end of March 31, 2012 to avoid the rate hike.
• Down-payment requirements remain at 3.5%
• Loan limit remains at $729,750
• Up Front Insurance Premium will increase to 1.75% of the base loan amount (75% increase)
• Annual Insurance Premiums will go up 0.1% point for loans under $625,500
• Annual Insurance Premiums will go up 0.35 points for loans over $625,500
• There is a proposal that cuts the amount a seller can contribute towards your closing costs from 6% to 3% (standard practice for contracts in the DC Metro area are 3% already).

In January 2012, FHA loans accounted for almost 10% of the sales in Arlington County. Overall, FHA loans account for about 16% of sales in Northern Virginia.

1. If a property is listed for sale, go see it as soon as possible. The market has been unpredictable in speed and time of contracts on new listings. Some things go the day the come on the market, others wait til the weekend, while others continue to sit. If you like it, go see it.

2. If you like it, write an offer. Don’t wait. Being the first offer shows interest and strength of your offer. You can always make changes if you find out more offers have come in, but if you waited until the last minute to submit your offer, don’t you think the seller will be flattered someone else submitted right away, showing how much they want their house? Real estate is an emotional sale, sometimes emotion plays a bigger part than rational thinking.

3. Keep timelines tight. Find out what the seller is looking for regarding closing date, inspections, etc. Many sellers are “move up” or “downsizing” buyers who have to sell before they can buy, so having that information will help you construct your offer.

4. Drop the lowball offers. In the buyers market, many buyers were lowballing sellers with the thought that they can always increase their offer. These days, many sellers know that their home may be 1 or 2 of the options in a certain location and/or price range, so why would they entertain a low offer shortly after coming on the market? Testing the market is done by both buyers and sellers…so keep that in mind when you’re reviewing comparable sales.

5. Write a love letter. Going back to the emotional appeal, you never know what motivating factor a seller has for selling their home. Are they retiring? Do they have  growing family? Are they leaving the state? See what information you can find out about the seller (often times a listing agent is authorized to disclose certain pieces of information that may help) and then write them a letter about why you want to buy their house. Are you expecting a child? Did you just get married? Are you moving closer to family? Moving from out of state (that just happens to be where they’re moving to)? Write it all down. You’d be surprised how many contracts have been won because the sellers liked this particular piece of information more than just the bottom line.

When you’re looking at properties that are tenant occupied, you’ll have to keep a few things in mind:

1) Tenants have the right to say there through the end of their lease, whether you buy it before then or not.

2) If you close prior to the end of their lease, make sure their security deposit is transferred or credited to you at the time of closing, since you’ll be on the hook to return it as their new landlord.

3) If you’re using an FHA loan to purchase the property, you must move in to the property within 60 days from closing or else you’ll be committing loan fraud (FHA loans are for owner occupied properties).

4) If you specify the property  must be vacant at the time of closing and the tenants have not moved out at that time, you will likely have a delayed closing until the seller/landlord can get the tenants out and you’ve had another opportunity to walk the property to make sure no damage has been done.

5) If you’re buying the property as an investment and you’re inheriting tenants, make sure you get copies of their current leases and their security deposits.

A term was thrown around that show that sparked a blog topic for me. One of the agents said she’d look through the MLS as well as any Pocket Listings available. Let me clarify the term “pocket listing” for you:

• A Pocket Listing is a house an owner has expressed interest in selling, but doesn’t want to formerly list the property in the MLS (like all of the houses you’ve seen on the internet or have been sent by your agent). It’s almost like an underground property, if the right people know about it or express interest, the seller would entertain the idea of selling it.

Many times, pocket listings occur for very expensive properties or well-known individuals who don’t want “looky-loos” coming by just to check out their personal belongings and/or house.

We don’t see them often in the DC Metro area, including Arlington, for properties under $1M, so rest assured that what you see listed for sale is what your options are for picking a home.