Ramesh Nyberg's Real Estate Blog

A year and a half ago, there was a ton of news about mortgage fraud. It was rampant. There was scarcely an full-time agent who hadn't been approached in some way with a strange sounding transaction, a puzzlingly high offer, or requests to change prices so that deals could go through.

It all seemed to fade away, especially after 31 people were arrested towards the end of last year in a big mortgage fraud sweep. It's still around though. Now, these rip-off artists are finding ways to dodge and weave through the already confusing landscape of short sales. In short sales, banks are notoriously insipid, lethargic conductors of a symphony that no one seems to have the music to. It has opened up possibilities for fraud artists, using multiple buyers, to capitalize on desperate homeowners and bleed the bank before they know they've even been cut. How they actually do this gets way too complicated to spend a whole blog entry on here, but here are the basic rules of thumb when you get involved in a real estate transaction, especially if it is a short sale:
1) Have a real estate attorney to examine every document
2) Use a Realtor, preferably one from a reputable, well known broker.
3) If there are large, complicated looking contracts with multiple addendums that don't look typical, something is probably wrong.
4) Don't be afraid--EVER--to ask for someone's Real Estate license, or Mortgage Broker's license. You can check them by name or number on myflorida.gov/dbpr
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I've had a tremendously busy week--four offers written in the last six days, and more buyers out looking this week. Jenifer Woolley, my new assistant, is a big help. She started last week, and she is handling a lot of in-office detail, paperwork and correspondence that is taking a big burden off of me. She is a great organizer, and she's real good with people too.

Thanks for reading this blog, and if you like it, please pass it on to others. Don't forget that the latest sales data for Miami-Dade, Pinecrest, and Palmetto Bay, can be found to your left (click on $ales by the Numbers).

I'm not going to be the one to say we are "off the bottom". I want YOU to look at the charts (see $ales By the Numbers) and decide for yourself.

We are now in our ninth straight month of decreasing inventory. Pending Sales of single family homes in Miami-Dade soared to over 1400, and closed sales were up for the seventh straight month, to 846. If that doesn't impress you, consider this: The average sold price in Miami-Dade is up for the third straight month- $252,000 in April, $290k in May, $332k in June.

I can tell you that talk at the computer room and the water cooler in my office at Coldwell Banker is all about the increase in buyer activity. Everyone I've spoken with is seeing it, and is busy with people wanting to get that property before the market starts to level out. The first-timers are scrambling to get their dream home so that they can close by November 30th and get the $8000 tax credit. It's all happening, and you can see it in these sales charts.

So what about condos you say? Sure that's a different market, and always will be---but even if you throw the condo market into the mix, average sales prices are up, sales are up, and inventory is down on the same consistent track. You don't hear me talking about the condo stats much here, but just for fun I dug into them this time, and look what I found (this is condos and townhomes ONLY):
9 straight months of decreasing inventory.
7 straight months of increasing sales (pending sales only--closings dropped slightly the last two months, but are still in the high 800's, which is a still 29.6% increase from this time last year)

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The big issue in real estate now is appraisals. We are running into serious problems with incompetent appraisers missing the mark on homes of all size and location. We, in fact, are losing deals because of it. Seph Pomerantz, who is considered by many the appraisal guru in South Florida, spoke at our sales meeting yesterday, and he said the new guidelines imposed on the appraisal industry have forced some lenders to use a pool of appraisers who simply "can't measure a house to save their life,"  are not adjusting square footage properly to reflect the true value of the property, and have little or no knowledge of the neighborhood. On top of that, they are including short sales and foreclosures in their comparables, and so are coming up with skewed property values.

What's to be done about it? Right now, Realtors, lenders, and homeowners are helpless. These hack appraisers are under no mandates to change their findings when they are challenged, and there appears to be no remedy for challenging an appraisal.

If a homeowner can challenge a buyer's inspection, and hire his own inspector, then why not the same for an appraisal, the results of which can result in tens of thousands of dollars difference?

No one has been able to give me answer on that, but I'm going to keep asking, and so is Seph, and I'll report my findings to you here.

Stay cool and mosquito-free if you can!