Selecting the right real estate agent to help you buy or sell your home is essential to a smooth transaction. For the best possible experience, you should consider a professional’s background, personality and responsiveness.

Here are some tips to help you choose and work with your real estate agent.

How to choose a real estate agent

1. Consumers who do their homework can save thousands of dollars and experience a smooth transition. So don’t waste time and resources – decide what’s most important to you, and then find a professional who specializes in that area. A RE/MAX agent can help you no matter what your needs are.

2. Ask friends and family members for referrals. Someone you know and trust may have a RE/MAX agent in mind to help you meet your real estate goals.

3. If you’ve already determined where you’d like to live, drive through neighborhoods in the area and survey them for REALTOR® yard signs. Seeing the same name pop up on signs time after time may indicate that the agent is a specialist in the area. If you’re thinking about selling, monitor the signs in your own neighborhood.

4. Moving far away? Right here on remax.com, you can connect with a RE/MAX agent around the world who can offer great expertise and service. Consider services they offer, additional certifications, any specialties, and languages they speak. You’ll find the right professional to meet your real estate needs no matter where your home search takes you.

5. Pay attention to credentials. This will help you determine areas of expertise. You may be interested in these designations: ABR (Accredited Buyer Representative), CDPE (Certified Distressed Property Expert), LHMS (Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist), CRS (Certified Residential Specialist) and SRES (Seniors Real Estate Specialist). There are dozens of designations pursued for continuing education, so identify one or more that fit your needs.

What to ask in the interview

1. If selling, ask the real estate agent how he or she would establish a listing price. Request a Comparative Market Analysis, also called a CMA, which shows the market value of similar homes in the area that are for sale or have recently sold.

2. Ask the agent how he or she would market your property. Understand that some agents may prefer to first tour your home and then put together a customized marketing plan to present at a later meeting. But if he or she can’t suggest a strategy when asked, you might consider interviewing other candidates.

3. Ask the agent how often you should expect to hear from him or her. Know how and when you will communicate to avoid unrealistic expectations.

4. Ask how long the agent has been licensed and how many buyers and sellers he or she has helped.

5. Ask about designations. Interest in continuing education is a strong indicator of motivation and professionalism.

6. Pay attention to the agent’s listening skills. Does he or she cut you off before you’ve finished a sentence? There’s nothing worse than looking at houses you have no interest in because the real estate agent has not listened carefully to your needs, or having your home on the market too long because it’s priced incorrectly and the wrong buyers are being targeted.

7. Ask the agent what his or her fee structure is. Does he or she require a percentage of the sales price or work for a flat fee? Will the agent be paid another way?

8. If you are unsatisfied with a prospect’s plans or personality, thank him or her for taking the time to meet with you and repeat the process with another real estate agent. It can be time-consuming, but it’s worthwhile.

Once you’ve found the right real estate agent to represent you, hold up your end of the relationship. There are simple things you can do to help your real estate agent get you the best deal.

How to work with your real estate agent

1. If you are selling, create an information sheet that lists your home’s features and best qualities, especially those that others might overlook. Your agent may be able to use the information when marketing your home.

2. When selling, talk to the real estate agent about cosmetic improvements. Your home may need fresh paint or new carpet.

3. If selling, keep it clean. Eliminate cobwebs and dust. Keep the bathroom counters and mirrors wiped down. Vacuum and sweep daily.

4. If buying, be clear about what you want. Make a list of your priorities numbered 1 through 10. You can always revise the list, but give your agent something concrete so that he or she can research available listings more efficiently.

Food for thought

1. Hiring a REALTOR® will give you a strong advantage. Although many practitioners work part-time, RE/MAX Associates are full-time professionals who provide their complete attention and expertise.

2. Your real estate agent is an authority you hire to help you make the right decisions, but you have the final word.

3. Your residence is likely to be the biggest single investment you’ll ever make. Buy and sell wisely.

4. Office environment can say a lot about a businessperson. Is it clean and organized? Do the office hours make it easily accessible? Are staff members pleasant and helpful?

5. Remember that home values fluctuate with the economy.

By: Re/Max

After three weeks of solid increases, the industry’s volume of new mortgage applications took a sharp dive last week, as refinancing plunged to its slowest pace in a year and home purchases declined to their lowest level in nearly four months.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said Wednesday that its measurement of total mortgage loan application

By: Carrie Bay DSNews

The Federal Reserve board held its first meeting of 2011 this week. It may be a new year with new faces around the Fed’s boardroom table, but there’s nothing new in the central bank’s policy direction or its guarded assessment of the nation’s economic recovery.

Board members voted to keep the Fed’s benchmark interest rate near zero – a level they’ve clung to for over two years now – and press forward with their November decision to pump another $600 billion into the economy.

The central bank will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 0.25 percent and “continues to anticipate that economic conditions … are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period,” according to the Fed’s policy statement released Wednesday afternoon.

The board decided to continue expanding the Federal Reserve’s securities holdings in order to promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure inflation levels remain stable, officials said. The central bank will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its portfolio of mortgage-backed securities and government housing debt and intends to purchase an additional $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011.

Neighborhoods across the country are riddled with empty bank-owned homes and unoccupied foreclosures that erode neighboring property values and open the door for blight and, in some cases, criminal activity.

It’s already a challenge for lenders to put these properties back into the hands of responsible homeowners, and the situation is only expected to get worse. Foreclosures are on the rise again, further adding to already engorged REO inventories, market demand is waning, and the homebuyer pool is shrinking.

The nation’s glut of vacant REO properties took center stage in Washington Wednesday. HUD announced a new nationwide REO “First Look” program, in partnership with the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, and it was the first of a two-day summit hosted by the Federal Reserve to examine the community impacts of foreclosed and vacant properties.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan called the National First Look Program an “unprecedented agreement” that will allow state and local governments, and nonprofit organizations first crack or first right of refusal to purchase foreclosed homes from top lenders before the banks make these properties available to private investors.

HUD says the institutions participating in the program represent 75 percent of the REO marketplace. They include: Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Deutsche Bank, GMAC, Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Financial Corporation, Saxon Mortgage Services, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo, as well as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

BY: Carrie Bay

The sharp fall in residential property prices in the third quarter means that housing in the United States has become even more undervalued, according to the analysts at Capital Economics.

Based on the latest S&P Case-Shiller index, Capital Economics has concluded that house prices are now 17 percent undervalued relative to disposable income per capita. Housing has never before looked as undervalued, the firm pointed out in a research note released to DSNews.com.

Looking at the data included in the index compiled by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), residential home prices are 14 percent undervalued, which is also a record, according to Capital Economics.

The housing affordability index from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) remains close to its record high. Capital Economics explained that NAR’s affordability assessment indicates that a median income household with a 20 percent down payment can now more easily afford the monthly mortgage payments on a median-priced home than at any time in the last 30 years.

Rock-bottom interest rates have also helped to bring owning a home within the means of more Americans. Mortgage rates have begun to head upward from half-

By: Carrie Bay

By: Carrie Bay

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have instructed their selling agents to move forward with transactions involving foreclosed properties in cases where sales were suspended due to potential problems with the legal paperwork.

The GSEs were forced to temporarily halt the sale of certain properties two months ago when news surfaced that some of the nation’s largest servicers – including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and GMAC Mortgage – had been employing robo-signers who failed to comply with clearly defined state laws when handling foreclosure documentation.

Fannie and Freddie also employed the services of the so-called foreclosure mill law firm of David J. Stern in Florida, which is currently under intense investigation for forging foreclosure documentation. Both companies terminated their business dealings with the Stern firm in early November.

By: Carrie Bay

There are 7,043,000 mortgages in the United States that are at least 30 days past due or in the process of foreclosure, according to Lender Processing Services (LPS).

The company provided the media with a sneak peek at its October month-end mortgage performance data this week. The numbers show the nation’s delinquency rate was virtually unchanged from the previous month’s reading, but foreclosures are on the rise.

Of the more than 7 million home loans in the country going unpaid, 2,090,000 have been referred to an attorney for foreclosure, LPS says. Another 4,953,000 are 30 or more days delinquent but not yet in foreclosure, with 2,238,000 of these at least 90 days overdue.

By: Carrie Bay

The nation’s mortgage delinquency rate declined in the third quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said Thursday, as the job market showed signs of what the trade group’s economic team called “marginal improvements.”

But lenders are still dealing with a massive backlog of defaults, and they stepped up initiations of foreclosure proceedings during the July to September period. Even with an increase in foreclosure starts, MBA says the ratio of home loans in the foreclosure process declined, signaling servicers are pushing unpaid mortgages through the pipeline at a faster pace – some might argue too fast with all the controversy surrounding robo-signing and deficient documentation.

According to MBA’s latest figures, the delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four unit residential properties dropped 72 basis points from the second quarter to 9.13 percent of all loans outstanding in the third. The rate is down 51 basis points from one year earlier. (The delinquency rate includes loans that are at least one payment past due but does not include loans in the process of foreclosure.)

The percentage of loans on which foreclosure actions were started during the third quarter was 1.34 percent, up from 1.11 percent the previous quarter. Foreclosure start rates increased across all loan types, with prime fixed loans setting a new record high in MBA’s quarterly survey.

According to Michael Fratantoni, MBA’s VP of research and economics, the increase in foreclosure starts is just a “natural progression of defaulted loans moving through the process.”

Total loans in the process of foreclosure equaled 4.39 percent of the nation’s outstanding mortgages at the end of the third quarter, according to MBA’s analysis. That’s down from 4.57 percent in the second quarter and 4.47 percent during the third quarter of 2009.

As more loans exit the foreclosure process, REO inventories are growing. Fratantoni says he expects existing home sales in 2011 to be 4.8 million – roughly the same as in 2010. While that’s not a fast enough pace to bring down the overhang supply, he expects to see home prices stabilize over the next year.

Myth #1:  Foreclosure happens fast. With unemployment and underemployment still affecting nearly 1 in every 4 Americans, no one is immune from fears that a pink slip might quickly turn into a foreclosure notice.  According to NeighborWorks America, nearly 60 percent of families seeking foreclosure counseling cited a lost job or cut wages as the reason they were facing foreclosure. 

While the Obama Administration’s Home Affordable Programs haven’t been nearly as effective as predicted in actually preventing foreclosures, they have had the effect of extending the foreclosure process for many families.   Even though the legal process of foreclosure can happen in as few as 6 months in most states, it is currently taking much longer for the average foreclosure to get to completion.  Recently, JP Morgan Chase revealed that their average borrower who loses a home to foreclosure has not made any payments in 14 months nationwide; 22 months in FLorida and 26 months in New York.

To be sure, some see this as a good, others view it as unnecessarily dragging out the overall market’s recovery. Many insiders will point out that these delays in foreclosure may be calculated to save the banks the costs of owning and maintaining foreclosed homes, not to help homeowners.  In any event, the fact that foreclosure does not happen nearly as fast, in many cases, as expected does give families who are temporarily down on their luck some extra time to try to get back on their feet and save their homes.

Myth #2:  Buyers can’t get clear title or title insurance on foreclosed homes.  When the foreclosure robo-signing scandal first hit, there was widespread concern that buyers would not be able to get clear title on foreclosed homes, because the former foreclosed owners might be able to come get their homes back when the improprieties in the bank’s foreclosure documentation processes came fully to light.  At the same time, several of the country’s largest title insurance companies publicly balked at issuing policies on bank-owned homes until the issue was resolved.  At this point, the banks claim they have revamped their processes, and all banks have stated that they have found not a single borrower whose home was repossessed without them having missed the requisite number of mortgage payments.  Nevertheless, a number of governmental investigations are still in progress.

The fact is, buyers of bank-owned properties in nearly every jurisdiction are protected from later title attacks by foreclosed homeowners by the bona fide purchaser rule, under which courts would prefer to simply award cash damages to be paid by the culpable bank to a wrongfully foreclosed-on homeowner, rather than reversing the sale or ownership to the new, innocent buyer.  Additionally, the title insurers have now changed their tune and restarted issuing insurance policies on bank-owned homes which protect buyers’ interests, after working with the banks for them to take responsibility in the event a former homeowner prevails in a wrongful foreclosure suit. 

While there are still many intricacies of title to be resolved for foreclosure buyers who purchase homes at trustee sales and auctions, or for cash buyers who often went without title insurance in the past, on the average, Trulia-listed, bank-owned property purchased with an average mortgage and title insurance, the chances a buyer’s title will later be successfully challenged by the foreclosed homeowner on the basis of robo-signing?  Exceedingly slim.

Myth #3:  Buyers should wait for the shadow inventory to be released.  Many a buyer, discouraged with the homes they see on the the form in their price range, has decided to sit still and wait for the banks to release for sale what is called their “shadow inventory” – rumored to be anywhere from 4 to nearly 6 million homes that have already been foreclosed, but not listed for sale, or will be foreclosed in the near future. The fact is, to the extent that the banks have acknowledged the existence of a pool of homes they own but are not selling, they have expressed that their reasoning for holding the homes off the market is to avoid flooding the market and driving home values down any further.  For that reason, buyers should not expect to see a massive influx of these shadow homes onto the market anytime soon – if ever. 

The banks’ current modus operandi is that as they sell a home, the replace it with another home in that market – if they sell 50 homes in a town that month, they’ll put another 50 on the next.  So, don’t hold your breath waiting for a fabulous new flood of homes.  Instead, set up a Trulia alert to notify you when homes that fit your search criteria come on the market, and be ready to call your agent and go visit any and every one that looks like it might be a good fit.

Myth #4:  If you’re looking for a deal, you’re looking for a foreclosure.  Despite what they may say, no buyer’s heart’s fondest desire is to buy a foreclosure.  But almost every buyer dreams of buying a great home – and getting a great deal on it.  Many people think that to get a great value on their home on today’s market, it means they must buy a foreclosure.  As a result, the value and other advantages of buying an individually-owned home on today’s market are frequently overlooked.  Individual sellers with homes on the market right now are generally quite motivated, and understand that their homes are competing with discounted short sales and foreclosed homes.  Many of these sellers are slashing prices in an effort to get them sold – the most recent Trulia Price Reduction Report revealed that 27 percent of homes on the market across the country have had at least one price reduction.  Now that’s what I call a sale!

Further, individual owners are often much more negotiable on a wide range of contract terms than a bank which owns a foreclosed home.  You can work with non-bank owners on things like repairs, closing dates, choice of escrow provider, closing costs and even included personal property much more flexibly than you can when the bank is on the other side of the bargaining table.  On top of that, many individually-owned homes are in pristine, move-in condition; that is much rarer with foreclosures.  So, don’t underestimate the value of the deal you might be able to get on a non-foreclosed home.  Just get clear on what you can afford and look at all the homes that are available in that price range, without discriminating against non-foreclosures.

Myth #5: Having a foreclosure on your credit history means it’ll take years and years before you can buy again.  One of the most Frequently Asked Questions in the Trulia Voices Community by homeowners who are facing or have just lost a home through foreclosure is how long it will take before they’ll be able to buy again.  Until recently, the standard wisdom was that 5 years, minimum, would have to have elapsed between the foreclosure and the new home purchase.  Now, though, borrowers can obtain an FHA loan with the low, 3.5 minimum down payment requirement as soon as 3 years following a foreclosure.  To do so, though, all your other ducks must be in a row. 

Post-foreclosure buyers need a credit score of 620-640 to qualify for an FHA loan; higher for a non-FHA loan – given that the foreclosure itself usually dings anywhere from 100-150 points off the credit score (not necessarily counting a full year or more of pre-foreclosure missed payments), former homeowners who want to buy again need to ensure they have no other late payments or credit dings after they lose thier home.  You must have clean credit with no derogatory marks like late credit card payments following the foreclosure,  and you may also be required to document 12 to 24 months straight of on-time rent payments after the foreclosure. 

Further, the bank may impose a lower debt-to-income ratio on post-foreclosure borrowers than on borrowers who have not had a foreclosure, in an effort to keep your mortgage payments low, keep you from overextending yourself and boost the chances you’ll be a successful homeowner over the long-term this time around.  The bank will also need to see 2 years of continuous employment history in the same field, and documentation that you meet other loan qualification requirements.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson