Housing Market on Track to Beat Last Year’s Success

Back in March, as the nation’s economy was shut down because of the coronavirus, many were predicting the real estate market would face a major collapse. Some forecasts called for a 15-20% decline in transactions. However, six months later, it seems as though the housing market has fully recovered. Mark Fleming, Chief Economist at First American, announced last week: “Since hitting a low point during the initial stages of the pandemic, the only major industry to display immunity to the economic impacts of the coronavirus is the housing market. Housing has experienced a strong V-shaped recovery and is now exceeding pre-pandemic levels.” The Economic & Strategic Research Group at Fannie Mae upgraded its forecast for home sales last week: “Housing data over the past month continued to show a strong V-shape rebound, helping drive the broader economy. Existing home sales jumped to a pace not seen since 2006…We have substantially upgraded our forecasts for both new and existing home sales. For 2020, total home sales are now expected to be 1.3% higher than in 2019.” The National Association of Realtors (NAR) agrees. In their last Pending Sales Report, NAR shared projections from Chief Economist Lawrence Yun: “Yun forecasts existing-home sales to ramp up to 5.8 million in the second half. That expected rebound would bring the full-year level of existing-home sales to 5.4 million, a 1.1% gain compared to 2019.” Yun’s forecast for 2021 was even more optimistic, stating, “Home sales will ramp up again next year, increasing between 8% – 12%.” Bottom Line The housing market has come roaring back and looks as though it may even surpass last year’s success. Frank Martell, President and CEO of CoreLogic, hit the nail on the head when he said, “On an aggregated level, the housing economy remains rock solid despite the shock and awe of the pandemic.”

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Why Pricing Your Home Right Matters This Fall [INFOGRAPHIC]

Some Highlights As a seller today, you may think pricing your home on the high end will result in a higher final sale price, but the opposite is actually true. To sell your home quickly and for the best possible price, you should eliminate buyer concerns by pricing your home competitively right from the start. Let’s connect today to make sure you have the guidance you need to price your home right this fall.

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Credit Karma: FICO vs. Credit Karma

So you did it, you looked at Credit Karma and it’s finally at that credit score that you know that you need in order for you to go ahead and purchase a home or to buy a new car. Unfortunately, that may not be the case. Credit Karma doesn’t suck. It does have some really great uses, but there are a few things that we need to know when using Credit Karma to build and monitor your credit. Credit Karma only uses two of the three major credit bureaus, TransUnion and Equifax. When you’re looking to buy a home, buy a car, you’re going to need all three. So what the lenders are going to do is they’re going to take out your highest credit score, they’re going to take out the lowest credit score, and use what’s called the mid score. Credit Karma offers your credit score for free in exchange for learning about your spending habits and allowing for companies to target advertise to you. Vantage Score vs. FICO Credit Karma utilizes the Vantage Score model while most of your lenders for home and for auto use the FICO scoring model. Because every point matters, and Credit Karma sometimes is off by 40, 60, 80 and sometimes 100 points, you can set yourself up for some real heartbreak. What can you do? So what can you do? You want to think about when building your credit or fixing a bad credit, you want to go at it thinking about what is your ultimate goal? So if your ultimate goal is to just maintain your credit, Credit Karma can work wonders for you. Keep your goal in mind If your goal is to buy a home or buy a car, one of the things that I will suggest is that you reach out to a lender that services your goal. So if you’re looking to buy a home, you would definitely want to go ahead and reach out to a lender and have them go ahead and pull your credit. They’re going to pull your credit and most times they’re going to be able to let you know like, “Hey, you’re good to go right now. You’re at that minimum of 640 that we’re going to need for FHA.” Or if you’re not there, most of them are going to offer you some tips on what you can do with your credit report in order for you to go ahead and build your credit to a point where that lender is going to be comfortable and confident that if they put forward your application, that you’re going to get approved. Same thing if you’re going to go for an auto loan, keep in mind the lower your credit score, the higher interest rate you’re going to pay. I hope this information you found to be useful, feel free to like, comment and subscribe. I will really greatly appreciate that. Talk to you soon.

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