National Closing Center

If you’re reading this, hope you’re ready for NAR Convention in Anaheim!

We just checked in, set up our booth, prepared some surprises for you and even had a few very productive meetings.

The Convention Center looks wonderfull. We’re trully excited to see you during the next few days. Please do not hesitate to stop by. We want you to leave Anaheim ready to become a short sale listing machine: Work less, close more!

Finally, National Closing Center is on Facebook!

For now, it’s just a bare bones page, but during the coming weeks we will be working on it.

If you’re on Facebook, please find NCC and ‘LIKE’ us!

Exclusive member benefits, webinars, information on short sales and more awaits you.

Thank you for supporting us and we look forward to chatting with you on FB!

Yours,

Team NCC

It took longer than our estimates, but we’re pleased to announce that our BPO ordering system and lead generation system is finally working and open for real estate agents and brokers!

National Closing Center is now seeking valuation professionals in select states. Click here to learn more.

Registration opened on November 1st. It will close when all the spots are filled. All current NCC members are automatically eligible for both short sale leads and valuation orders. However, if you are not a member of NCC, you need to register here!

Good luck and we look forward to working with you!

We’ve received a lot of emails from agents stating that they were not able to register to our latest webinar Efficient short sale processing: How to work LESS and close MORE. We estimate that about 50% of all invitees were not able to get on board due to email clients blocking links very aggressively.

Here’s just the link, no images or anything additional, it should work: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/751496574

Please register by clicking on the link. We apologize for the inconvenience! Feel free to pass the link to your colleagues or anybody who you think might be interested.

Thanks for your interest in National Closing Center and we look forward to seeing you at the webinar!

In much of the English speaking world, affordability is often conflated with cheapness and lack of economic competitiveness. Real estate developers, and the press that covers them, instead revel in driving prices to the stratosphere, identifying out of reach values with some definition of economic good, writes Joel Kotkin in the 7th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

But what might prove a benefit to individual owners or speculators may not be so wonderful for most families or the broader society. Over the past decade, even after the housing
bubble implosion, the ratio of housing prices to incomes has shown a steady increase. This process has been most evident in markets such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Boston but also occurred, particularly during the bubble, in traditional growth regions such as Phoenix, Las Vegas and across Florida. All in all, real estate in the United States looks quite affordable, compared to markets in other English speaking countries.

This phenomena, as the authors of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey make clear, also extends outside the United States. Places such as greater London, Vancouver, Toronto all experience high ratios of housing cost to income. But perhaps most remarkable has been the shift in Australia, once the exemplar of modestly priced, high quality middle class housing, to now the most unaffordable housing market in the English speaking world.

You can download the entire report here.

If you are attending IAR Convention and Expo at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, we cordially invite you to stop by the booth #607.

Learn about free short sale processing services, best short sale mitigation software and DON’T forget to ask us about BPO orders and short sale leads.

National Closing Center will soon start accepting registrations for valuation experts in Illinois. Be one of the first to learn all about it and get your name in the hat!

NCC is not (only) about short sales anymore…

Listing short sales is a hard work. And I’m not even talking about short sale processing. Many homeowners are scared and confused, they have been taken advantage of by various scammers and too-good-to-be-truth mortgage help plans. It’s not surprising that quite a few homeowners won’t even allow you to help them, although you, as a real estate professional, know perfectly well that their situation can be improved greatly.

So, every time I stumble upon something that could be used as a proof and motivational information in your sales pitch, a share it with NCC members.

I think this New York Times article is worth sharing. Have an appointment with a prospect? They don’t seem convinced that foreclosure is way worse than a short sale?

Let them know that foreclosure is way more than a dent in their credit history.

• Of 250 people undergoing foreclosure in the Philadelphia area, 32 percent reported missing doctor’s appointments.
• 48 percent said they let prescriptions go unfilled.
• People living in high-foreclosure areas are significantly more likely than those in less hard-hit neighborhoods to be hospitalized for diabetes, high blood pressure and heart failure.
• 37 percent mortgage counselors said they had worked with at least one homeowner in the past month who was considering suicide.

We hope fall is treating everybody well! Just a quick note: if you are at AREAA’s (Asian Real Estate Association of America) National Convention in San Francisco, find us and say “hi.” This year we don’t have a booth there, but it makes the entire process even more fun… Spot us in the crowd, ask about how you can have your short sales process at no cost to you, your seller and buyer!

Let’s start the fall right and worry-free with short sales in your pipeline, all taken care for you at no cost!

First-time buyers are abandoning short sales and looking for other options. According to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey, first-time homebuyer purchases of short sales dropped to 39.7 percent of short sale transactions in August. That represented a three-month slide and was the lowest level for first-time homebuyers ever recorded.

The first-time homebuyer share of short sales hit a peak of 54.1 percent of all short sale transactions in November 2009, just before the originally-scheduled expiration of the federal homebuyer tax credit.
Short sale transactions have long been problematic for buyers and sellers alike, with typical approval times of several months after a homebuyer first submits an offer. Factors slowing down short sale approvals include lost paperwork, coordination with multiple investors, slow appraisals, and mortgage servicer understaffing.
Still, for many first-time homebuyers, average short sale prices of 27 percent lower than non-distressed properties compensated for the wait time. But with average time-on-market for short sales stalled at 16.6 weeks—with the majority of that time spent waiting for short sale approval—short sale transactions are becoming less popular with first-time homebuyers.

This is an unfortunate situation, because when properly handled, a short sale is the best option for a first-time buyer in the today’s market. Yes, even if everything goes relatively smooth, some type of waiting and will always be involved. However, if the waiting time is not outrageous (less than 6 months) a short sale will result in significant savings and simply getting a bigger bang for the buck. It all comes down to who and how is handling your short sale…

First-time buyers losing interest in short sales

We’re back to Chicago…  Home sweet home met us with some seriously chilly weather. In fact, there was more than 50 degree difference between the weather in Dallas and Chicago–107 vs 50!

The good news–we’re back in our office working hard to get approvals for your short sales, developing the second version of our short sale processing platform and, of course, sorting through all the business cards and answering emails.

Thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth in the Five Star Conference in Dallas. Thanks to The Five Star Institute and the beautiful Hilton Anatole Hotel. Thanks for those of you who already visited our website and signed up. We look forward to closing many short sales for you.

For those who are still shopping around for the best short sale processing company, a friendly reminder: National Closing Center is there for you; always improving and always free for sellers, real estate agents/brokers and buyers. Feel free to call us, email or simply register and test-drive our platform and our services.

Best,

Team NCC

P.S. Enjoy a few photos from the conference and Dallas below!