Effects on Credit Scores
Many people know that things like bankruptcy and foreclosure can cause heavy damage to a credit score, but a recent FICO-led study found that seemingly small things can have detrimental effects on credit scores also.
Lenders use credit scores to measure how well a person handles debt, and decide interest rates on loans—or even whether to issue a loan. The scores range from 300 to 850, with 650 and below considered poor credit. A good credit score is important not just for financing home purchases, but employers increasingly check credit as well as landlords when seeking rentals. Also, poor credit scores can also mean higher costs on car loans and credit cards.
For this study conducted in March, 2011, FICO, the most prominent public company providing credit-scoring services, and VantageScore, a new credit-scoring model, looked at three circumstances experienced by three types of mortgage holders — a borrower with a great credit score (780), a borrower with good credit (720), and a poor credit borrower.
A mortgage, the biggest loan most people will ever get, often is the most important part of a person’s credit profile. Among other things, the study as reported on Realtor.org found that just one missed mortgage payment can hurt credit scores significantly. For instance, a 780 credit score borrower saw her credit score fall to 670-690; a 720 credit score borrower’s fell to 630-650; and a 680 credit score borrower falls to 600-620.
Conversely, loan modifications, when lenders approve new loan terms, have a “very, very minimal” impact to credit scores, possibly dropping the borrower’s score by 10 or 15 points, according to FICO officials. The effects on credit scores caused by short sales and foreclosures also were looked at.
In the case of short sale, deed in lieu of foreclosure, or settlement, assuming the balance has been wiped out: The 780 credit score borrower falls to 655-675; the 720 credit score falls to 605-625; and the 680 credit score drops to 610-630.
In the case of foreclosure, or short sale with a deficiency balance owed: The 780 credit score drops to 620-640; the 720 credit score falls to 570-590; and the 680 credit score decreases to 575-595.
These effects on credit scores can be repaired, but in the meantime, they can be costly, so it is wise to monitor your credit score.
Building a Business Plan in Real Estate
Many Real Estate agents do not understand the importance of a business plan. They do not look at their role as being an independent contractor. When you are essentially running your own business, you need to have a plan! When I was in Real Estate, I was very scattered. I was doing Real Estate in between jobs and then part time when I had a job. It wasn’t until the last time I was unemployed that I really took Real Estate seriously. I realized it was very easy to get off track and I knew that staying on track was essential if I was to take this seriously. The first step that I knew I had to do was to conduct a business plan. Without a business plan, I knew that I had no direction.
So where you start with the business plan, you may ask? I found a business plan online that I was able use that was very helpful. The idea of it was to calculate your bills every month and see how much money you needed every week, month and then year. After you figured out how much you needed to make, you then devised a plan as to how you were going to get there. This part included figuring out ratios. How many buyers and sellers would you have to meet with to reach your goal? How many closings would you have to make to reach your goal etc..
Once you got that far, it was then very important to figure out a plan to enable you to reach that goal. In this part, you need to then figure how many phone calls, how many meetings and how much marketing you need to do to get there. It is again very important to keep ratios in mind. How many people do you have to call to get one appointment? How many fliers do you typically need to send to get a response from someone?
After you have come up with your business plan and you know then what you need to do in order to reach your goals mentally and financially, then it is time to take action. This will make your days, weeks and months much more structured and you will also have a clear path toward reaching your goals. Goals are much more easy to reach once you set a clear path to get there! Become an Ownacondo.com Real Estate agent and get started today!
Chicago Condo Realtor
Looking for a Chicago condo Realtor? What makes a good one from a bad one, a good company from a bad one? Chicago condo realtors are everywhere. They're hidden in mom and pop offices and they're in some of the largest national brands you hear all the time. How do you go about choosing the condo Realtor for you?
A Chicago condo realtor is different from your average realtor because they have chosen to dedicate their career to helping people buy and sell condos, nothing else. That's a bold move for a real estate agent to make. What they in essence are doing, is cutting off all other types of business so they can be great at one. This allows them to know the Chicago condo market better than anyone else in the industry. They eat, sleep and dream condominiums.
How do you find these real estate condo only realtors? They normally will have something on their business cards that will associate themselves to condos only. You'll see something like condo specialist or they'll use something lie "condo queen" as their tag line. The best way to search a condo specialist is to go to a company that specializes in condos as a whole. That's your best bet. When you have a company that does nothing but sell condos, every real estate agent in the bunch is going to be a condo specialist. A condo specialist is so important when choosing to either buy or sell a condo because they can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think of a situation where you've spent weeks and weeks trying to find the perfect condo and then you lose it because you didn't work with the right condo lender first to see if you can qualify for the condo. A condo specialist will be prepared and be able to put you in front of those lenders right from the start.
A condo lender is also different from your typical mortgage broker. They know much more about how to close a condo than anyone else in the industry. This is a critical piece in moving through the steps to obtaining condo ownership. Condos can be owned and sold through all realtors. But when you take the time out first to locate and interview a realtor that specializes in condominiums, not only will you find that you'll save a ton of time through the process, but you possibly could save thousands of dollars along the way as well.
Hiring Real Estate Agents
Are you a real estate agent looking to join a condo company instead of the traditional real estate brand? OwnACondo.com is hiring real estate agents for the Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and New York markets.
OwnACondo.com is hiring Realtors for part-time and full-time positions. OwnACondo.com generates thousands of leads through a number of advertising campaigns. They take those leads and distribute them to the agents that want to work the area the lead is coming from. From the billboards it advertises on and the internet marketing they consistently work on, they literally receive more than dozens of inquiries every single day. They dispatch these leads to the agents that work that particular area.
If you’re newly licensed or have been with a company for awhile but would like to find out more about OwnACondo.com, call Brian at 877.627.5543 or you can email him at BK@OwnACondo.com.
In addition to receiving leads of potential condo buyers and sellers, OwnACondo.com has the best training program in the industry. There are training classes each and every week on a different aspect of real estate. When real estate agents are hired by OwnACondo.com, they are immediately put into the hands of an experienced mentor and guided through the process of closing real estate. If you generate leads you better know how to close them. The closing part comes from training.
OwnACondo.com is hiring real estate agents to help handle the expansion to the areas of New York, Miami and LA. With the marketing programs that are in place over the next six months, they’ll need at least another 50-100 agents to handle the volume. There’s an expected spike in traffic and closings due to the $8,000 stimulus tax plan as well that will cause a number of people to close in September, October and November of 2009.Â
OwnACondo.ocm originated in 2000 as a company that helped developers convert their apartments buildings to condos. Today it’s corporate offices are out of Oak Brook, Illinois. Today they are a full service real estate brokerage hiring real estate agents to help become the best place to buy and sell condos.
Hiring Chicago Real Estate Agents
We need more real estate agents! OwnACondo.com is hiring Chicago real estate agents to fill the gaps. Currently we’re receiving too many leads on a daily basis to keep up to level of service we’d like top give our customers. Each agent in OwnACondo.com that takes leads receives a lead based on the territory they want to work. If a customer calls us today wanting to buy or sell a condominium in the River North area of Chicago, we hand it over to an agent that wants to service that area as well.
The leads are given by territory, but an agent can take as many territories as they’d like, as long as they can handle everything. We have some real estate agents handling Chicago that only want to take leads in one zip code and we have others that will service all territories. It really comes down to you.
Why does OwnACondo.com get so many leads? At this moment in time, OwnACondo.com has over 400 outdoor impressions throughout the entire Chicago area. Park benches, bus stops and billboards make up the outdoor. This is a start. First off, can you think of any other real estate company that has 400 outdoor, let alone any brand? This makes the phone ring every fifteen minutes at our office. Next, OwnACondo.com is focused on website optimization. This means that when you type in a keyword phrase in Google, where do you rank? OwnACondo.com now ranks on the first page of several hundred pages and is not stopping there. For starters, you can type in the phrase find a condo, finance a condo, sell a condo, buy a condo, buy a condo in Chicago, Chicago area condos, hiring Chicago Realtors, Chicago condominiums and buy Chicago condominiums, OwnACondo.com, the company, comes up on the first page of results. I’ve just listed nine phrases. There are hundreds of phrases that we rank on the first page of results.
What does this mean for Chicago real estate agents looking to be hired by us? Lots and lots of leads. People click on us constantly looking to buy or sell a condo. We take the lead in through either a website registration or a phone call. We qualify the lead and then dispatch it out to our condo experts.Â
If you’d like to find out how to get more information about becoming a real estate agent in Chicago for OwnACondo.com, contact us at 877.627.5543 for more info.
Buying Condos or Selling Condos in Chicago?
HELP WANTED! Due to the recent boom in leads to OwnACondo.com, it has us looking for new agents to join the OwnACondo.com Condo Specialist team. If you like helping people in the suburbs or downtown Chicago buy condos or sell condos, then we need you.
If characteristics such as high initiative, communication skills and sales skills describe you then join the OwnACondo.com Condo Specialist Team, then we need you.
Not only has OwnACondo.com become known as the best place in Chicago to buy and sell condos but also the surrounding communities. Real estate is an exciting and essential part of the global society. Those who work in real estate provide a service that affects each of our lives, and they contribute to development that will impact society for generations. A career with OwnACondo.com in the dynamic field of real estate will provide fulfilling opportunities to stretch your abilities and expand your experience.
The real estate profession has expanded and offers one of the widest career selections in the business world today. Helping people in Chicago buy condos and sell condos are aspects of a real estate career in with OwnACondo.com.
A career with OwnACondo.com in real estate provides flexibility and freedom to set your own pace. Income directly reflects your efforts, with no limits on what astute, hard-working men and women can earn. Successful people in real estate are goal-oriented, persevering, self-motivated, ambitious and people-oriented. The rewards of a real estate career are a potential for high earnings, status in the community, autonomy, time freedom, helping people, the intellectual challenge and the satisfaction from those accomplishments.
Just remember an OwnACondo.com Condo Specialist brings experience and useful resources to the condo ownership process as well as selling a condo.
Join the OwnACondo.com team and experience it! What is this “experience?â€Â It’s everything. It’s the attitude, the passion, the technology, the systems, the people, the managers, the trainers and the employees. It’s the buzz, the positive vibes, the focus, the determination, the will, the drive, the excitement and the dedication to be the best. It’s the camaraderie, the team effort, the sharing, the helping and the caring. It’s everything. It’s the brand. It’s the feeling of being on top, being Number One. It’s the OwnACondo.com Experience.
The rewards are endless. We offer leads, training marketing and management growth. Call today and join the OwnACondo.com Condo Specialist Team 866- 696-2266!
We look forward to your becoming part of the OwnACondo.com Condo Specialist Team!
Condo Fair Housing
It's been 40 years since U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act. What does this landmark legislation mean?
The 1968 act expanded on previous acts to prohibit discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin and sex. It was amended in 1988 to include handicap and family status.
Housing discrimination had already been prohibited for more than 100 years previously, thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, but ironically there were no federal enforcement provisions as part of that act. The enforcement "teeth" would not come about until the 1968 act was signed into law. In fact, some local states, municipalities and/or counties have expanded further on the federal act. Be sure to check locally for more information.
Realtors, including the condominium specialists at OwnACondo.com, abide by a Code of Ethics that requires "Equal professional service to all clients and customers irrespective of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin." Read a summary of the REALTOR Code of Ethics here.
Here's the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in its entirety.
