Kansas City Real Estate Update

What if I am Upside Down in My Home?

In this economy, many homeowners are faced with a move and need to sell their home. Unfortunately, some banks have over-loaned on the property or they may have just bought the home in the last few years, and (in the Greater Kansas City area) there has not been any appreciation. Therefore, almost every home The Korn Team has seen for sale in this market is selling for about the same price it was selling for at the end of 2005 (as long as the homeowner didn't pay too much for it then).

The great news is that we are not seeing many neighborhoods and communities that are depreciating. Most have had their values flatten out. More good news is that means that many of the subdivisions are not depreciating either. However, if you purchased your home in the last 3-4 years, you may feel like you are losing money. That is because, typically, if you lived in the property for 3 years, your appreciation would have more than covered your cost to sell the property.

The other issue is when the boom was going on, the banks and mortgage companies were loaning money pretty freely. If you had excellenet credit, they could typically push the appraisal value on the property to give you some equity to borrow against. Doesn't mean the appraisal weren't justified...but many really may have pushed the upper limits. Understand that Banks make money on Interest charged. If you are borrower with impeccable credit, they would love for you to borrow as much as you can. They really didn't have to worry about you defaulting based on your credit history.

The biggest solution you can do is talk with The Korn Team about a true market evalutation on your property. We can bring options for you to get moved. In many cases where our clients may have borrowed more than their home is worth...and might come up a little short on sale date or not have as much equity as they thought they would, were glad they called us. Because of the current economy, we have helped many of our clients buy their next home at such a discount they are getting double the savings on what they gave up on their sale side.

One particular client absolutely had to get 5k from the sale of his home. However, the MOST his home would probably sell for was for him to break even because he had borrowed money against his home and got his equity out early. We promised him he would not be homeless and that in most cases we might be able to get his closing cost paid by seller, bank, or some other way. What ended up happening was we sold his house in less than 30 days, and even though he broke even, he purchased a home about 30-40k under market value...and it was move-in ready. You can see his testimonial video at http://www.youtube.com/user/wwwKORNTEAMcom#play/uploads/7/P8Cuyndj5UE where he talks more about his experience in the real estate process.

If you want to know what ALL your options are, don't hesitate to give us a call at 816-224-KORN (5676) or go to our website for all of our contact information at www.kornteam.com