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Five Reasons to Avoid Foreclosure

December 26, 2009 by admin

Experiencing foreclosure is an extremely emotional event in one’s life. It ranks in the top 5 most-traumatic things that can happen to an individual. The ramifications of foreclosure reach much further than most people understand. Here are the top five reasons why avoiding foreclosure is the best choice you can make:

Disclosure

For the rest of your life, you will always have to disclose that you have been through a foreclosure. When you fill out any application that asks whether or not you’ve been through a foreclosure, you’ll find that the only options are YES, or NO. You will be required to answer truthfully in order to avoid being involved in mortgage fraud.

Credit Score

When your bank repossesses your home, your credit score can drop by 300 points or more. It takes a long time to repair your credit history, and this will surely knock you into a no-qualify position financially. Not only that, but it will affect other service providers that you may have, and could affect your future employment. Some insurance companies check your credit score and use that as a measurement of risk. Your rates could sky-rocket as a result. You can be assured that your credit card rates will also be raised the next time your creditors check your credit status. All of that can be extremely costly down the road.

Permanent

Foreclosure is a permanent event. You cannot have a foreclosure removed from a credit history report. In fact, the only information you have have modified on your credit history is data that is considered an error. All other events will remain on your report for a long time. A foreclosure will stick with YOU forever, even if it disappears from your report. You will always be obligated to report it if asked on a legal document.

Security Clearance

If you work in an industry that requires security clearance to do your job, such as the military, or other high level security jobs, you will be at risk of losing that clearance. In most cases, when people lose their clearance, they lose their job. Foreclosure can lead you to unemployment.

Job Hunting

There are plenty of companies who run your credit history report when you apply for a job. If your record is tarnished by a foreclosure, your future employer may consider this when they compare you to another candidate with a clean record. You want to remain as marketable as you can, so having a foreclosure will impact your ability to find new work.

There is a clear difference between living with foreclosure and moving forward without it. I can help you prevent it through the process of a short sale. Contact me today for more information.

For the REST OF YOUR LIFE, you will ALWAYS have to disclose that you have been through a foreclosure when you apply for a mortgage.
Your credit score will drop by up to, and perhaps more than 300 points. Credit scores are being reviewed by insurance companies and other service providers to assess risk and determine what they’re going to charge you. In EVERY CASE, a low credit score costs more than NO credit score or a high credit score.
It is virtually impossible to reverse or repair your credit report and the foreclosure will remain on your record for up to 10 years. Regardless of the length that it remains on your credit report,

Handy Man Cools Off The Competition

August 15, 2008 by admin

(Note: Please know that I am an experienced DIY guy and have lived my entire life tearing into systems to figure out how they work. I would never suggest that you attempt to repair any of your home’s systems without consulting a professional and must tell you in advance that you may be held liable in the future if your work is the cause of failure.)

If you live in a hot part of the country, you probably have an air conditioner. Air conditioners have moving parts, and those parts are subject to wear and tear. Hiring a service technician is usually the first thing that you do when you have a problem, and many times it is well worth the expense. HVAC companies can and will charge a hefty price to repair problems with your A/C unit, and rightly so. Think about it. You’re calling them to alleviate the pain of a very hot home, and they’re out driving all day to homes that have no air conditioning. Who’s uncomfortable now?

Recently, a friend of mine experienced a slight problem with her A/C unit. It was making a buzzing noise and no air was blowing. For those of us who have ever played with a TYCO race set as a child, or an electric train set, we all know that when something electric has a buzz but doesn’t do what it should, it’s probably stuck.

Sure enough, after a $79.00 service call the results were in. A fan motor was stuck. What perplexes me is the solution that was offered to pacify the problem. Apparently the technician told her that all she needed to do was unplug the unit, reach into the blower fan, move it a bit, then press the reset button.

The reset button? There is no reset button, as I later discovered. It turns out that the “reset button” that the service technician was speaking of was the safety kill switch that’s disengaged when the lid to the unit is removed. It’s not a reset button. Based on what my friend had told me, there was no longer a problem, as I had not yet explored the unit to see what was actually wrong…

…until today. She called me frantically to let me know that her air conditioner wasn’t working again, and the solution that she had learned about from the HVAC company wasn’t working. So, I came by to discover what I had suspected all along. The motor was stuck. In fact, it had completely seized.

The anatomy of an air conditioner is very basic. Gas is compressed into a liquid. Compression causes friction, friction equals heat. The fan outside of your house helps vent the heat into the atmosphere. When the liquid evaporates, it cools quickly, just like sweat evaporating from your body during exercise. The cold liquid which travels to the unit inside your home is piped through copper tubes; very cold copper tubes. Blowing air over those cold tubes cools the air in your house.

The blower, a simple fan, shroud, and electric motor are the components that are responsible for moving this air.

Electric motors fail over time and eventually they stop spinning because their bearings get stuck or because the motor burns out. We called up the same service company and they quoted us $650.00 to replace the old broken motor with a new one. Too much for my taste. Especially since I had experienced the same type of problem with a condenser fan on my air conditioner years ago, which only cost me $89.00 to repair because I did it myself.

For this problem, within 4 hours I had disassembled the blower (an entire 3 parts), driven to my local distributor to purchase a new electric motor and capacitor, and re-installed the new parts. My total cost for the repair was $127.00 plus 4 hours of my time and gas. I usually consider the education part of my time value.

All in all, I’d say $50/hr is a great price compared to what would have been $162.50/hr by the HVAC company, and now I know how to do it.

Triathlon Challenges for the Average Joe

June 12, 2008 by admin

In the time honored tradition of posting non-real estate related material on a real estate website, I thought I’d join in by offering a “Random Musing” as Jay Thompson of the Phoenix Real Estate Guy calls it, of my own.

May 31st was a difficult day.

Unlike any other normal day of the year, I found myself in the cool pines of Show Low enjoying near perfect weather in anticipation of a short, but difficult day ahead of me. You see, I had entered the 5th Annual Deuces Wild Triathlon to test my skills away from the negotiating table. A triathlon is a 3-discipline event which starts with a swim, followed by cycling, then by running. I do not excel at any of them, but I do enjoy it. Working out is a great way to burn off emotional steam and signing up for a race is a great motivator.

The night before the race, we had arrived to find an available hook-up overlooking Fool Hollow Lake, one of the most beautiful camping grounds I have seen in a while. We enjoyed the pre-race gathering and attended a small service put on by Fellowship of Christian Athletes where JR Rosania (pictured to the right) gave his testimony. What a stud.

After the athlete dinner, we crashed at the campsite. I slept in my car, which was surprisingly comfortable.

Negotiating an open water swim is far more difficult than negotiating a purchase contract for a new home. The swim is the first leg of the race. The water was somewhere around 53 degrees. Entering the water was actually easy because of the wet suit, and I even thought that I might perform. I tested my stroke, got a feel for the water, and prepared for what was the most difficult swim I had ever experienced.

Within 200 meters of the start line, I was already anaerobic, gasping for air, and certain I would have to call it quits. I was so ready to end it, but something unexplainable pushed me forward. I just couldn’t give up. I had traveled 3 hours, paid an entry fee, and trained for 5 weeks (perhaps the cause of the trouble.) There was no way I’d quit. Thankfully, I finally made it out of the water, nearly in last place.

After making it through the hardest part of the race, the rest wasn’t so bad. I completed the cycling portion and moved on to the run. I felt great during both, but unfortunately cramped my right calf 2.5 miles into the run. It slowed me down considerably, but I made it.

Challenging myself in disciplines that I have never excelled at has made me stronger. It has fueled my desire to continue to improve both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If you have never pushed yourself to complete something that you thought was otherwise impossible, you have not yet lived. Consider doing something above and beyond what you ever dreamed you could do!