Bankruptcy

Steps to Avoid Bankruptcy

by bchandler on 9:37 am

Over 4,000+ Homes Purchased Since 2003

[listmenu menu="Primary Menu"/]

Steps to Avoid Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy, debt, saving, cash-strapped
The common wisdom about how to avoid?
Don’t get in over your head with debt.
Keep an emergency fund of six months salary.
Live frugally.

For the person who is currently treading water in a sea of debt or who is saddled with a home that has declined significantly in value, this advice is hard to follow. Whether you bought too much house or fell behind on your bills due to job loss or illness, you may find yourself in precarious shape and bankruptcy seems like the only viable option.

Bankruptcy may reduce your debt, but it has great repercussions on your credit score, your ability to find a job, and your ability to obtain credit in the future. For some people, it may offer a clean slate, but bankruptcy revisions in 2005 made it more likely that you will still be responsible for paying a portion of your debt. You may have to sell your assets, including your home. While you are paying down your debt, you have the added stigma of the bankruptcy on your record. If possible, you should consider less destructive alternatives to bankruptcy.

Increase your income – In the ideal world, you might prevent bankruptcy by bringing more income into the household. You can take on a second job or more work, have a stay-at-home family member find a job, or tap into savings or 401ks (this is not usually a good idea, but it may be a better alternative to bankruptcy). In the current economy, increasing your income might be tough.

Reduce your monthly income requirements – By squeezing the fat from your budget, you may be able to redirect some income toward other obligations. The things you cut however – the cable TV, the lattes from the coffee shop, the eating out – may only put a couple hundred dollars back into circulation.

Work out the debt with creditors – Creditors may agree to reduce your payments or freeze your interest rates. If you take your problems to a consumer credit counselor, you may find help in negotiating with your credit card companies.

Dump the debt – If the big income drain for you is the house or car payment, shedding these assets may either put your finances in the black or at least stop the bleeding. If you see that you could manage without having to make these payments, proactively selling the house or car can prevent foreclosure or repossession.

What other ways can you avoid bankruptcy?

Are you ready to sell a home fast? Call us today at 1-(877) 804-5252 or have your client contact us to https">get an offer in hours from Express Homebuyers.

Get Your Fair Cash Offer to Sell Your House, Fast!

or Call us at (877) 804-5252

Corporate Office

6564 Loisdale Court, Suite 315
Springfield, VA 22150
Phone: (877) 804-5252
Email: expresshomebuyers@expresshomebuyers.com

Express Homebuyers is rated 4.6 stars on Google based on 39 reviews

Alternatives for a Fresh Start

by bchandler on 1:14 pm

https">

Over 4,000+ Homes Purchased Since 2003

[listmenu menu="Primary Menu"/]

Alternatives for a Fresh Start

If you are in financial distress and fear you will lose your home, you may feel frustrated and hopeless. Some of the alternatives presented to you may seem pretty much the same: you will lose your home. You can do a short sale, let the bank foreclose, or file bankruptcy. Your choices may have the same import as waiters on the Titanic asking diners sitting in water to their waists if they preferred coffee or tea.

Being in this situation is not what you anticipated when you scraped and saved for your home. However, if you can adopt the philosophy that homes and material things are replaceable, you can get through the situation and aim for a fresh start. Short sales, foreclosure, or bankruptcy can provide this. What you should aim for is the solution that has the smallest long term impact on your credit score and the greatest chance for you to move onto the next step with dignity.

Preserving your credit score is important. Not only is a good credit score necessary to get future credit and get it at a decent rate, it may impact your ability to rent or buy a house, get insurance, and even get a job. If you fall on hard times, you will take an inevitable hit. Your concern should be with preserving your score as best you can. The means that in order of the least damage to your credit, it is short sale, foreclosure, and bankruptcy.

Short sale: If your home’s value is not enough to pay off the mortgage, you could ask your lender to authorize a short sale where you can sell the home for less than you owe. This approach saves the lender time and money compared to a foreclosure and allows you have more time to plan your nest move as the process takes a while. You will lose 80 to 100 points on your credit request, but within 18 months the impact on your score should lessen.

Foreclosure: When the bank takes your home, you lose 200 to 300 points on score and can’t buy another home for at least three years. Given the large numbers of foreclosures these days, foreclosure might have a relatively small social stigma and economic impact over time.

Bankruptcy: Bankruptcy will remove your debts or allow you to repay them over time, depending on whether you file Chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcy. The number of points you lose depends on what your credit score was before you filed, but the event will stay on your record from 7 to 10 years. Despite the effect on your credit rating, this may still be the best choice if you are burdened down with a lot of other debts besides your mortgage.

Any of these methods can offer a fresh start to you if you are in trouble. If you want to sell your home now, Express Home Buyers can offer exciting alternatives. Whether you are in financial trouble, face foreclosure, have a property that needs a lot of work, or have an inherited house, we can sell your house fast. Because with us, it’s Guaranteed2Sell.

Get Your Fair Cash Offer to Sell Your House, Fast!

or Call us at (877) 804-5252

Corporate Office

6564 Loisdale Court, Suite 315
Springfield, VA 22150
Phone: (877) 804-5252
Email: expresshomebuyers@expresshomebuyers.com

Understanding Short Sales

by bchandler on 10:30 am

https">

Over 4,000+ Homes Purchased Since 2003

[listmenu menu="Primary Menu"/]

Understanding Short Sales

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about short sales in the past few months- chances are you know someone who’s been through the process. And if you’ve been hit as hard by the current recession as many have been and have a home you’re having trouble affording, you may be considering a short sale as a viable option.

What’s a Short Sale?

Let’s assume you understand the basics of the concept, and are familiar with the broad strokes: basically, a short sale is what occurs when a lender agrees to accept less than the amount owed against a home because there is no longer enough equity to sell and pay all costs of sale. Put simply, if your payments are in arrears and it’s looking more and more like the lender won’t be able to recoup the full cost of the home, a short sale may be their best way of their getting something rather than nothing.

It Isn’t Perfect, But…

There’s no question that a short sale is far from an ideal outcome for anyone who owns a home. If you find yourself in dire straits with either foreclosure or a short sale looming as your only two options, which do you choose? Consider which does more damage to your credit? Opinions on this topic vary, but the bottom line is, they both do a lot of harm. Foreclosure typically knocks between 200 and 300 points off your score, while short sales have been known to trim your credit rating by anywhere from 100 to 300 points. Bottom line: your credit will suffer either way, although you have a slightly better chance of losing less money and credit rating if you work with a real estate agent and negotiate a short sale.

It’s a Way to Protect Your Credit Rating.

We understand how hard it is for anyone to be facing these possibilities; if you’d like to know more about this process or have any other real estate questions answered, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Express Realty Services has a fully-staffed short sale department; we can help you work through every facet of your short-sale negotiation.

Get Your Fair Cash Offer to Sell Your House, Fast!

or Call us at (877) 804-5252

Corporate Office

6564 Loisdale Court, Suite 315
Springfield, VA 22150
Phone: (877) 804-5252
Email: expresshomebuyers@expresshomebuyers.com

Overpricing is a Risky Business

by bchandler on 1:39 pm

https">

Over 4,000+ Homes Purchased Since 2003

[listmenu menu="Primary Menu"/]

Overpricing is a Risky Business

We’ve written several times about home selling, and weighed the pros and cons of using a licensed realtor to assist you in this process. The advantages to turning to an experienced professional include the training, experience and network at their disposal. Moving homes is something they’re familiar with, and a task they can fully devote themselves to. This is not to say you can’t be successful on your own; however, if you do decide to go it alone, know that there are several easy (and potentially costly) mistakes you can make. The most common tends to be overpricing your house.

It’s not a flea market.

If you’ve ever gone to a street sale or marketplace, you know that haggling is part of the process. The selling price is whatever you can get it lowered to, and half the fun is low-balling until you and the vendor reach an agreement. This is not how the home market works. Drastically overpricing a house isn’t a good policy; potential buyers will be scared off, and will skip over your listing until they find something within their price range. Your best bet is to determine its market value, and set the price close to this number.

Know your surroundings.

Another good move is to take into account what comparable homes in the neighborhood have sold (or are selling) for; if the other two story townhouse across the street has already been appraised and priced, it might not be a good idea to list yours on the market for twice as much. Still, use common sense when determining a price. If your home is in better condition or has features that many of the other homes in the area lack, don’t be afraid to set the bar higher. Hiring a professional can be useful in this case because they can provide you with a CMA, or Comparative Market Analysis, which evaluates your home against others in the area.

As you are probably well aware, we are the largest homebuying service in the greater DC area. We buy and sell hundreds of homes every year, and can save you the time, frustration and cost of shopping your house for months on an increasingly stingy market. If you’d like to talk to us about your home or would like to know more about how we operate, take a look at our website and feel free to give us a call when you’re ready.

Get Your Fair Cash Offer to Sell Your House, Fast!

or Call us at (877) 804-5252

Corporate Office

6564 Loisdale Court, Suite 315
Springfield, VA 22150
Phone: (877) 804-5252
Email: expresshomebuyers@expresshomebuyers.com

Knowing When to Let Go

by bchandler on 2:53 pm

https">

Over 4,000+ Homes Purchased Since 2003

[listmenu menu="Primary Menu"/]

Knowing When to Let Go

Selling your house can be one of the most difficult decisions you’ll ever make. A home comes to mean much more to its owner than just four walls and a roof: for many, it represents comfort, safety and family, as well as a substantial investment. Letting go of a piece of property can feel like an act of betrayal, like abandoning a loved one during tough times instead of working things out. No matter how much it hurts, walking away can sometimes be the only decision that makes sense.

Downsizing

This can have several meanings. If funds are tight and spending needs to be reduced, a less expensive house can make all the difference. The number many use as their cutoff point is 60%, as in they know it’s time to unload their home when mortgage payments eat up over 60% of their monthly paycheck. Sometimes the decision to downsize isn’t made out of necessity, but for the sake of convenience. If your family becomes smaller (when a child leaves for college, for example) it may be time to look for a home with fewer bedrooms and less overall space.

More trouble than it’s worth

If you’ve ever owned an old car, you’ve probably had the following conversation at least once:
“You should really get those brakes fixed.”
“No way, that repair would probably cost more than the whole car is worth at this point.”
This probably won’t literally be the case for your home, but a house that constantly needs repairs can be an incredible waste of time and money. If your “things to fix” list keeps growing and you’re racking up serious expenses, consider scaling down to a more affordable renovated home, one whose issues have already been identified and corrected.

If you can relate to any of these circumstances and decide that selling your home is the right move, check out our website at www.expresshomebuyers.com, we’re happy to discuss your situation and assist you by either buying or helping you sell your home.

Get Your Fair Cash Offer to Sell Your House, Fast!

or Call us at (877) 804-5252

Corporate Office

6564 Loisdale Court, Suite 315
Springfield, VA 22150
Phone: (877) 804-5252
Email: expresshomebuyers@expresshomebuyers.com

Scams and Fraud – You Can Get Scammed Trying To Avoid Foreclosure

by bchandler on 3:25 pm

https">

Over 4,000+ Homes Purchased Since 2003

[listmenu menu="Primary Menu"/]

Scams and Fraud – You Can Get Scammed Trying To Avoid Foreclosure

They’re here. They’re real. And, as usual, they can be very, very clever.

Scam #1 – The “Helping Hand” Company

We ran across this particular trap about two years ago – it came from the Better Business Bureau and it’s a doosie. These companies look like the “We Buy Wretched Houses” companies that pepper the landscape with flyers and get-out-of-your-mess-quick promises. You sit down with them, and they tell you they will buy your house for a specified period of time. Not only that, they promise you can continue to live in the house while you pay them much reduced rate with a promise that when you catch up on your finances, they will sell you the house back for very reasonable terms. They pick up your late payments and penalties, and you get back to regular payments.

Sounds pretty good.

What you are not aware of is the papers you sign include some non-traditional mortgage terms. The favorite of these helping hands companies is a binding rider that notes “a deed will be executed if you are 10 or more days late on a payment.” Translated, it means the company will take immediate possession of your house and any and all equity if you are 10 days late on any payment during the contracted time period.

Best Course of Action – Use You Head and Call In Professionals

If you need to sell your house fast, our advice is pretty straightforward: avoid doing really dumb things because you are in a state of personal financial panic. Here are the best steps we can suggest:

Work with Professionals
Only deal with companies who have an established history of home buying.
Check them Out
If you have any concerns about the buyer, don’t hesitate to check them out. We always ask our skeptical clients to check out the http" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Better Business Bureau.
Always Know What You’re Signing
Don’t be shy; ask for help! A lawyer or even your mortgage company can help you if you want professional advice from a third party. Never, ever sign a contract that you haven’t read – “oh, that’s just standard contract stuff” – or don’t fully understand.
Be Willing to Walk Away
If you have any doubts about the buyer or the contract — or if it just doesn’t feel right — just walk.

Of Course, Call Us
Many times, people facing foreclosure call us just for advice. We’re glad to help, whether you choose to sell your house to us or not. We buy houses fast, we’re Better Business Bureau accredited. With Express Homebuyers you can sell your house quick, and be secure and comfortable doing it. We’ll introduce scam #2 from this week’s Washington Post next time.

Get Your Fair Cash Offer to Sell Your House, Fast!

or Call us at (877) 804-5252

Corporate Office

6564 Loisdale Court, Suite 315
Springfield, VA 22150
Phone: (877) 804-5252
Email: expresshomebuyers@expresshomebuyers.com