New Job, New House, New Car, Right?

When I graduated from school and got a “real job” the very first thing I did was go house hunting. I was relocating across the country and our little family had had enough of apartment living. We traveled to Austin and in a matter of 48 hours found a house we liked, submitted an offer, signed some papers and caught a plane back to Salt Lake City.

About seven weeks later we loaded up our U-Haul and headed back to Texas for good. After a few nights in a hotel it was finally time to close on our house. As we were sitting around the table, signing dozens of documents, our loan officer asked non-nonchalantly, “Now, you didn’t do anything crazy like buy a car since we last saw you, did you?”

My wife and I glanced nervously at each other. We had, in fact, bought a car. Truth be told, we weren’t all that sure that our 1998 Chrysler Cirrus would have made the 24 hour drive to Texas. So, with the promise of full time employment on the horizon and a new life about to begin in Texas, we figured we may as well add a new car in to the mix as well. How were we supposed to know that was a bad idea?

As our loan officer tried to hide the rolling of his eyes, our hopes and dreams of owning the beautiful three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, Texas limestone home, situated perfectly in the middle of a cul-de-sac, seemed like they were being flushed down the proverbial toilet.

When the loan officer saw the nervous glances between my wife and I, he got an exacerbated look on his face and started hounding us with questions, all while my wife broke in to tears.

Why Buying a Car is a Bad Idea

When determining your ability to qualify for a mortgage, a lender looks at your “debt-to-income” ratio.  That ratio is the percentage of your gross monthly income (before taxes) that you spend on debt. This includes your monthly housing costs (principle+interest+taxes+insurance+HOA fees), it also includes your monthly consumer debt, including credit cards, student loans, installment debt and…..ready for this? Car payments.

So in reality, not only should you not buy a car shortly before you buy a home, but you should also refrain from adding to your debt by making other major purchases (furniture, appliances, electronics, jewelry, vacations, paying for a wedding, etc.)

How a New Car Payment Reduces Your Purchase Price

As an example, suppose you earn about $5000 a month and your car payment is $400 per month.  Using an interest rate of 8% you would qualify for approximately $55,000 less for your home purchase than you would if you did not have the car payment.

Even if you manage your finances in such a way that you personally feel there will be no problem in meeting your mortgage payment, your lender might not agree.

So if you are considering buying a home and buying a car remember that that extra car payment could complicate things and perhaps hold off for a little while.

Luckily the purchase price of our Texas home was far below what our lender was willing to lend us, so our debt-to-income ratio was still acceptable. We walked out of the title office that day with the new keys to our new home in hand, but we also learned a valuable lesson for the next time!

Utah’s Real Estate Experts

If you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell Utah real estate and would appreciate the high level of service and expertise we provide, please contact us. We’re never too busy for you or your friends and look forward to assisting you with your real estate needs.

Sweet sweet summertime! With all of the recent rain (and even snow!) it doesn’t feel like Utah has even had spring yet, so it’s hard to believe that we are marching quickly in to the summer real estate season. And while many peoples minds are traveling to sunny beaches, refreshing swimming pools and staying outside until the streetlight turns on, we at the RedSign team are looking forward to a summer full of helping our clients sell their homes!

As we all know summer is a great time for a barbecue, campout, or road trip, but it’s not the easiest time to sell a home. There are lots of factors that are occupying potential home buyers’  minds, like going on vacation, kids being out of school, and busy summer schedules. Most sellers find that they would rather wait until things settle down in the fall to take the plunge and buy a home.

Sometimes waiting till fall is not an option. A change of employment or life events could require you to put your home on the market during the rough months of June, July and August.

Tips for Summer Selling

Here are some helpful tips from Elizabeth Weintraub, an agent Sacramento California, to maximize interest in your listed property this summer.

1. Mow the Lawn Twice a Week - Mowing once a week is a pain enough, but nothing creates better curb appeal than a freshly trimmed and edged lawn, and grass grows extremely fast in the summer so be sure to keep on top of it. Every other lawn cutting, try mowing the lawn on the diagonal to add curb appeal.
2. Create Summer Curb Appeal – Trim the bushes, plant flowers, repaint your house number on the curb. Wash the front doors, garage door and windows, sweet the walk. Anything you can do to make your home look tidy and beautiful, do it!
3. Decorate with Summer-Influenced Accents – Bring the life of summer in to your home by changing your throw pillows or rugs to something with a brighter summer color.
4. Bring the Light Inside -Remove heavy drapes. They can make a room look smaller! Pull all the blinds to the top and tape the strings underneath. Consider tie-backs for holding open lighter drapes or curtains.
5. Control the Air Temperature - entering in to a hot room on a hot day is misery. Circulate the air of a room, even if it requires placing floor fans around the home. Turn down the AC a smidge below your comfort zone. You don’t want to freeze out your buyers but you want to create a comfortable environment  that your potential buyers don’t want to leave.
6. Utilize Natural Scent Sparingly - Don’t overkill with your scentsy or room spray, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Try filling the air with the natural fragrances of fresh cut flowers instead.

Utah’s Real Estate Experts

If you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell Utah real estate and would appreciate the high level of service and expertise we provide, please contact us. We’re never too busy for you or your friends and look forward to help you with your real estate needs.

Public Transit

In the past few months my husband and I have been considering an opportunity in Boston. When we started looking in to it we knew absolutely nothing about Boston, short of some party involving tea a long time ago. As we dove in to researching the city and talking to various acquaintances there, we learned something rather quickly. Boston is a public transit phenomenon. Several, if not most, workers in Boston don’t drive to work at all, a lot don’t even own cars, and a good number don’t even have a drivers license!

To those of us from the West, the thought is absurd. For me, going to the grocery store would turn in to a full day ordeal! I can’t imagine hauling my brood around on public transit, we simply wouldn’t get anywhere, ever.

It’s not to say that Utah’s public transportation is bad. As you get closer to the city and in other places, like Provo, it’s better. But in Boston you can live an hours drive from the city and get to work by commuter rail, subway, or bus very easily.

In fact, because Boston area hotels cost an absurd amount of money, when my husband flew out there several weeks ago we booked a Motel 8 in a suburb 20 miles out of Boston. He was able to easily make it from the airport to his hotel, and from his hotel to the city, by using the subway.

On the Right Track

Utah is taking major strides in the right direction to becoming a more public transit friendly city, and I couldn’t be happier about it. In fact the new TRAX lines connecting West Valley City and  South Jordan are slated for an August 7th opening. The new lines will add over 16 miles worth of new rail and schedules will be consistent with other TRAX lines – a train every 15 minutes.

For now our family is going to be staying in Utah and taking advantage of the gorgeous mountains, friendly people, breathtaking views, and increasingly convenient public transit! I can’t wait for the day when I can sell my car and ride TRAX and Frontrunner everywhere I need to go, and August 7th will bring us a lot closer to that.

Utah’s Real Estate Experts

If you or anyone you know is considering buying or selling Utah real estate, we would love to help them out. We have been helping people buy and sell for years and would love to provide you or your friends with the same quality, customer service, and results that our clients have come to expect from the RedSign team.

Be Prepared

Utah is a desert state, with low yearly rainfall amounts. Flooding is not uppermost in the minds of most Utah real estate owners. However, we are all susceptible to flooding. For example: surface water from a sprinkler or hose, overflow of canals, ditches or streams; mud slides or collapsed earth and walls due to leakage of underground water pipes. It was the leakage of a water pipe that sent mud sliding down a hill and through the homes of a community in Riverdale, Utah in 1999.

As I dropped my daughter off at school today it started snowing. Snowing on May 17th. Many of you remember the floods of 1983 that turned State Street in downtown Salt Lake City into a rushing river. That year, the state saw historic snow levels, followed by a cool, wet spring.

And this year, officials say Utah is on track for the same conditions — if not worse. Snowpack levels are actually higher this year than they were in ’83, and flooding has already begun in areas of the state. Reservoirs are spilling over and dumping water to make way for the snow melt. And the continued falling snow is only making matters worse.  Every day that it is cool and wet increases the potential for much higher stream flows later on.

Please take the time now to make sure you are prepared for potential flooding around you. Murray real estate owners and Draper real estate owners have already started sandbagging.

It is important to note that homeowners insurance typically does not cover these types of flood losses. Flood insurance policies are available through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). If your agent does not write flood insurance you can find one that does. One important thing to keep in mind is that your flood insurance policy takes thirty days to take effect, so now is the time to prepare if your home is in a potential flood zone.

Utah’s Real Estate Experts

The RedSign team hopes you and your family will do everything you can now to prepare your home and family for potential flooding in the future. If you have any questions about Utah real estate, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

On Thursday Keller Williams Realty agents from around the country set out to give back to their communities. Here in Orem, The Red Sign Team and fellow agents decided to participate in a big way by beautifying Orem’s Scera Park. We met early and began by deviding out the work into 8 different projects. By doing this we were able to tackle a huge amount of work such as painting garbage cans, weeding, planting, transferring plants, hauling loads of weeds and waste, and spreading new mulch all around the park. However, the special touch to this year’s Red Day in Utah county, was working along side our friends at “The Special Needs Dream Team”. These kids are hard workers and were able to assist in this years project through out the day. We also had a special surprise visit from Harley and his super cool Harley Davidson bike.

Attendance

We had a fantastic turnout with over 60 real estate agents, mortgage loan officers, title insurance workers and home warranty representatives. In addition we had around 30 attendees from the Special Needs Dream Team. Laura, from Orem public works, said this was one of the largest groups to work on Scera Park in one day that she had ever seen.

Sponsors

We must give a special thanks to those who sponsored the event. We enjoyed delicious sandwhiches provided by John with Academy Mortgage and James with Security Home Mortgage, chips and soda provided by Steve with Bank of America, apples provided by Don and Corey with 1st Colony Mortgage and bottled water through out the day by Tyler with Two Week Home Loans. As you can see our mortgage partners really showed up and kept us all fueled up to work hard.

We’re of course very grateful to all our other industry partners who attended and gave their time and energy in helping us with this great project.

Media Coverage

We some good coverage by the media and were excited to have both Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News cover the event. The Salt Lake Tribune wrote a short article entitled “Realty firm associates spruce up Orem park“. I have not yet been able to find the Deseret News’ article, though we had a guy show up and take pictures. Please let us know if you have found this article or any other news coverage so we can add it here.

Photos

Many of you had camera’s during the even and took lots of pictures and video. We have created a dropbox album for everyone to add to and collaborate all our photos and videos. Please check it out to see all the fun photos and videos of the event. Thanks so much for sharing everyone.

Special Thanks

Oh behalf of the Red Sign Team and KW Cares Committee, thank you to all who participated. This event is evidence that a real estate firm can bring the industry together in a culture of giving back to the community that keeps us in business. It was truly amazing to see so many people happily working in the dirt along side one another in a way that we don’t usually interact. And what a blessing to have the Special Needs Dream Team join us in all the work. Thank you to the leaders and organizers who were able to make arrangements at the last minute. The event turned out great and we look forward to seeing you all at next years Red Day 2012!

-KW Cares Committee and Red Sign Team