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4 Ways a Real Estate CRM Will Help You Get More Organized | Waccabuc Real Estate

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Thinking about investing in a customer relationship management (CRM) software? If you are, now is the time to get on board. Here’s why: the U.S. real estate market is finally making a comeback after years in decline. In fact, there are reports that U.S. housing rebounded to a four year high last month. There are less vacant homes on the market and applications for building permits are increasing

If you’re still a REALTOR®, you’ve lived through some tough times. Now is the time to prepare yourself for more business and make sure that you’re able to take it on while staying 100% organized and in-control.

In addition to helping you remain in touch with clients, nurture your leads, and build relationships with your sphere, a real estate CRM is absolutely instrumental to getting more organized. Below are four ways you can use your CRM to stay both proactive, organized, and in-control:

1.     Listing and Closing Activity Plans

A good real estate CRM will come with pre-designed listing and closing Activity Plans. These plans will help you manage every step in the process of listing and closing a home so nothing ever falls through the cracks.

2.     Transaction Management

Part of running a completely organized business is having the ability to manage all of your transactions, transaction documents, showings, and third parties in one place. And this is exactly what a top-notch CRM will let you do. Use your CRM to generate service reports, schedule appointment and task reminders, list property details, record closing and other dates, manage offers, and track commissions.

3.     Drip Email Marketing

Staying in touch with clients and prospects and building long-term relationships with them is the impetus that’ll spark referrals and repeat business. Your CRM should have a number of pre-designed marketing campaigns created you. Simply select the campaign that works best for a particular contact or group and your CRM will send emails out automatically at various time intervals. Drip email marketing campaigns will help you automate some of your marketing, which means that while you’re busy with a client on the road, you’re also marketing to hot leads and staying in touch with past clients at the same time.

4.     Integrated Calendar and Task List

Never underestimate the power of a calendar and task list in helping with personal organization. One of the benefits of a good CRM is that you don’t have to rely on your memory. Use the system for any reminders or notifications that you want to receive (for example, you may want the system to remind you to call your clients on their birthday or home purchase anniversary date). As soon as you log into your CRM, take a look at your calendar and tasks for the day so you’re aware of your appointments and what needs to be done.

Choose a system that automatically and wirelessly syncs with the built-in calendar in your smartphone. That’s an important plus because it gives you the opportunity to add and view appointments on the road and keep your CRM constantly up-to-date.

A good, easy to use CRM will play a big role in helping you run a more organized and productive business. As the real estate market is coming back to life, adopting a CRM into your business is more important now than ever.

via next.inman.com

Choosing the right light bulb | Waccabuc NY Realtor

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In the world of home improvement products, it used to be that one of the things you could count on for consistency year after year was the light bulb. Little changed since its invention, so it was a product that you didn’t really have to give much thought to.

No longer. Today, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding this simple staple of the American household. Are 100-watt bulbs banned? Are those twisty bulbs dangerous? Can you use these new bulbs with a dimmer? Aren’t the new bulbs really expensive? There are lots of questions and lots of confusing answers, so let’s try to clear up what we can.

Incandescent bulbs

Incandescent bulbs are the traditional household light bulb. They consume electricity, which is measured in watts, and give off light, which is measured in lumens. However, most of the electricity they consume is actually given off as heat, so these bulbs have never been particularly energy efficient.

Incandescent bulbs haven’t technically been “banned.” What’s happened is that new energy efficiency standards have been put into place, which simply means that the bulbs now need to consume less electricity for same amount of lumens produced.

So the traditional 100-watt light bulb is, in essence, a thing of the past. It’s being replaced by a bulb that produces the same amount of light, but uses about 72 watts. Since that translates to money in your pocket in the form of energy savings, it’s not a bad thing. Similar wattage-to-lumen reductions are set to phase in for other bulbs over time, but given the ongoing mess in Washington, those dates are a congressional moving target.

Halogen bulbs

Halogen bulbs, also called energy-saving bulbs, are incandescent light bulbs that have a capsule inside that holds halogen gas around the filament, which increases the efficiency of the bulb. Halogen bulbs are a little more expensive to buy initially, but their energy efficiency increases by about 25 percent over a standard incandescent bulb, and they can last up to three times as long.

Another advantage to halogen bulbs is their color rendition, which is the ability of a light source to render the colors of an object similar to the way sunlight does. This makes them a great choice for many desk and task light applications. Halogen bulbs can also be used with dimmers.

Compact fluorescent bulbs

Compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs, are the increasingly familiar “curly tube” light bulb. Once again, they’re more expensive to purchase initially than a standard incandescent bulb, but their increasing popularity and availability is bringing prices down.

CFL bulbs uses about a quarter of the energy that a standard bulb uses to produce the same number of lumens, so that’s a pretty good savings. They’re estimated to last about 10 times as long, so that offsets the somewhat higher initial cost; in fact, the Department of Energy estimates that a typical CFL will pay for itself in less than nine months.

As CFLs have become more popular, they’ve become available in a range of colors that weren’t available when they were first introduced. You can now get CFLs with warm, yellow tones, as well as bulbs that are encased in an outer cover that help diffuse the light better — and which, coincidentally, also makes them look much more like a traditional light bulb. Some CFLs can also be used with a dimmer switch, but be sure that you verify that on the package when you buy it.

CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury, as do all fluorescent bulbs. When they burn out, they shouldn’t be disposed of with the regular trash. Instead, they need to be properly recycled, which is something that a growing number of retailers are doing at no charge.

LED bulbs

The final type of bulb you want to be aware of is the light-emitting diode, or LED. These bulbs are semiconductors that convert electricity into light. They’re actually in the early stages of development at this point, so they’re still pretty expensive. However, many people think that these bulbs have a tremendous amount of potential, and represent the wave of the future in residential and commercial lighting. As such, their prices should begin coming down.

LED bulbs use only about 25 percent of the energy that a conventional bulb does, but their real advantage is in their life span. An LED bulb is estimated to last about 25 times longer than a conventional bulb, so even with the high initial cost, their use may still make good economic sense for applications where bulbs are difficult to access for replacement.

via inman.com

5 real estate tasks best done early | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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For the past several years, my cousin Melanie has done my entire family a fantastic favor: She holds Thanksgiving one week early, on the weekend preceding the actual holiday.

What this means is that what is normally a stress-filled, highly dramatic odyssey for many along holiday-impacted freeways, railways and airways has become a highly attended, drama-free family event. (OK, maybe not drama-free, but as low-drama as a family affair can get!)

Instead of many couples having to alternate between his family and hers, or negotiate which side a blended family’s kids will and won’t be able to see for the holiday, everyone can basically show up — easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. (Thanks, Mel!)

While reflecting with gratitude on my quick-and-easy drive home after this year’s early bird Turkey Day, my mind gravitated, as it is wont to do, to real estate. While I’m a big proponent of avoiding premature real estate moves, there are a number of tasks that are best done before you think they need to be. These are things that tend to take longer or often turn out to be more complex than people plan for.

1. Check your credit. Everyone knows that you should check your credit, or have your mortgage broker do it, some time before you get ready to start house hunting. What people fail to factor in are the real-life turnaround times on rehabbing your credit in the event there are errors, fraudulent entries, balances you need to bring down, or trade lines (credit accounts) you need to build up in order to qualify for a home loan.

For the most part, erroneous entries should be removed/removable in relatively short order, but on occasion, something like an account that was truly, but fraudulently, opened by a relative in the borrower’s name can take weeks or months to resolve and remove. Many wannabe buyers who consider themselves uber-responsible, financially, may also be surprised to find that lenders require that they have some demonstrable history of responsibly using credit. In some cases, they will actually need to open and maintain one or more credit accounts in good standing for a short while to qualify.

2. Change your spending habits. The most-overlooked benefit of the tight lending guidelines in place during the past few years is that they motivated mortgage applicants to buckle down, get out of debt and be meticulous about their credit. In the process, people actually rehabbed their spending habits and financial behaviors way in advance of buying a home, creating a level of financial discipline that is freeing, enjoyable and stands them in good stead as homeowners over the long term.

As loan guidelines loosen up a bit, it’s still advisable for buyers-to-be to get serious about the whole picture of their finances as soon as they make the decision that they want to buy a home down the road, and clean up their spending, saving, debting and other money matters, stat.

3. Saving. I’ve seen buyers save up precisely what they need to put down on a home and pay their closing costs, not realizing that they might actually need to demonstrate several months’ worth of payments that will still be in “reserve” in their savings or investment accounts after they close escrow and deplete their cash-to-close savings.

Also, buyers who start saving late often fail to calculate for the very common tendency buyers have to increase their search price range over time, and for the costs of the fixes and furnishings they’ll want when they move in.

These miscalculations tend to result in buyers trying to get unrealistic deals on the first few homes they like, losing a few before they get real about what can truly be had for their dollar in their market.

4. Apply for tax reassessment. Don’t not apply to have your taxes reassessed because the deadline has already passed for the year. Many who hold off because they missed the deadline actually end up losing track of this to-do list item and forget to come back around to it. If you’ve missed the deadline to apply to have your home’s assessed value reduced for property tax purposes, just apply anyway — early for next year.

5. Talk to a real estate or mortgage broker. Don’t delay. Real estate and mortgage brokers are a wealth of information that has the power to take your mental estimations of what will be involved and required to buy or refi or sell into the realm of a reality-based action plan. And they are ecstatic to get calls from prospective clients (that’s you) months, even years, in advance, as it makes their job, once it’s time to do it, much smoother and simpler.

Talking to a pro before you think you need to can be an eye-opening course-corrector in terms of understanding things like how much you need to put down, any work you need to do to your credit, what you can expect your home to go for or cost you, and many other expectation-managing, plan-of-action-driving essentials.

via inman.com

Ads by 19 Mortgage-Related Companies Probed by Regulators | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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U.S. regulators are investigating 19 mortgage-related companies over potentially misleading advertisements, including some that used Facebook Inc. (FB)’s website, the agencies announced today.

“Misrepresentations in mortgage products can deprive consumers of important information while making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives,” Richard Cordray, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, said in an e- mailed statement announcing the probes. “Baiting consumers with false ads to buy into mortgage products would be illegal.”

Ads by 19 Mortgage-Related Companies Probed by Two U.S. Agencies

Ads by 19 Mortgage-Related Companies Probed by Two U.S. Agencies

The consumer bureau said in the statement it had opened investigations into six companies. The Federal Trade Commission, the other agency involved in the probes is looking at 13 firms, Thomas Pahl, the FTC’s assistant director in the division of financial practices, told reporters on a conference call.

Neither agency released the names of the companies.

The CFPB and the FTC also announced they had sent warning letters to 32 mortgage-related companies that the agencies said may be violating the Mortgage Acts and Practices Advertising Rule. Of the 32 letters, 12 came from the CFPB and went to mortgage lenders and brokers, the agency said.

The rule, which was approved by the FTC in 2011 and is jointly enforced by both agencies, does not apply to traditional depositories, so today’s actions affect only non-banks.

The agencies’ warning letters from the agencies urge the companies to review the rule to assess compliance, and do not accuse them of legal wrongdoing.

Preventive Measure

Since the housing bubble burst, mortgage advertising has been down and may rise in the future, Pahl said.

“One of the things we wanted to do through conducting this sweep was to make sure that when mortgage advertisers start disseminating claims again, that they are aware of their obligations to make sure that none of those ads contain deceptive claims,” Pahl said.

The actions grew out of a joint review of about 800 randomly selected mortgage-related advertisements that appeared in newspapers, on the Internet and in direct mail and e-mail, Pahl said. The Internet ads included ones on Facebook, he said.

Some were provided by state attorneys general including Kamala Harris of California and Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Kent Markus, the CFPB’s enforcement director, told reporters.

The CFPB focused its review on mortgage advertisements, particularly ones targeting older Americans or veterans, according to the agency’s statement. The FTC looked at ads by home builders, real estate agents and lead generators, services that collect consumers’ information and sell it to service providers.

Potential Violations

The review turned up four potentially illegal practices, according to CFPB. Some ads contained seals that appeared to imply a government affiliation, while others promoted potentially misleadingly low interest rates. Some understated the costs of reverse mortgages, and others may have misrepresented the amount of cash available to consumers by for example, including a mock check.

Markus said the dividing line between warning letter and enforcement action depended on the severity of the potential violation. A “clearly false” statement brought an investigation, while something that might be technically true would prompt a warning letter, Markus said.

“It’s not a technical reading of the ad,” Pahl told reporters. “It’s as if an average person is reading the ad.”

via bloomberg.com

Fed Gov. pushes separate lending rules for community banks | Waccabuc NY Homes

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The threat of losing community banks in the home lending space, prompted Federal Reserve Board Governor Elizabeth Duke to propose the creation of a separate regulatory regime for smaller banks this week.

While speaking to the Community Bankers Symposium in Chicago, Duke said one-size-fits-all regulatory structures ignore the unique burdens community banks face when dealing with Dodd-Frank Act rules and Basel III capital requirements.

“Balancing the cost of regulation that is prescriptive with respect to underwriting, loan structure, and operating procedures against the lack of evidence that balance sheet lending by community banks created significant problems, I think an argument can be made that it is appropriate to establish a separate, simpler regulatory structure to cover such lending,” Duke said during her speech.

Duke is one of the first Fed Governors to go on the record, saying she believes regulation is starting to reach a point where its benefits are now outweighed by the risks of overburdening community banks and forcing them out of home lending altogether.

For starters, higher-interest rates and balloon payments have become targets of lending regulations tied to Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But community banks have successfully used these products time and time again in the past.

Unlike subprime lenders, which abused these tools to drive volume and then sold them through the securitization channel, community banks generally hold the risk on their balance sheets, Duke asserted.

“They use higher interest rates to compensate for the lack of liquidity in these loans or to cover higher processing costs because community banks lack economies of scale, and they use balloon payments as a simple way to limit their interest-rate risk,” Duke said.

Concerns over new capital requirements and additional operating procedures could push community banks away altogether, Duke said.  This is a problem when considering banks and credit unions together represented 25% of all originations in the U.S. marketplace last year.

Rather than imposing the same regulatory structure on all institutions, Duke proposes the creation of a separate regulatory regime that possesses the skills to evaluate smaller banks on the disclosures they make and through on-site bank supervision.

via housingwire.com