Fern Poyser UPDATE on Titus Woman Ministry
The Titus Woman Ministry is preparing to take Waller County for Jesus!
We have secured retail space in the Fieldstore area of northern Waller county to open the Grace & Mercy resale shop. This will enable us to be open more often in an effort to generate the funds necessary to work towards the shelter for women and children in Waller county.
We praise God for this small stride and look forward to many, many more fruitful days and bountiful blessings as we reach out to the community.
FINGERPRINTING REQUIREMENTS FOR TEXAS REALTORS
A recently enacted law (HB 1530, 80th Legislature, Regular Session) requires any person applying for or renewing a broker or salesperson license on or after January 1, 2008 to provide their fingerprints, in a specified format, in order to enable an FBI criminal history check to be performed. These new fingerprint requirements apply only to brokers and salespersons. They do not apply to other TREC licensees, such as home inspectors. Once fingerprints are on file with DPS for a TREC license, a licensee will not need to be fingerprinted for subsequent renewals.
This new fingerprinting requirement for Texas realtors is very welcome. This is good news for the real estate community. It will give homeowners and property owners a greater sense of security knowing that the people responsible for selling or showing their homes are not wanted for any crimes. Also, should any criminal activity occur within or on a property owner’s property, the law enforcement agencies can quickly and easily identify the perpetrator(s) through this new fingerprinting requirement.
The Texas Real Estate Commission (TREC) conducts background checks on ALL licensees. This new fingerprinting requirement will NOT affect current licensees’ licensing status UNLESS that person has committed a new crime and is convicted of a felony offense within the state of Texas.
If a licensee has committed new crimes and has new felony convictions which were not reported to TREC since he or she last applied for a real estate license, the new convictions resulting from a background check may or may not hinder the issuance of a real estate license. TREC will decide if the licensee’s license should be renewed after conducting their own independent investigation of the circumstances surrounding the new felony conviction.
Under no circumstances will TREC suspend or revoke a licensee’s license unless (1) they falsify or try to hide any new felony convictions (2) they willingly lie about having new felony convictions (3) they refuse to submit to fingerprinting and background checks and (4) they fail to pay their renewal fees or honor any delinquent debts owed to TREC.
Selling Your Home In a Market Full of Foreclosures
Take a look in just about any neighborhood and you may find the sign of distressed times. Foreclosures are on the rise and that can cause a lot of panic for sellers who aren’t in the same financial crisis.
We’re in a very price-sensitive market and obviously in any buyers’ market that’s the case.
The increase of awareness about foreclosures is stimulating buyers to keep fishing and pushing for even lower prices for homes.
So the sellers who are not in foreclosure or who are not in distress have to compete with those properties with the same pool of buyers. So there are two things that they can do; the two things are: pricing the property so it is competitively priced … and they have to make sure that the property shows in absolute perfect condition. The more choices the buyer has, the more critical the showing condition.
Get clear about your market-length time. Having an accurate picture of how long you can have your home on the market will help you to price it correctly. Remember, that buyers aren’t going to pay a premium price out of sympathy simply because the seller owes more on the mortgage. Price your home based on its worth, not on what you owe.
Work with an agent. Now more than ever, an experienced agent can help provide the advice and knowledge sellers need to get their home sold. Agents can also help to aggressively market your home so that it doesn’t get lost in a sea of foreclosure homes.
Price your home correctly from the start.
All too often sellers end up taking a humble ride down and diminishing their possible gain. They end up chasing the market down — whether they realize it or not. Price is critical. When determining price, don’t just look at computer screen shots of homes that are selling in your neighborhood, get in the car and take a ride around to view the exterior and interior of properties that your home will be competing against — that’s exactly what buyers will do. Overpricing your home will cause it to sit on the market for an extended period. Eventually your listing will become stale and you may receive many lowball offers from buyers who are simply fishing to see how low you’ll go. If a home is slightly underpriced you can generate more attention and improve your chances of getting a qualified offer.
Choose the best methods to promote your home. Nowadays, advertising isn’t really important because every buyer has access to almost complete information via the Internet — everyone can find the properties. Advertising used to be important when buyers didn’t have access to the property or a way of finding the property, but now buyers can do their own shopping, searching, and finding. They’re going to do that based on their perception of value and how it’s priced based on the other properties that they are looking at. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have virtual tours and lots of pictures loaded on websites that feature your home — buyers like to preview before they actually see the home in person.
Make your home the best value. Buyers are going to look at all their options. We have to make it painfully obvious that we’re the best value. It doesn’t always mean the lowest price. It may mean a nicer house for the same price. It may mean having more goodies for the same price. It may mean having a lower price, but the buyers have the information and prices of what’s available and they will choose the one that is the best value — and we’re either going to help sell the other homes or the other homes are going to help sell ours.
Real Estate Outlook: Market is Stirring
Affordable mortgage money is the fuel that is going to pull the real estate market out of the woods. And there are some encouraging signs that may be happening right now.
Take a look at interest rates: They plunged last week by nearly a quarter of a point on 30-year fixed-rate money — down to 5.74 percent from 5.98 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.
Then there was the big jump in new loan applications from people looking to buy houses. They were up by almost 11 percent for conventional conforming loans — those are the types funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — but up by an amazing 21.1 percent for government-backed mortgages, primarily FHA.
You can be the world’s grouchiest, grimmest housing market bear … . But you can’t deny that something is stirring out there in the market.
It may not be the end of the down cycle as a whole, but it’s certainly pointing to a more active spring season than the naysayers on Wall Street have projected.
There were some other positive signs that popped up last week as well: The total inventory of unsold houses dropped by 3 percent. New homes for sale dropped 2.1 percent. Those inventory numbers are critically important because they tend to be heavy drags on local markets — pushing prices down and making buyers pickier.
Even new home sales did better than most analysts had predicted: They dropped by 1.8 percent last month, which may not sound good, but that decline was measured off upward revisions of the two prior months’ sales.
In other words, there were more home sales going on than reported earlier in January and December, and overall sales are stabilizing.
Now, in fairness, not everything is cheery out there. Consumers are still rattled by the economy and the upheavals they see on Wall Street. The latest consumer confidence index from the Conference Board nosedived to levels usually associated with recessions.
People are worried. They’re spending less, and that is rippling throughout the economy. Continuing price declines in the once-booming housing bubble markets are also keeping consumers on the sidelines. Many of them don’t want to commit to a purchase until they are sure prices won’t go much lower.
So all in all: There are unmistakable glimpses of light out there. You can’t — and shouldn’t — ignore them.
But we’ve still got a way to go before we can officially pronounce the correction cycle done, down and out.
FERN POYSER JOINS TITUS WOMAN MINISTRY IN WALLER
FERN POYSER HAS JOINED THE TITUS WOMAN MINISTRY LAUNCHED BY ROSEMARY BUTLER IN WALLER, TX.
Titus Woman Ministry has opened a resale shop on March 1 in Waller, Texas.
WALLER – The Titus Woman Ministry is a 501 (c)3 faith-based nonprofit organization dedicated to serve the community through the holistic development of women in need.
One of our primary goals is to construct and operate a homeless shelter for women and their children, with the intent of equipping the women to enter (or re-enter) mainstream society and become self-sustaining and providers for their children. This proposed shelter will be constructed in Waller County, Texas and will house families from all the surrounding communities.
We will open a resale shop, named Grace and Mercy, March 1,2008. To help fund this project, we are asking for the support of your church and the community to make the vision a reality. Come out and buy our resale merchandise.
Any donations to this worthy cause will be appreciated.
The shop is called Grace and Mercy for it was God’s grace that gave us the vision and His mercy will allow us to carry it through. Can we count on you?
The resale shop wiill carry furniture, clothing (for the family), household goods, and much, much more. It is located at 71 Scroggins Lane Waller, Texas (off FM 1488 In the Field Store Mini Warehouses). The grand opening was March 1, 2008.
Thereafter, the resale shop will be open the first Saturday of each month with the same operating hours from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m..
For further information and/or donations, contact Rosemary Butler @ 936-931-1726; 281-682-4177 or Carol O’Brien @) 281-302-5333; 713-294-1476 Fern Poyser @ 936-931-3344. Pass the word and support this God given vision. We thank you in advance for what you will do.
