Sub-Prime Foreclosures To Create New Buying Opportunity

In the past 5 years or so, the number of foreclosed properties has been at an all-time low. Anyone in trouble with their mortgage payments had no problem selling their houses, so the number of foreclosures was minimal. That meant that those people looking to BUY foreclosures had very few choices. In particular, the "Teacher Next Door" program through HUD was not viable because most teachers who used this program did not want to live in the neighborhoods where these foreclosures were located.

Today is a different story. This HUD program allows teachers to buy FHA foreclosures at 50% of the appraised value of the home! Now there is an abundance of foreclosed homes in a variety of different neighborhoods throughout the United States. So, for example, in the Phoenix area, where the median price of a home is $250,000, a teacher could buy a median-priced foreclosed home for only $125,000!! And there are plenty of them available now, where a few years ago there were none.

Even with qualifying criteria being somewhat more stringent, this is a huge opportunity for our teachers in this country. Realty Executives has created a program called HOMEWORKS, which is designed to help teachers buy houses. This is one example of the opportunities in our program. So if you are a teacher, or if you know a teacher who needs to buy a home, please contact me directly, or one of our Executives (Agents) to find out more about the HOMEWORKS program.

Remax to go public?

There have many recent signals that suggest that Remax International may be preparing for an IPO. In the recent past, they changed their Board of Directors to include a significant number of new people, mostly "outside" directors. This was done, most likely, to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley rules for public companies. Most recently they have been buying up many of the regional franchises they had sold over the years. International now owns California, Hawaii, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and probably others that I am not aware of. I believe that this acquisition path is to create a larger individual company that will be easier to take public. These moves have been financed by the company going to the financial markets (ie, Wall Street) for a large private debt offering.

It seems like they are preparing for the Initial Public Offering before too long. This would increase the number of franchisees who are Wall Street driven. (GMAC, C-21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, Prudential, Sothebys, and now Remax)

The feedback I get is that many top real estate agents are feeling like they are getting lost in the fray and will be seeking out those franchises that treat them like family members instead of like numbers.