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Identity Theft Protection Options When Buying a Home
Identity theft protection might help when buying a home.
Anybody who is buying a home in Sacramento might want to consider signing up for a free trial run of credit monitoring and fraud detection, including identity theft protection, before applying for a loan and while your mortgage is in process. Because it seems every time you turn around, some agency is getting hacked. The I.R.S. has had to send out thousands of letters to citizens informing us that some of our data might have been exposed. The New York Times say the IRS hacking is worse than reported. If your major corporations, your banking institutions and your government are not secure, what is?
About a year ago when Home Depot was breached, part of the settlement was to provide its recent customers with a free one-year subscription to credit monitoring and identity theft protection. This is how I became registered with such a company because it would never occur to me to sign up otherwise. Yesterday the company called to say new credit information showed up on my credit report and asked if I had initiated such a thing.
Now, those of you who follow my blogs might recall the situation with a Citibank Custom Credit Line. This happened about a month ago when Citibank mailed a 12-page letter without an account number or other identifying information apart from my name and address to inform me a Custom Credit Line had been opened in my name. Without my permission nor knowledge. I spoke to a supervisor and demanded they reverse the Citibank Custom Credit Line without affecting my credit. In other words, I did not want the account merely closed, I expected it to vanish, and was assured it would happen.
The reason the credit monitoring company called was to inform me that Citibank had placed a new account on my credit report for its Custom Credit Line. Granted, the date I received the letter was August 17th, and yesterday was September 11th, so almost a month had passed. The company asked if I had opened the account. After I explained that not only did I not open the account, it was not supposed to show up on my credit report. That’s when they told me it had also been closed on my report.
Good news is the identity theft company is able to remove it all together from my report. They are also placing fraud protection on my account for free for 90 days. It can be extended for 7 years, they promise, if I file a police report against Citibank, which I will gladly do. Citibank had no legal right to do what it did. They also suggested I deal directly with TransUnion because of the 3 reporting agencies, TransUnion is the most consumer friendly. Good tips, I’d say.
I can’t recommend the best identity theft protection company to you; you’ll have to do your own online research, but it seems that Consumer Reports ranks Identity Guard as #1, followed by Identity Force as #2 and Lifelock trailing as #3.
Any consumer agency, though, will tell you that the best identity theft prevention is you. Use common sense. Don’t access your banking accounts from a public WiFi. Put credit alerts on your personal accounts. Change your passwords often, and make them complicated. And remember, during the mortgage process to buy a home, you don’t want anything to mess up your credit reports. Besides pulling your free credit report from Annualcreditreport.com., you might want to sign up for a trial basis for an identity theft protection. Just record the data so you can stop the service prior to being charged for a full year if you find you no longer want it.
All information is secure online until the day it isn’t.
Do Not Be a “Snooze You Lose” Home Buyer in a Seller’s Market
Snooze you lose is OK for a feline but not a home buyer
Many years ago — when I used to work with more home buyers than I do now, as most of my business nowadays is representing sellers as a listing agent — I recall a first-time buyer, let’s call her Cathy, who did not know when she should write an offer to buy a home in Sacramento. We had spent all day together, chasing around Rosemont looking at homes for sale. There was one home in particular that she gravitated toward, a home without carpeting, mostly hardwood flooring, with a huge back yard, priced right, and it fit all of her needs.
Toward the end of the day, I suggested we look at the home again. We viewed the home a second time. Cathy really loved it. It’s all she could talk about all the way back to my office in Midtown Sacramento. I pulled up to the curb on J Street where she had parked, and we got out. She shook my hand to thank me for the home buying tour and was about to head off when I asked again what her gut instincts told her about the home we had toured twice. “That’s my dream home,” she responded, and spun on her heels to leave.
Just a sec, here. “Usually, when a buyer finds her dream home, that’s a sign she should write a purchase offer,” I pointed out. Cathy’s eyes opened wide. Her jaw fell open. This had not occurred to her. That was evident by the blankness crawling across her face. She had processed looking for a home but had not yet quite come to terms with how she would react when she found a home to buy. This was astounding news.
She also could not cope because she had been unprepared. She insisted on going home to mull it over, what some buyers refer to as “sleeping on it.” Nothing I could say would change her mind. There is a term for that kind of cautious behavior, for people who don’t trust their own instincts. It’s called Snooze You Lose.
I see that behavior in some of today’s home buyers in Sacramento. It’s not necessarily the buyer’s fault, either, because if a person is buying her first home, how would she know what to do or how she would feel? It’s up to her buyer’s agent to explain, in a non-threatening way, that the market in Sacramento is sizzling hot, and another buyer will purchase that home if she fails to quickly take action. We’re not making this stuff up just to throw a buyer into escrow. When you spot a home you love, you should write a purchase offer.
Otherwise, it’s snooze you lose time. Nobody likes that time clock. Remember, in any given market, if you truly adore a home, odds are another buyer does as well. Did Cathy buy that home? Sadly, no, another buyer had purchased it by morning. Cathy eventually settled on another home, but I heard about this home for years because the home she did buy was always second choice in her mind. Snooze you lose. It’s not just a catchy phrase.
Are You Struggling to Buy a Home in Sacramento?
Team Weintraub is kicking butt and taking names this month. We always do well in Sacramento real estate, but it’s refreshing and even more exciting to excel in a market that is tougher than nails at the moment. It’s super hard to buy a home in Sacramento during a seller’s market. Especially when we have so many buyers vying for the same listings. But the Elizabeth Weintraub Team seems to possess the knack, the expertise and, honestly, just the good fortune, I suspect, to be winning multiple-offer situations.
Part of this could be because we know what is important to sellers and we give it to them via the offers we write for our buyers. We know how to satisfy what sellers want. The reason we know this little fact is because I personally list and sell a ton of homes in the Sacramento area, and I freely share seller expectations with my Team Weintraub members. When you know what sellers want, you know how to write a purchase offer that will give the buyer an edge over all of the other buyers. Plus, everybody knows we perform on our word. We are accountable for our actions.
It also helps to know what a strong listing agent expects, and it starts with a clean offer. No missing pieces, I’s dotted, initials in place, earnest money deposit, proof of funds, and a preapproval letter — not from some fly-by-night place. I swear, the other day I hear from a mortgage broker that his buyer who is about to close escrow has had a short sale a short time ago and now can’t qualify for a conventional loan. Well, I’ve got news for ya buddy, the buyer never could qualify for a conventional loan under those circumstances and that question should have been asked in the interview / application process and, if it was, you should have known Freddie Mac would require seasoning on those gift funds. Ack.
The offer should also be submitted to the listing agent within the time frame for acceptance. Some agents openly invite multiple offers by specifying a time for offer presentation in MLS, but that’s not a practice this Sacramento Realtor endorses because it turns off some agents and buyers. Not everybody is competitive nor enjoys competition like some of us, and I’m not naming any particular name here like myself; but the point is I don’t want to discourage any buyers from writing an offer on my listings. Besides, nothing looks goofier than touting all offers will be presented on Sunday and here it is two weeks later and the home is still for sale.
Every first-time home buyer has a chance to buy a home in Sacramento, even in a multiple-offer situation. The mindset is not to think about all of the other offers and focus solely on what you are able to do. If you want to buy a home and to align yourself with an experienced real estate team like the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, then give us a jingle at 916.233.6759.
Who’s on First or Why You Need a Buyer’s Agent
Buyer’s agents can offer a wealth of experience to Sacramento home buyers.
We’re not quite there yet with some of this online bidding for homes because in my market of Sacramento, it seems that only the distressed homes — the foreclosures and short sales — qualify for that process, and even those sales are pretty much convoluted. Reserve pricing, phony beginning bid prices, coupled with the practice of the website company placing its own shill bids in order to drive up offers — a system that relies on greed, preys on naivety — and generally you can’t even see the home until after your offer is accepted, which is no way to buy a house. Nope, to buy a home you should hire a buyer’s agent.
I understand there are buyers who want to control every step of the home buying process from start to finish, and they think they know Sacramento real estate and don’t need an agent. It’s pretty much impossible to acquire that kind of specific knowledge, though, without working in the trenches day after day. A buyer can never refine that knowledge without hands-on experience, and that’s just the way it is. So, it’s only logical that buyers would be eager to take advantage of the services a buyer’s agent has to offer, especially since the seller is paying that buyer’s agent’s commission. But some first-time home buyers make the mistake of believing seminar gurus or buying into HGTV.
Buying a home is not like buying a loaf of bread. You can’t stroll down the online bread aisle and buy the brand of home you like the best without investigating a host of other factors. There are neighborhoods, location, construction defects, maintenance issues, financing, real estate trends, comparable sales, future plans on the drawing board for the community, business services, neighborhood reputations, taxes, school districts and a bazillion other things that should be considered before buying a home, and a buyer’s agent can help you with much of it.
A buyer called yesterday to ask if she could see a home for sale that is a short sale. Sure, we’d be glad to show her, but she needs to know that if one my team members shows her the home, we will be writing that offer for her and representing her. We clarify that with every buyer because some buyers do not understand what it means to be “working with an agent.” She didn’t have an agent, but then, all of a sudden, she had an agent. Funny how that works.
Then, she called back to ask me to set an appointment for her because her agent was “busy at work.” Doing some other job, I suppose, and not real estate. These poor people. They think they are a buying a house and shopping for a home, but they are digging themselves a bigger hole every day and sinking into it. There are many buyer’s agents who are busier than all get-out right now with the high demand in our seller’s market and our low inventory. Buyers would be wise to latch on to one of them.
FHA Mortgage Insurance Reductions and Arthroscopy Surgery
Unlike some patients recovering from surgery, I will not bore you with the photographs of my procedure; although, if I say so myself, they are quite lovely arthroscopic photos of my rotator cuff surgery. They look like planets in our solar system. Perfectly round and eerily colorful. I suppose they give you photographs like automobile?mechanics hand over the used parts after replacing your engine block, just to prove it was completed.
The last thing I recall was a nurse trying to stick a scopolamine patch behind my ear, and she was about to adhere it on the left side, right where they told me they were going to inject me with a block in my neck. So, at least I was awake enough to suggest it might be better on the right side of my body, and she agreed. Make all the jokes you want about patient involvement, but?the patient has more invested in this transaction than any of her doctors or nurses. I sorta resent having to seize responsibility?for my personal health care, but in this day and age it’s more necessary than ever.
The doctor asked me several times to turn my head to the right and look at the wall. They stuck a needle in the top of my right hand for an IV, and you know what? There is a distinct advantage to growing old because while your hands may shrivel away, your veins, believe it not, get bigger and protrude, making it very easy to insert an IV. ?I heard him say the medicine was administered. Next thing, bam, I am awake. Surgery was over. Not even groggy awake, but pretty clear headed. Where was my left hand? OMG. I seemed to be missing my left hand. Pressing the buzzer by my bed I asked the nurse if perhaps they had misplaced an appendage. I had flashes of being a Koren War?vet and waking up on M.A.S.H. ?My hand was right there, all right, next to my side, but that whole part of my body had no feeling in it whatsoever.
This could only mean that I had been very thorough with my insistence on drugs, and a blocker and more drugs. There was absolutely no pain. I was amazed. Isn’t modern science wonderful? I mean, imagine if I had surgery under the situations facing guys in the early 1900s, the best they could do back then was pour bourbon down your throat and stuff a rag in it.
My husband would tell you, on the other hand, that I was pretty much out of it after my surgery, especially since he was the one to plant me into bed. Egg drop soup, a little fried rice and my cellphone. What’s not to like? Yeah, I know I decided to take the day off to recuperate but I could answer voice mails and emails and text messages. Not like I had anything else to do. So if I used profanity when you called me, I apologize.
Since we are rolling into end-of-the-month closings right now, and I had a transaction close yesterday, some of them are not. The main reason is mortgage lenders are calling their buyers to say, hey, if you delay closing for a couple of weeks, we can lower your mortgage payment. FHA mortgage insurance has just dropped to .85. That’s significant. Right in the middle of closing, they’re doing this. I can understand why but not every seller is willing to extend, especially not a seller who clearly said if we don’t close on January 30th, she’s canceling the transaction.
It’s a seller’s right to expect to close on schedule, and buyers are bound to the purchase contract. I imagine this is happening all over Sacramento right now, as I’ve received a number of requests for a delay in closing. The only thing it means to me is my Sacramento Board of REALTOR Masters Club qualification will roll into February instead of earning that status in January. And what the hey. It doesn’t matter. What matters is if my sellers are happy. Some of my sellers could not believe I was calling them and working after surgery but dangnab it I can’t just lie there in bed.
The other piece of news I have to share, if you’re interested, is the fact that even though both of my MRIs showed a tear, there was no tear to repair in my rotator cuff. So the arthroscopy surgery was not as invasive as expected, and I’m actually able to use my fingers after all. That was my biggest nightmare, and that is not a problem now. Eureka!
