Now is such a good time to buy a home. Historically low mortgage rates couples with lower home prices are sometimes even sparking bidding competition in markets around the country.

Here are some tips to make your offer stand out from the rest if you are in a multiple-offer situation:

• Get Pre-Approved, not just Pre-Qualified with a Lender: To get pre-approved, your lender will thoroughly evaluate your application and then approve you for a loan of a pre-determined amount. If you are pre-approved, you are on equal footing with cash buyers.
• Consider minimizing contingencies: Contingencies are those clauses that allow buyers to back out of a contract if certain conditions are not met. Consider shortening the escrow period or remove your contingencies in a shorter amount of time. Offers with the fewest contingencies are more attractive to sellers.
• If possible, don’t make your offer contingent on selling your current home: Even if you have an offer in hand, that offer may be contingent on that buyer’s selling his/her home, etc.
• Try to connect or establish a relationship with a seller: Consider writing a letter to the seller about why you want his/her home. Find common ground and share brief stories. The more the seller gets to know and loike you, the better the chance your offer will stand out in a competitive situation.

Finally choose a real estate agent like Marilyn Dashe at Sea Coast Exclusive Properties in Encinitas who will work with the listing agent to make you stand out as a buyer and notice your offer.

Borrowers have some weapons for keeping closing costs down as a result of recent guidelines requiring lenders to disclose certain fees, but perhaps the most underutilized consumer tool simply involves old-fashioned haggling.

Good-faith estimate rules mean that lenders must provide a clear picture of the costs involved in buying or refinancing a home. Yet consumers may not realize that some of those numbers are actually negotiable, mortgage experts say.

Closing costs can run a borrower 3 to 6 percent of the price of a property, according to the Federal Reserve.  In 2010, the average cost for a $200,000 purchase rose by nearly 37 percent to $3,741, according to Bankrate.com.

Most borrowers pay less attention to closing costs, focusing instead on the interest rate offered by a lender. But because many of the fees associated with closing are not set in stone, mortgage experts say, consumers should review the line-by-line estimates with a view toward challenging them. Lenders are required to outline all of the estimate closing costs withint three days of receiving a loan application.

John T. Mechem, the vice president for public affairs of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said borrowers should simply ask the lender which fees are negotiable and which are fixed.

The good-faith estimate rules say that certain charges cannot increase at closing, including those for loan origination and points paid to the lender to reduce a locked interest rate, with 1 point equal to 1 percent of the loan amount. But borrowers can negotiate those charges.

While regulators discourage lenders from overestimating costs, they don’t penalize them for doing so. Therefore, borrowers should understand that “it’s not a time to be polite,” said Kathleen Day, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, an advocacy group.

These foreclosure tips were created by a group in Florida but the tips apply to virtually all markets in the U.S. While many buyers have heard that there are many foreclosures on the market, most don’t understand these practical rules they can follow to save money:

Here are some tips to consider if you want to buy a foreclosure:

1. Work with an agent who has access to foreclosure information.
2. Bank-owned properties generally close much faster than short sales. While short sales can be bargains, they also can take a lot longer. Some banks will negotiate in a timely manner on short sales, but most will prioritze properties they have already repossessed.
3. Always offer less than the asking price. Don’t assume that banks are firm on their price.
4. Ask the bank to pay your closing costs. The worst thing that can happen is that they say no. Sometimes buyers are surprised to find that banks can be quite accommodating when they want to be.
5. Get pre-approved from the right bank. When making an offer on a short sale, it’s often strategically helpful to be pre-approved by the same bank who is selling the property. During negotiations, this may tip the scales in your favor.

Before you even look at any foreclosures, get pre-approved by a lender. The good foreclosures don’t last long, and you need to be ready to go.

If you need advice about foreclosures, please call Marilyn Dashe at Sea Coast Exclusive Properties in Encinitas, CA. She has a certification in short and sales and foreclosures and is ready to help buyers through the process

California Association of Realtor’s Housing Affordability Fund (HAF) now offers the California REALTOR’s Energy Audit Program (R.E.A.P.), a new program that provides rebates of up to $250 on Home Energy Rating System (HERS) home energy audits conducted by certified HERS raters. Home energy audits help homeowners identify improvements they can make to their home to reduce their monthly utility bills.

To qualify for the program, homeowners must:

• Purchase a single-family home in California between Oct. 1, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2011.
• Use the home as a primary residence
• Conduct a HERS home energy audit of the home prior to close of escrow or no later than 60 days after close of escrow
• Use a California REALTOR in the transaction

Homeowners can apply for R.E.AP. by requesting an application from their California REALTOR. Call your Sea Coast Exclusive Properties REALTOR today!

For the second month in a row, home buyers across many places in the country were able to negotiate bigger discounts off the listing price of homes than they had in the prior month, according to new data from zillow.com.

Buyers in the United States paid a final sale price of 2.8% or $5,823 less than the last listing price during January, up from a median discount of 2.7% in December and 2.6% in December.

The biggest discounts continued to be found in Florida, although buyers in several New York City-area metros also found relatively large discounts during January.

However, sellers continued to do well in severalmarket, with most buyers in places like Southern and Northern California, paying more than the last listing price of homes sold in January.

Fewer for-sale homes experienced price reductions in January 2010 than in December, with nearly one in five of homes for sale on Zillow experiencing at least one price cut as of the end of January.