Parade of Homes has less homes but won't dissapoint

If you have not had a chance to make it out yet, this year’s Parade of Homes™ will not disappoint. There are 55 homes in the Parade showcasing what Mid-Michigan homebuilders have to offer. I have been through 8 so far and been impressed with all of them. Seirra Homes has 3 in the Parade and the two that I have seen are both worth the time. The “Spartan Cottage” in College Fields is truly amazing. It is a custom home that is over seven hundred thousand including the lot, but once you are in it you see why. From the notty pine ceiling to the custom Alderwood cabinets the kitchen is perfect for entertaining. At the preview party the night before the Parade there were probably 50 people in the main living and Kitchen area, and there was still plenty of room to move around. The Spartan themed basement would be the envy of any MSU fan, complete with the projection TV to watch the game on. There home in the Oaks, though not as extravagant is a great value at $289,000. With almost 2600 square feet of living space it would make a great family home, and it still has many features that you wouldn’t expect in this price range.
Even though the housing market has slowed, the Parade of Homes really shows that there are great things going on in the Greater Lansing area. From the beautiful redevelopment projects downtown, to all of the single family homes and remodel jobs in all of the communities in the area. Have a great day, and if you have any questions on how to get tickets call me at (517) 202-7572 or visit www.glhba.org.

Foreclosure relief Home buying Counseling for Mid-Michigan

As I walked into Lance Queen’s office he is just hanging up the phone and states that for the last few weeks he has been swamped with phone calls like that one. It was a person whose home was going into foreclosure. Unfortunately for that couple the sheriff sale has already taken place so there was nothing that the Center for Financial Health could do to help the situation.
“Helping working families and individuals build assets through home ownership” is the Mission statement of this non-profit organization, and when it comes to helping people you rarely find a person as passionate as credit counselor Lance Queen. Lance is a certified counselor for HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and MSHDA(Michigan State Housing and Development Authority). The Center for Financial Health where Lance is employed provides five main services for people; pre-homeownership counseling, post homeownership counseling, money management skills, a home education workshop, and foreclosure prevention. The last one is where he has been the busiest with phone calls in the current market.
His goal in foreclosure prevention is to look the whole picture with the individual through a sit down meeting, try to negotiate with lenders, or in the right circumstances use government programs to help families stay in their home. “The key is people have to call me when they are starting to get in trouble, if they wait until a week or two before Sheriff sale there is really nothing I can do.” This is the message Lance really wants to get out.
Besides the foreclosure work, there are many more programs for people to take advantage of. If someone is considering buying a home the education courses can be invaluable. There are credit management programs to learn how to budget, a four class seminar on the entire home purchasing process, if you have bad credit you can learn how to become mortgage ready again in the future. The skills taught here are what everyone in the future will have to become very adept at. As gas and food increase our Mid-Michigan families purchasing power is eroding fast. These classes can help those who are already well into the crunch, and also help others who want to get a jump on the cycle and start planning now. The best part is, these services are free to Michigan Residents. This is a government sponsored program. You are already paying for it, you might as well use it.
I asked Lance what the advantage was of coming here, instead of going directly to a lender. “The center has no interest in it when you get a mortgage. That allows me to pull credit, assess the situation, and find the best deal for someone. It takes the pressure away from the individual wondering if the lender is really looking out for their best interest. Not all banks have all programs, so we can tell them the right questions to ask when they start interviewing banks for a loan. We may even find money through financial aid and grants in the right situation.”
Lance is very knowledgeable in the banking industry having spent 10 years doing mortgages. I met him when he worked for a bank and knew that he did things right when he worked with people, and him and I know all to well, that there are some companies out there who try to push people into the product that makes them the most money. This has caused part of the problem that the housing industry is currently in. This is really a good fit for him, in the fact that it really allows him to help people with no strings attached. If you need to get a hold of Lance his number is 517-319-1309 and his email is lanceq@centerforfinancialhealth.org.

Suburban's E-home perfect fit for Michigan Families

Suburban Homes of Mid-Michigan has just released their new housing line to help combat the new construction housing slowdown experienced in the area. "Many of the homes built can have up to 10% of the materials brought to the job sites thrown out instead of used in the construction of the home. This money comes directly out of the pocket of the consumer. This home has been engineered to be extremely efficient to build allowing us to bring our home owners a product with lots of square footage at a very competitive price. We feel that this is a perfect product for Mid-Michigan families and allows them to have a great home with an affordable payment." Stated Dave Netti of Suburban homes. Dave is able to build a 2100 Square foot two story starting at $179,900. His ranch home starts at$135,000. I will post a picture of the homes with actual square footages later this week.
I spent a couple of hours with Dave and a couple other select Realtors from around the Lansing area including John DeMarco of Keller Williams. The concept of these homes were very well accepted and the overall consensus is these will be a big hit in the greater Lansing area. The one disadvantage is the lack of choices that the consumer has in color choices, of paint and doors, but the cost of the home will more than make up for that shortcoming. Forsberg has a few home sites around the Greater Lansing area that these homes could be built on. The prices quoted above is a turn key house, meaning it is a livable house at that price. If you are interested in finding out more about these, please contact me at brentforsberg@gmail.com or leave a comment here, and I will get back with you more information. This home will be springing up all over mid Michigan this year, and I will bring more pictures of it and updates as they get completed. Have a great day.

Doom's Day for Education

This morning at the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce Ryan Doom of the company WebAscender gave a great talk on the value of social marketing on the web. He gave a great example of how the sharing of knowledge verses keeping it a secret helped out a corporation in the mining industry that otherwise would have been in deep financial trouble.

I know that this isn't exactly real estate related, but it fits into the scope of this blog because Ryan and Webascender is the type of company that the Tri-County area needs. It is locally founded and is growing to become an asset in this region. Ryan mentioned that he is a member of the local Technology council that also has members from MC Squared Technology Group and Tech Smith to help educate local workers and bring more talented web designers into the area. This is a great way to help combat Michigan's Brain Drain from the state. Even with the soft state of our economy there are more and more signs of these businesses really starting to grow and be noticed. It was also exciting to see in the paper today the fact that another thirty million in grants are going out in June as part of the 21st century jobs fund. If real estate is to see another growth spurt in the area it is going to take more of these types of companies to grow and gives us large employment growth in the region.

Ryan's presentation covered the importance of social networking and showed the benefits of many of the websites and communities available online. He posted his presentation on his website www.webascender.com and his company could provide some guidance if you are interested in learning more about using Facebook.com, myspace.com, linkedin.com, wiki's, and blogs to as he put it "leverage the world." It is truly encouraging to see people like Ryan who believe in our community and working to help better the region. There has been a lot of exciting things going on in our region that will be covered in the next few weeks. I will be covering a new type of home being built that Mid-Michigan has not seen before, Lance Queen, a local bank expert just moved to a non-profit to help people with home purchasing, and John and Brad have moved to Keller Williams to bring a new level of service to their real estate careers. Again, if you have anything that you would like to learn more about or have a comment in general, please feel free to call me, email, or post a comment here. Have a great day, and thank you again Ryan for sharing your knowledge this morning.

Investor education key for success

An investor friend of mine from Dayton, Ohio informed me last week about a very interesting real estate site. www.reiclub.com is full of information for those of you who are looking to make real estate investing a long term goal. I will be adding it to my links on the the right side of this page. For those looking to make bids on HUD houses, it is going to be a week or two before the site is back up and running. Chapman announced on Saturday that they are turning Michigan back over to Michealson, Connor, & Buhl as of today. The short notice has left current accepted bids up in the air, but after talking with them today, it seems they will have it smoothed out soon. The new site, or old site if you bought or sold these a few years ago will be www.mcbreo.com. If you are interested in learning more about how to bid on these, please leave a question posted here, or email me at brentforsberg@gmail.com.

Home Builder Economic Forecast given at International Builder Show

I am sorry for all of you reading this in Michigan right now. I am currently At the International Builders Show™ in sunny Orlando, Florida. It is a little cool right now because it is in the 60’s. Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to cope. Yesterday we were given the 2008 housing outlook according to the NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) economists. Their news agreed with what I posted a few weeks ago regarding the fact we seem to be moving more homes and with the slow down in building, inventory is reducing. It was nice to hear the validation in the numbers that we are seeing locally. They also gave a report regarding the foreclosure rate and what the numbers realyy mean. I will go into more detail on this next week. They are very optimistic about the outcome the home building industry for the next two years. I am going to try and get permission to post part of the report up to show what they had put together. It is a pay service, so I cannot guarantee anything. If you want to try and find it you can go to www.nahb.com and look for it. I am moderating two Meet the Expert courses at the builders show so I have posted some of the forms that Forsberg Real Estate uses in its day to day operations that I am going to be talking about in Florida. These are mainly Goal Setting and Agent Training forms, but are located on the right side of the screen if you are interested in looking through them. Have a great day.

Lansing Housing Market Stabilizing

Good news for the Lansing Real Estate Market, we are finally seeing the amount of inventory on the market getting lower. In July 2007 our company found that there was approximately 15.35 months of inventory based on the amount of homes available divided by what had sold over the previous year. This information is based on data pulled from the Multiple List Service of the Greater Lansing Association of Realtors. A current snapshot using sales data from 2007 over current inventory shows that the amount of inventory has dropped to 13.2 months. This is still up from the beginning of last year, but hopefully it is a good sign of what this year will offer to us in the real estate market. New construction has also seen a significant drop. Currently there is approximately a 14.2 month supply of new homes in the Greater Lansing Area. This also shows a drop in the amount of supply currently available. Most of that is due most likely to the significant drop in permits pulled for new homes in 2007. We saw one of the lowest years for new permits pulled in the tri-county area since the early 1980’s.
In our communities we have around the Lansing area, we are also seeing an increase in the amount of traffic that is coming through the doors. We currently have three new homes being built in Lakeside, two getting ready to start in Williamston, and one that just completed in Mason. Even with an election year, it seems that barring an announcement of a major job catastrophe for the Lansing area, we have seen a turning point in our housing market.