If you’ve ever tried to research buying a foreclosure or short sale online, you’ve probably found a lot of sites either plastered with ads or charging expensive subscription fees in order to access “exclusive” foreclosure listings. Well, the good news is that real estate site Zillow.com recently announced that it has added nearly 2 million free listings of “pre-market inventory” to its database. (Via Techcrunch.) This includes full addresses and details on pre-foreclosure, foreclosure, and bank-owned properties not included in the usual MLS databases.

You must register to see the foreclosure listings, but it’s free and all you need is an e-mail (name not required). I looked around my neighborhood and found several homes that are in the foreclosure process or already sold via auction, often complete with winning bid amounts. There’s a house down the street that is pretty nice and will be auctioned off live at the county courthouse next Friday; I might attend that auction for the experience. I’m told these are auctions where you need a cashier’s check for the full 6- or 7-figure sale price right on the spot.

Based on my limited understanding, if you want to buy a foreclosure it’s still helpful to work with an experienced real estate professional. Zillow makes their money if you ask them to refer you to a local “foreclosure specialist”. Sounds fair to me, if you don’t already have one in mind. I’ve had friends attempt to buy a bank-owned REO property which sounded like a good deal on paper, but required huge amounts of time and patience. Finding a good rental property always sounds nice in my mind, but I haven’t had much time to pursue it further.

Do you owe more on your house than it’s worth? How many of your neighbors are underwater? Are things brighter in the next zip code over?

Zillow has a very revealing Negative Equity Map that shows the percentage of homes in your area that have negative equity. The numbers are recent, last updated based on Transunion data from the first quarter of 2012.

I checked out the San Francisco Bay Area and saw a lot of red as expected, but also several pockets of lighter colors. More evidence that real estate is local?

I then pulled up the map for Austin, Texas where my sister lives, expecting (based on anecdotal evidence) to see a completely different picture. It’s better, but there are still areas of pain:

Have you ever wondered who really owns your mortgage note? You pay your mortgage each month, but where do those payments end up? Perhaps you’re thinking of obtaining a loan modification or refinance through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), or other program under the Making Home Affordable (MHA) umbrella. Or maybe you’ve read that banks are foreclosing on people without proper records and want to know if anyone out there actually can show you your original mortgage note.

First, remember that the loan owner isn’t necessarily the same as your loan servicer. Your loan servicer is the company that sends you mortgage statements, takes your payments each month, and if you have an escrow account, pays your homeowner’s insurance and property tax bills. So where do you start looking?

• Ask the servicer. They are legally obligated to tell you the name, address, and telephone number of the owner of your loan as shown in their records. It may be a good idea to ask them in writing officially with a “qualified witten request” via certified mail while keeping a log of your communications. The name of your servicer should be on your mortgage statement, but you can also use the MERS link below.
• Original lender. Your loan may have never been sold, and still kept as a “portfolio loan” with the original lender. What a concept!
• Fannie Mae. In reality, many loans are sold to FNMA aka “Fannie Mae”. See Fannie Mae loan lookup tool.
• Freddie Mac. Similar story with Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC) aka “Freddie Mac”. See Freddie Mac loan lookup tool.
• Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) is a big online registry designed to replace the costly process of publicly recording mortgage ownership at the local government level with a private electronic version that allows the swapping of mortgages with no friction at all. MERS tracks both the servicing rights and ownership of mortgage loans in the United States, although the accuracy has been called into question. See MERS ServiceID lookup tool. You can also call them at 888-679-6377.

Mortgage rates are still setting record lows! Qualification is still very difficult to refinance for those with little home equity, but there’s still many people out there that are eligible (maximize your appraisal). Don’t miss your opportunity to lower your interest costs and own your home faster by believing in one of these common mortgage refinance myths:

#1 I don’t want to pay the high closing costs again.

It’s true, when you refinance there will be additional costs. The mortgage broker has to eat! However, that doesn’t mean you actually need to pay anything extra.

First of all, you can get paid for negative points. Depending on the interest rate, the originator/lender will actually pay you a credit each 1 point = 1% of the loan principal. The lower the rate, the less points you’ll get. But if the credit is high enough, that may cover all your costs, making it a “no-cost” refi. Alternatively, they may simply advertise “no closing costs” which means they cover a certain list of fees.

When you apply for a refi, you’ll get a Good Faith Estimate (GFE) with a total closing costs amount listed at the bottom. However, you should separate the true costs from the stuff that you’d otherwise have to pay anyway, including:

• Prepaid or partial month interest
• Homeowner’s insurance to escrow
• Property Taxes to escrow

The remaining amount (origination fees, doc fees, application fees, appraisal fees, title insurance, credit report fees, etc.) is what I would just call the true cost of refinancing. Some “no closing cost” lenders still make you pay the title insurance fee.

#2. I can’t refinance because it’s been too soon since my last financing.

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The Calculated Risk blog has shared an updated graph of inflation-adjusted housing prices through 2011, based on Prof. Shiller’s data.

Mr. McBride also digs a little deeper and argues that because Shiller changed up the data series he was using in 1987, the true slope of the line should be a little more slightly positive. Using the original data series would result in an overall slope of housing prices increase slightly faster than inflation (1.5% per year) vs. the Shiller line (0.5% per year). His conclusion:

In many areas – if the population is increasing – house prices increase slightly faster than inflation over time, so there is an upward slope for real prices.

This reminded me of this chart via Sober Look that compared the US age distribution in 2000 and 2010 (US Census). The Boomers are getting old, and there is a little gap before the Echo Boomers come in. How will this affect housing prices in the future?

To me, the main takeaway is still that housing prices over the long run don’t rise much faster than inflation. This is not unexpected, as the cost of housing is by definition a big component of inflation. Of course, housing also provides dividends in the form of rent. So if you actually owned a house instead of most people “owning” a house with a big fat mortgage, your overall return on investment would be much better. I can’t wait to really own my house so I can earn that imaginary (imputed) rent.

In reality, what many people seem to do nowadays is hold on and rent out their properties for less than their mortgage payment and hope for price appreciation. This might work I suppose, and one could argue from the graph that prices overall are now close to historical averages. There are now some places where you can buy a house that rents for more than the mortgage payment, but unfortunately not anywhere near me (unless we’re talking huge down payment). As for me, I suppose I’ll just stick with owning low-maintenance REITs and getting my “rental income” that way.

During the housing boom, nobody worried about appraisals. If you put in a bid to purchase a house for $300,000, the appraisal was basically guaranteed to come out at $300,000 or above. Appraisers are hired by lenders, and back then lenders wanted to make the loan happened no matter what. Therefore, if you were an appraiser and you didn’t reliably provide the number that the lender wanted, then your phone might stop ringing. I was told directly that the intended purchase price itself was a “strong indicator of value”. Rather self-fulfilling, no?

Nowadays, banks are much more cautious, and thus so are appraisers. In addition, recent legislation created new Appraiser Independence Requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. At the same time, mortgage rates are at lows and refinance requests are at highs. Your ability to refinance is often dependent on what the appraiser says your house is worth, as you will need to satisfy a certain loan-to-value ratio. So what can you do to maximize your appraisal?

Feel out the lender first. Appraisers still work for lenders, and a good mortgage broker should be able to give you an idea of your chances for an adequate appraisal given the current environment and your basic home details. Check recent sale prices in your neighborhood on sites such as Zillow.com and Trulia.com to get a realistic sense of what to expect.

Collect supporting documents. If you’ve made any improvements to the house, gather up any blueprints or housing permits to provide to the appraisal. You could also make a list of the best “comps”, or recent sales of comparable homes in the area. If you’ve gotten one recently, dig up your last appraisal, and see if there were any omissions or changes. A busy appraiser might simply copy stuff from the previous appraisal. You may even find that they just bring a copy of the old appraisal and mark off things as they go.

Prepare your house. The appraiser will call you to schedule a time to see the interior of your house. Some people have suggested that you should hire a landscaper and basically stage your house as if you were selling it. I don’t know about spending that much energy on things, but I would definitely keep things neat and tidy. Have the kids and pets playing elsewhere. You want the house to come off as well-maintained and cared for.

Meet the appraiser. You’re dealing with a human, so be nice. Walk the appraiser around your house, answer any questions he or she may have, and point out any changes that you have made to the house. When I met my appraiser he was happy to see our official building permits that showed our legal additions. We also pointed out any remodeled areas and newly-installed hardwood flooring.

I don’t know if all appraisers would be open to debating about exactly what houses make good comps to yours or not, it might rub them the wrong way. But you could probably point out ways that your house is different than other potential comps (bigger yard, pool, view, etc.).

Read the appraisal report and follow-up if needed. Request a copy of the report and review it for any inaccuracies. The workload is high right now, and it could be that they mixed up details with another house or just copied stuff over from other sources. Point out any errors along with supporting evidence and you may be able to get the appraisal re-evaluated. On the extreme end, you might ask for another new appraisal at your cost.

Don’t worry about property taxes. While the local government might consider your house’s sales price history when figuring out your home’s tax assessment, they will not be notified of the value from an independent appraisal. In fact, they probably have a rather rigid formula to figure out your home’s assessed value (they do have to do this on a lot of houses) based on things like number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square footage, lot size, etc. If anything, you might volunteer data from the new appraisal to appeal your assessed value – assuming it’s lower of course!

In the end, by taking these steps we felt that we had done our best… and our refinance was a success, so good luck!