Time ripe to think about moving up

Solano Real Estate Scene: Jim Porter

Article By: Jim Porter – May 21, 2016

Wow, we are finally seeing a bunch of Solano County folks selling or thinking about selling their current residence and moving to a larger or more modern home.

This increase in inventory is vital to our real estate market and is great for first-time homebuyers looking to purchase an affordable starter home. This is also great for the thousands who had to let their homes go on short sales and foreclosures and are now ready to repurchase as part of their financial recovery from the Great Recession.

Investors looking to buy rental property as part of their investment portfolio usually prefer buying lower-priced homes so inventory is critical for a healthy rental market.

Many people who talk about and dream about moving up don’t move even though they can easily qualify financially to achieve the dream.

Here are my top 10 reasons and excuses that people just stay put in their undersized or in some cases oversized homes.

1. Procrastination.
2. Stress.
3. Fear.
4. Time (just too busy).
5. Lack of inventory (no homes available that are nice enough to be motivated to sell and move).
6. Neighbors (they love their neighbors).
7. A lack of coaching on how to buy and sell concurrently (they need a mortgage professional and a qualified real estate agent).
8. Exhaustion (people are tired from working, commuting and running kids around to soccer, Little League, FFA, gymnastics, theater, ice skating or maybe travel ball basketball).
9. Health issues.
10. Dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior (humans have problems and family situations that freeze us from moving or making any changes, life happens).
    The solution to overcome these excuses and reasons is free coaching and financial advice from a combination of a real estate broker, a mortgage professional and in some cases a certified financial planner or tax professional.

We as an industry need people to be able to sell their homes and move into new ones because not that many people can afford to purchase without selling their departing residence. A qualified mortgage professional can help people make the decision to move because they do this for a living every day and most of us in real estate understand the stress and fear because we have moved up ourselves and are humans just like our customers.

Jim Porter, NMLS No. 276412, is the branch manager of Solano Mortgage, NMLS No. 1515497, a division of American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, NMLS No. 1850, licensed in California by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the CRMLA / Equal Housing Opportunity. Jim can be reached at 707-449-4777.