Many Silicon Valley home buyers rely on PMI, or Private Mortgage Insurance, to purchase a house or condo. But what is it and who needs it?

Private mortgage insurance is usually required with loans in which the buyer has less than a 20% down payment.

PMI does not protect you, the residential real estate consumer. It protects your lender in case you default!

FHA loans don’t have PMI but instead there is a “government guarantee” and for that you pay a premium – so not called PMI but it works similarly. The cost may range from 1 – 2.5%.

FHA or Conventional with PMI?

If you have less than 5% down, FHA will be your only option. But between 5 and 20% down, you may choose.

If you are trying to decide between FHA and conventional loan products with PMI, talk to you mortgage broker or banker to see which one really costs more in the long run, factoring in the total package of interest rates, premium rate etc. (FHA loans may come at a lower interest rate but with other added costs – so don’t just compare interest rates.)  The result may depend on the loan to value of the property, your credit score, and other factors. There don’t seem to be any “easy answers” as to which one is necessarily better.  This decision will require a little research!

If you expect to be bidding in multiple offers, this is another consideration too – it can be very hard for home buyers in the South Bay to win out in multiples if they are using FHA financing (as opposed to conventional).

Finally, like HOA dues, PMI is not something you can usually deduct from your income taxes (unless the PMI cost was simply rolled into your interest rate).  Please talk to your lender and tax professional for more information on PMI and the tax ramifications.

Related reading:

Is your lender pushing you into an FHA loan?

The challenge of being an FHA home buyer in a seller’s market

First Time Home Buyer with FHA Financing? Make Sure That Your Offer is Well Drafted!

Recently I was speaking with a neighbor of mine in Los Gatos who’s a high powered lender with decades of experience all over Santa Clara County.  In the last year or two she’s been doing many more FHA backed loans, rather than conventional ones, as smart home buyers, especially first time home buyers, try to get into a house while both home prices and interest rates are at record lows.  This makes a lot of sense as it can take a long time to save 20% or more and in that time, both interest rates and real estate prices in Silicon Valley could go through the roof.  (If my kids were out of college and working, I’d be encouraging them to buy a home using FHA backed financing too.)

FHA backed mortgages do require a lot more work, though, so I extended my sympathy that she’s having to jump through so many hoops and that they are for much smaller sales prices (many areas of San Jose have dropped 35 – 40% since the market collapse).  Mortgage brokers often make about 1% of the value of the loan as their compensation, so I imagined this great loan officer spending twice as much time with FHA paperwork as on a normal loan, on a smaller priced property, resulting in “half the pay for twice the work”.

Apparently that’s not the case with FHA loans!

“It’s better for me when the buyer uses FHA”, she assured me.  Really?  “Instead of getting 1 point, we are often paid 2.5 points when we close an FHA loan.”   That didn’t seem unfair to me since there’s a lot more paperwork involved.  But consumers probably don’t realize that their banker or mortgage broker will be paid much more if the loan is FHA backed rather than conventional.

If you have saved enough money for a conventional loan product but your lender is pushing FHA, be doubly careful before deciding what to do. There are pros and cons to each loan product you buy (you are “buying” or “paying for” a loan).  Make sure that you aren’t getting FHA financing only because it is more profitable for your lender.

Early in my career, I had the pleasure of working with a wonderful young woman (let’s call her Ann) who was preparing to buy her first house in San Jose.  Ann was all of about 23 or 24 years old, but she had been saving since she was 16 or 17 years old. So much discipline!  This Silicon Valley native had a clear idea of what she wanted (a house in a good part of Santa Clara County), what she expected (a bigger place that probably would need some work) and her long term goals (get a house and rent bedrooms out to friends and relatives later).

Together, we got her into a 4 bedroom Blossom Valley house with lots of potential.  Ann rented the other 3 rooms out to friends and relatives.  She worked to save the money to buy the property and has labored to make it better over the years.  This was not an impulse buy at all – instead, it was part of a big plan she had since she was a teenager.  I did and do respect her so much: she had a very clear idea both of what she wanted, and what she needed to do to attain it.

How many of us can say the same or have so much discipline and planning?

I have a ton of respect for people who carefully save and plan.  At the other extreme, I worry tremendously about those who make spur of the moment, highly impulsive and seemingly unrealistic decisions.  When or if they ask me for advice, they don’t always like what I have to say, because as a friend or as their Realtor, I need to try to help them to make better decisions. (more…)

Lately I am meeting people who work hard but aren’t saving anything – and they want to buy a a house.

Let me tell you:  It doesn’t work that way.  Few important things in life are that easy, actually.

If you want to buy a home in Silicon Valley, you have to embrace the “new frugality” and start saving your money for the down payment, the closing costs, and improvements you’ll want to do to the property.  Real estate isn’t cheap (you may have noticed) and the taxes, insurance and upkeep will require that you have a reserve account to pay these things after you purchase the townhouse, condo or house.

How much should you be saving?  As much as humanely possible.  Yes, that means probably giving up a lot of ski trips in winter, lavish nights out on the weekends, dinners and maybe even coffees out.  When you do buy a house, you will probably be spending 33% of your gross income (total, pre-tax) on the property (mortgage, interest, taxes and insurance).   Try living on what’s left now – see how you do.  If you can’t live on just 67% of your gross income, you might reconsider whether you can or want to sacrifice that much to purchase a home here in Santa Clara County.

Yes, there are lower down payment options like FHA backed financing, but with a tiny downpayment (6% or so) you will have very high payments and to top that off, your interest rate will be higher.

If you really want to buy a house, you need to sacrifice and save.  Aim at 25% down so you can afford to fix it once you’re in and pay lower interest rates.  Or if FHA is the way you want to go, more like 8%.  Save, save, save.

Multiple offers have returned to many segments of the Silicon Valley real estate market, so it is more important than ever for motivated home buyers to pinpoint the pricing.

Most of the time, when there are multiple offers, the sales price goes higher than the list price.  Does that mean you would be over paying for the property? Possibly.  Or it could simply mean that the listing agent and home seller listed it strategically low – under its true market value.  In that case, the list price was never the expected sales price.  Unless you and your Realtor carefully analyze the comps (comparable listings, pendings and sales), you won’t have a sense of the probable buyer’s value for that house, townhouse or condo.

Common home buyer mistake

A very common mistake for new home buyers is to get as far as to analyze the comps and find what they think is market value…and then start subtracting for everything wrong with the house.  This is because they assume that the house is supposed to be perfect, or that they should not have to pay for any improvements or repairs after close of escrow.

The difficulty here is that most of the time, the house or townhome or condominium is not brand new.  The comparable sales were not new, either. A 40 or 50 year old property is not going to be in perfect condition.  Had you or any buyer seen all of the comps’ presale inspections and disclosures, you’d have learned that they also had a myriad of things wrong with them – mostly small but items to be repaired, replaced or improved nonetheless. (more…)

Often when home buyers look at Silicon Valley properties for sale they compare the list prices to online valuations.    The difficulty is that the “auto-comp” figures are often wrong because they are based primarily, if not exclusively, on the “price per square foot” of the house’s listing.

Price per square foot is one way of finding value (or one factor) but often is not the best, especially if you use it alone, because there are other factors besides the square footage of the house.  Here are some of the other factors that can mess up that valuation based on price per SF alone:

• location
• lot size
• back yard size
• amount of remodeling
• care for the home
• whether the street is a good one or full of parked cars
• sale type – regular vs distressed
• amount of down payment
• whether it’s all cash, conventional financing or if the seller carries a note

The variance from “all original” to “all remodeled” alone can swing value 10% in the San Jose area, 15% or even in rare cases 20%.  Add to that other factors and the divergence in value can be much, much greater. (more…)

Today consumers have a lot of choices as to where to search for properties for sale in Silicon Valley (the South Bay area, Santa Clara County, San Jose, Los Gatos, Almaden etc.).  But not all “find a home” sites are equally accurate.  Some websites display listings that are sale pending, sold & closed or even withdrawn.

The very best, most accurate and most often updated site is the public branch of our agent-supported Multiple Listing Service or MLS, which is MLSListings.com.  You can find it at www.MLSListings.com. (If sending your own agent info a house, it is helpful if you provide both the street address and the MLS #.  By the way, the first few digits of the number imply the year that the listing was put into the system.  811 = 2011.  810 = 2010.)

Why is MLSListings.com the best source for finding Silicon Valley homes for sale?

It is updated constantly.  Within a few minutes of whenever a real estate agent or broker changes the listing status, comments, photos, showing instructions, open house information,etc., the new information is displayed on MLSListings.  While it’s not instantaneous, most changes appear within 5-10 minutes (photos being the slowest to load).

MLSListings is syndicated out to some other sites, but some don’t update often (or at all).  Other sites rely upon the listing agent to go to that one site and update the status.  Realtors and other licensees get busy and this task may slip through the cracks, making you believe that a home is available when it’s not. MLSListings.com is the source.

You don’t have to register. Some of the portals that you might consider visiting to view the MLS info may not include the virtual tour or all pics – or might show them to you only if you register.  You do not need to register to view houses, condos, townhouses, multi units etc. on MLSListings.com. (more…)