I’m a bit behind on getting class notes out from this past Tuesday’s class.  We had a great class and, as is often the case, learned quite a bit from the students, while teaching.

This week, among our students was a Snohomish county building code enforcement officer, who was able to answer many questions from students and instructors alike.  After class we got a chance to get some landscaping questions answered by another student who is a landscape designer.

At the bottom of this post are the updated slides from the class. We caught a few mistakes in the slides and have fixed them.  One of the mistakes is due to a change in how offers are made for HUD homes.  It used to be that as part of an offer, agents could write in their own commission, up to 5%.  This created an opportunity for your agent’s interests to be at odd with your own, since HUD looked at the net (the offer minus commission) as the final offer price.  The changet to the process is that HUD pays a flat 3% to the buyer’s agent, which removes the problematic incentive.

Also during the class we spoke at length about title insurance.  Here is a link to a set of articles from Ticor Title, that go over the details: https://www.ticortitle.com/TitleInsurance.aspx

We also talked at length about inspections and rehab loans. One of the home inspectors we recommend named Randy Navarro. I can’t recommend him highly enough.  Here is a link to his website: http://thecompleteinspection.com/default.aspx.

Almost last but definately not least, our handouts listing ‘For Sale’ foreclosures in Snohomish county were disorganized. So, as a replacement here are the search results from the Tellus Real Estate website: http://search.tellusre.com/idx/12777/results.php?stp=advanced&idxID=041&pt=sfr&showField=countyField&county%5B%5D=1247&ba=0&srt=ASC&start=0&per=10&aw_propStatus%5B%5D=Active&a_bankOwned=Yes

And, finally, here are the slides: