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LinkedIn Profile Tips for Realtors

by Express Cash Flow Blog Posts

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Maximizing Your LinkedIn Profile

In today’s age of social media being the go to for verification of business acumen, it is crucial to have an optimized LinkedIn profile.  Here are some tips on how to do just that:

1. Have your best and clearest profile picture and complete your entire profile,
2. Address what you do in your Headline not just your title,
3. Join Groups to connect with your customers, partners and prospects,
4. Tell your friends, co-workers, etc to “Like” and “Share” your post,
5. Publish articles to show your knowledge of the industry,
6. Contribute and comment to blogs,
7. Automatically connect with your contacts: sync your email accounts with LinkedIn,
8. Ask a title rep for all the homeowners in your farm and connect with them on LinkedIn,
9. Search senior job titles in your city and connect by writing them a note,
10. Lastly, and to supercharge your connects…connect with people that have a high number of shared connections by searching your “2nd degree connections”. They will usually accept your invitation more easily than ones that you don’t have share connections with. This will exponentially grow your network!

About Us:
AgentBranch.com is a real estate recruiting platform for real estate agents and brokers.
ExpressCashFlow.com provides commission advances for real estate agents and brokers.

Realtor Financing – Commission Advances

by Express Cash Flow Blog Posts

Real estate is just like any business: it requires capital. The solution:  Realtor financing.

Capital is needed for expenses such as business cards, advertising, office equipment, and transportation, just to name a few examples. Since capital, or cash, only flows into the coffers of a realtor upon completion of a sale, financing these kinds of expenses can be challenging. If you are a realtor and you find yourself particularly stretched financially between sales, there is good news. You can use real estate advances to finance your business.

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Best Mortgage In America

by Express Cash Flow Blog Posts

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Mortgage Today

Applying for a mortgage can be a tough task for aspiring homeowners.  Especially so for borrowers with low to moderate incomes or perhaps less than stellar credit. While the availability of credit in the early-mid 2000s made it possible to get a mortgage, this was irresponsible.  These types of mortgages would typically include a teaser rate, eventually leading to payment shock.

These days, NACA seeks to avoid that mess.  In addition to a wide depth of resources available to homebuyers to ensure they get the best possible deal, NACA also provides what has been dubbed the “Best Mortgage In America”.  This means that qualified borrowers will be able to take advantage of the following mortgage perks NACA has to offer:

  • No down payment
  • No closing costs
  • Below market interest rates
  • No Points
  • Buy-downs to near-zero interest rates
  • No fees

Seem too good to be true?  For once, it isn’t!  What’s more, NACA is not a program only available to people with certain income or credit scenarios, it is available to all qualified borrowers who do not currently own a home!  Even if the desired property requires more renovation than the buyer can afford, NACA will finance that renovation as well to allow the buyer to purchase their dream home, even if it is a fixer-upper.

This underutilized and underpublicized product is a great tool in the tool belt of first time homebuyers and realtors alike who are striving to get the best deal.

You can read more about the different programs available at www.NACA.com.

 

About Us:

Express Cash Flow – Commission advances for real estate agents and brokers www.ExpressCashFlow.com.

When to lock mortgage rate

When to Lock a Mortgage Rate

by Express Cash Flow Blog Posts

When to lock mortgage rateReal estate agents are often asked to advise homebuyers on financial matters especially on mortgage rates and when to lock them in. These can be difficult conversations, because things like whether to lock or float an interest rate can be guess work. A mortgage rate lock simply guarantees a specific interest rate if a loan closes by a particular date. Rates can often be locked for up to two months. At Express Cash Flow, we work with agents to keep their cash flowing with commission advances, and we’ve picked up a few tips for homebuyers who are deciding when to lock in an interest rate.

Home Seller Factors

by Commission AdvancesExpress Cash Flow Blog PostsHome Owners

Working as a home seller can be a frustrating experience, given how long it can take for a sale to close before finally being able to take the commission you’ve earned for your work. But by preparing yourself for several different possibilities, you can lessen the frustration by being aware of what issues might pop up over the course of getting to the sale. Here are a few Home Seller Factors that might come up in the process.

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Should You Reject an FHA Loan?

by Express Cash Flow Blog Posts

FHA loans are a popular type of mortgage for homeowners that either don’t have the capital for a large down payment, have a bankruptcy in their past, or can’t get a mortgage otherwise. Because of the downturn of the housing market in 2008, the mortgage insurance premiums (required by any FHA loan) have almost tripled in expense, which means FHA loans aren’t as great a deal as they used to be. If you are trying to decide whether or not to take an FHA loan, here are a few things to consider.

Expenses and Fees

One of the biggest things you need to consider before deciding on an FHA loan is the expense and fees that come with an FHA loan. Because FHA loans offer such a low down-payment, they come with the requirement that you take out two mortgage insurance premiums, one upfront and one that lasts throughout the entirety of your loan. These typically add a lot to a monthly amount. Though a low down-payment is appealing, it also adds quite a bit of interest over the years than if you had paid the traditional 10 to 20% of the mortgage. So, if you have another loan option, you should definitely take that over the FHA, just to save money in the long run.

Financing Limits

Another problem with FHA loans, because they are known for helping families of more modest means, is that they have a limit to how much you can borrow. The FHA recalculates the loan limits (the “floor” and the “ceiling”) each year based on 115% of the median house price in each area. This means that if you live in an expensive area, like New York City or San Francisco, your loan limits will be a lot different than if you live in Kansas City or Las Vegas. This can be a problem if you need a higher loan amount.

If you are considering an FHA loan, these are just a few things that you’ll want to determine before you decide to go with the loan. Because there are a few things that may add a hiccup to your plan, you’ll want to go over all of your options, especially if you have a loan offer from the private mortgage industry. If you are looking to talk about FHA loans, or commission advances in California, be sure to contact Express Cash Flow for more information.

3 Reasons a Deal Might Fall Through

by Express Cash Flow Blog Posts

One of the largest challenges of running your own real estate business is maintaining steady cash flow. You may have multiple contracts pending and ready to close within the next month, but that means nothing when you have expenses and overhead that need to be taken care of immediately.

Maintaining relationships with vendors, as well as with clients, is at the heart of your business.  Here at Express Cash Flow, we are dedicated to helping professional real estate agents and brokers improve their day to day cash flow and operating budgets. Similar to the way banks offer loans based on accounts receivable, commission advance companies like Express Cash Flow provide early payment on your pending commissions. You get up to 75% of your commission before closing so you can pay your service providers on time. Once you receive your commission on a real estate sale, Express Cash Flow receives the amount of the advance, plus their fee, back through closing.

Deals can fall through, however. Here are three reasons real estate deals sometimes breakdown:

Appraisals

Every lender and loan requires that the property in a pending real estate transaction be appraised. This protects the buyer – they don’t want to end up upside down in a new real estate investment – and ultimately, protects the lender, too. Real estate appraisals are typically based on recent sales.  If sales haven’t caught up to a shifting market on the rise, this can happen. Sometimes, these deals can be saved through negotiations, but if the difference between the appraised value and the sale value is too great, these deals can fall through.

Property Condition

With the help of savvy buyers’ agents, most prospective home purchasers will request an inspection. An inspector will test and examine all of a home’s systems, including electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and even the roof. These deals may fall through if the seller doesn’t have the finances to cover the work and can’t afford to take a hit on the sales price. In foreclosed homes, banks are often unwilling to finance any repairs, meanwhile, the lending bank is unwilling to make a loan in the home’s current condition.

Buyer Motivation

Looking at homes to buy is fun. Dealing with all the requisite paperwork and effort to close a deal isn’t. If a buyer isn’t very motivated, even the smallest hiccup – and there will be hiccups – may lead them to believe it’s easier to walk away from a real estate transaction.

Any of these factors, as well as many others, can delay the all-important close of escrow.  Utilizing a commission advance can allow agents to breathe a little easier during their escrow, knowing that the money is already in their pocket.

Express Cash Flow also understands that not every escrow closes.  As a real estate professional, we trust that you are going to close another escrow in the near future, and may even have other escrows going concurrently with the escrow associated with the advance.  That’s an easy enough solution we simply transfer your advance to another escrow, and there is no out of pocket payment for you.