Hi, I’m Marc Graves, and this is Marc Graves Perspective.
So today, we’re coming out here from Clayton, California. I’m Marc Graves, Courtyard Realty, where my job is to be your guide. Clayton, California is just a fabulous town. It’s a fabulous space. The construction of the homes is off the chain. This is a great atmosphere. We have botchy ball courts right down here. We typically have hot August nights, so we have car shows out here, we have a pizza parlor, there’s a tavern here, and that’s a bar for the people who don’t know what tavern means. Anyway, we have a French restaurant, Italian restaurants, and some of the best hoagies and Casadas ever. I’m not sure how to say it, but I know how to eat them. This is where I grew up. There used to be a road right here. We have the Oakhurst Country Club. That used to be a road that went all the way out to the black diamond mines.
Now, it’s the Oakhurst Country Club, which is just fabulous. It’s a beautiful golf course, a beautiful venue. I think I’ve done a podcast on it before or a Ygnacio Valley Community Highlight. You have the play structures over here, a super friendly town, super kid-friendly, very Americana. Anyway, the deal is that there’s a little bit extra. We’re at the very end of the Ygnacio Valley Community, at the very end of the Ygnacio Valley corridor. So, sometimes for the people that spend hours and hours on the road, that last little trek is a little too much for them. Otherwise, this town would probably be worth 40% more as far as home prices go. Right now, I think something to illustrate would be the ease and comfort it is to get money, to purchase a home. I’ve been doing this longer than I’ve been alive, but my stepfather had real estate brokerages before me.
I’ve been paying attention to what’s going on in the marketplace by sitting at the dining room table, having dinner, going out to Discovery Bay, and the chitchat we’d have on the boat about interest rates, market trends, and things like that since the Carter era. That’s where my parents would primarily let people that had a lot of substantial equity in their properties loan out the money to purchase the home that they were selling and carry their paper, so act as the bank. That was very, very good. That’s what you always want. My stepfather used to tell me to look for a win, win situation. If everybody wants to have happened what you’re trying to orchestrate, it has a great possibility of happening. Motivation is how he phrased it. The key component to a good transaction is the motivation.
That’s just always something to keep in mind. I said it before, maybe even on film, where all my deals could be done on a handshake. We do it all the appropriate way with all the documentation, the safety nets, and all of that. Everything I do, everybody involved wants the same conclusion. So, we’re all working together to make that happen, and everybody’s happy when it happens. It’s a really cool process to be a part of. I just helped somebody with what they call “superjumbo money”. The week that Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and a couple of the other big players announced they were not doing jumbo money loans or super jumbo money loans, I was able to, through a credit union, find my buyer 3.625 fixed with six months reserves as a requirement when everybody else was typically somewhere between a year and two years of reserves that they need.
Reserves are principal taxes and insurance for the month or monthly obligation, and they would want as many as 12 to 24 months worth of those in a bank, what they call seasoned, which typically just means it’s been there for 3+ months. This requirement was 6 months, and it was no points, which that’s a whole other story of whether points are incorporated into the rate. Another thing, there was no MI, or mortgage insurance. It’s somewhat like xerox, the term PMI has developed. It was actually just a company that provided mortgage insurance. It’s what allows mortgage bankers to bundle loans and sell them on the secondary money market. It helps ensure that the banks and the people that are buying these mortgage-backed securities have at least 20% worth of equity. So, when they don’t have 20% worth of equity, but they want to sell them as if they did to meet the guideline, they put an insurance policy making the uncertain certain. That’s what insurance is labeled so that they can sell them along with the rest of the flow.
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO TO LEARN MORE!