Outstanding New Home Protection Plan for Las Vegas Buyers

Innovative new American Home Shield® Product Maximizes Flexibility, Minimizes Questions for Purchases on Las Vegas Homes or condos as well as nationwide. Direct from American Home Shield - one of the Tonnesen Team's featured guest bloggers and preferred home warranty providers.


A dynamic solution for marketing properties, delivering service excellence, protecting clients and increasing customer satisfaction is within the reach of real estate professionals nationwide. The unique AHS® Home Warranty FlexPlan® offers unprecedented levels of coverage and price options, allowing agents and homeowners to customize the plan to fit their specific needs. With this plan, homeowners can choose coverage for items and services never before available in the home warranty industry.

Easy to use and understand, the FlexPlan is available ONLY through real estate transactions. Developed in direct response to suggestions and requests from customers and the real estate community, it replaces all previously available American Home Shield products and streamlines product offerings.

FlexPlan customers can choose options starting with the Core Coverage Plan, the basic services package and foundational AHS product. Customers can then choose to add one or both bundles of coverage through the ServicePlus and CoveragePlus packages, as well as additional options from the list of FlexPlan add-ons. Depending on the level of protection chosen, coverage may even include unexpected costs related to permits, code violations, improper installations, mismatched systems, septic systems, geothermal conditions, and more. As well, clients can choose to cover such items as ceiling fans, pools, spas, freestanding ice makers, and second refrigerators, to name a few available options.

The FlexPlan’s full-service package is a highly effective marketing tool for agents that can help encourage quicker sales and may discourage downward price negotiation on Las Vegas homes for sale. Since every house and every situation is different, the price and coverage options available through FlexPlan enable agents to present inventive solutions to their clients, fostering increased service satisfaction and repeat business. In addition, having the industry-leading AHS brand associated with a listing can help attract buyers and inspire confidence.

With this total package of flexible coverage and exceptional customer service, AHS continues to seek innovative ways to partner with real estate professionals and to deliver superior customer service to home buyers and sellers. Today, AHS is proud to provide more than 1.2 million home warranties nationwide.

For more information or to purchase an AHS Home Warranty FlexPlan, visit http://www.ahsflexplan.com/, call 1-800-735-4663, or contact your local AHS Account Executive. To find the AHS account executive in your area, ask your Las Vegas real estate agents to visit the web site and click the “Find an Account Executive” link. Remember, these plans are available only through your agent.

100% Financing for Las Vegas Homes

The Nehemiah program explained courtesy of Adam Kearney, your local Las Vegas mortgage lender and guest blogger.

With the crash of the subprime market, all the conventional 100% financing options disappeared overnight, leaving many borrowers who were already in escrow scrambling to find a way to complete the purchase of their Las Vegas homes. While investors were pretty much out of luck unless they had money for a down payment, primary home buyers were given a reprieve due to an FHA program which has been revived.

The FHA Nehemiah program is a great way to get 100% financing at a great rate. The seller can contribute 3% to the down payment assistance as well as up to 6% towards closing costs.

There are several different options to the Nehemiah program. One very popular option is the 2/1 buydown. This option gives you a start rate of 2% below your "fully indexed" rate. What is a "fully indexed rate?" That is the maximum rate that will be charged during the life of the loan.

For example, if you choose to do a 2/1 buydown, part of your closing costs are going toward "buying down" the interest rate during the first two years of the loan, allowing you to qualify for more home now. This is based on the premise that your income will go up as the payment goes up. If your fully indexed (maximum) rate was 6.5% for thirty years, your rate for the first year would be 4.5%. This 4.5% would only be fixed for the first year . Beginning year two the rate would move to 5.5% and stay fixed for all of year two. On year three you would reach your fully indexed rate of 6.5% and your rate would remain fixed at 6.5% for the remaining 27 years.

Just to give you an example of what your payments would be on this loan program, let's say you need a $300,000 mortgage. Your Principal and Interest payment at 4.5% would be $1,475.00 during year one. During year two your Principal and Interest payment would be $1656.00 at 5.5%. The third year your Principal and Interest payment would adjust at 6.5%to $1847.15 and this payment would stay the same for the remaining 27 years of your mortgage.

The Nehemiah program is a government backed loan and works well in a buyer's market like today, even if you are looking at Las Vegas foreclosures that are bank owned. It is one of the only 100% financing options available to date.

If you have any questions regarding this program, please contact me at the 702-528-3775 or to prequalify, fill out a loan application at: Las Vegas loan application.

Regards,
Adam Kearney

High End Buyers "Dissed" by Las Vegas Realtor

With the current market for Las Vegas foreclosures, we are getting a lot of out of state enquiries on bank repossessions, auctions and short sales. Many of these requests are actually for high end Las Vegas homes where the foreclosures are not quite as prevalent, but where the buyer can really pick up some equity on distressed properties.

We received an enquiry last month from a Canadian couple who were looking to purchase Lake Las Vegas real estate. They were looking for a high end Las Vegas luxury property that they could use as a vacation home and they were planning on paying cash. One of our agents, Janet, was assigned to take them on a tour of potential homes.

Janet emailed the clients while they were still in Canada and sent them some listings to look over. They were able to narrow down their search and on the scheduled day Janet met with the buyers, who were very nice and very adamant about getting a real "deal." Since these are high end homes, Janet had arranged appointments with the listing agents on the ones they were interested in.

At the very first home Janet took the buyers to see, Mrs. Buyer got a funny look on her face when she saw the listing agent. She pulled Janet aside and asked for the agent's name. Janet told her, and as soon as she got the chance, Mrs. Buyer said to the agent, "Oh so YOU'RE Agent N." Of course the way she said it caused the listing agent to reply, "Yes, I am. Have we met before?"

"No," replied Mrs. Buyer. But you spoke to my husband on the phone the other day. I'd like to introduce you to Mr. Bottomfeeder." Agent N had to leave the room to compose himself when he realized what he had done.

As it turns out, like most Internet buyers these clients had been surfing the web and had talked to quite a few agents before deciding who they wanted to represent them. Evidently Mr. Buyer had talked to Agent N about a particular property and had asked if the sellers would consider a sales price quite a bit less than what the property was listed for. Unfortunately Agent N took umbrage and called Mr. Buyer a "bottomfeeder" and hung up on him.

Needless to say, the buyers were not interested in putting in an offer on Agent N's listing. But they are going to put an offer in on another home Janet showed them listed at over $6 million.

Who can blame a buyer for trying to get the best deal possible in today's market? And who are we as Las Vegas real estate agents to say that they should not give it a shot? We love it when we know we have gotten a smoking deal for one of our clients, and we are certainly not going to discourage them from doing so. Because Janet took their concerns seriously, she now has some loyal clients who know she truly has their best interests at heart. But Agent N, who insulted these same clients, lost out on a huge sale. Hopefully he learned a lesson, but at what a cost!