Kevin Koss

Did the real estate market just find a bottom? Are we bouncing off the lows? A few articles suggest we just did:

• Firm: Calif. median home price up 7 percent
  • Statewide median price jumped to $246,000, up from $230,000 in May
  • 44,167 homes were sold statewide last month, up more than 13 percent from 39,051 in May and nearly 26 percent from 35,202 in June 2008In a nine-county area of
  • Northern California, the median home price increased more than 3 percent, reaching $352,000 in June from $341,500 in May. It was the third month in a row that prices increased.
• San Francisco Home Sales Hit Highest in Three Years
  • Purchases financed with mortgages of more than $417,000 accounted for 29 percent of all Bay Area sales in June, almost double the low reached in January, MDA DataQuick said.

If you run your own business it can be very difficult to get a refinance right now even if you make a lot of money. A recent article in the Chronicle tells the story of two Bay Area professionals who with 300K in combined income could not get a refinance. Also, be aware that if you have two loans, and you refinance one, the other will have to provide a subordination. Due to processing backlog, this can take eight weeks or more. So make sure you work with somebody who can freeze your rate and get extensions for you at no cost.

One way around the self-employment is have regular payroll through a service like ADP and just get a regular paycheck like your employees do. You might have to do a C Corp or LLC formation to make this work.

 (Undocumented income makes it hard to get a loan - Thursday, July 9, 2009, Sfgate.com)