James Tan MBA Broker/REALTOR - Bethany Real Estate & Investments

Based on our experience, if the house is well prepped, with professional photography and staging plus an aggressive marketing and pricing campaign. The house can be in contract within 2 weekends after being launched on the market. Call us if you have any questions.

Even though the rental ratio in a condominium complex is high, you can still get a loan to buy a home. Both FNMA and FHA have relaxed their requirements. Typically, if you are an owner occupant, it is relatively easy to get a home loan even for a condominium. It is different though, if you are buying it as a rental.

Yes, there are lenders that cater for people who do not have a credit in this country. They do not require a social security number, nor a credit score. But you do need to have substantial reserves and a large down payment. The interest rate is also slightly higher than the normal full documentation loans. But is is very easy to qualify.

Yes, nowadays there are programs that offer very low down payments such as 3 or 3.5%. California also offers down payment assistance to qualified buyers, so you can bring the down payment to zero. Retired military personnel are also entitles to a zero down VA loan.

The first thing you need to do is talk to a lender (a bank or a mortgage broker). They can check your credit profile, your income and be able to tell you whether you can qualify for a loan, with how much down payment and how much you can borrow. This would give you a budget and price range to choose from. By the way, If your credit score is too low, he/she should be able to help you increase that score over time. Once a budget is set, then you should decide on which area would suit your needs. This depends on the market prices in that zipcode, and what kind of house you are looking for (a house or a condo, square footage, number of rooms, bathrooms, lot size, etc.). The best thing for you to do is to contact a good real estate agent (realtor), he/she would be able to guide you through the steps of procuring the American Dream of owning your own home.

Yes, we would be happy to do a free comparative market analysis to determine the value of your home. This will be a more accurate estimate than what you will get online from zillow, etc. The latter is a computer model estimate, without taking into account more details of the property. Often times, our estimate can be higher than what zillow states, some times it may be less.