Realtors Welcome New Credit Scoring Calculation

The National Association of Realtors welcomed the move of Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO) over its new credit scoring rating, which it said would improve access to homeownership.

NAR President Steve Brown said in a statement, “Realtors welcome today’s announcement from Fair Isaac Corp., or FICO, that it will no longer penalize borrowers for certain debt-collection activities when calculating credit scores. This move will ultimately make a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans, who have been shut out of the housing market or forced to pay higher mortgage interest rates because of flawed credit scores. Since the housing crash, overly restrictive lending has been the greatest obstacle to homeownership.

Brown said the NAR would continue to support efforts to broaden access to credit for qualified homebuyers.

The NAR issued the statement as it also noted that favorable exchange rates, affordable home prices and rising affluence abroad continue to drive international buyers to the U.S. to purchase properties and make real estate investments.

According to NAR’s 2014 Profile of International Home Buying Activity, for the period April 2013 through March 2014, total international sales have been estimated at $92.2 billion, an increase from the previous period’s level of $68.2 billion.

“We live in an international marketplace; so while all real estate is local, that does not mean that all property buyers are,” said NAR President Steve Brown, co-owner of Irongate, Inc. Realtors® in Dayton, Ohio. “Foreign buyers are being enticed to U.S. real estate because of what they recognize as attractive prices, economic stability, and an incredible opportunity for investment in their future.”

International buyers and recent immigrants purchased homes throughout the country, but four states accounted for 55 percent of the total reported purchases – Florida, California, Arizona, and Texas. Florida remains the destination of choice, claiming a 23 percent share of all foreign purchases. California comes in second with 14 percent, Texas with 12 percent and Arizona with 6 percent. According to realtor.com®, the top five cities searched online by international buyers in 2014 were Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, Orlando and New York City.

Foreign buyers take many factors into consideration when deciding where to purchase abroad, such as proximity to their home country, the presence of relatives and friends, job and educational opportunities, and climate and location. European buyers are generally attracted to states with warmer climates such as Florida and Arizona while the West Coast tends to attract Asian purchasers. Indian buyers tend to gravitate towards states that are home to large information technology companies, such as California, New York and North Carolina. Within markets in an individual state, it is not unusual to find concentrations of people grouped by nationality, possibly indicating that word-of-mouth and shared experiences influence purchases

With the new rule on credit ratings imposed by FICO, homebuyers will have better access to funding when buying their new homes.

Homebuyers looking for a new home or real estate agents can avail of the new technology offered by RealBiz Media Group, Inc.’s RBIZ.

RealBiz Media’s Nestbuilder.com aims to grant agents control over how they want to run marketing campaigns for their listings. The portal came at a time when the norm among agents for capturing leads is to buy them from established multiple listing sites.

“Nestbuilder.com’s mission is to both empower the real estate agent and to connect the homeowner and homebuyer directly with the agent in a personalized and meaningful relationship without interference from large, impersonal, third party lead generation sites,” RealBiz Media President and chief revenue officer Steve Marques noted.

“Homebuyers are able to create personalized video collections of potential homes to be set-up for review and sharing. Agents can quickly bring their listings to life via RealBiz’s rich video conversion tools, and market their properties directly to homeowners and homebuyers in a personalized, customized, entertaining, and engaging format no matter where they are," he said.

RealBiz has access to the nation’s largest real estate companies with numerous approved vendors and national contracts, both key to its future development programs. When completed, the company is targeting distribution of its digital video network to more than 70 million households and an agent driven MicroVideo App program. For more information, please dial this toll free number at 1.888.REAL.BIZ (888.732.5249) or email at support@rbm.zendesk.com.