Ralph R. Roberts, consumer advocate and spokesperson for Federal Loan Modification Law Center, LLP, was featured on CNN Saturday during a live special report on the foreclosure crisis. The hour-long report, hosted by anchor Fredricka Whitfield and facilitated by CNN’s Josh Levs, included a series of hard-hitting questions from struggling homeowners facing the prospect of losing their home in foreclosure. (Note: Roberts’ interview can be seen in its entirety by clicking here or scrolling to the bottom of this entry.)

Since losing his own home to foreclosure in the late 1970s, Roberts has made it his life’s mission to cure what he calls the “Cancer of the American Dream.” During the segment he rallied homeowners to modify their mortgage loans, “You can’t modify a loan if you’re not working, but as you find work, be ready to modify your loan. The more Main Street steps up and fights for themselves, the more affordable their homes are going to be, and the better it’s going to be for their families, the neighborhoods, the schools, the tax base, and for all of us as Americans,” said Roberts.

Roberts, who has led thousands of families through the foreclosure maze, also provided his perspective in response to President Obama’s recently announced foreclosure prevention plan.

“We’ve been bailing out Wall Street,” said Roberts. “We’ve been bailing out insurance companies. We’re bailing out states. We’re bailing out cities. We need a bailout for Main Street. What everyone needs to realize is by bailing out your neighbor, it’s going to protect your value [the value of your home].”

He went on to suggest that the Obama Administration would be wise to consider investing more of the bailout money modifying mortgage loans for all American homeowners. “Let’s just modify the whole country. That would be the best thing, instead of throwing all this money at Wall Street like we’ve been doing, let’s modify Main Street, because America really needs it,” he said.

Roberts, an award-winning author, also shared insights from one of his latest books, Foreclosure Self-Defense For Dummies (Wiley).

About Ralph R. Roberts
Ralph R. Roberts, GRI, CRS is a real estate-focused consumer advocate who knows a thing or two about overcoming challenges. An award-winning author and REALTOR®, Ralph lost one of his own homes to foreclosure in the late 1970s, and soon thereafter added a foreclosure division to his real estate business. Since then, Ralph and his team has led thousands of families through the foreclosure maze, informing them of their options, including loan modification, and steering them clear of the most common pitfalls while empowering them with the information required to get on with their lives. Ralph is an award-winning REALTOR® and author who has penned several successful books, including Foreclosure Self-Defense For Dummies (Wiley), and Protect Yourself from Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud: Preserving the American Dream of Homeownership (Kaplan). His latest book, Loan Modification For Dummies (Wiley), is slated for publication in summer of 2009. For more information about Ralph please visit www.keepmyhouse.com.

Ralph R. Roberts is the spokesperson for Federal Loan Modification Law Center, LLP, a law firm dedicated to preserving the American Dream of Homeownership by successfully renegotiating loan agreements between homeowners and lenders. For more information please call 1-877-39-HOUSE (1-877-394-6873) or visit www.fedmod.com.

Interview - Part One:

Part Two:

Southeast Michigan’s most popular and respected business newspaper and website recently took the time to interview me about the state of the house flipping market here in Michigan. The interview/story made it to the front page of the current edition of Crain’s Detroit Business.

Here’s a shot of the front page:

For more, read “Some area house flippers find upside to housing downturn” by Tom Andrew of Crain’s Detroit Business.

Today’s edition of The New York Times carried a story by Joanne Kaufman entitled, “A Shift in Real Estate Books.” The story is about how publishers are scrambling to get books to market to help homeowners and real estate investors with the downturn in the housing market and increasing foreclosures.

The article begins by focusing on the fact that even well-to-do celebrities are having trouble. Recently, Ed McMahon–famous for serving as Johnny Carson’s co-host and for making a small number of people happy as spokesperson for American Family Publishing sweepstakes–has run into some financial trouble and is facing foreclosure on his $4.8 million in home loans. As Kaufman’s article points out, I attempted to contact McMahon to offer my help in reviewing his real estate files (to see if he had been mislead or worse by his financial advisors or the real estate industry professionals who worked on his behalf), but I didn’t get very far.

In any event, The New York Times article serves as a nice nod toward those of us work hard to write great books that truly help homeowners navigate their way through testy waters.

From The New York Times:

A few years ago, when the housing market was white-hot, companies that publish how-to books were tripping over themselves to pump out titles about buying property and making money in the real estate business.

Now that the bottom has fallen out of the housing market, the opposite is true: publishers are updating their backlist titles as well as rushing out newly acquired manuscripts to advise consumers who may have stumbled in the housing game.

For more on this story, read “A Shift in Real Estate Books” or click on the banner image above.

Chicago Tribune real estate columnist Mary Umberger recently asked me to offer advice to homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments. From this morning’s Chicago Tribune:

Making the most of workout
Mary Umberger

April 13, 2008

Options exist for homeowners behind on their mortgage payments—if they act quickly. Lisle attorney Steven Bashaw and Michigan real estate broker Ralph Roberts offer these:

• A forbearance agreement may help borrowers with short-term financial problems, Roberts said. It’s a payment plan with a set pay-back period, and the bank will want proof you can live up to it. “If you owe $3,000 in back payments, for example, the bank may allow you to pay an extra $250 per month for 12 months,” he said.
• Reinstatement entails paying all past-due payments, costs and fees to bring the account current. This may be a good short-term solution, Roberts said, but homeowners have to make hard decisions about whether they can keep paying the loan in the long haul.
• Mortgage modification means working out a new loan, with many possible variations. The bank may agree to roll the amount owed in missed payments, penalties and interest into the total loan amount, for example, Roberts said. Or a modification might lower the interest rate or change the loan’s term.
• Sell the house in a timely manner, pay off the loan and fees, and end the problem, Roberts and Bashaw said.
• A short sale occurs when a lender agrees to take a loss by selling the house for less than the amount owed. “I don’t encounter those as much as you’d think,” Bashaw said. “They’re not the panacea that speculators and investors and real estate agents want you to think they are.”
• Bankruptcy. “It can give you more time to restructure your debt,” Roberts said. “Bankruptcy takes you off the market, the collection proceedings can’t keep going. The clock just stops running.” But it’s extreme, and a lender might get court approval to proceed with the foreclosure anyway, Roberts said. Plus, it poisons your credit-worthiness.
• Redemption. In Illinois, a foreclosed borrower has a certain amount of time after the house is sold at auction to redeem it by reimbursing the purchaser for the sale price and other costs.
• Rescue plans can come from all manner of folks. They are too varied to describe here—except to say that homeowners must be wary of scams.

Bottom line: Don’t sign a quit-claim deed to someone who says this will “fix your problem,” Roberts says. It may be a ruse to steal the house. Check with a lawyer before you sign.

Below is an article published earlier today by Inman News. The author–noted real estate columnist Ilyce Glink–interviewed me for the article, which I thought I would share here…

Look before you leap into foreclosures — Avoid problems with ‘Dummies’ author’s 12-item checklist

BY Ilyce Glink, Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Inman News

As if Detroit, and the entire state of Michigan, hasn’t suffered enough.

Last year, Detroit led the United States in foreclosures, with close to 5 percent of its households entering some stage of foreclosure, according to California-based RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure listings.

That number was nearly five times the national average, and almost double the number of foreclosures the city experienced in 2006.

But every cloud has a silver lining. Just ask Ralph Roberts, a top real estate agent in Detroit who says he has personally bought and sold more than 2,000 foreclosures during his career.

“This could be a great time to buy a home — if you have the resources,” he said.

Roberts, who is the author of “Foreclosure Investing For Dummies” and “Flipping Houses For Dummies,” said in a recent interview that he believes more than 6 million families are in distress nationwide.

“Maybe 1 or 2 million are behind in their mortgages and more have received their foreclosure notice,” he said. “But 2 million families will lose their home this year.”

Roberts says that now is the time to pick up properties at fire-sale prices.

“Properties could double in value over the next 10 years. But you have to be willing to go in, buy them, and hang on for the longer term,” he advises.

With foreclosure investing, he says, you get what you pay for. His book on foreclosure investing isn’t of the “get rich quick with no work and zero down in cash” variety.

Instead, he values doing as much homework ahead of time. To learn how to read complicated real estate and tax records, he suggests doing an exhaustive search on your own personal residence. Once you become familiar with how the information you know to be true is laid out in tax records, documents and deeds, you can begin to research homes in distress.

In addition to doing your due diligence on a particular home, Roberts suggests you create a file that contains:

• a copy of the foreclosure notice or notice of default;
• title commitment and a 24-month history in the chain of title or the last two recorded documents;
• a copy of the deed with the current homeowners’ names;
• the last recorded first mortgage, so you know how much the current homeowners owe (some of this may be available online);
• copies or documentation of all liens against the property, including property tax liens;
• a map showing the location of the property;
• your exterior home inspection (with photos and videos), plus neighborhood photos;
• city worksheet on the property showing all repairs, inspections reports and other information;
• local multiple listing service (MLS) data showing how much comparable homes are selling for in the area;
• copy of the tax bills and notes on whether they are paid up or not;
• notes from meetings with or calls to neighbors, if you met with them while doing your research;
• and, a copy of the SEV (standard equalized value) of the property, on which property taxes are based.

“Most people, when looking for a foreclosure, think ‘No’; they don’t think ‘Know,’ ” Roberts says. “To successfully buy a foreclosure, you have to build a Rolodex, get on the Web, talk to brokers, and go do your research.”

Roberts said that the Internet has been a boon for foreclosure investors.

“Go to the county’s Web site and see what kind of information they have listed. Sign up for the local legal newspaper. It costs about $1 per week,” he explains, adding that he subscribes to a number of foreclosure Web sites, some of them paid sites. “You get what you pay for.”

What I like best about Roberts and his books is that he appears to care a lot about consumers. He cautions foreclosure investors to think about homeowners and their redemption rights. He warns against being dishonest (foreclosure-rescue fraud schemes have grown exponentially, according to the latest figures from the Federal Trade Commission and the FBI).

And, he has put a lot of time and money into fighting mortgage fraud (see www.flippingfrenzy.com). Last year he published “Protect Yourself from Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud,” written with attorney Rachel Dollar.

I was recently given the opportunity to talk with Alex Markels from U.S. News & World Report about some of the topics covered in Foreclosure Investing For Dummies. Alex asked some great questions, which I’m pleased to share here (for anyone who may not have a subscription to U.S. News & World Report).

By Alex Markels — U.S. News & World Report
February 13, 2008

Ralph Roberts is a Realtor who has written many books about the real estate market and flipping homes, such as Foreclosure Investing For Dummies. U.S. News talked with Roberts about some of the first things a potential investor should know before getting into the foreclosure market. Excerpts:

Investors are understandably skittish about getting into the real estate market. Why do you think now is the time?

If you can afford to buy a piece of real estate, there’s never been a better time in my 30 years of business than now. We have good prices, and unbelievably great interest rates. For a ma and pa investor, if you’re willing to buy a rental property, you can leverage it, and 10 years from now it will be worth double what you paid for it. All the people who have been displaced because they can’t afford to pay $2,500 a month, they surely can pay $1,500. If everybody had bought a 30-percent-cheaper house, we wouldn’t have had as many foreclosures as we have now. There are a lot of tenants out there who are displaced and were at one time living the American dream of owning a home, but they still need a nice home. People who are displaced become renters.

What about the concern that the market may only get worse before it gets better?

There’s always a boost in real estate after an election. I know all those people who are saying there’s going to be change. Well for sure there’s going to be change—George is not running. By January of 2009, you’re going to see the market turning the other direction and showing appreciation again. So between now and 2009 is a great window of opportunity to buy. The best plan is to buy it, fix it, hold it, and sell it 12 months and one day or further in the future, and you will get another benefit of getting a tax rate of long-term capital gains versus ordinary income. The long-term capital rate is only 15 percent.

How does foreclosure investing differ based on your locality?

Whatever city or county you’re going to invest, you’ve got to check what inspections they have. What do they require before you can put the house back on the market to rent it, or back on the market to sell it? You are responsible to follow those rules whether you know about them or you don’t. You must at least contact the city hall or the township hall before you make an investment.

What are some misconceptions about foreclosure investing?

Just because it’s a foreclosure does not mean it’s a good deal. Some people pay too much for a property if it’s a foreclosure because they think it’s automatically a home run. You should go to your broker and run the comps in the neighborhood. The most important thing is what’s selling right now. What’s your competition? That gives you a range. The next thing you want to do is check how many houses have sold in the past 90 days. You need to have your house priced the best for the condition that it’s in because you don’t want it to be the fourth house if only three are bought in your time frame.

Why is having a time frame so important?

Time is money. The average holding cost on a house is $100 per day. You’ve got to have a B plan. If it doesn’t sell in X amount of days, you’ve got to rent it until the market improves.

Most of the people doing foreclosure investing are not doing it as their primary source of income. How do you do it and balance the rest of your life?

First you make sure your spouse is completely on board. You want to have support from your family. You’re doing this to improve your lifestyle; you’re not doing this to take quality time away. Then you draw a circle on a map, and mark where you work at, where your wife works at, where your school is at, and put those items inside that circle. That’s your target area. If you drive 20 minutes to work one direction, and then you drive back home, and then 20 minutes the other direction to your investment property, you’re 40 minutes away from it versus if it was in your target area. Some people go too far out of their marketplace and that’s how they get into trouble.

How do you avoid taking advantage of people in this business?

Treat the people with dignity and do what’s best for them. Let’s say they tell you they have a rich uncle who could help them, but they’re just too embarrassed to tell him. Help them tell the rich uncle. By doing the right thing, it’s going to come back to you 10 times.

Nationally syndicated talk radio show host Michael Dresser was kind enough to interview me yesterday about my latest book, Mortgage Myths: 77 Secrets that Will Save you Money. Click here for the recorded version of the show, or here if you would like to learn more about the new book.

I was recently contacted by the San Diego Union-Tribune about a Real Estate-related article they were preparing to publish. Reporters Lori Weisberg and Emmet Pierce wanted to know what I thought about the National Foreclosure Institute’s free workshop focused on strategies that the Institute says are “perfect for the novice and pro investor alike,” and are aimed at getting attendees to fork over $2,995.00 for a three-day follow-up seminar.

Having previously attended one of National Foreclosure Institute’s free workshops and co-authored two related books–”Protect Yourself from Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud” and “Foreclosure Investing For Dummies“–I figured I was just as qualified to comment on the benefits or lack there of, of attending as the guy who stood up at the San Diego workshop and proclaimed, “Three deals, three months; everyone say, ‘cha-ching’. ”

As I told Weisberg and Pierce when they called, the whole course is probably worth $100. Think about it… If the content of the Institute’s three-day workshop is so good that someone can stand up and proclaim that he booked $100,000 in profit from just three transactions—which is what James Gripshover said he did when he rose to say, Everyone say, ‘cha-ching,’–then the National Foreclosure Institute and it’s slick spokeswoman, Ann Goldschmidt, wouldn’t be conducting seminars, now would they. Why not? Well, think about it for a second. If it were so darn easy and profitable, Goldschmidt and the Institute’s staff would be spending all of their time doing it themselves!

Read Weisberg and Pierce’s article here. It appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The article, “Seminars promise quick cash in foreclosures,” does a nice job of questioning this so-called institute about its content and the way its conducts business.

There you are, in front of the TV, watching the six o’clock news, and up pops a story about the Real Estate industry. Maybe it is about Real Estate or Mortgage Fraud. Maybe the market has bottomed out and people are having trouble selling their homes. Perhaps your area has been hit hard by layoffs and the foreclosure rate has spiked.

Whatever the case, the reporter is interviewing an expert in the area, and that expert isn’t you. Even worse, the expert really doesn’t know what the heck he is talking about. You could do a better job. Why didn’t they call you?!

The reason is that local news producers and journalists probably have no idea of who you are, whether you would even be interested in doing such a thing, or how good of an interview you could provide. They don’t know you.

Understanding the benefits of being in or on the news

Many Real Estate agents and other professionals pay little to no attention to reporters because they fail to see that free Public Relations could actually boost business. They think that competitor of theirs who is always in the news is just somebody with a big ego. Although that may be true, that guy or gal with the big ego also has a big understanding of how to generate business. Appearing in the news gives you a higher profile and instant credibility. It lets prospective clients know who you are and sends the message that you are a legitimate business owner and expert — someone they can trust.

Establishing yourself as an expert

The first step into making you the guy or gal who appears in or on the news is to start establishing yourself as a local expert. Pick one or more areas to specialize in, and then start producing articles that show to the world that you know what you are talking about. I have several areas of specialty, including sales and Real Estate investing, running a Real Estate business, and advising local and federal authorities on the problems associated with foreclosures and Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud. Your areas of specialty are likely to be different.

After identifying your specialties, start publishing. Here are a few ideas on how to get your material written and published:

• If you write well and enjoy writing, you can write the articles yourself.
• Choose content based on your own experience (first-hand knowledge), which makes it more interesting to the reader, drives home the point, and confirms your expertise.
• If you are not much of a writer or dislike writing, hire a writer to work with you.
• Publish your content on your own blog.
• Contribute content to other people’s blogs and to discussion forums. (Pick the blogs and discussion forums that are most popular.)
• Offer to write articles for other publications (newspapers, magazines, and professional journals) that typically contain content relevant to your specialties.
• Offer to write content for local newspapers.
• Making yourself media-friendly.

Journalists are constantly on the lookout for new sources of information. They want experts who know their stuff, but they also want people who are easy to contact, easy to work with, and play well on TV and radio. To make yourself a more attractive interviewee for the press, keep the following important points in mind:

Be accessible: Reporters cannot afford to wait around for return phone calls. Many expect you to be available within minutes. When I dress down for work, I often pack a suit just in case a reporter calls.

Be a good interviewee: Speak candidly and directly answer questions. When preparing for the interview, think in short sound bites–memorable phrases that capture the essence of what you have to say in as few words as possible.

Establish long-term relationships with the media: If a reporter knows an excellent source who plays well on the news, it’s easier and safer than contacting an unknown source. Invite a reporter to lunch. Let them get to know you!

Introducing yourself to the media

Contact reporters and news producers in your area and let them know that you are available on short notice for interviews. Send over a marketing packet that includes your business card, a photo, your resume or curriculum vitae, along with clippings from any articles you have written or other interviews you have given.

Let local news reporters in your area know your areas of expertise and your availability to do interviews. You have to be ready and willing to give interviews at a moment’s notice, but other than that minor drawback, giving interviews provides you with valuable free press!

Once the reporters get wind of you, word spreads quickly, and could even lead to a call from the producer of a national news outlet. Once while negotiating a large deal with several participants at a high-rise in downtown Detroit, the producer for ABC’s World News Tonight tracked me down and called during the negotiations. That call definitely raised a few eyebrows, and the deal was signed.

Email me and I will send you a list of places where you can start posting your articles for free and establishing yourself as a local expert. This will put you on the path to getting your face on the six o’clock news!

Mark Ellis of The Columbus Dispatch provides great coverage of why flipping the right way for profit takes patience in cold market:

The chill in real-estate sales hit Larry Dickson in June when he tried to sell a North Side home. After running into “the coldest market,” he waited only 30 days before pulling the house that he had renovated. Dickson doesn’t renovate and sell houses for a living but has tackled a half dozen houses in Clintonville in recent years. “I’ve always turned a profit and been satisfied,” he said. The practice of buying homes for renovation and sale, usually within a year, is sometimes called “flipping.” The speculative pursuit has declined as the overall real-estate market has slowed, experts said. But prudent and patient investors can still prosper.

“Seeking a good opportunity has never gone out of style,” said Pat O’Neil, of Century 21 C.R. O’Neil and Co. on the North Side and president of the Ohio Association of Realtors. “It’s still out there. It’s not being done nearly as much.

“You’ve got to know what you’re doing.”

Dickson, who runs transportation services for Battelle, invested about $25,000 in materials and long hours of work in his house…

The house went on the market for $334,000, but Dickson came up empty and withdrew the house. He figures he missed the boom market by about four months.

He was contacted later in the summer by real-estate agent Kevin Sullivan, of RE/MAX Premier Choice in Worthington, and put the house on the market again, asking $319,000. The current asking price is $269,900, and the house is in contract…

Investors in today’s market must be prepared to hold properties longer and must be able to absorb the extra costs of holding a house, Ford said.

Holding costs are typically about $100 a day, said Ralph Roberts, a Michigan real-estate agent and author of Flipping Houses For Dummies (Wiley, $21.99).

“When flipping houses in a down market, you want to stay in the business,” Roberts said.

The market will improve, he said.

“It’s still the best investment anybody can make.”

But slow the pace, he advised. “If you flipped six houses last year, maybe you flip four houses this year.

“Don’t let the inventory grow on you,” he said. “You’ve got to have a plan B. Rent it if you have to.”

To read the full version of the article, visit The Columbus Dispatch