It wasn’t long ago that some economic forecasters anticipated a turnaround in the home-sale market by 2012. When the economic recovery stalled and the housing market showed no sign of turning around quickly, projections for a housing recovery were pushed out two, three and even seven years.

Ken Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, believes that home prices have bottomed and are increasing in areas powered by strong job growth. However, even in places where prices are rising, they are not rebounding.

Not all economists agree that home prices have hit bottom; many anticipate another 5 percent price decline over the next two years.

Rosen gives a 65 percent probability that the recovery will be choppy. He forecasts a 5 percent chance of a strong recovery and a 30 percent chance of a double-dip recession. Factors holding a recovery back: a general sense of uncertainty that undermines consumer confidence; millions of unsold foreclosure properties; high unemployment; cutbacks in services; and tight credit conditions.

In some urban areas of the country, like Atlanta, Chicago, Miami and Phoenix, it may be more advantageous to buy than to rent. Apartment rents have been rising due to increased demand for rentals from people who have lost their homes in foreclosure, empty nesters trading down, people with jobs who have decided not to buy, and people who would like to buy but who can’t qualify.

The same lenders who gave risky mortgages to buyers who couldn’t afford them in 2005 and 2006 are now making it difficult for qualified buyers to get financing. It used to take a credit score of 620 or more to qualify for a conventional mortgage. In those days, loans to buyers with 5 to 10 percent cash down were readily available.

Today’s buyers need a credit score of 760. Some conventional lenders require a 20 percent cash down payment. If the buyers are self-employed it can be more difficult to qualify. It’s a great time to trade up, but most buyers can’t qualify to buy the new home without first selling their current home.

One of the best things that could happen to the housing market at this point would be an easing of credit-qualifying standards — not to the ridiculously low level of several years ago, but to a level that would enable more creditworthy buyers to take advantage of today’s low interest rates and relatively low home prices.

Good news lately bodes well for the future, but you should anticipate continued volatility. The jobless rate dropped to 8.6 percent nationally in November, the lowest level in 2 1/2 years. The consumer confidence index rose 15 points in November, to 56. Although encouraging, if the economy were on solid ground we would expect a reading of 90.

HOUSE HUNTING TIP: It’s a good time to buy a home in many areas of the country. However, it’s only a good time if you buy for the long term and you have realistic expectations about what buying a home will entail. It will require maintenance, which costs money and takes time.

Your home is unlikely to be the cash cow that most buyers expected — and many achieved — during the bubble years. According to Robert Shiller, Yale University economist, home prices track, on average, with the inflation rate over long periods.

Renters with good incomes and good credit who are tired of moving could benefit from buying a home now. Just be aware that if we go into a double-dip recession, prices could drop another 10 percent in some areas. That’s why you don’t want to buy for the short run.

THE CLOSING: Buyers having trouble amassing 20 percent for a down payment should check with independent banks that have more flexibility in their qualifying criteria.

By Dian Hymer, Monday, January 9, 2012.

Inman News®

Dian Hymer, a real estate broker with more than 30 years’ experience, is a nationally syndicated real estate columnist and author of “House Hunting: The Take-Along Workbook for Home Buyers” and “Starting Out, The Complete Home Buyer’s Guide.”

Q: We bought a house this year! We put $33,000 down and the bank financed $28,000. Can I write this off on my 2011 taxes? How much of it?

A: First things first: Congratulations! You’ve become a homeowner, and seem to have done so using an enviable financial arrangement. But now that you own a home, you might need to shift the way you think and look at some things, including your taxes and other financial matters.

Owning a home is one of those landmarks that signify financial adulthood. And one of the things that responsible financial adults do is get professional help when the situation requires it. Taxes are one of those areas that often do warrant calling the pros in.

I’m not just shilling for the tax prep industry here, either: The ultimate aim of using a tax professional is to make sure you get every deduction, credit and other tax advantage for which you qualify, without jacking up your chances at triggering the universally dreaded Internal Revenue Service audit by claiming dubious deductions.

Your mortgage debt is fairly small, as was your home’s purchase price, though I don’t know whether they are large or small in the context of your overall financial picture (i.e., income, assets, investments, etc.).

The fact that you saved or somehow came up with such a sizable chunk of change to put down makes me hesitate to assume that your finances are as simple as your mortgage balance might otherwise lead me to believe.

So, it might be the case that you can easily handle your own taxes — in fact, it’s even possible that your real estate-related deductions won’t even outweigh the standard deductions, so that filing a simple form without even itemizing your deductions is actually the financially advantageous move.

Whether that’s the case cannot be determined in a vacuum — you may have other financial and tax issues going on. But with software and tax preparation services as inexpensive as they are, starting at under $20 for simple returns, I think it behooves you to get some professional advice and ensure you get the deductions you need.

Hiring a tax preparer might be a worthwhile investment to make, even if just this year, so he or she can brief you on what records you should keep and strategies you should do moving forward, like home repair and improvement receipts, or documentation of your use of an area of the home as a home office.

Now, let’s talk more substantively about the deductions that are available to you, in the event you do decide to itemize your taxes (IRS Publication 530 offers a more nuanced view into Tax Information for Homeowners):

1. Mortgage interest deduction. Assuming this home is your personal residence, 100 percent of the mortgage interest you owe and pay before Dec. 31, 2011, is deductible on your 2011 taxes. In January, your mortgage lender will send you a form documenting the precise amount of interest you paid, although most lenders also now make this form immediately available to borrowers online.

Chances are good that you paid some amount of advance interest on your home loan at closing — expect to see that on your statement from your lender, but you should also be able to find it on the HUD-1 settlement statement you received from your escrow agent at closing.

2. Property tax deductions. Again, assuming that this is the home you live in most of the time, you should be able to deduct 100 percent of the property taxes you’ve paid to your state and/or local taxing agency this year.

3. Closing-cost deductions. Discount points and origination fees paid to your mortgage lender and/or broker at closing are frequently deductible, but there are rules around this, which tax software and/or professionals can help you make sure you meet. Note that, according to Internal Revenue Service Publication 530, “You cannot deduct transfer taxes and similar taxes and charges on the sale of a personal home.”

There are various home improvements (especially those that increase your home’s energy efficiency), state and local tax credits for buying a foreclosure, and other tax advantages that might be available to you.

My advice is to work with an experienced, local tax preparer or, at the very least, use reputable tax preparation software to ensure that you get the maximum tax advantages available to you as a result of your new role as a homeowner.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, January 5, 2012.

Inman News®

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

Think again if you’re considering buying a home without having it inspected. This particularly applies to first-time buyers who have little, if any, experience with home defects and repairs. Even professionals can make mistakes when buying homes without having them thoroughly inspected.

In one example, an experienced contractor bought a home to fix up and resell. The contractor looked over the property carefully before he bought it, but he did not have it inspected by an impartial home inspector.

After the contractor took possession of the property, he discovered that the furnace was shot and required replacement. The cost of a new furnace was not included in his renovation budget.

Homebuying is an emotional experience no matter how hard you try to keep it strictly business. You have high hopes that nothing will go wrong and the transaction will close. The appeal of a home could cloud your objectivity about the real purchase price when you consider the work that needs to be done to repair defects and deferred maintenance.

Home and magnifying glass image via Shutterstock.com.

Think again if you’re considering buying a home without having it inspected. This particularly applies to first-time buyers who have little, if any, experience with home defects and repairs. Even professionals can make mistakes when buying homes without having them thoroughly inspected.

In one example, an experienced contractor bought a home to fix up and resell. The contractor looked over the property carefully before he bought it, but he did not have it inspected by an impartial home inspector.

After the contractor took possession of the property, he discovered that the furnace was shot and required replacement. The cost of a new furnace was not included in his renovation budget.

Homebuying is an emotional experience no matter how hard you try to keep it strictly business. You have high hopes that nothing will go wrong and the transaction will close. The appeal of a home could cloud your objectivity about the real purchase price when you consider the work that needs to be done to repair defects and deferred maintenance.

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In some areas, the home-sale market has picked up. One example is California’s Silicon Valley, where job growth is strong. There is far more demand than there are homes for sale, which tends to drive prices up.

In some cases, buyers will waive contingencies in order to outbid the competition. Buying without including an inspection contingency in the purchase contract can be an expensive strategy if you later find defects that are expensive to repair.

The risk is minimized if the sellers provide the buyers with copies of recent presale home inspections done by reputable local home inspectors before they write an offer. However, most home inspection reports recommend further inspections. Diligent sellers take the extra step and have further inspections done, like a roof or furnace inspection. Many do not.

HOUSE HUNTING TIP: A second opinion from a highly regarded home inspector can’t hurt. The reason to have inspections at all is to find out as much as possible about the property’s condition before you go through with the sale. Don’t skip an inspection to save money.

Sometimes, buyers who are satisfied with the report they received from the seller’s home inspector will hire that inspector to do a walk-through inspection based on the seller’s report. This means a second home inspector isn’t involved. But at least the buyers have an opportunity to spend time at the property with the seller’s inspector, ask questions, and find out more about what works and what doesn’t.

Inspection contingencies protect the buyers and, depending on how the clause is written, can allow the buyers to withdraw from the contract without losing their deposit. This is why sellers are often drawn to an offer that doesn’t have an inspection contingency. However, accepting such an offer can create problems.

Inspection contingencies also protect sellers from future legal entanglements with the buyers over items that weren’t discovered before closing. It’s much easier to resolve inspection defect issues before, than after, closing.

Inspection contingencies can create an opportunity for buyers to ask sellers to fix defects, lower the price, or credit money at closing to cover the cost of repair work.

When buyers ask sellers to make concessions after they bought the house “as is” with respect to certain disclosed defects, it can be a deal-breaker. However, reasonable sellers will often attempt to negotiate an acceptable solution regarding newly discovered defects rather than put the house back on the market.

If you’re buying in a competitive market and find you’re losing out because you won’t waive an inspection contingency and others are willing to take the risk, consider having inspections done before making an offer.

THE CLOSING: Make sure to ask permission from the seller through the listing agent.

By Dian Hymer, Monday, January 2, 2012.

Inman News®

Dian Hymer, a real estate broker with more than 30 years’ experience, is a nationally syndicated real estate columnist and author of “House Hunting: The Take-Along Workbook for Home Buyers” and “Starting Out, The Complete Home Buyer’s Guide.”

With 2012 nearly upon us, many of us will be spending this week reviewing the events of 2011 and setting resolutions, goals or visions for what we’d like to accomplish next year.

It will come as no surprise that the most common New Year’s resolutions fall into the categories of getting organized and getting fit — physically and financially.

Financial fitness includes getting your real estate business in order. But you can’t set up your real estate plans for the year in a vacuum. They must be done in context of what’s going on in the market. Here are four predictions about what that market context will look like in the coming year:

1. Even more foreclosures

While I’d like to claim crystal-ball credit for this one, it doesn’t take heightened powers of prediction to foresee an uptick in the rate of home repossessions in 2012. Last fall’s robo-signing debacle and the ongoing legal fallout from it created a massive backlog in the foreclosure pipeline, meaning that banks are taking many months, even years, to actually foreclose on mortgages in default.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the additional hurdles New York state courts are requiring banks to leap in the wake of the robo-signing revelations, like additional settlement meetings with the homeowner to see if a modification can be brokered, have created a backlog of foreclosures that it would take 62 years to clear, at the current rate of foreclosure.

It’s pretty clear that in 2012 and beyond, the banks will work through those backlogs. The inevitable result will be an increase in foreclosures.

2. REOs and short sales will become the new normal

If you even know anyone who has house-hunted in the past couple of years, you’ve likely heard tales of the high-drama high jinks — super-long escrows, first-time buyers being bested by investors’ cash offers, banks resistant to negotiating for repairs — that take place in the course of a distressed property sale.

In the coming year, distressed home sales will continue to represent an increasing share of homes on the market. So, buyers will shift from considering whether to buy a short sale to understanding that they must be educated and prepared to do a deal with a seller, a bank (to buy an REO) or a hybrid of the two (to buy a short sale) to access the full selection of homes on the market.

This, in turn, will empower buyers to make smart decisions about what to offer and what to expect on any listing they like, as well as to set smart priorities and make realistic comparisons between listings based on their own personal priorities around timing, certainty and seller flexibility.

3.  So-called ‘smart cities‘ will do well 

This year, a number of housing markets saw double- or even triple-dips in home values. In others, pricing stayed relatively flat. However, in areas where technology powers the economy, home values prospered along with the industry. Silicon Valley real estate, for instance, saw fierce competition among buyers as the young employees of companies that went public like used their newly stocked bank accounts to buy their first homes.

I recently talked with Jed Kolko, chief economist for real estate search site Trulia, and his 2012 forecast was that so-called “smart cities” will continue to have hot real estate markets next year. But Kolko defined smart cities much more broadly than the California tech hubs. Other tech centers like Austin, Texas, and the Massachusetts suburbs of Cambridge, Newton and Framingham all made Kolko’s list, as did Rochester, N.Y. (a town known for its highly educated, highly skilled work force).

4. Consumers will get ‘hopeless’

I mean hopeless in the best of all possible ways. For years, buyers and sellers have been waiting for that singular event to occur that would cause a quick market recovery. But 2012 will mark the fifth or sixth year of the real estate recession, depending on who you talk to. I predict that those consumers who have not already done so will drop unrealistic hopes for a fast return to the heady real estate fortunes of the subprime era.  Instead, people will make their real estate plans based on:

• today’s low home prices, rather than the fantasy of what could happen if the market miraculously came back;
• assumptions of very low, or no, appreciation in home values for years to come; and
• very conservative estimates of their own finances and how they will grow.

As a result, buyers won’t break their necks to hurry and buy before prices uptick; rather, they’ll save and plan to buy when it makes the most sense for their finances. Homeowners will do the same; they will either refi, remodel and be content where they are for the long haul, or decide their homes no longer fit their lifestyles and their finances, divest of them and move on. But the good news is, people will make these decisions based on what is or is not sustainable for their lives and their finances, and not based on inflated hopes about what the market will or will not do.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, December 27, 2011.

Inman News®

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

While reading this article about the aggressive — and ostensibly legal — tax reduction strategies of Ronald S. Lauder (son of Estée), I was struck by this quote from University of Colorado law professor Victor Fleischer: “There’s real truth to the idea that the tax code for the 1 percent is different from the tax code for the 99 percent.”

The connotation? The super-rich have not only cash, but also elite access to loopholes and other advantages to which the 99 percent might aspire, but will never attain.

While the Occupy movement is on a mission to illuminate and shatter power imbalances between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, there’s another angle to take on the issue: Let’s call it the “If you can’t beat ‘em, learn from ‘em” school of thought.

Along those lines, here are four real estate lessons all of us can take from the 1 percent:

1. Take advantage of government programs/assistance. When the big banks — whose execs certainly belong to the 1 percent — began to experience the fallout of the subprime mortgage meltdown, they threw up their hands, pleaded their case, enrolled governmental advocates and got the bailouts we now know as the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP.

Yet many an individual American, whose personal finances have too much at stake to fail — at least as far as their household and local communities are concerned — struggle silently to make their monthly mortgage payment.

More than 20 million American households are upside down on their mortgages. The Obama administration’s foreclosure avoidance program, Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), was designed to help 5 million homeowners refinance into lower interest rates and payments.

At last count, earlier this fall, HARP had actually helped only 62,500 seriously underwater homeowners, and fewer than 900,000 homeowners total — a number so low Congressional Republicans sought to wind the program down. The Obama administration revised the program in hopes of helping more homeowners. (In 2009, the administration projected 4 million HARP refinances by fall 2011.)

The Main Street bailout is here and, whether you think it’s sufficient or not, it seems indisputable that it is vastly underutilized.

In an effort to get more help to the homeowners who need it, the Obama administration loosened up qualifying criteria; the revised guidelines just kicked in on Dec. 1, 2011. The 1 percent looks to the government when they are down on their luck; so should you.

2. Take full advantage of the tax code. Many members of the 99 percent have decried the complexity of the tax code and its loopholes that favor the rich. Lauder’s son, for example, has reportedly deferred or avoided tens of millions in federal taxes by donating art to his own foundations, deducting of property taxes on an extensive real estate portfolio, making massive charitable donations, and derivative stock transfers — deductions accessible only to those rich enough to own such assets in the first place!

Besides the better-known federal mortgage interest and property tax write-offs, there are numerous, less well-known deductions of which “99 percent-ers” should take full advantage.

Some areas allow renters to take a property tax credit. Similarly, homeowners who switch to solar or installing a tankless water heater can get the federal government to help pay via tax credits, some of which expire soon, others of which will be longer lived. It won’t line your pocket with millions, but every little bit helps.

3. Pay for professional advice when it counts. You’d be amazed at the number of buyers, sellers and homeowners I’ve heard reference real estate advice they received from their parents, their mechanic and the other moms at day care — and that doesn’t even begin to count the folks who try to distill insights just from a headline in the national nightly news or from a story they overheard at the hairdresser about the amazing deal they were able to negotiate (and, by the by, everyone exaggerates at the hairdresser!).

I assure you, Mr. Lauder pays a virtual army of attorneys and accountants a pretty penny for his tax advice. And the rest of us should make the appropriate investment in obtaining experienced, local, professional advice when it comes to making potentially life-changing real estate, mortgage and tax decisions.

4. Don’t let emotion cloud your decisions. Members of the 99 percent often stay emotionally committed to a home or a list price despite the fact that it is absolutely a losing battle, the data completely contradicts our commitment, or that the living situation no longer works for the people who live in the household.

The 1 percent, on the other hand, will divest of a home or slash even millions of dollars off the list price of their home in a New York minute, if it makes business sense.

Obviously, it’s a bit easier to be detached from an asset when it’s not the only asset you have. As well, sometimes the 1 percent is a little too hasty to detach from all sorts of relationships that most of us in the 99 percent hold dear — from homeownership to marriage and beyond.

But we 99 percent-ers might do well to take a page from the 1 percent playbook when it comes to holding onto assets that have become toxic. Sometimes, it makes sense to short-sell the house, divest of it via a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, or simply slash the list price, in the service of the household’s greater, long-term financial good.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, December 20, 2011.

Inman News®

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

Q: We just got multiple offers on my “vacation” house listed as a short sale. And so far, we have begged and borrowed to keep our mortgage current so our credit scores will be less bruised. But now that our house is in contract, do I continue to pay the mortgage? Our debt exceeds our income due to job and benefit loss.

Here’s my bigger concern: Since we are current, I don’t want the bank to reject the offers just because we have been current, although our financial papers will prove that our debt exceeds our income. –Cindy

A: There are a number of schools of thought and approaches to deciding whether to continue making your mortgage payments while you’re selling your home on a short sale, and your ultimate decision will require you to weigh a number of factors and see where your personal calculus of your own values and interests comes out:

Legal: Legally speaking, you have an obligation to pay your mortgage and property taxes as long as you own your home. While you might very well make the decision not to for a number of reasons (see below), it’s important to keep the legal contract you made to pay especially your mortgage in mind, as some lenders make efforts to reserve the right to come after you later for the deficiency (i.e., the difference between the sale price of your home and your mortgage balance). For this reason, it’s not a bad idea to have a local real estate attorney involved in your short-sale transaction, to help you negotiate a complete release of liability for the mortgage.

The moral/ethical perspective: Morally and ethically, some homeowners view themselves as having an obligation in line with their legal commitment to pay all these items. Others look at the various factors beyond their control that have forced them to short-sale their home, like the decline in property values and the weak employment market, and have made a decision that their personal moral imperative weighs in favor of protecting their family finances and children’s education funds. In that vein, some make the conscious decision to stop paying once they’re in a short-sale situation or on a clear path to foreclosure.

Financial/business: Once you know 100 percent that you’ll be divesting of your home in some way, shape or form, continued investments in the property can seem to easily fall into the “throwing good money after bad” bucket, looking at the situation from a strictly business and financial perspective. There is also a strong sentiment among many real estate professionals that if you keep your mortgage current, while applying for a short sale or loan modification of any sort, you decrease the chances that your lender will approve of the sale.

The theory goes that if you are current on your payments, you can’t possibly have the level of hardship you must claim (and the lender must believe you have) for them to agree to waive the deficiency amount and release you from the mortgage.

I’ve seen very mixed feelings on this in the real estate industry; on this point specifically, you should definitely talk with your listing agent and your local attorney, and take their advice into account — they might have worked with this bank in the past and be able to shed light on how staying current or falling behind may affect the success prospects of your short sale application.

Credit/ability to buy again: Right now, you are probably fixated on getting out from under this onerous debt, as virtually every homeowner in your situation is as a matter of course. But I’ve worked with a number of folks through this entire experience of going upside down, losing a home through a foreclosure or short sale and financial recovery, and I know that before too terribly long, you could very well be looking to buy a home again. Just be aware that most lenders will impose a two- to three-year waiting period after you have a short sale, if you were in default on your mortgage at the time the short sale closed (sometimes the waiting period is as long as seven years, depending on what type of loan you’re trying to use to buy your new home).

However, if you do not default on your loan and are able to get your lender to green-light your short sale, you can qualify for an FHA mortgage immediately. I don’t know your personal situation, and it’s been my experience that the majority of homeowners who have a financial hardship severe enough to even attempt a short sale need a couple of years to get back on their feet, but if you think you’ll want to buy another home anytime sooner than two years from now, you’ll need to stay current on this mortgage.

Just as there are many factors your bank will weigh in determining whether to allow your short sale to close, and on what terms, you have a lot of considerations to weigh in deciding whether to continue making your mortgage payments while you await their decision. I can’t urge you strongly enough to include your real estate agent and an attorney in your decision-making process.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, November 28, 2011.

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com

Homeowners facing foreclosure seem to be desperate to buy again.

Frequently, I receive letters from someone who hasn’t yet lost their home to foreclosure but anticipates they soon will, and wants to be able to get back into the market, quick-like.

Many claim their haste is because they don’t want to miss out on today’s bargain housing prices or interest rates. Yet neither seems poised to rise significantly any time soon.

In the same breath, many of these folks say they’re ready to pay top dollar for their next home, and pay an additional premium if they are forced to rely on lease-to-own, seller financing, or a hard-money mortgage.

Others claim they don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to build equity in a home instead of paying rent, or cite the tax advantages of homeownership as the piece they particularly want to retain.

My advice is almost always this: Slow down! Most legitimate loan programs now impose a three-year-plus waiting period after a borrower loses a home to foreclosure, even if they would otherwise qualify for a mortgage based on their credit score, income and assets.

Here are my four suggestions for how you can wisely use that waiting period to recover from a foreclosure — these steps also do double duty in terms of setting you up for success and sustainability the next time you buy a home.

1. Feel the pain.

Many folks who write to me are still in the early stages of grief at the loss of their home: anger and denial. They are angry at the bank, and in denial about the loss of their home and its advantages, from status to tax write-offs.

What I know is that getting through this grief is an essential first step to truly moving forward. Inherent in grief is an acknowledgement that something is dead and over. The acceptance of that finality is what allows you to move forward and learn the lessons that such experiences can teach.

As long as you’re stuck in the emotional protestations of how unfair it was that you lost your home, or spinning in a place of outrage about the Wall Street bailouts, you’re probably not making emotional progress to the point where you can begin to learn from your experience.

2. Metabolize the loss.

Henry Cloud, bestselling author of “Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward” (Harper Business, 2011), recommends that we treat our painful past experiences as our bodies do food, metabolizing them by taking away the lessons we can distill from them that will fuel our future decisions, and leaving behind the pain and other toxic wastes from the experience.

Individuals and couples should take time out to acknowledge what has happened, and distill and discuss mistakes that were made and insights you’ve gained so that you can avoid repeating them in the future. It’s a meaningful method for progressing past grief and repositioning yourself to make smarter decisions about your money and your mortgage for the rest of your life.

3. Avoid rebound home purchases.

There’s a whole lot of what I call tuition — the price we pay to learn life lessons — involved in the loss a home to foreclosure. If rush in too quickly to the next home purchase, chances are good we’ll miss the lesson and get nothing for the tuition. This is evident in the gymnastics many foreclosed homeowners are considering going through in order to buy a home at all costs. These may mirror their willingness a few years ago to take on an unsustainable mortgage, which is what got some portion of them into foreclosure in the first place.

Trying to replace our losses on the rebound, be it after a breakup or after a foreclosure, is how people end up repeating their mistakes. Making new, unsustainable mortgage commitments and chronically overspending or over borrowing is no different from your friend who keeps repeating the same old dysfunctional relationship patterns, year after year.

4. Heal your finances.

My advice to foreclosed homeowners is to devote some real time to working on their finances, without worrying about buying another home. Get your debt paid down or off. Change your spending habits and your overall relationship with money. Get your taxes current and paid. Save some money. Create the habit of paying every bill on time every time. Eliminate unnecessary monthly expenses. Work the programs in “365 Days to Organized Finances or Financial Recovery,” or some similar book, or both. Focus for awhile on your career development.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, November 29, 2011.

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com

E-books, video books, blogs, Web videos and infographics now all contribute to the knowledge we need to help make smart decisions, especially in the realm of real estate and personal finances.

Because so much about our own personal real estate and mortgage decision-making is dependent on personal and local market data, like our income and home prices in our area, interactive maps and other highly visual, interactive online tools are particularly useful in surfacing insights that allow for a deep understanding of a real estate or financial issue, at a glance.

So, for a few weeks, we’re going to spend some time exploring not books, but interactive online infographics and tools, starting with the Annual State of Credit Map recently published by Experian. The credit bureau and financial data company ranked more than 100 metropolitan areas in all 50 states in the order of their average resident’s credit scores.

From a sweep of the eye over the top and bottom 10 cities, one pattern instantly emerges: Eight of the 10 American cities with the highest credit scores are in the Midwest (the outliers were San Francisco and Sioux Falls, S.D.). A parallel pattern emerges on the other end of the credit score rankings: Eight of the 10 cities with the lowest credit scores are located in the South (rounding out the list:  Bakersfield, Calif., and Las Vegas).

Experian points out on its graphic of the list that there seem to be strong correlations between a metro area’s average debt (that nine of the 10 cities on the high-credit-score list have unemployment scores below the national average. This makes sense, as it would seem difficult to pay your bills on time every month with no job and no income.

The report also found some regional patterns in debt levels consistent with the credit score rankings; six of the 10 American cities with the lowest levels of debt were in the Midwest, and eight of the 10 with the highest debt levels were in the South.

I was most intrigued, however, by the real estate and mortgage insights layered within the study. If you go to the interactive map, here, you’ll see that it allows you to mouse over individual metro areas and see a set of data points for each locale, including its average credit score, average number of open credit card accounts, average debt, population, unemployment rate, and the area’s foreclosure activity over a one-month time frame.

The conclusion is almost inescapable that cities like Bakersfield and Las Vegas, the two non-Southern cities on the lowest credit score list, made it onto the list as a result of the unfortunate one-two punch: sky-high unemployment and chart-topping foreclosure rates.

At the top of the credit score list, the reverse also seems to be true — Midwestern cities have been notoriously resistant to the real estate recession compared to the rest of the country, as have San Francisco and Sioux Falls, the only two non-Midwestern areas on the list. And this is backed up by the low foreclosure rates reflected in the data on the infographic for these areas.

I’ve long believed that negative home equity, unemployment and resulting foreclosure epidemics would take down credit scores far below what the credit bureaus even project, because my experience has been that the actual credit impact of a short sale or foreclosure event virtually never occurs in isolation.

Working and corresponding with thousands of homeowners in mortgage distress throughout the course of this four-plus-year real estate recession, I’ve seen a number of hidden credit harms of housing market distress:

• People who hope to keep their homes will generally max out their credit cards and fall behind on them before they begin missing mortgage payments (especially if they’re trying to get a new job after becoming unemployed), which impairs their credit scores;

• Homeowners who know they are going to lose their homes to foreclosure might miss the equivalent of two or more years of payments before the lender actually repossesses the home, damaging their credit scores every month before the final credit nail in the coffin; and

• Even those who seek to work things out with their mortgage lenders via loan modifications and short sales often are counseled to stop making payments to bolster their claims of financial hardship and boost the chances they’ll be granted the mortgage relief they need — again, dinging their credit scores every month until they either get a modification or finally lose the property.

There’s at least one other major hidden harm to credit scores that the housing market meltdown has had: People simply care less about their credit scores than they used to.

When you’re out of work and your credit is going to take hits no matter what you do, your home is a couple of hundred thousand dollars upside down or your mortgage payments double, you are forced to make your financial decisions based on considerations beyond credit score, like how you’ll feed your family and choosing between sending your kids to college and holding on to an upside-down home.

And all these factors, I suspect, might also be impacting credit scores in a way that even the most insightful infographic will never be able to surface.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson,

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.