Bruce Ailion in the News

Articles including Bruce interviewed as a "Residential Specialist"

• ...Many potential first-time buyers are apartment dwellers who might be reluctant to make the move for a multitude of reasons. Bruce Ailion, CRS, CRB, with RE/MAX Greater Atlanta, attracts first-time buyers by offering to pay their lease termination up to 1 percent of the purchase price of a home. “First-time buyers are often frightened by the concept of not fulfilling their commitment to their landlord and the penalty associated with an early termination. These perceptions often scare them out of acting in their best financial self-interest.” He promotes this Steven Wright, CRS benefit through Craigslist, social media, direct-mail campaigns, and strategically placed signs. He says word-of-mouth has also been effective. “We target apartment complexes where rents are between $900 and $1,400 a month and ratings on apartmentratings.com are low. [With those criteria] you get people who are unhappy where they’re living and can probably pay a mortgage,” he says. “If buyers can qualify for a loan and find a home they like, it is to their advantage to terminate the lease so that they can buy today.” Ailion also works closely with lenders who are experienced with FHA loans. He describes a recent client, a single mother who made $7.88 an hour and paid $500 in rent in an economically distressed area that she felt was not safe for her children. They found an REO property listed for $35,000 that needed $15,000 in repairs and negotiated for the seller to pay closing costs. “Using an FHA 203(k) loan, the rehab was completed and the property had a $65,000 repaired value at the current market — the equity equivalent of a full year’s wages for this buyer, and a payment on a safe, renovated home for less than her former rent.”
  • Full article can be found at http://www.crs.com/trs/trs10-6/20-23-FeatCollins.pdf

• Be a counselor. “The best advice you can give someone who’s been through this and wants to buy a home again is to right-size your finances, get some consumer education, and adopt good financial habits afterwards,” says Bruce Ailion, CRS. By making adjustments to spending and by paying bills on time, credit scores will ultimately improve, and the individual will be able to buy a home again....Bruce Ailion, CRS, an attorney and broker with RE/MAX Greater Atlanta in Marietta, Ga., has seen an uptick in requests from clients who have been through foreclosure for lease-to-own programs, in which they make a down payment on a home with the option to buy it within a specific period of time. He’s also seen a similar increase in requests for seller financing programs, in which the seller holds the mortgage note on a property and potential buyers make the payments to the seller rather than getting a mortgage of their own. “Some people, instead of rehabbing their credit, go out and look for these opportunities. But, Ailion cautions, “because they don’t have many options for financing, they may end up paying far more than the property is worth.” He usually counsels his clients against such transactions unless they are valued carefully and he feels it is a fair deal. In Atlanta, he says, that can be tough to gauge. While home values in some areas have fallen 15 percent, in other areas plagued by high foreclosure rates prices have fallen by 80 or 90 percent, he says.
  • Full article can be found at http://www.crs.com/trs/trs10-1/FeatMoran.pdf

• ONE THAT'S SOLD
  The property: Three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath Smyrna townhome in Westchester Commons with a master on the main and a two-car garage.
  Approximately 2,900 square feet. Original price: $261,900, sold new by Pulte Homes in December 2000
  When foreclosed: May 2007 Appraisal: $270,820, as of 2007
  Sale price: $285,000 in August 2007 (seller paid $5,400 in closing costs). That's the cheapest sale in Westchester Commons in the past couple of years, with others selling in the high $200,000s-low $300,000s.
  Notes: Property needed approximately $20,000 to bring it to excellent condition.
  How it happened: The foreclosure sold in 16 days and received three offers close in price, said Bruce Ailion, a real estate agent with ReMax Communities who represents banks. He doesn't believe the former owner hired a Realtor before the foreclosure. "It always surprises me how few owners took the appropriate steps that would have prevented foreclosure and perhaps generated equity," he said.
  For the full article: http://m.ajc.com/hotjobs/content/homefinder/stories/2007/10/18/homecover_1021.html