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HAVE YOU LOST YOUR HOME TO FORECLOSURE? BUYING A HOME IS STILL A POSSIBILITY. The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. The real estate market is a key sector contributing to the economic downturn in the U.S. economy. Millions of homeowners have lost homes and face ruined credit ratings due to bank foreclosures. Yet, this fact remains: you can buy a home after foreclosure. Without a doubt, loss of a home is one of the most traumatic experiences that any homeowner will ever face. Foreclosure is the conclusion of a very stressful and emotional financial period in one’s life. The foreclosure may not have been completely your fault. The road that led to you losing your home to the bank may have been caused by any number of reasons — loss of employment, a life altering event, buying more home than you could afford, or simply that you just had the wrong loan product from a lender. The reason itself does not matter. The fact is this foreclosure has changed your life. The process of foreclosure has caused you embarrassment, financial strain, anxiety, frustration, and a bad credit debt. Now you must begin a long road to financial recovery. Any hopes of buying a home in the near future have disappeared, unless you have enough cash to do so. Banks and mortgage companies will be of little or no help to you, once they see the foreclosure on you credit report. Keep in mind that a foreclosure stays on your credit report for ten years. Most traditional lenders will not even consider offering a home loan to you for the first several years after your foreclosure. They will inform you that you must wait until enough time has passed, in their opinion, and that you have improved and maintained an acceptable credit rating — to their standards. When the time finally comes that one of these traditional lenders will offer you a home loan, it more than likely will be at a premium interest rate and will include funding points. These points are bank fees (one point equals 1% of the loan amount). This is not good news for those of you trying to get back into homeownership. The loan offer may result in you paying much more than otherwise needed for a home either in up-front closing costs or over the life of the loan itself. Thus, you may be forced to settle for a lesser priced home in order to afford the total loan payment that is being offered by the lender. Wait. You do have other choices to live in the home you want. One choice is to become a tenant and begin paying rent to a landlord. You may also consider a Lease Option agreement as a viable alternative if you must rent. Many real estate agents and home owners trying to sell their homes could present this opportunity to you to get into the home. Before you agree to either of these options, consider these details in making your decision. As a tenant entering into a rental agreement with a landlord you will be required to provide the landlord a security deposit, as well as the first and last months rent. This usually amounts to a considerable sum of up-front money at a time when you’re already financially stressed. In addition to that financial hardship, at the conclusion of your rental agreement you will be left with nothing. You will have no interest in the property and no equity growth. Your monthly payments will be lost to the landlord as rent. Your landlord has paid down his mortgage and your landlord has enjoyed a certain amount of equity growth on his property. If you choose to enter into a lease option agreement with a seller, keep in mind that two agreements are being made at the same time. The first agreement will be a lease between you and the owner of the property. This agreement makes you the tenant while the seller of the property becomes your landlord. You will be required to make monthly rental payments to the landlord, which may or may not have any deposit credit value (a percentage of the monthly rent payment to be applied to your deposit funds if you opt to purchase the property at the end of the lease). And you will most likely be required to place a security deposit with the landlord and pay him the first and last months rent in advance, as with a typical lease agreement. The second agreement in a lease-option is the purchase agreement. This agreement will define the option date, price and terms to purchase the property from the landlord. The agreement will convert you from tenant to buyer, and the landlord to seller. The price for the property will have already been predetermined by the seller with you at the time of the original agreement to lease with the option to purchase the property. The downside to this is that the seller wanted to sell the property originally at a price competitive with market values at the point in time when the agreement is made. By agreeing to lease the property to you with an option to purchase at a later point in time, he will expect you to pay a higher price based on anticipated equity growth for the property. You will also be required to make a full deposit prior to closing, and obtain the balance of the funds by the closing date in order to close on the property. This simply means that since you have a foreclosure on you credit history you will most likely be required to make a 20% deposit, and to have improved your credit rating sufficiently in order to qualify with a lender for a mortgage loan. If you qualify for the loan you will finally start homeownership and home equity growth once again for you and your family. The cost of regaining this position is one to three years of rental expense, a down payment of possibly 20% of the purchase price, any loan fees required by the lender to grant and fund the loan, and most importantly paying one to three years of equity growth more for the home. What if there was another way to get into a home right now? A way, that allows you to start gaining home equity immediately? A way, that starts to rebuild your credit? A way to buy now with no more up-front money than if you rented a property? The way is our guide, the YOU CAN BUY A HOME AFTER FORECLOSURE e-booklet. This is designed to show and teach you a way to get back into homeownership after suffering a foreclosure. Don’t run away from the problem. Face it head on and get back into home ownership reasonably and for not much more than what you would pay to rent a home. Our solution YOU CAN BUY A HOME AFTER FORECLOSURE e-booklet helps give you peace of mind that you are buying and investing in a home that will gain equity over time. Our solution is not a lease purchase option. It is a method to purchase a home today! This solution gives you the ability to negotiate the purchase of your new home with the seller at today’s market prices, not at a perceived market price determined by a seller on a lease purchase option. We have the solution for you to get into a new home reasonably. Get started today by ordering our YOU CAN BUY A HOME AFTER FORECLOSURE e-booklet. Our e-booklet will give you a way to buy your next home, even after a foreclosure at today’s market values and affordable up-front costs. The solution to your home buying problem is just $9.99 away. Order our on line copy at www.nfsbos.com and get started today. Above all, be realistic. Don’t fall in love with a home you can’t afford. You may convince yourself that if you scrimp and tighten your belt, you can afford it. If you do that, you may put yourself at risk. Buy the home you can afford now and if you’re able later on, you can “trade up” when you can afford a larger house. Don’t plan other big purchases or other big ticket items right away unless absolutely necessary. Build an “emergency fund” into your budget. Put a little away each month for the unexpected. That way when the car needs repair or the house needs a new roof you won’t be tempted to reallocate funds from existing financial responsibilities. Order this solution to owning a home after foreclosure. This e-booklet, YOU CAN BUY A HOME AFTER FORECLOSURE will give you a way to buy your next home at today’s market values and affordable up-front costs. The solution to your home buying problem is just $9.99 away. Order our online copy at www.nfsbos.com and get started today.

Your New Local Branch Location

  You found the perfect location for a new home. Check your to-do list. First item on the agenda, call the contractor and get the old building demolished so you can start fresh. That is typical in today’s "throw-away" society.
  In another era, Community Bank may have endorsed that way of building. Not too likely, but it could have happened that way.
  Community Bank of Manatee was first started, over twelve years ago in 1995, to provide personalized banking services for the local community. One year later a branch was established on the west side. It was called the Village Green office because it was located in the Village Green shopping center.
  A lot of people knew the present location as the old H&R Block building. When Community Bank bought it, it had deteriorated to an eyesore, a distinct blemish for the area, and the building was in bad condition. It was the perfect candidate to be torn down and thrown away. Community Bank chose instead to renovate and enhance the building, adding some touches, such as the distinctive columns. Environmentally friendly landscaping, indigenous to this part of Florida was added.
  Now the old Block building at 7202 Manatee Avenue W, looks like a bank and is a visual asset to the community, as well as being a commercial asset that makes banking convenient to the western part of Bradenton.
  Community Bank of Manatee was founded with a mission to provide personalized banking services for businesses and families in Manatee County and the Greater Tampa Bay area along the west coast of Florida. [NAME DELETED FOR PRIVACY ON INTERNET] is president of the bank and can be found at this branch office. [NAME DELETED] is Vice-President and manages the staff of four who serve you at this location. They are [NAME DELETED], Head Teller, and [NAMES DELETED].
  Whether your business is just starting out or ready to expand, or you are looking for a localized bank for your personal accounts, Community Bank can help. The Main Office is located at 6000 State Road 70 East, West Bradenton Branch is at 7202 Manatee Avenue West and the South Tampa Office is at 1001 W. Cleveland Street.

ANOTHER PROJECT FOR DANG COMMUNICATIONS. THIS APPEARED IN SARASOTA LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE, September 2007, UNDER MY BYLINE:

    A type of structure for a home exists that provides great structural strength butuses a minimum of material. This is a geodesic dome, conceived by R. Buckminster Fuller, usually known as “Bucky.” A so-called “dome home” appears round, or hemispherical, but is actually a complex network of triangles.
    Not too many contractors have experience with structures like this, unlike William Kelly and Mark Rausch, who founded Contractor’s Services, Incorporated. Although CSI specializes in traditional residential and commercial remodeling and new construction, they have worked on several domes in the past.
    The dome construction technique is less than 100 years old. The Zeiss Optics Company of Germany, built the first geodesic dome in 1922, to test their products. Bucky Fuller later modified some of the structural detail and ultimately was given a patent for the technique.
    So, if you live in a dome home, as do Scott Malachowski and Robert Peters, what do you do when your home needs major repairs? They started looking for contractors, but, according to Scott, “Most of the ones we called for estimates didn’t even stop when they saw our home. And the ones who did weren’t interested.”
    Not so, when Vice President of Field Operations, Tamra Tornai, met with Scott and Robert to determine their needs. Better known as Tami, she is a co-owner of Contractor’s Services. Tami realized, with her 26-plus years of master carpentry experience, that her knowledge along with the CSI tradesmen, would be able to apply standard knowledge and skills to the special structural challenges of a geodesic dome.
    “I got into the business helping my stepfather remodel his home and I fell in love with remodeling and construction,” Tammy says.
    A dome home is actually a structure composed of lots of triangles, Mark Rausch stated. He went on to note, “There are 120 little triangles of plywood,” mountedon two-by-four frames.”
    The plywood is essentially the frame of the house, as well as the “skin” or exterior. And how does one “re-roof” a hemisphere that is not just a flat surface, but rather, “a series of positive and negative angles,” according to Mark, sounding a bit nonchalant in making the statement. That is where experience, competence and versatility combine to get the job done.
    Part of that job was to also reconfigure floors and lofts once the structural repair was completed. Consider the special challenges in a home that is more like an igloo inside, than, perhaps the home of most of our readers. In an igloo (or more specifically) a dome home, the interior walls have to be treated differently, since they are anchored to, essentially, an arc. The contractor has to think outside the box, especially if you consider that “box” to be a “standard home.”
    Contractor’s Services specializes in residential and commercial remodeling, in addition to new construction. “Anyone can build a new home, but remodeling is a different art form – a whole other ball of wax,” explains co-founder William Kelly. “We can be as flamboyant or conservative as you want.”
    Flamboyant may be the best description for CSI’s geodesic dome remodeling project.
    For several years now, Contractor’s Services has been noted for customer service and client care. CSI also offers one-stop shopping to fit their clients’ needs from conception to completion. Contractor’s Services has contacts with a large network of financial institutions, title companies, designers, architects and subcontractors, and truly provides a unique service in Manatee and Sarasota counties. Not only will they work on a far reaching project like remodeling a dome home, they continue to increase their target market in traditional construction projects
    Contractor’s Services is the only authorized dealer in Florida for RIGID™ Building Systems. This is on the cutting-edge of steel construction — a new market that is becoming the home and commercial construction defense against hurricane force winds. RIGID™ Building Systems can engineer the superstructure to withstand hurricane winds up to 180 miles per hour!
    No matter what your home or business construction or remodeliing need — traditional construction or far out, like a dome — contact William Kelly, Mark Rausch, Tamra Tornai, or any of their extended family of co-owners for your personal consultation. No matter how flamboyant, you can make your remodeling or building dreams come true.
    Contractor’s Services is located at 1877 Northgate Boulevard, Suite 2, Sarasota, FL 34234, 941.358.8490, or you can find them on-line at www.fl-builder.com. Then follow the link to “Contact Us.”