Many home buyers are unhappy with agents and don’t understand loans, CAR says

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The California Assn. of Realtors’ annual home buyer survey is out. The group’s news release highlights sales to first-time buyers (38% of buyers, double the previous year’s rate) and says falling prices and low interest rates boosted sales.

Deeper into the report (on sale for $29.95), however, are some results showing discontent with agents and apparently high levels of buyers who don’t understand their mortgages:

-- The average buyers’ rating of their agents’ performance was 3.3 on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being the highest. That was the same level as the 2008 survey, and down from 4.6 in 2006.

-- Failure of the agent to ‘negotiate aggressively on my behalf’ was cited by 82% of respondents as the reason for their dissatisfaction, up from 81% the previous year.

-- About one-fifth of buyers (21%) said they did not know the terms of their loan or were unsure. Buyers of foreclosed homes said they were more informed, with only 12% saying they did not understand or were unsure of their loan terms. If you remove foreclosure buyers from the pool, fully 31% of ‘regular market’ buyers said they did not understand or were unsure of their loan terms.

The CAR survey was conducted by telephone with 1,400 people who bought homes in the second half of 2008.

-- Peter Y. Hong