Times Home Fair Offers Help for Buyers, Sellers

With home prices their most affordable and mortgage rates their lowest in years, thousands of Southern Californians are thinking about buying homes.

If you’re among them, then you’ve probably got lots of questions about one of the most important and complex decisions many of us ever make.

Well, make a list of your questions and come get the answers at the third annual Los Angeles Times’ Home Buyers and Sellers Fair on Saturday, April 4, and Sunday, April 5, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The fairs will run from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days.

Two full days of consumer-oriented question-and-answer programs will feature real estate industry experts providing up-to-the-minute guidance on home buying, selling, mortgages and taxes.

Among those on hand to share their tips will be The Times’ “Real Estate Q&A;� columnist Robert J. Bruss, “Condo Q&A;� writer Jan Hickenbottom and “Your Mortgage� columnist David W. Myers, as well as other real estate authors and advisers.

Other two-hour presentations during both days of the fair will offer timely advice to homeowners trying to sell in today’s market, to small investors looking for profit-making tips and to senior citizens interested in new housing opportunities.

More than 50 exhibitors--including realtors, lenders and home builders, as well as state and federal government housing experts--will be on hand for you to talk with at their booths.

In each of the past two years, almost 10,000 Southland home buyers and sellers attended the fairs, including 5,500 people at last year’s Los Angeles fair, the largest such event ever held in the United States.

And this year, The Times has joined with Los Angeles’ La Opinion newspaper, the nation’s largest Spanish-language paper, to promote the home fair among Southland Latino home buyers.

A special two-hour question-and-answer program will be presented each afternoon in Spanish. Real estate experts from the Latino community will address the home-buying and selling questions of the readers of La Opinion.

Fair-goers can also:

--Pre-qualify for a mortgage to see how much house they can afford, an important first step to house hunting.

--Receive a free credit check to see how a mortgage lender will view their loan application, and in time to clean up any rough spots.

--Learn about home loans for the first-time buyer at a panel presented by the Federal National Mortgage Assn. (Fannie Mae) and at an exhibit by the California Housing Finance Agency (CHFA).

--Get information on new home listings.

--Get home-price information from a leading real estate research firm.

--Talk to representatives of the Internal Revenue Service just days before the April 15 income-tax filing deadline.

--Get the details of President Bush’s proposed $5,000 tax credit for first-time buyers in a special presentation by a tax accountant.

--Learn about the FHA loan program from representatives of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

--Receive information for senior citizens on reverse mortgages, new life-care developments and tax laws for the 55-plus group.

For more details about fair programs, watch for upcoming stories each week in the Real Estate section.

Admission to the Home Buyers and Sellers Fair is $7.50, but use the coupon you will find in the Real Estate section in coming weeks and you can save $2.50.