Montgomery County PA Real Estate Video Blog with Diane Cardano: 2015

What Sellers Need Now Before Listing Their Tri-County Home

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search

Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation

Call me at (215) 576-8666 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation

Great news: the market is exploding right now! Interest rates are still low, even with this last small increase. This spring is going to be a great one if you plan to buy or sell real estate. Buyers will enjoy an increase of inventory, and sellers will enjoy a flood of new buyers in the market.

If you're thinking of selling your home, this video is for you. Spring is only four months away, and marketing your home is incredibly important. You need to differentiate your property from the others that will come onto the market.

There are some things you need to do within three to six months of showing your home. If you don't take care of them before you list, you will never get them done. These things will keep money in your pocket. Sign up for our free Room by Room Review.

We will stop by and let you know exactly what you need to do in order to net the most money possible. Some repairs will get you a bigger return on investment than others. We'll let you know which repairs are best and what you need to do with any clutter in your home. We want to help you sell for top dollar!

If you have any questions, give us a call or send us an email. Don't forget to join us for our home selling seminar on January 23rd. We look forward to speaking with you!

Three Expert Tips to Sell Your Tri County Home this Winter

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search

Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation

Call me at (215) 576-8666 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation

Instead of reporting on the latest market trends and statistics in the Tri County area, today I'll be going over three important things you need to know if you're entering the real estate market this winter.

Topic number one is Family wealth. This chart will simply blow you away. It shows the current trend in the difference of family wealth between a family that owns a home versus a family that is a renter. It is DRAMATIC and the difference is growing even more dramatically.

Just five years ago, the difference in family wealth between a homeowner and a renter was $182,000. In the last five years, that number has skyrocketed to $220,000. On average, the net worth of a renter is $5,000, much lower than a homeowner.

Buyer traffic is topic number two. If we take a look at this map, there are more and more people that want to own a bigger home. With just a few exceptions nearly every state in the country is blue, showing Strong buyer traffic. THEN, all of a sudden, something strange shows up in our tracking. Foot traffic is down for the first time.

So why, if demand is so strong—why are we showing less houses? When we look at the Seller Traffic index; we can see that the activity is way down. The orange color designates weak demand for sellers. In other words, sellers are not putting properties up for sale. If we look at the 2015 inventory levels compared to the same time last year, we see six of the first nine months, are below where we were in 2014. The last three months we are way lower.

Now, Finally let's discuss Mortgages rates &FICO scores! It’s likely you’ve heard the rule of thumb that you shouldn’t buy a home unless you can put 20 percent down. There is a common misconception you shouldn’t buy a home unless you can put 20 percent down. A growing number of borrowers are putting down between 5 and 10 percent of the purchase price. Some qualified borrowers are even putting down as little as 3 percent.

Many sellers think that they need an 800 FICO score. But that’s just not true either - a score just above 700 is fine. However, we were able to secure loans for people with scores as low as 580!

Conditions are perfect for you to do really well selling your home in the next 3 to 6 months. However, it won’t just happen by accident. You need an expert marketer, marketing your home, using a well-constructed, personalized, home selling strategy.

That’s why I am offering a FREE Room-by-Room Review by going to www.FreeRoomByRoom.com. There are things you need to do within 6 months of putting your home on the market. If you are prepared, you will be able to sell your home and keep up to 10% of your equity in your pocket.

So go to www.FreeRoomByRoom.com today and get your room by room review scheduled.

AND Don’t forget, If you want to Sell Your Home Fast in 26 Days!! Come to our next Home Selling Shark Seminar, Saturday, January 23rd at the Hilton Garden Hotel in Fort Washington.

Just go to www.homesharkseminar.com to register for your seat today!

My team and I hope you have a Joyous Holiday season!

Three Secrets to Sell Your Tri-County Home

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation
Call me at (215) 576-8666 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation

It’s Thanksgiving! Happy holidays to my friends and clients. At a seminar last month, I shared three secrets to selling your home in 26 days. Today, I’ll review them with you!

1. Start earlier than you think. It’s easy to get busy. That’s why you need to be proactive about your decision to sell. There are some many things you need to do to prepare to sell your home, even before you list. Therefore, start now!

2. Crush the competition. The average days on the market right now is approximately 120 days. It’s important to make your home stand out. Your listing competes with a full market. When your home enters the market, it should shine over the rest.

3. Buyers line up outside your door. It’s all about preparation. Start thinking years in advance! It’s entirely possible to have buyers in advance even before you list. One of our clients has a home they are planning to sell in the spring and they already have two buyers waiting to make bids. Your home shouldn’t have to be on the market for more than a month, ultimately.

If you have any questions about these secrets or more, give ma call or email today. And remember everyone: have a happy Thanksgiving!

What Does the Market Look Like this November?

Hello raving fans, we are back again with your November edition of the “Hot Off the Press” real estate market report. There’s so much we want to cover about the market today, let’s just get right to it. Here’s what you need to know about:

Fannie Mae has just released their home purchase settlement index, and from that we can see that consumer sentiments regarding the housing industry have decreased rather dramatically.
Home sales still have a huge impact on our economy. Each time a home is sold, money is added to the state’s economy, and with the movers, landscapers, and other contractors you may need during a move, that’s only more money going into our economy.
With the economy moving forward, more and more people are looking to buy a home. This is demonstrated by the amount of foot traffic we’ve seen, which is above where it was the last few years. We predict a strong winter this year, leading to an unbelievable 2016.
Household formations are skyrocketing. Adults are moving out of their parent’s house and people are getting married and having kids. This is triggering them to buy homes, which is allowing home sellers to move up into better homes.
Mortgage affordability is up, and more and more people are qualifying to buy a home.
More people are considering selling their homes this year, but haven’t put them on the market yet. 23% of homeowners are considering listing their home, while 55% of those homeowners say they would be in the market if they had the right information. That’s 10% of buyers just waiting for someone to give them the right info. We are here to do that, and to help you feel confident when buying or selling.

Don’t keep me a secret! If someone you know is looking to get accurate real estate information or wants to sell their home in 26 days, give them my contact information or invite them to my next home shark selling seminar, January 23 at the Hilton Garden Inn at Fort Washington. Visit www.homesharkseminar.com for details. Have a Happy Thanksgiving! We will talk to you soon!

Price Your Home to Sell & Keep Money in Your Pocket

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation
Call me at (215) 576-8666 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation

In today's new world of Real Estate, you cannot just put a sign on the lawn, put an ad in the paper, and expect it to sell. A lot more thought and marketing is now needed to sell a home. In order to price a home, you need to determine the demand for your home. However, before determining the demand for your home, you need to come up with a marketing plan and determine how you are going to present your home to the public the day you start showing the property.

The first advice we give our clients is to meet with a marketing expert that has a real estate license and go room-to-room. In each room, figure out what repairs or updates you could do to make the home more marketable. At the same time, have your home pre-inspected to find problems before your buyers do! Get estimates from the list from the room-to-room and the Pre-Inspection report. Sit down with your expert marketer with the list and the estimates and determine which updates and repairs will get you the most bang for your buck! I call this creating your staging for presentation to the public.

Then, and only then, can you price your home. You cannot price a home if you do not know what it will look like the day it comes on the market. Then it is time to test the price online with fabulous marketing.

When your home goes on the market and you find the home is priced a little high, act fast to make an adjustment. We reposition our homes by re-listing them as a brand new listing, and we change the pictures and list in another price point. This will get your listing out to another group of buyers who never knew that your home was ever on the market.

In order to keep money in your pocket, test your price, market it online before it goes live on the market, and then watch the results. Are buyers calling in? Are Realtors calling in to find out more information? We call this the 'Coming Soon' process and we test every marketing effort to make sure our clients' homes are priced to attract as many buyers as possible. Then, the first day your home goes on the market, we get feedback. This feedback tells you what to do next and how to respond to the marketplace.

If you would like a free room-to-room review, just go to www.FreeRoomByRoom.com to get your free consultation on what you need to do to your home before it goes on the market. We suggest you do this at least 6 months before you are going on the market. Or you can just sign up for our next Home Seller Seminar on Saturday, January 23rd at 9:30 a.m. Go to www.HomeSharkSeminar.com to learn more!

Two Great Resources for Selling Your Home

When you overhear your family, friends, or coworkers talk about buying or selling real estate, stop keeping me a secret and simply tell them “I’ve got the perfect person for you.”

In fact, why not share with them some of the incredible free resources I have on my site? I just posted the Cardano Fall Seasonal Reports online for both buyers and sellers. You can find them right here, at www.freeseasonalreports.com and feel free to share the link with anyone you know who is considering making a move in Pennsylvania.

If you or someone you know wants to sell their home fast, like within 26 days, consider signing up for our next Home Selling Sharks Seminar on October 20. It will be held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Fort Washington. Just head on over to www.homesellingsharks.com to register.

If you have any questions for me, feel free to call or send an email. I look forward to hearing from you!

House Too Small for Growing Family? Move on up Now & Save Thousands

Today, we're here with the October edition of the market report. We have some incredible insights to share with you this month.

First off, existing home prices are up year-over-year in every single region of the U.S. Whenever we have a strong housing market, the doomsayers always jump in and start talking about another housing bubble.

We have been seeing too many of those headlines lately. However, the only states whose current price levels are above the peak in 2006 are the states whose prices stayed level compared to the rest of the country. We are not worried about another housing bubble looming ahead, so ignore those doomsayers.

Now, let's talk about home equity and the move-up buyer. There is a whole segment of homeowners right now who don't realize that they have enough equity to move up. Interest rates are at historic lows and prices are reasonable, but these homeowners just don't realize that they are able to buy the house of their dreams.

The Fannie Mae report shows that 23% of Americans believe they have negative equity in their home, when in reality, only 9% of homeowners have negative equity. Some people think they have to bring cash to the table, and they don't!

In addition, only 37% of Americans believe they have more than 20% equity in their home, when actually, 69% of homeowners have over 20% equity! That means 32% of those homeowners are just sitting on enough equity to move into the home of their dreams without even realizing it!

Also, people who are waiting to put 20% down either don't know that there are lower down payment loans available, or they want to avoid PMI payments. Let's say you're buying a $200,000 house. If you put 5% down, you will end up paying $232.75 more per month than if you put 20% down. However, as home rates continue to appreciate, waiting to save that 20% down payment could actually cost you more.

Waiting a year to have that 20% down payment may not be the best option for you. In addition, interest rates will go up, making homes more expensive. Now is the time to upgrade and move into your dream home!

If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

8 Secret Strategies to Avoid Equity Draining Home Selling Sharks!

The most important part of the home selling process is the marketing of your home to prospective home buyers. The problem is, it can be awfully difficult to do so in the current market. Luckily, there are 8 steps you can take to squash home selling sharks and control the equity drain when selling your home!

When selling there are a lot of sharks out there, or things that can adversely affect the process that will eat away at your equity. The key is figuring out how to fight these things that you have no control over. Each bite a shark takes is thousands of dollars, so it's crucial for you to find a way to keep money in your pocket!

To find out how to fight these sharks, head over to www.8secretstrategies.com and watch the short videos I've put together. They will help you keep money in your pocket where it belongs! Don't wait until the last minute - whether you're selling now or in three years, it's crucial for you to learn how to avoid these sharks that will drain your equity!

If you have any questions or if you need real estate assistance of any kind, don't hesitate to give me a call or shoot me a quick email! I would love to hear from you!

Are We Approaching Another Housing Bubble?

Today, I'm here with your Tri-County market report. You may have heard the media saying that home sales are down, but that's not the case!

If you look at the existing home sales report, we can see that since January 2015, we've been on an upward climb and more and more homes are selling every month. Across the country, sales are up about 10% year-over-year in every region. I think we'll finish out with an extremely strong summer.

As we move forward, we're going to see stronger sales in every price point, except under $100,000. That's because we don't have as many short sales or foreclosures.

Were pending sales down last month? Yes. However, the preceding month, we had the highest number of pending sales that we've seen in years. Last month was still the third highest number of pending sales that we've seen in awhile.

Now, let's look at foot traffic. How many people are still out there looking at homes? This year, we've destroyed 2014's numbers. There is a lot of demand out there, and prices are rising.

This causes some people to worry about a housing bubble, but a housing bubble is not happening. Our historically low mortgages have caused confusion as well. Still, it is a much more thorough process to get a mortgage today than it was in 2007, ensuring that people who aren't eligible for mortgages won't qualify.

If you have any questions, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

How We Use Marketing to Sell Your Home

Today, we'll discuss the important role marketing plays in selling your home.

Nowadays, people do a lot of research on home values. We use preemptive marketing to price the home. We look at pending sales to determine a market value, and then we test the price.

Typically, Realtors try to get a home on the market as fast as possible, without bothering to test the price. They're thinking that doing so will get them their commission faster, and they can always lower the price as time goes on. However, an overpriced home will sit on the market, making buyers wonder what's wrong with the home. That's why it's important to have the price right from the start, so we test the price!

Traditional real estate marketing consists of a sign on the lawn, an ad in the newspaper, listing it with the MLS, and putting the home on the company website. But who reads the newspaper anymore? Certainly not 26 or 32 year-olds.

Once you've staged your home and priced it, we need to market it appropriately.That means getting your home on thousands of websites before it's listed. In order to do that, we simply fill out the Trend Waiver form, which allows us to delay putting the home on the MLS.

By delaying the MLS, we can help the home generate demand before it even hits the market. We can get calls from prospective buyers before you have your first showing, and when you do have that first showing, you can expect a lot of interested people to show up!

If you have any questions on today's video, give me a call or send me an email. If you're interested in signing up for one of our seminars, go to homesharkseminar.com to register for our October seminar. We look forward to hearing from you!

Don't Let These Two Real Estate Myths Prevent You From Buying a Home

Today I would like to dispel some myths about real estate that may or may not be keeping you from entering the market today.

You cannot afford a down payment: A lot of people believe that you need to make a large down payment in order to purchase a home. However, conventional loans and FHA loans only require a 3% down payment. Some lending options don't even require a down payment!

You cannot qualify for a mortgage: Many people believe that your credit score needs to be 780 or higher to purchase a home, but this is simply not true. The average FICO score on FHA loans is 688, and the average for conventional loans is 757. On top of this, mortgage credit availability is improving, so homes aren't as hard to purchase as most people would have you believe. Interest rates are also hovering at all-time lows, so now is a phenomenal time to purchase a home.

Buying a home is an extremely valuable investment, and when they're so affordable it's hard to think of reasons why you shouldn't be buying a home. If you have any questions about the buying process or if you're worried about anything whatsoever, please don't hesitate to contact me.

I look forward to speaking with you!

Swim with the Home Selling Sharks Without Losing Thousands

In today's video, I discuss the sharks that can eat away your equity. I call them sharks because these are things that can come back to bite you when you least expect it.

The five sharks are home staging, pricing, marketing, negotiating, and overseeing details. The key to making money when selling your home is to swim with your sharks. Your Realtor acts as your shark cage, so you want a Realtor with a lot of experience.

Right now in Montgomery, more and more people are becoming real estate agents. The average Realtor sells 4.9 houses a year. You want someone on your team who is experienced, so that you can come out of the buying process stress-free.

Also, I think that the biggest shark out there is the negotiating shark. If your Realtor doesn't negotiate well, or doesn't have experience negotiating, it could cost you an arm and a leg.

If you want to learn more about the home selling process, go to www.homesharkseminar.com to sign up for our next home seller seminar on October 20th at the Hilton Garden Inn. We can help you sell your home for 18% more than the average agent.

If you have any questions about today's topic, or about real estate in general, please give me a call or send me an email. We'd love to hear from you!

Are You Doing What It Takes to Get Top Dollar for Your Tri-County Home?

Today, I want to let you in on some valuable information. At a recent seminar I led, I taught people about Secret Staging Guidelines and people were ecstatic! Today, I'll share a few of these great home selling tips.

As a general rule, less stuff equals more money for you, the seller. Clear the clutter from flat surfaces to make your home feel bigger and more open. Let the buyers breathe by getting rid of random knick-knacks and other items that don't serve an obvious purpose.

Don't block the natural light when selling your home. Half of the photos I see online have closed shades, making the home look dark and unwelcoming. You also want to keep furniture out of the corner of the rooms to make the space feel more open and full!

Many people have centerpieces on their table and are surprised when I tell them to remove them! The table needs to be clear of everything, so that the photos capture the essence of your home, rather than your things.

The last tip for today is to depersonalize your home. Remove personal pictures from the walls so buyers can imagine their family living in your home. You also want to clean out your closets so buyers don't feel like they're invading your personal space and so that online buyers can get an idea of how much storage space is really there.

Essentially, the main thing to keep in mind is that less is more when selling in the Tri-County. If you have any questions about selling, or if you need real estate assistance of any kind, we would love to help. Give us a call or shoot us a quick email for the service you deserve!

Hot Off the Press: June Market Report for the Tri-County Area

I started off last month's report talking about existing home sales, so let's begin there again.

Existing home sales have been cascading upward since February and March, which bodes well for a strong market this summer, no matter which region you're looking at. Existing home sales aren't the only things that excite us, it's the fact that homes are selling in nearly every category. Sales in the $250K-$500K range are up by almost 27%! However, homes below $100K are drying up because there are very few foreclosure sales happening anymore.

Foot traffic has also significantly increased, and this is an important trend. We're getting much, much more foot traffic this year than we were last year. A reason for this renewed interest in buying homes may be because 31% of Americans believe that real estate is the best type of long term investment. People chose real estate over stocks, gold, savings accounts, and bonds.

Throughout the country, homes are selling in less than 45 days, but you'll be happy to hear that my average is 26 days! However, inventory levels year-over-year increased in March, but we're still below inventory in our area. This means that home prices may be rising soon. The Case Shiller year-over-year price change tracker for 20 cities shows that we're seeing a steady level of appreciation, ranging from 3-5%.

All this activity has the media begging the question: is there another housing bubble forming? My answer is no, but there is probably a strong seller's market taking shape.

This means if you're looking to sell your home, rising prices may move you off of the fence and into the market. I can sell your Tri County home for top dollar this summer!

If you were not available to attend my Home Selling Sharks Seminar June 17th, get my FREE Home Seller toolkit here, http://www.homesellertoolkit.com/. It lists my eight secret strategies for home selling.

What Do Current Tri-County Market Trends Mean for You?

Hello, and welcome to the May edition of the Hot Off the Press Market Report! I'm here to report that existing home sales are WAY UP from last year and pending sales are surging!

Although you might see some headlines saying that sales are down, when you look at the numbers, you'll find that home sales were MUCH higher in February 2015 than they were in February 2014. It amazes me how lazy the mainstream media is when it comes to presenting accurate market data! For instance, they wouldn't report that sales for suntan lotion and swimsuits are down in December, January, and February, would they?

Like clockwork, home sales drop during the same time period each year. Of course there was a dip in home sales over the winter months - it happens every year! To get a more accurate picture of where our market is actually heading, it's best to compare year to date statistics from year to year. Instead of saying home sales have fallen off, you would notice that sales are actually substantially higher than they were at this same time last year!

Another thing to take a look at is pending home sales. According to NAR, a market with 100 pending home sales is a historically healthy one. In February of 2014, that number was near 94, which indicated a weak market. However, in February of 2015, pending home sales were at 107! In other words, despite what the headlines would have us believe, the market is booming!

If you have any questions about what these market conditions mean for you, or if you need real estate assistance of any kind, give me a call or shoot me a quick email. I would love to hear from you!

How to Make Money in This Tri-County Real Estate Market

Hello, and welcome back! Today, I'll share some tips and tricks to keep you and your family ahead of the competition in the real estate market here in Montgomery County!

Recently, I came across a headline that claimed existing home sales had collapsed in January, despite low interest rates. Well, here we go again; the media, as always, took shaky evidence and turned it into a misleading news item.

Let's take a more tempered look at the numbers:

Existing homes sales for January were $200K higher than they were last year.
Pending home sales remain very strong and continue to rise!
January foot traffic was 3x greater than January of last year.
Inventory is falling, so now is a great time for homeowners to sell.

When you take a look at the actual numbers, you can understand why it's best to ignore the headlines! The market is doing fantastic, and there's no sign it will slow down any time soon.

If you want to buy or sell real estate, or if you have any questions about our market, your best option is to speak with a real estate professional. We have access to updated and accurate information and would love to help you get the most out of our market!

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