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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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!
