Archive for the 'Home Seller Information' Category
The best time to trade up
August 27th, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
Have you out grown your Spring Texas house? Do you want to trade up but the economy keeps holding you back? If you are financially secure and are comfortable with the status of your job, then now is a great time to trade up.
The buy-low, sell-high approach works for the stock market and for the Spring Texas real estate market. The best time to buy is when inventories are high and the best time to sell is when inventories are low. Our current listing inventory is 32% higher than last year making it the time to buy.
The disadvantage of selling your Spring Texas house in a down market is you are not going to sell it for as much money as you would like. But you will make up for it by getting a better deal on the higher priced home you are going to purchase. Homes in the $400,000+ range have been taken a beating and there are some really good deals available.
With record low interest rates, that more expensive house will cost you less now than if you wait for the economy to fully recover. When the economy begins to show life and upward movement again, mortgage interest rates will be following right behind and moving upward.
Trading up in a down economy is not right for everyone. But if your job status is stable, trading up in a down economy is a smart financial move.
Read also:
- How to choose a listing agent to sell your house
- How to increase your list price and attract more buyers
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Is your Facebook page sabotaging the sale of your house?
August 23rd, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
There’s a good chance that when your put your house on the Spring Texas real estate market, you shared this information with your friends on facebook. You might have even pasted a link to your home’s listing or to its virtual tour on your facebook page. Your friends probably gave you encouragement and wrote on your wall “Great house! I am sure it will sell quickly!”.
Three months have gone by and your house still has not sold and you have become discouraged. In hopes of getting some encouragement from your facebook friends, you write on your wall ”Tired of making two house payments. We should have sold our house in Spring TX before buying a home in Chicago. We are almost ready to give it away just to get rid of it.” Your friends responded immediately responded with “Hang in there! I am sure the right buyer will come along soon.” You got the encouragement you wanted but what you also gave potential buyers your reason for selling your home and your current financial situation.
Sharing your home’s listing with all your facebook friends is a great idea. As your listing as the potential to go viral and be found by the right buyer. If your house isn’t moving, seek encouragement from your friends in person and not online because otherwise you may indirectly be sharing information with the buyer.
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Do you have to attend the closing?
August 21st, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information, Home Seller Information | views
In Spring Texas the closing on a real estate transaction is held at a title company. Since the closing is scheduled in advance, the majority of buyers and sellers are able to arrange their schedules and do attend the closing on their house.
Sometimes a buyer’s or seller’s schedule does not permit them to physcially attend the closing. In these circumstances, the closing can still occur on the scheduled closing date by the title company doing an advance “mail-out” or through the use of a POA (Power of Attorney).
Mail-out closings are common when the sellers have already moved from Spring Texas and are now living in another state making it unpractical for them to travel back to attend the closing. The title company will mail out the documents for the sellers signatures and the sellers will arrange to have the documents returned by the closing date.
POA’s are frequently utilized when there is more than one buyer or seller. The buyer or seller who is unable to attend the closing will give a POA to the other buyer or seller to sign the documents on his or her behalf.
Read also:
- Who decides the closing date?
- Who repairs the nail holes?
- What stays and what goes when you buy a Spring Texas home?
- What to expect on closing day?
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Will paying cash get you a discount on real estate?
August 13th, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information, Home Seller Information | views
The majority of the time if you pay cash for Spring Texas real estate you will get a discount. The real question is not will you get a discount but how big of a discount. The answer depends on how big of an advantage cash is to the seller.
The biggest discounts for cash will be on properties that are not available to be financed. Properties unavailable for financing are typically foreclosure properties that are in terrible condition. The owners (banks) of these properties know they need to provide significant discounts to attract the cash buyers.
The discount will depend upon the overall condition of the property, how long the property has been on the bank’s books, and how motivated the bank is to dump the property. In the Spring Texas area, I have seen lenders sell cash only properties at 10% to 20% lower than market value.
The value of cash to a seller (bank or individual owner) is much less if the house can be financed. Why? From the seller’s perspective he wants to sell his home to whomever will pay him the most for it. Whether the money comes from the buyer directly or whether it comes from the buyer’s lender doesn’t matter to the seller. Its all cash to the seller.
A cash buyer does offer the seller some advantages including a quicker close, the elimination of potential appraisal issues, and an assurance the transaction will not fall through due to a buyer’s inability to secure financing. In situations where the seller has two buyers both offering him the same price for his Spring Texas house and one buyer has cash and other buyer requires financing, the seller will choose the cash buyer.
If the seller has only one offer and it is from a cash buyer, the seller is going to consider the advantages the cash buyer offers in conjunction with the market value of his house. Sellers will give a cash buyer a discount but the discount is usually in the 1% to 5% range.
Read also:
- If the house doesn’t appraise for the sales price, are you stuck buying the house?
- Are you overpaying if you pay the home’s list price?
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Accepting property in its present condition doesn’t mean you can’t ask for repairs
August 11th, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information, Home Seller Information | views
In section 7 of our Spring Texas real estate contract the touchy subject of property condition is addressed. Buyers, sellers, and Realtors seem to generally understand the majority of the items in this section. That is until they reach 7.D. ACCEPTANCE OF PROPERTY CONDITION which is where confusion takes over.
In section 7.D., Spring Texas home buyers have to either check box (1) they are accepting the property in its present condition or box (2) they accept the property in its present condition, provided Seller, at Seller’s expense, shall complete the following repairs and treatments.
On the majority of offers I receive, the buyers have checked box (2) and have written in “all deficiences listed on the inspection report”. This causes my sellers immediate heartburn because it commits them to correct every single deficiency listed on the inspection report. If the sellers agreed to (2), they would be writing a blank check to cover every item identified on the report. Whether the repair could be handled with a $5 tube of caulk or the repair was to bring an item up to today’s building codes, it wouldn’t matter because the seller would have agreed to fix them all.
The true purpose of section 7.D. is to list any items the buyers are making their offer contingent upon the sellers repairing. As a buyer a specific repair you may want to make your offer contingent upon is the sellers installing a new roof or a water heater or replacing a broken window.
If you are not requiring the sellers to make any repairs at this time, you should check box (1). If you have purchased a termination option in Section 23 of the real estate contract which I highly recommend you do, you still have the right to inspect the house and request the sellers to make repairs. If the sellers agree to the repairs, the contract will be amended detailing the repairs to be made. If you and the sellers can not come to terms on the repairs, you still have the right to terminate the real estate contract during the option period.
As a buyer the main thing to remember is when you accept the property in its present condition, you are NOT forfeiting any of your rights to request the sellers to make repairs based upon your inspection of the house.
Read also:
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500 Characters
August 9th, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
500 characters sounds like a lot but it’s not. 500 characters is the quantity of characters the Houston MLS system gives me to describe my listings. 500 characters that’s it. That is all I get to describe why you want to buy this particular house over all the other houses on the Spring Texas real estate market.
It’s just not enough. At least it’s not enough for me. Even before I begin, I know I am going to run out of characters. It happens to me every single time.
I get into a groove describing all the wonderful features and benefits of the house and why you would want to live in this Spring Texas house and then boom up pops the message “You have exceeded the field limit of 500 characters.” And I haven’t even gotten to tell you about the all the neighborhood’s park and trails, the home’s convenient location to shopping, and its low real estate taxes.
It’s while I am analyzing every single word, comma, and period I have chosen to describe my seller’s house that I become jealous of all the Spring Texas Realtors who seem to have characters to spare. Maybe you have seen the listing descriptions I speak of. They are the ones that have characters left to use on exclamation points and not one or two exclamation points but numerous exclamation points. There are also Realtors who have characters left to say things that tell you nothing about the house such as one of my least favorites of “Honey, stop the car!”.
Maybe the Houston Association of Realtors could implement a program to allow the Realtors who have to many characters to donate them to the Realtors who do not have enough characters. I know I could use more characters because 500 characters is just not enough.
Read also:
- Top 10 worst real estate advertising phrases
- Is your home’s listing on page 1 or page 200 of Google?
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My House, My Rules
July 26th, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
I remember my parents saying “My House, My Rules” a lot when I was a kid. It was their common response to my questions of “why can’t I eat in the living room?” and “why can’t I put my feet on the coffee table?” and “why do I have to take off my boots by the back door?”
The other day when I was out with clients showing homes in Spring Texas, I felt as if I had been transported back to my childhood. But this time instead of my parents it was the sellers saying “My House, My Rules”. The sellers didn’t say exactly that but it was pretty darn close. As they said “Take off your shoes at the front door.” My clients responded like a couple of rebellious teenagers and refused to take off their shoes.
What the sellers had forgotten was their house is on the real estate market. And when your house is on the market, your house is no longer your house. It is a product. A product that you are wanting to sell. And if you want to sell that product you need be able to make buyers see themselves as owners of that product. The best way to do this is to make them feel comfortable viewing it. These sellers did the exact opposite. As my buyers immediately felt uncomfortable viewing the house.
Maybe its the sellers customs to take off your shoes upon entering a home or maybe they just had the carpets cleaned. Both are good and understandable reasons as to why the sellers wanted us take of our shoes.
But I am sorry Mr. and Mrs. Seller, when your house is on the Spring Texas real estate market it is NOT about you. Its about my buyers and about making them feel comfortable in your home. When my buyers are uncomfortable, we head to the next house on our list to view. Buyers have plenty of houses to choose from. Don’t eliminate your house from their list by saying “My House, My Rules”.
Read also:
- Top 5 things you can do to sell your house faster
- How to increase your list price and attract more buyers
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Do you know if your house is for sale?
July 24th, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information, Home Seller Information | views
About 10 years ago it was easy to know if your house was for sale. And if you weren’t 100% sure all you had to do was take a quick look oute the window. If you saw a real estate “for sale” sign in your yard, your house was for sale. But fast forward to today and it’s possible that your Spring Texas house could be listed for sale on numerous websites without you knowing.
The reason it is listed for sale may be because you have been a victim of a real estate scam. But the more likely reason is because the status of the listing was not changed when either you purchased the home or you took the home off the Spring Texas real estate market.
Your house could be listed for sale on YouTube , Google, Craigslist.org, OLX, Facebook, Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, your real estate agent’s site, or numerous other real estate sites. The reason your house could be wrongly listed as for sale on a site when it’s NOT for sale is due to the site’s source of data for its listings.
If the real estate site uses our local Houston MLS (multiple listing service) as their date source, then the information is fairly accurate. I won’t say 100% accurate because a house could be sold but still be showing as for sale because the listing agent has not updated the listing in the Houston MLS.
Numerous Internet sites and real estate sites receive their listing data NOT from the Houston MLS but directly from individual real estate agents and from syndication sites. When a house is sold or taken off the Spring Texas real estate market, these sites are dependent upon their data source to update the data. The problem is the real estate agents and the syndication sites do not update the data. Resulting in houses being represented as for sale that are NOT for sale. The solution is for these sites to work out an agreement with the Houston MLS to receive a feed of its listing data. But that won’t happen because the feed agreements cost money.
If you want to find out if your Spring Texas house is listed for sale, google your address. If you discover its listed for sale and its NOT for sale, contact the listing agent and ask them to remove the listing.
- How accurate is the Zillow’s Zestimate for your home?
- Do all real estate websites have the same Spring Texas homes for sale?
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Home size declines; buyers demand for 1 story homes increase
July 10th, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information, Home Seller Information | views
The National Association of Home Builders announced that builders are listening to buyers preferences and constructing smaller homes. After nearly 30 years of increases, the size of new single-family homes built experiences its first decrease.
The nationwide average of 2,438 sqft for homes built in 2009 is about a 100 feet smaller than the homes built in 2007. The homes built in 2008 were about the same square footage as 2007.
Several years ago, Spring Texas home buyers wanted the biggest house they could afford. This was especially true if the buyers were relocating to Spring Texasfrom out of state. It was around the time Hurricane Rita came through in 2005 and caused utility prices to increase that buyers became more concerned about the heating and cooling costs of the 4,000+ sqft McMansions. Buyers began to question whether they really needed a 4,000+ sqft home. The demand for the larger Spring Texas homes started to decrease while the demand for smaller homes began to increase.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s data, for years the percentage of 2-story homes being built has continually increased while the percentage of 1-story homes has decreased. But starting in 2006, the trend has been reversed as more buyers are demanding 1-story homes. We are experiencing the same trend of increase demand for 1-story homes in the Spring Texas real estate market. With the baby boomer population continuing to age, the demand for 1-story homes will continue to increase.
Read also:
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Lack of Communication
July 5th, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
When I sit down with prospective sellers, one of the things I want to find out about are their prior home selling experiences. Were their experiences good or bad and what made them good or bad? Sometimes the sellers have had great experiences and were very satisfied with their listing agent’s performance. Other times the seller’s listing agent failed miserably and came nowhere near meeting their 
expectations.
When the listing agents failed miserably, the main reason was due to lack of communication. The sellers said “after we signed the listing agreement, we did not hear from our real estate agent until it was either time to renew the agreement or we had an offer on the house”.
Technology has made the ability to communicate easier by providing us with more ways to communicate. But none of this technology does us any good if we do not use it. If you asked the listing agent why she didn’t communicate with her sellers, she would probably say “Until I get an offer on their house, I have nothing to tell them”.
As a Spring Texas Realtor, I believe communication is extremely important which is why I email my sellers a weekly update. The update covers the areas of 1) Marketing - in this section, I report on the marketing activities that were performed during the week. 2) Showings – in this section, I discuss the last week’s showing activity and the showing feedback. 3) Competition – in this section, I discuss the Spring Texas real estate market identifying the new homes their listing is competing against for buyers and homes that have gone under contract. I also report on anything else that could potentially impact the sale of the sellers of home.
In addition to the weekly update I provide, my sellers also receive the Prudential Gary Greene Online Sellers Advantage (OSA) report. The OSA report provides sellers with online buyer activity and is further explained in this YouTube video.
Does communication take time? Absolutely. Is it worth? I believe so. Because I have not had a seller yet tell me to stop sending the reports.
Read also:
- Automatic email notifications and missed opportunities
- Realtor.com iPhone APP and your Spring Texas home’s listing
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