Road construction
June 11th, 2010 categories: Discover Spring Texas | views
Have you ever driven by a massive hill of dirt and wondered what’s going on? Or have you been wondering if someone besides you believes that Kuykendahl north of FM 2920 needs to be expanded?
A good place to find the answers to your Spring Texas construction questions is at the Harris County Precinct 4 website. Click on the Roads & Bridges tab. In this section of the web site, you will find maps detailing the capital projects completed, current projects under construction, current projects under design, and proposed projects.
Under the Capital Improvements section of the website is a link to a complete listing of Capital Improvement Projects. The listing of Capital Improvement Projects identifies the project, describes the scope of the project, its stage of development, projected completion date, and the date the information was last updated.
The Harris County Precinct 4 website is an excellent resource to use to stay informed of road construction projects in the Spring Texas area.
Read also:
- How to find out what’s the traffic like in Spring Texas
- Tips on navigating the Spring Texas roads
- Smile, you’re on red light camera
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Automatic email notifications and missed opportunities
June 9th, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
Over 90% of home buyers are searching for Spring Texas homes for sale on the Internet. Ninety percent of home buyers is a powerful number. But home buyers are doing much more than just searching for homes on the Internet. They are also looking at photos, mapping locations, viewing virtual tours, viewing YouTube videos, and setting up automatic email notifications for homes matching their desires.
Automatic email notifications are a great way for buyers to be alerted when a new home matching their desires is added to the Spring Texas real estate market. These buyers are what is called “pent-up demand”. Buyers who are currently in the market and are waiting for the right house to come on to the market.
As a Spring Texas home seller you have one only opportunity to take advantage of this pent-up demand. Get it right and your house will get sold quicker. Get it wrong and its a missed opportunity that you are not able to get back.
How do you get it right and take advantage of “pent-up demand’? It’s really pretty easy. Just make sure your home’s listing is entered into our MLS system with photos. Buyers want photos!
If your listing is not entered with photos, the automatic email notification home buyers receive will be like the one below. 
If you think buyers will just wait for photos to be added to your listing, you are wrong. They won’t. Buyers don’t need to. Tomorrow morning sitting in their email inbox will be a listing alert of new Spring Texas homes and these listings will have photos. While your house, they have forgotten all about it. Too bad your house didn’t have photos to view because it may have been the right house for them.
You have only one opportunity to capitalize on pent-up buyer demand. Don’t blow it with no picture available.
Read also:
- Is your home’s listing on page 1 or page 200 of Google?
- How to choose a listing agent to sell your house?
- How to increase your list price and attract more buyers
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Flood Insurance – Wise purchase or a waste of money?
June 5th, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information | views
Once again, hurricane season has arrived. Hopefully, we will have another calm year like 2009 and not another year like 2008 when Hurricane IKE came barreling through the Spring Texas area. If your house is located in the 100-year flood plain and you have a mortgage, your lender requires you to have flood insurance. But what if you own your Spring Texas house or your house is not located in the 100-year flood zone should you buy flood insurance? Or is flood insurance just a waste of your money?
I think to some degree we all hate insurance. It doesn’t matter whether it is homeowners or auto or health insurance, we still hate paying for something that provides us with no immediate benefit. But now when we need insurance, then we are very glad we have it. If only we could perfectly time our insurance needs. We would buy insurance just before we needed it and not a day before. But since you are not going to be able to time your insurance needs, you need to decide ”Is flood insurance a wise purchase or a waste of money?”
The statistics:
- Only 20% of the households in Harris County have flood insurance
- During Tropical Storm Allison, 65% of the areas that flooded were outside the 100-year flood plain.
- During the torrential downpour in April of 2009, 70% of the 2,300 flood damaged homes were outside the 100-year flood plain.
Why is the percentage of flood damaged homes located outside the 100-year flood plain so high? It’s because of what the flood plain maps DO NOT depict. The flood plain maps show flooding risks from bayous and streams going over their banks during certain theoretical floods. The maps DO NOT show flooding risks from street flooding caused by storm sewers exceeding their capacity. Nor do they show what’s referred to as “sheet flow” which is water traveling over land to reach the bayous. Nor do they show flooding risks from extreme flooding events as we experienced with Tropical Storm Allison.
If all those statistics aren’t enough to convince you that buying flood insurance for your Spring Texas house is a wise decision, let me give you one more statistic. Over 50% of the flooding that occurs in Harris County is caused by flooding scenerios NOT depicted on flood plain maps. With flood insurance on an average Spring Texas house located outside the 100-year flood plain being around $250 a year, it is a wise purchase.
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Is your home’s listing on page 1 or page 200 of Google?
May 31st, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
How do buyers find Spring Texas real estate? They Google. When it comes to search there is none more powerful.
When home buyers are googling moving to Spring Texas, Spring Texas subdivisions, blogs on Spring Texas real estate or a home’s pysical address what will they find? Will it be your home they find or a home you are competing with?
Choose a Spring Texas Realtor who puts your home on page 1 of Google.
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Why does it cost more to live in a gated community?
May 28th, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information | views
Why does it cost more tods live in a gated community in Spring Texas and is it worth it? The first part of the question I can answer for you. Whether it’s worth the extra cost is one of personal opinion.
We have several gated communities in Spring Texas including Estates at Creek Ends, Spring Lakes, Lakes of Cypress Forest, Bainbridge Estates, Canyon Gate at Legends Ranch, the Falls at Champion Forest, and more. The annual home owners association (HOA) fees for these gated communities range from $815 to $1,756 while non-gated communities in Spring Texas range from $400 and $700. 
Why does it cost more to live in a gated community?
There are several reasons ….
1) cost of the gate (initial and ongoing maintenance) - The gates do break down.
2) cost of the guard – Some communities are gated and guarded.
3) cost of the streets - In non-gated communities, the county is responsible for street maintenance. In gated communities, the HOA is responsible for street maintence. Our subdivision streets don’t require a lot of maintenance but when they do it is expensive. Pot hole can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars to repair.
The smaller the gated Spring Texas subdivision is the more expensive the HOA will be. The fewer the homes to share the cost amongst the more each homeowner has to bear. The HOA fees vary due to the size and the level of amenities in the subdivision.
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Discover Meyer Park – VIDEO
May 26th, 2010 categories: Parks and Recreation | views
Meyer Park is one of the many great public parks we have in Spring Texas.
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Realtor.com iPhone APP and your listing
May 24th, 2010 categories: Home Seller Information | views
Did you know that since its launch in 2007 over 42 million iPhones have been sold? Did you know 24 million 4G iPhones are projected to be sold in 2010? These are huge numbers with my husband, Rick Ratchford and I accounting for 2 of the 42 million in iPhone sales. But what does the millions of iPhone users have to do with the listing of your Spring Texas house? A lot.
The percentage of home buyers using the Internet to search for Spring Texas homes for sale has been steadily increasing over the years. According to the latest NAR survey over 90% of home buyers are using the Internet to search for homes. 90% is huge which is why it’s important your Realtor’s marketing plan has a heavy emphasis on Internet marketing. But what does the Internet have to do with iPhones?
The # 1 most frequented Internet website for real estate is Realtor.com. Realtor.com has developed an application or APP for the iPhone that allows home buyers to search for real estate listings on their phone. Realtor.com displays the real estate listings on the iPhone APP similar to the way they display them on their website. If your Realtor does not pay for what is called “Showcase Listings”, your home’s listing will only have 4 photos. But if your Realtor does pay for additional marketing exposure on Realtor.com, your listing will have 16+ photos. 
To the right are a couple of screen shots of the Realtor.com iPhone APP . The circled listing is one of the homes I am currently marketing. It along with all of my other listings are “Showcase Listings”.
Click on the photo for a larger view of the Realtor.com iPhone APP for real estate listings.
The bottom line is home buyers are using their iPhones to search for Spring Texas homes for sale. If you want your home to capture their attention, your listing needs to be a “Showcase Listing”.
UPDATE - As of August 16th, 2010, the Realtor.com iPhone APP reached the 1,500,000 download. A short eight months after its introduction.
Read also:
- How to increase your list price and attract more buyers
- How to choose a listing agent to sell your Spring Texas house
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How to dispute your real estate taxes
May 22nd, 2010 categories: Property Taxes | views
If you haven’t filed a protest of your Spring Texas real estate taxes yet, you still can. But don’t wait too much longer as the protest deadline is June 1st. Once you decide to protest the tax assessed value of your Spring Texas house, the next decision you have to make is do you protest the value yourself or do you hire a property tax reduction firm to do it for you?
If you have the time to prepare, feel comfortable in presenting your data, and have the time to attend the scheduled protest, then you may want to go it alone. But before you decide which way to go, you need to know how to dispute your real estate taxes. The comptroller’s office for the state of Texas has put together a slide show presentation titled “How to Present Your Case at an Appraisal Review Board Hearing“. The presentation does an excellent job of explaining the tax protest process.
You can be successful in protesting your real estate taxes on your own. For the last several years, I have handled the protest myself and have successfully reduced my Spring Texas real estate taxes. This year, a property tax reduction firm will be handling my protest. Why would I want to pay someone for something I can do myself? After a preliminary review of the tax assessed value of my house, I determined the Harris County Appraisal District’s number to be pretty accurate and it’s not worth my time to protest. But it is worth me hiring a property tax reduction firm. Especially since I do NOT incur a cost unless they are able to reduce my taxes.
There is another bonus to having O’Connor and Associates protest my taxes. If they are unable to lower my real estate taxes, I receive a FREE $50 American Express gift card. Either way I win!
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Real Estate negotiations – business or personal?
May 19th, 2010 categories: Home Buyer Information, Home Seller Information | views
Negotiating the sell or purchase of Spring Texas real estate is vastly different than other business negotiations. Yes, there are some similarities between real estate and business negotiations as they both involve people, a contract, and require give and take between the parties but that’s where the similarity ends.
Business negotiations are just that business. It’s nothing personal just business. Real estate negotiations are almost the exact opposite. Yes, it’s still business but there is an awful lot of personal involved too.
In business negotiations, unless you have ownership in the company, it is not your money involved in the transaction. In real estate negotiations, it is your money and the fact that it is YOUR money changes everything. The sales price, the cost of the repairs, and the closing costs all directly impact your personal finances.
In business negotiations, you may be negotiating a price for 1,000 whatchamacallits. If the manufacturer doesn’t have 1,000 whatchamacallits on hand, he will produce additional ones and all of the whatchamacallits will be exactly alike. In real estate negotiations, you are negotiating for a one of a kind product. Sure, there are other Spring Texas houses with the same floor plan. They may even be in the same subdivision and have similar amenities. But there is no other house with the same floor plan, the same amenities, in the same subdivision, and in the exact same location as the house you are wanting to purchase.
In business negotiations, the parties to the transaction have no personal attachment to the product. It is only a product. In real estate negotiations, the house is much more than a product to the sellers. The house holds memories of fun cookouts with friends, it is where their child took his first steps, and where holiday gatherings with family were held.
In business negotiations, logic will usually win out. The parties negotiate the terms and a deal will be struck. In real estate negotiations, egos and personal feelings can cause negotiations to break down and prevent buyers and sellers from negotiating a deal.
The first step in real estate negotiations is to recognized and understand that there are differences between business negotiations and real estate negotiations. The next step is to remain logical and stay calm. Just remember it is not necessary for you to like who’s buying your Spring Texas house. You should only care that someone is BUYING your house.
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Spring Texas Real Estate: Market Report April 2010
May 17th, 2010 categories: Spring Texas Real Estate Market Reports | views
What’s going on with the Spring Texas Real Estate Market? Fueled by the last minute rush from buyers wanting to take advantage of the tax credits before there expiration on April 30th, home sales for the month were 27% higher than April 2009. While the prior year’s month over month showed a significant increase, there was no corresponding increase over the prior year’s YTD sales figure.
The YTD average sales price and median sales price are slightly higher but not due to price appreciation. The increase is attributable to a shift in the distribution of home sales with a larger percentage of the sales occurring at the higher price ranges. Months of inventory which is the quantity of time it would take for all the homes currently on the Spring Texas real estate market to sell based upon prior sales activity is 6.o months. Six months of inventory is considered to be a balanced market with neither buyers nor sellers having the upper hand.
Homes in the over $400,000 price range are still suffering from a buyer’s market with months of inventory in the 8 to 10 months range. The home buyers tax credits spurred activity in the lower price ranges but had little to no impact on the upper price ranges.
You can expect to see a significant decrease in pending home sales for May versus April. As we have experienced a signficant decrease in showing activity since the end of April. It will be interesting to see what the YTD home sales figures are in September. Until then, we won’t be able to determine if the tax credits fueled a true increase in home sales or merely pushed up the timing of home sales.
Want more numbers? Check out past Spring Texas real estate market reports
The data represented is from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and the Houston Association of Realtors MLS for single family existing homes in Area 13. Area 13 covers the geographic boundaries of East – I45 to West – Hwy 249 to South – Beltway 8 to North – Spring Cypress. A good portion of the houses in MLS area 13 have a Spring Texas mailing address
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