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Fall is here and everything is changing once again. The leaves are falling and the air brisk. It’s getting dark sooner and you feel like thinks are slowing down. Despite all the changes, your home can still keep its charm and appeal for fall buyers. First you’ve got to cover some basics to keep safe and smart.
Here are few things you might want to consider:
Exterior: Check your foundation walls for cracks, heaving and crumbling.
Heating & Cooling: Oil burning equipment & heat pumps should be checked annually. Gas burning equipment can be serviced every other year.
Interiors: Check your roof for any signs of water stains, leaks, dampness and/or condensation.
Plumbing: Have your septic tank professionally drained and cleaned every two years.
Doors & Windows: Check for insulation on your doors & windows
Exterior: Clean gutters and make sure your downspouts direct water away from the foundation.
Roof: Check your vents and chimneys for squirrels, birds nest, or insects.
http://www.trulia.com/blog/esolutionsrealty/2010/03/preparing_your_home_for_fall_buyers
More developers favor ‘smart growth’ in cities, not suburban sprawl
ROCKVILLE, Md. — This suburb of Washington, D.C., inspired R.E.M.’s 1984 song about the soul-sucking blandness of a suburban adolescence that has been a staple of rock and roll. “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” described a town of empty houses, “where nobody says hello.”
But some experts in the real estate business believe that in the future, more and more of us will be going back to places like the revamped Rockville — quite happily, in fact.
“They had a point at the time,” Sally Sternbach, the head of Rockville’s economic development arm, says of R.E.M.’s quiet anthem. “We got it wrong. We built a mall that never found its anchors. It languished for 40 years. It was like the biblical 40 years in the desert.”
Then, 15 years ago, Rockville convened hearings and forums to discuss its lackluster downtown, deciding in the end to replace it with a town square lined with shops, restaurants and apartments, all steps away from a subway station — in other words, more of an urban experience.
The citizenry wanted vibrant street life both for the fun of it, and to attract business. So far, it’s worked. Teenagers use Facebook to signal spur-of-the-moment breakdance sessions on the town square’s bandstand because, as Dominique Estrera, 17, explained, it’s really the only place they can “hang out and break.”
Adults like to socialize there, too. “I love the Town Square because I can’t walk more than a couple feet without seeing someone I know from doing business,” said Robin Wiener, president of Get Real Consulting, a firm that helps healthcare providers put their records online.
Rockville’s renaissance over the past four years shows how the shift toward urban-style living has reached the suburbs. And urban planners insist the trend has legs.
Dubbed “smart growth,” the movement favors the development of a mix of housing and businesses in and near existing cities. At the same time, it discourages the Topsy-like growth of peripheral suburbs, known disparagingly as “sprawl.”
The unexpected revival of a number of cities, from Rockville to Sacramento, stands in contrast to plunging home prices in the suburbs. “America is catching on to this trend,” said Peter Calthorpe, who co-founded the Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993 to create alternatives to the conventional suburb.
He says the previous model was based on the assumption that the United States could prop up the single-family home in a distant location by keeping the cost of oil and mortgages low. But that era is over. “The true cost of transportation and housing is going to start to surface,” he warns.
Living for the city
If the trend persists, as many expect, it would be a sharp rejection of the preferences and policies that have shaped U.S. housing since World War II.
The suburb as we know it today — open, low-slung, car-dependent — was born with the post-war baby boom. All of a sudden, there was a desperate need for housing. By 1950, single-family housing starts had soared from around 286,000 a year in 1945 to 1.6 million, according to Census Bureau data. And as the car became more widely available, and roads spread, so did the suburbs.
During the most recent housing boom, homebuilders started 6.3 million detached single-family homes between 2003 and 2006. By 2007, single-family homes accounted for 63 percent of U.S. housing units.
The baby boomers whose arrival kicked off the postwar housing frenzy fed this latest expansion, too. This time, they sought space for their own families, said James Chung, president of Reach Advisors near Albany, New York, whose clients include developers. “Suburban developers did a fantastic job riding that wave,” he said.
But today, aging boomers are growing out of the suburbs and their children have not yet grown into them — and may never do so to the extent their parents did. This demographic shift, more than anything else, is driving consumer demand for compact, walkable neighborhoods, Chung said.
Born between 1946 and 1964, baby boomers represent about a third of the U.S. adult population, and will do so through the next decade, said demographer Dowell Myers of the University of Southern California.
Boomers are eager to liberate themselves from the maintenance of house, lawn and car now that their children have skipped the nest, said Mollie Carmichael of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, an Irvine, California-based firm that advises homebuilders. They want necessities within walking distance because they know they will not be able to drive forever.
After a divorce, real estate agent Kim Merrell, 51, found her ideal community in Sacramento. It has a grocer and neighbors who go “porching” to drop in on each other and chat. A local lounge, Mix Downtown, caters to people like her by waiving cover charges for the 40 and older crowd until 10:30 p.m..
In Sacramento, the 55-74 age bracket will expand by 50 percent by 2020, according to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which created a plan to reduce congestion and expand housing choices to accommodate that growth. The group aged 35 to 54, which is when people tend to buy single family homes, will shrink slightly.
Of course, not everyone can afford urban life and its pleasures, especially during this period of fitful recovery from the worst recession in nearly eight decades. Building costs in the urban core are double that of the suburbs, said Mark Friedman, president of Fulcrum Property, a developer in Sacramento’s midtown.
Developers pass those costs onto buyers. Meanwhile, the housing bust has cut the cost of Sacramento region homes 46 percent from their peak, so suburbia is still a draw for many.
For others, it’s the only option, said Henry Cisneros, the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who now runs CityView, a developer of housing within the range of average families. “Cities need to understand that a great city needs a mix of housing. It creates dysfunction when workers are required to live at great distances,” he said.
But developers will make the most money building for those who can pay a kind of virtue premium, they say. The gas-sipping Toyota Prius set the precedent: people buy it despite a price tag that is at a minimum $3,000 more than a comparable conventional car.
“It’s looking for the prettiest buyer, a person who is going to pay more for their car because it is important enough to express their values about the environment,” Friedman said.
That lucrative market explains why he and others believe the potential reward in urban development is well worth the risk. “You have to be very careful not to wind up with an obsolete business model in rapidly changing times,” said Eneas Kane, chief executive of DMB Associates, an Arizona-based developer of upscale neighborhoods.
The firm is shifting its focus toward smart growth, including a 1,433-acre Silicon Valley-style industrial salt site with a variety of homes, open space and streetcars.
All politics is local
Until very recently, a real estate agent like Merrell might have been the last person to trade the suburbs for the city. After all, her profession had bought and sold the notion that homebuyers should stretch to invest in the biggest and most expensive they could afford because prices could only go up.
The housing crash changed all that. Size and value were decoupled as prices fell farthest fastest in the far-flung suburbs, said Stan Humphries, chief economist at real estate website Zillow.com.
Now citizens with real estate savvy are honing in on the cities. Unlike the suburbs, and despite the downturn, homes closer to downtowns tended to retain their value, according to a 2008 Zillow report which analyzed the change in value for 1.65 million homes between the first quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008.
In 15 of 20 major housing markets, such as New York City but also Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Durham, North Carolina, higher home prices correlated with proximity to the city center and its restaurants, parks and libraries.
More specifically, walking distance to those amenities generates a home price premium in the range of $4,000 to $34,000, according to a 2009 study of 90,000 homes conducted by CEOs for Cities, an urban advocacy organization.
Americans are willing to invest in that lifestyle just as they were willing to pour money into their homes during the boom. Residents of communities like Sacramento and Rockville are ponying up for the urban privilege of public transportation in their own backyards.
“In one of the worst economies in a generation, people have actively chosen to raise their own taxes to support public transportation,” said Jason Jordan, the director of the Center for Transportation Excellence, which supports ballot initiatives that fund transportation.
In general, 35 percent of ballot initiatives pass. But in 2008 and 2009, 76 percent of ballot initiatives raising taxes to fund transportation did, Jordan said.
People are increasingly pushing for policy that supports an urban lifestyle, and leaders from the White House to town halls are listening, said Alexander von Hoffman of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
This year, President Barack Obama created the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities to coordinate federal housing and transportation funding with local development. He designated $2.1 billion in grant money for projects like streetcars in Tucson, Arizona and bike trails in Philadelphia. And the House of Representative’s version of the Surface Transportation Act would nearly double funding for public transportation.
The president “is helping to coordinate and reinforce a movement that was already gaining momentum. He’s helping those local and state leaders,” von Hoffman said.
In California, for example, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 375 in 2008, requiring each region to adopt a “sustainable communities strategy” to reduce greenhouse gases and give transportation projects top priority for funding.
“It was the coalition of the impossible,” said Darrell Steinberg, president pro tempore of the California State Senate. “The builders, the local governments, the environmental community and the affordable housing advocates had been at odds for decades on these issues.”
Of course, some critics oppose government’s role in “engineering” neighborhoods in cities. During debate over the California bill, conservatives mocked government’s promotion of urban development. “Hasn’t everyone always longed to live in a dense, crime-ridden urban neighborhood, right next to the nearest railroad hub?” said one Internet ad, of Steinberg’s bill.
If anything signals smart growth’s newly mainstream status, it’s the embrace of Salt Lake City, Utah, said Christopher Leinberger, a developer and Brookings Institution fellow. “It’s a Republican state. It’s a Mormon state. It’s fallen in love with blueprint planning,” Leinberger said.
Two-thirds of the residents in the two-county region surrounding Salt Lake City voted to raise $2.5 billion for more miles of commuter and light rail track by hiking their sales tax, said Chamber of Commerce spokesman Marty Carpenter. “70 miles in 70 years!” is the rallying cry.
Salt Lake City itself will receive another $5 billion. A la Rockville, the Mormon Church is replacing two indoor malls with a walkable housing and retail complex.
Atlanta, Georgia; Boise, Idaho; Minneapolis, Minnesota and others have invited Salt Lake City officials to speak, said Natalie Gochnour, the chamber’s chief economist. “They want to know how in a conservative environment like Utah you pass ballot initiatives,” she said.
Utah got buy-in from business, Gochnour said. “It goes back to commute times, and the cost of doing business when you’re congested,” she said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38535943/ns/business-real_estate/
Earlier this year 27 students at Old Dominion University pressed their foreheads into a padded frame and peered ahead, much like patients at an eye doctor. They scrolled through pictures of 10 on-the-market homes on a computer screen as an ocular tracking program recorded their eye movements. In some of the homes, for some of the students, the living rooms were painted pink.
The question: Would a pink room-a problem you could fix for the price of a few cans of paint-make the students less likely to purchase the homes? The answer, based on preliminary results, is yes.
The study is part of a growing body of research that is putting real estate under the microscope. Scientists are finding that psychology-everything from how a buyer perceives his agent to how a seller prices her home-plays an unexpectedly large role. “When the market was going up, these questions were mildly interesting,” says Michael Seiler, a professor of real estate at Old Dominion University and the coauthor of numerous studies in the field (including the one about the pink room). Today, with the market wobbly, “they’re much more relevant,” and the results of such research, he and other academics say, can offer useful insights to buyers and sellers alike.
Here’s a roundup of some pertinent findings.
Choose Your Words Carefully
For a seller, advertising that you’ve recently painted your house seems like a no-brainer. But in a study that looked at nearly 60,000 residential real estate transactions in Texas, listings that mentioned new paint, new carpet and/or roof work sold, on average, for slightly less than those that did not.
Thomas A. Thomson, the study’s coauthor and the director of the Real Estate Finance and Development Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio, says that buyers aren’t going to be fooled by a problem house simply because it has a fresh coat of paint. “It’s kind of like putting lipstick on a pig,” he says. But even if there’s nothing wrong with the house, an advertisement that touts new features could set off alarm bells. If a seller says everything is new, a buyer might wonder why everything needed to be replaced-and whether there are other defects lurking.
Thomson recommends sellers take the simpler route: Let potential buyers be surprised by the quality of the home instead of disappointed by how average it is compared with its description.
Looks Do Count
Do buyers pay more when sellers’ real estate agents are attractive? Apparently so: Preliminary results of a study from Old Dominion University suggest that, put bluntly, the more attractive a male finds his female agent, the higher the price he’ll probably be willing to pay. Women also seem to be susceptible to attractive female agents, although not to the degree that men are. (Neither women nor men seem to respond much to attractive males.) “I’d like to think I wouldn’t fall prey to it,” says Seiler. “But I think that the people who were in our study would have said the exact same thing.”
Welcome, Out-of-Towners!
Out-of-state buyers tend to pay more than locals for properties of equal value, particularly when they come from states with higher real estate prices, according to a study from Brigham Young University. Researchers looked at apartment sales in the Phoenix metropolitan area-2,854 transactions from 1990 to 2002-and found that, on average, out-of-state buyers paid more than 5 percent more than their in-state counterparts.
BYU’s Grant McQueen says it often makes economic sense for out-of-state buyers to find homes fast, even if it means shelling out more money than if they shopped more or negotiated longer. Otherwise, they can end up paying more in travel costs than they save on the price of the home. The other reason, though, is less rational: In what’s known as “anchoring,” buyers tend to pay more for a home when they’re used to paying a higher price elsewhere.
The Downside of Upbeat
A big part of any decision to sell a house is where a homeowner thinks prices are heading. So how do owners feel after the brutal market of the past few years? Surprisingly-perhaps naively-optimistic. A recent survey of 479 homeowners in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas found that people were about five times more likely to say their own homes would see their prices increase in the next 12 months than they were to say their neighbors’ homes would do better.
Robert Shiller, a professor at Yale University, and Karl Case, a professor at Wellesley College, survey homeowners every year to gauge how confident they are that their homes will increase in value. Only once, when the housing market was at its worst in the recent crash, did the poll results slide into the negative. In general, the average respondent figured his home was bound to jump in value in the near future. “People don’t change their opinions that quickly,” says Shiller.
Whether they’ll regret those opinions later, only time will tell. If his expectations are out of whack with reality, an overoptimistic seller could wind up waiting for a higher price that will never arrive. But pessimists should tread just as carefully: An overly downbeat seller could wind up dumping a house at a price far below what it could fetch a year or two later.
http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/the-psychology-of-real-estate.html
Not Using Experts. This tip really applies not only to selling a home but also to financial investing, building a business, or anything else that requires expertise. Of course, you can sell your own home and some people do; but many times the headaches that go along with it far outweigh the benefits. Frequently, I hear stories from homeowners who attempt to do this, but months later that those same sellers are trying to locate a qualified real estate expert. Their self efforts effectively slowed their sales process and lost time on the market.
Getting Emotionally Attached. You’ve had history with your home—the memories cause you to have an emotional attachment with it. But now, you have to detach and recognize that your emotional attachment will likely not transfer to the buyer—at least not right away.
Buyers will come into your home looking to find out what’s wrong hoping to thereby negotiate the price down. They’ll be skeptical—checking all around the house to make sure that they’re not going to buy the home and end up having to deal with burdens of many flaws later. They won’t have the memories of the kids taking their first steps in the living room or the big celebration you had for grandma. Buyers will possibly think about the parties and how their lives can fit into this house if you’ve removed the items that make it look and feel too much like your home.
When you get emotionally unattached you’re allowing yourself to see the home you’re listing for sale the way a potential buyer might.
Holding Your Own Open House. This one really goes hand-in-hand with the first “don’t do” tip. Some sellers like to be around when their home is on the market. However, I suspect you have better things to do than sit at home while potential buyers explore your house.
Making fish and other smelly foods. Okay, so we are not saying that you can’t cook what you want in your home. The issue is actually not just about food but also things like pet odors and incense or anything else that might have an offensive odor to a potential buyer.
Generally, a pleasant odor is appreciated but there are different types of people and “pleasant” is relative to the individual. So, basically some of the mistakes that you can make are to fry up some fish, let the pets do the wrong thing in the house and then not deodorize, and leave the pets loose to “welcome” the guests in their own ways. For certain, most people won’t appreciate those smells.
As for using other fragrances, my personal opinion is that if the smell is subtle and not overwhelming, it probably won’t cause any issues with buyers unless they happen to have a particular allergy. However, if there’s a repugnant smell, it will get a huge reaction and buyers will flee the home like scurrying ants seeking food and water on a hot summer day.
Watch out for these mistakes and you’ll be ahead of the sellers who are wasting time (and possibly losing buyers) by not seeking expert help, not detaching from the home, showing their own home, and forgetting to deodorize.
Make Home A Haven tours this one-of-a-kind rotating round house. Eight rooms, stunning views and sunlight everywhere. But this Wilton Connecticut home’s biggest prize is its unique ability to spin with the touch of a button. It’s head turning too, both inside and out.
The round shape is beautiful to look at, but this spread offers much more. I love the floor to ceiling windows that envelope you in nature and light. The core of the home and its central spiral staircase are stationary; the rest of the house spins. It takes about 48 minutes for one complete rotation, so imagine stepping off the stairs and walking directly into your bedroom one day and into your living room the next. The same variety applies to the outdoors views. Start breakfast overlooking a massive pond and finish breakfast overlooking a serene garden. The round motif continues throughout the house, from the fireplace to the limestone sink in the powder room. There are 3 bedrooms and 2 ½ baths. It sits on 4 acres and has a guest-house and an inground pool. The house is made of steel, glass and cedar shingles. Designed by famed architect Richard T. Foster in 1968 (as a collaboration with Philip Johnson), the home is on the market right now with an asking price of $1,750,000.00. If you’re in the market for a round rotating house contact at William Pitt/ Sotheby’s International Realty.
http://shine.yahoo.com/event/haven/extreme-homes-the-rotating-house-1610187/
WASHINGTON – Home sales surpassed expectations for April as government incentives provided a temporary boost to the housing market.
The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of previously owned homes rose 7.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.77 million. That was the best showing in five months and better than the 5.63 million units economists had expected.
The increase in sales sparked a rise in home prices. The median price for a new home rose to $173,100, up 4 percent from a year ago.
The federal government provided a big boost to home sales this spring by offering first-time buyers a tax credit of up to $8,000. Homeowners looking to upgrade were able to qualify for a credit of up to $6,500. The deadline for getting a signed sales contract was April 30.
Sales were up in all parts of the country except the West. The gains were led by a 21.1 percent jump in the Northeast and a 9.9 percent rise in the Midwest. Sales also rose 8.6 percent in the South.
The only region of the country that saw sales decline was the West, where sales dropped by 6.2 percent from March.
The big question facing the housing market is what happens now that the government’s tax credits have expired.
“No doubt there will be some temporary fallback in the months immediately after it expires,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the Realtors.
But Yun said that the improving economy has led to an upswing in consumer confidence, which should help support sales in the months ahead.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100524/ap_on_bi_ge/us_home_sales
There’s some good news in the residential mortgage market. With completion of the first “private label” deal in almost two years, securitization is starting to come back.
A small $235-million bundle of jumbo loans attracted plenty of interest from private investors and a top rating from Moody’s. What helped make them attractive was that the underlying loans required borrowers to thoroughly document income and assets and to have high credit scores.
More deals will be coming, though they’ll be small. It will take years to return to the peak volume of $200 billion worth of securities backed by jumbo mortgages sold annually from 2003 to 2006. At the peak of the housing boom, in 2006, the market for private-label bonds backed by mortgages amounted to about $1 trillion.
It’s a critical first step in rebuilding the housing and mortgage markets. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) are purchasing or guaranteeing conventional loans up to $417,000 in most cities and up to $729,750 in some metro areas. But without a way to offload bigger mortgages — those outside the limits allowed for Fannie, Freddie and the FHA — banks are reluctant to hold them on their books, tying up capital in reserves that are set aside in case the loans go sour. As a result, the high priced segment of the housing market has been brought to a near standstill. There is also uncertainty about new rules that might be part of the financial services regulations being debated by Congress.
Mark Vitner, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities, says the issuance is important but doesn’t signal a return to a deep, liquid private sector market anytime soon. “We’re going to see small, and I stress small, relatively low risk transactions take place this year,” he says.
Home prices in the New York metropolitan area, including North Jersey, rose slightly in the first quarter of 2010, in another sign that the housing market may be stabilizing.
The median price of an existing single-family home in the region hit $436,900 in the first quarter, up 2 percent from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. But values have dropped since 2006 and 2007, when the median price was around $540,000.
Nationally, the median price of an existing single-family home was $166,100, down 0.7 percent from a year earlier.
The North Jersey price rise was in line with gains in household incomes, said Patrick O’Keefe, an economist with the accounting firm J.H. Cohn in Roseland.
“While the region’s economy is beginning to recover, it will be quite some time before business conditions — and employment — return to pre-recession levels,” he said. “As a consequence, housing will recover only slowly.”
The number of sales statewide was up 14.5 percent over the first quarter of 2009, probably because of an $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time home buyers and a $6,500 credit for repeat buyers. Since both credits expired April 30, buyers had an incentive to jump into the market during the first quarter. The increase in sales also reflected the fact that the market was very slow during the first quarter of 2009, which was just a few months after the financial market crisis.
The expiration of the tax credit may lead to slower home sales during the rest of 2010, some analysts say. In a recent report, appraiser Jeffrey Otteau of East Brunswick said the real estate market will be affected by the end of the tax credit and an expected rise in mortgage rates later this year. In addition, he said, the inventory of homes for sale has been rising in New Jersey, as homeowners who waited out the recession put their properties on the market.
“It appears likely that home sales will slow at some point later this year and then regain their recovery momentum heading into 2011,” Otteau said.
Home sales in the Northeast rose in February as the economy showed signs of recovery, inspiring buyers.
The National Association of Realtors also said Tuesday that Northeast sales were 13 percent higher on a year-over-year basis, the biggest improvement in any of the four U.S. regions.
Nationwide, homes sales were up 8 percent from February a year ago, without adjusting for seasonal factors.
The improved sales activity in the region helped drive up prices. The median sales price of $254,700 for an existing home was almost 8 percent higher than February 2009, making the Northeast the sole region to show a price increase from last year.
The national median sales price of $165,100 was down almost 2 percent.
…
Home sales in the Northeast rose in February as the economy showed signs of recovery, inspiring buyers.
The National Association of Realtors also said Tuesday that Northeast sales were 13 percent higher on a year-over-year basis, the biggest improvement in any of the four U.S. regions.
Nationwide, homes sales were up 8 percent from February a year ago, without adjusting for seasonal factors.
The improved sales activity in the region helped drive up prices. The median sales price of $254,700 for an existing home was almost 8 percent higher than February 2009, making the Northeast the sole region to show a price increase from last year.
The national median sales price of $165,100 was down almost 2 percent.
…
Biggest sales gains: Sales in the New York City suburbs climbed 29 percent from a year ago, the second consecutive month of strong growth in that market.
Miriam Bernstein, an agent with Re/Max Prime Properties in Scarsdale, N.Y., saw evidence of growing demand in the pricey New York suburban market, coupled with an occasional lack of supply.
”A tremendous number of buyers are out there ready to buy, but I don’t think we have enough houses for what they’re looking for,” she said.
…
Biggest sales declines: Sales in Trenton, N.J., fell 14 percent, while Hartford, Conn., was down nearly 9 percent and Philadelphia off 6 percent.
Realtors were split on the impact of the historic winter storms that buried the mid-Atlantic states, particularly Pennsylvania and New Jersey, while leaving northern New England relatively unscathed.
…
Sellers whose homes have been on the market for months may also be starting to lose patience and showing more flexibility.
http://njrereport.com/index.php/2010/03/24/is-the-slump-over-in-the-northeast/
How much is your real estate—your house, condominium unit, cottage, income property—worth in this market?
If a number immediately popped into your head when you read this question, I have a few more questions for you:
- How did you arrive at that value—detailed research, neighbourhood gossip, property tax market assessment or a comparative market evaluation from your local real estate professional?
- Why do you think real estate value for a specific property can be represented by one number and not a range of values based on the variety of value factors and prospective buyers for your property?
- How important is it for you to know the value of what is probably your principal asset and, therefore, to understand your full real estate purchasing power in this market?
- What are the consequences of being wrong about the value you’re so sure of?
If you have no idea of your property’s value or little confidence in what you know, why have you not taken advantage of free opportunities to determine the current market value of your real estate?
Real estate brokers and salespersons routinely offer their services free of charge to property owners. Received a “free market evaluation” certificate by mail or email lately?
Although there is no set definition of what a market evaluation should include, there are basic ingredients that can be useful in evaluating your position and the services offered by local real estate professionals:
- Solds: A property is worth exactly what a buyer is ready to pay for it. Analysing actual solds for your location and for properties similar to yours in surrounding neighbourhoods will provide solid ground for establishing value.
- Expireds: These are listings which terminated at the end of the usual thirty- to ninety-day period without a sale. Expireds are typically considered to be over-priced for the market, based on the condition of the property and current buyer patterns. These listings can also represent insight into marketing strategies to avoid or to adopt in your area.
- Currents: If your property were listed, how would it compare with the other houses or condominiums that buyers shopping that location or that price range would be shown? It’s buyers’ needs, wants and what’s “in,” not sellers’ costs, that determine value.
- Value Boosters: Repairs, modernizations and improvements to your property can boost value. The real estate professional will offer some simple, cosmetic suggestions and others which may involve investment with a predictable return. Listening to these suggestions is the beginning of learning to separate pride of ownership from investment realities. What you love is not necessarily what buyers will pay top dollar for in your location. For instance, a swimming pool can devalue a property in some neighbourhoods. In others, this amenity is highly prized. Inground versus above-ground can also make a value difference.
- Value Range: Using solds, expireds and currents, you’ll be led through the process of determining a range of value for your property. The real estate professional will explain why market value is a range rather than an absolute value. The relationship between that value and property-tax market value will also be discussed since local variations are significant. The value range will be evident to you after this buyer’s-eye-view evaluation.
- Selling Costs: It’s not the list price, or even market value, but what you would net, or keep in your pocket, that is really important. Typical costs will help you fully appreciate what value in an offer will mean to you.
- What Ifs: Example listings for moves “up” or for “downsizing” will complete your real estate value picture. Sometimes sellers gain the greatest value in closing the price gap between their neighbourhood and those considered “better.” Not all locations fare equally in a market. Values in your area may be boosted by buying activity while other locations, even the most preferred, may not be significantly affected or may even face a downturn. Rural property does not always increase in value as quickly as urban. If you want to move out of the city, check to see if you’ll be favoured by a value gradient which allows you to buy more house for less money in your dream country setting.
As part of the evaluation, real estate professionals usually outline their services. Don’t discount this as a sales pitch. It may be, but it is also an important opportunity for you to learn what you’d get for your money—the commission. If you’ve been out of the market for a while, this is a valuable education. Technology provides sellers and buyers with more access to listing information than ever before. Brokerage services and standards have also changed. Bring yourself up to date.
Give us a call…….
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