Short sales in our area can hold the key to more than one real estate-related issue. For cash-strapped borrowers, short sale success means relieving an unsustainable obligation without having to go through foreclosure. For sharp-eyed buyers, local short sales can present outstanding opportunities to purchase properties otherwise beyond their affordability range.
Both are reasons to applaud …
Near the end of 2012, the National Association of Realtors® announced that the average home took 69 days to sell, a welcome shrinkage from the 98-day Time On Market (TOM) common during the housing market crisis. They expected the 2013 numbers to be even stronger, and they haven’t been disappointed: the last read for TOM …
After weeks of dealing with inspections, appraisals, repairs, and the sheaf of paperwork created by your mortgage company, The Final Walk-Through should come as a welcome relief to those buying a home in town this summer. Despite its ominous name, that final walk-through is anything but — it provides a last layer of protection for …
We all do a mental survey before preparing to enter our home in the local home listings. We ask ourselves something like, “What should I improve that will pay for itself?”
Since anything that improves home listings can result in better offers, the answer can never be proven absolutely. But Remodeling magazine gives it a try. …
As home prices continue to rise throughout most of the nation, sooner or later people begin to wonder whether we’ve crossed the threshold dividing undervalued from overvalued. Pundit shorthand for “overvalued” has gradually become almost synonymous with the far more fear-inducing term, “Bubble.” As with the chewing gum and soap-blowing varieties, the term can’t help …
If you are selling a home in town this year, even in the improving market you certainly know there is a great deal more to it than sticking a sign in your front yard. It will be a competition between like-minded homeowners — some with very competitive properties to offer. This is where the help …
When it comes to residential real estate outlook, some truisms say it all: “Strike while the iron is hot!” “The early bird gets the worm!” “Time and tide waits for no man…” Sometimes those hoary old clichés have survived because their wisdom doesn’t ever change — and right now, some hard facts and figures may …
If you’ve come across the term “zombie foreclosures” in recent months, it wasn’t referring to voodoo parlors whose priests couldn’t pay the mortgage.
Not exactly dead, but not exactly alive, they are properties stuck in a kind of zombie-like limbo. They are homes that have been abandoned by their former owners at some point before foreclosure. …
In the business publishing world, one of the most reliable bestseller categories is Marketing and Sales: How to Sell This, or Tips for Selling That. Selling may be a complicated business, but one approach always sets you ahead of the pack: putting yourself in the shoes of the customer.
Selling a local home is a case …
This month’s release of National Housing Data from realtor.com shows yet another rise in list prices, which, as expected, apparently spurred more previously reluctant sellers to put their homes on the market. The pressure to jump on board continued as “the home buying season shifted into high gear…”
With more area listings competing for prospects’ interest, …