Once you make the decision to sell your home, you might be tempted to just put the house on the market and get it over with as fast as possible.  After all, this can be a stressful and emotionally-draining task!

But rushing into things can show a lack of preparation and strategy. Mistakes made in the beginning of the selling process are difficult to undo. Even time – the great healer – does not help with real estate. (more…)

Some of my buyers are in no hurry to purchase their home. They say something like, "We are willing to wait until a great deal comes along", or "The sellers will get desperate to sell after the home has been on the market for a long time". What does "a long time" mean? Until now, the answer to this question has been some agent’s made-up statistic or vague answer. (more…)

After plenty of rumors and speculation, the details of the government’s economic stimulus package have finally been released.  I have read the real estate portion, and would like to give you a summary. There is now an $8,000 tax credit (or 10% of the sale price, whichever is less) for first-time homebuyers.  You might have heard about the $7,500 tax credit, which is basically an interest-free loan paid back over 15 years at $500 per year.  That credit still applies if you purchased your home between April 9 and December 31, 2008. This new $8,000 tax credit is for home purchases between January 1, and December 1, 2009, and you do not have to pay any of it back (yourself, individually… all of us ultimately will have to pay back the entire $787B… the housing portion is $6.638B).

To qualify for the $8,000 credit, you must meet ALL of the following criteria: (more…)

Did you know that 55% of all homes for sale do not have a virtual tour?  I found this statistic as I was working on my brand-new home-search page, http://aroundcu.com/search.  Give it a try and let me know what you think of it!

The virtual tours that you will find when you search for homes are simply links to external sites that have more than the maximum 9 photos that are in the multiple listing service (MLS), the main real estate database that Realtors use.  This database is what you can access through my website.  

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Existing homes overall are currently taking longer to sell than they used to, but the average selling price has gone up an average of 7.4% since 2005/2006Not bad, considering the widespread belief that 2005/2006 was the “peak” of the housing market.

It is a slightly different story for new construction homes, though. (more…)