Month: May 2005

“We’ll Sell Your Home or We’ll Buy It Ourselves”

Who wouldn’t want to have this assurance that their home will be sold? If you are attracted to this type of service, make sure you read all the details. All homeowners should be interested in how these type of services are offered because most end up not actually having to buy 99+% of the homes in their programs. How are they so successful in selling a home??

Let’s look at one of these services that is currently being offered by a Brokerage. Their program does the following:

1) Makes the homeowner get the home in move-in condition, plus get a home inspection and fix what needs to be before the home goes on the market. This makes perfect sense. Having a home ready for move-in will make it show better and prevent any unpleasant surprises when the inspections are done.

2) Price the home right.
The service requires the Seller to pay for an appraisal. Then, the home has to be priced within 5% of the appraisal. This particular Brokerage’s program has set times when price reductions will happen over the 6 month period the Brokerage has to sell the home. Any valid offer within 5% of the current asking price must be accepted by the Seller.

If the home isn’t sold within 6 months, the Brokergage will pay 10% lower than what the home was appraised at.

The better description of this service should be
“We’ll Sell Your Home or We’ll Buy It Ourselves (at 10% lower than the appraised price)”

With the price appreciations in the area, an appraisal that was done 6 months ago is probably well under the market price already!

www.ScanUSA.com launched a new service where they will notify you if there is an alert in an area. The alerts you can enable range from knowing if a registered sex offender has moved into your neighborhood, to amber alerts, to weather alerts. You can enter up to 5 zip codes to receive alerts on.

Milliion-dollar homes nearly doubles since 2000

Article here:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/24/real_estate/home_values/index.htm?cnn=yes

The new upscale clothing stores are about to open in downtown San Luis Obispo. I got a good chuckle yesterday when I heard a radio ad on KVEC for the upcoming grand opening of Talbots. They mispronounced San Luis Obispo (San “Luey” Obispo) about 5 times.

With all the recent talk about how the Marketplace would effect local businesses, it would be nice if the chains that are coming into downtown would at least know how to pronounce the city. I’ll be keeping my ears open for the ads from Ambercrombie & Finch and Banana Republic to see if they get it right!

There are some new features now available with the MLS Search #1 (available from the MLS Search page on SloCountyHomes.com).

Here are some of the new features:
– Sort listings so the ones with photos are at the top.
– Change how long before your HouseTrack new listing notification service will expire and change the expiration.
– Ability to save more searches and have more active HouseTracks.
– Phone number is now optional when registering to save searches, listings, or define HouseTrack notifications.

About 21.6 million Web surfers, or 15 percent of the active Internet population, visited a real estate or apartment Web site in April, up 26 percent from six months ago, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

If you’re going to be needing the assistance of the Morro Bay Planning Department, make sure you’re not in a hurry. The Morro Bay City Council voted 4-1 to not replace the two (out of three) planners that are leaving in mid-summer. Waits for permit reviews, counter assistance, and phone assitance will be longer. The city council is waiting for the budget to be approved before it looks to replace the planners.

I enhanced the neighborhood home price on my site so it’s easier to use.

Check it out!
http://www.slocountyhomes.com/home_price_page.htm

I know of no other agent that offers a free automated home sold price report!

In 2000, only 28% of home buyers surveyed by the California Association of Realtors (CAR) said they used the Internet as a significant part of the homebuying process. The latest survey reported 62% of home buyers said they did, an incredible jump just in a few years! What will it be in the next few years, more than 80%?

There’s no question now that the Internet is the #1 place Buyers go when looking for a home. Real estate magazines and newspapers are all trying to figure out how to move their business to the Internet. The next few years should be interesting to see how these other business react to how the Internet has changed the way homes are marketed.

There doesn’t appear to be any signs of a slow down in the real estate market. Here’s a link to the first quarter report on markets around the country. http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/nar_1q05/