Category Archives: Sellers

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August Housing Barometer Details Recovery Phase 3

Each month, Trulia’s Housing Barometer charts how quickly the housing market is moving back to “normal.”  They summarize three key housing market indicators: construction starts (Census), existing home sales (NAR), and the delinquency-plus-foreclosure rate (LPS First Look). For each indicator, they compare this month’s data to (1) how bad the numbers got at their worst and (2) their pre-bubble “normal” levels.

In July 2013, all three measures improved: construction starts and existing home sales rose, while the delinquency + foreclosure rate notched downward.

Read the details…

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All-Cash Deals on the Rise

Money

As mortgage rates creep up and stringent lending standards continue to make it difficult for many home buyers to get loans, all-cash deals are accounting for more and more home sales completed in the U.S.

RealtyTrac data released recently shows that 40 percent of all home sales in July — including single-family homes, co-ops, condos and townhomes — were made without a loan being recorded, up from 35 percent in June and 31 percent in July 2012.

Read more…

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Repeat Buyers, Backbone of Housing Recovery

The growing ranks of repeat home buyers are helping to drive the housing recovery, making up for the dwindling numbers of first-time buyers.

Repeat home buyers accounted for 54 percent of existing-home sales in June, up from 49 percent just one year prior, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. Meanwhile, first-time buyers — who usually account for 40 percent of the market share — shrank to 29 percent in June. A lack of lower-priced homes and strict lending requirements are edging more first-time buyers out of the market.

“What we’re seeing are these buyers who’ve waited around and who have finally realized this is a good time to move,” says David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders. “They will feed the demand until our economy gets a little more solid.”

The article…

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5 Ridiculous Seller Sayings

Selling your home isn’t easy. In fact, it’s one of those experiences that can cause even the most stable, calm human being to feel panic, outrage, and anxiety — and sometimes all of the above, at the same time. We get it. Even worse, these volatile emotions can lead you to say silly things that affect your home selling strategy. Here are five ridiculous refrains we’ve heard from sellers over the years, along with some insights to keep them from infiltrating your actual home selling decisions.

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After months of rising prices, is the Puget Sound housing market cooling off?

 Komo 4 Video

The housing headlines have been screaming all spring and summer about how home buyers have been pushing prices up in King County.

There have been bidding wars for some Seattle-area homes, and median home prices are up 15 percent over a year ago.

Around Lake Sammamish, home prices are back up to peak levels set in 2007. In West Seattle, homes in some turn-of-the-century neighborhoods have been selling for up to $650,000 or more. And in other areas, sellers are getting 10 or 20 offers on a single property.

But now it’s beginning to appear that the price and pace of sales may be cooling off in the Puget Sound housing market.

Watch the KOMOnews…

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Home Sales and Prices Still Rising

… despite lean inventory and increasing mortgage rates.

Rising interest rates, rising prices and rising consumer confidence are creating a “positive cyclone of home sales activity,” according to members of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service earlier this month. A robust job market around the Greater Seattle area is also spurring sales.

Member-brokers reported 9,565 pending sales during July for an increase of more than 13.6 percent from a year ago – the highest year-over-year gain since January. Last month’s mutually accepted offers across 21 counties also marked a slight improvement on June’s total of 9,484 pending sales.

Read the details…

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What’s in a name?

Hear how a new name will revolutionize the real estate industry!

BHHS Seal - Cabernet

Watch the video…

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Surprising Foreclosure Hot Spots

US

While housing markets across the country are recovering from the deepest throes of the foreclosure crisis, others are just stumbling into it — and they aren’t exactly the places you’d expect.

States like Maryland, Oregon and New Jersey, which maintained relatively stable markets after the housing bubble popped, saw new foreclosure filings climb by double- and triple-digit percentages in July, according to RealtyTrac.

Read more…

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7 Home Features Buyers Love

Prudential Sign in Yard

If your home has gorgeous ocean views, sits on acres of land, or is in the most prestigious neighborhood in town, it’s pretty easy to know what to lead with in your marketing. But if you have a normal house in a normal neighborhood, it can be hard to know where to start. Some features that you take for granted might have major appeal to home buyers. Here are seven often overlooked home features to make your listing shine.

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3 Multiple Personality Market Musts for Smart Sellers

In the dramatic world of the theater, they say “it ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings.“ In the dramatic world of the real estate market, headlines touting multiple offers and appreciating home values can feel like a premature declaration that the recession is over to some homeowners.

As you’ve probably heard a million times, real estate is hyperlocal. And it’s true – in many, many markets across the country, a mood of exuberant recovery has eclipsed the recession era’s stagnation, doom and gloom.  But the fat lady hasn’t sung for the 10 million homeowners who are still upside down on their mortgages, according to CoreLogic, or for sellers whose homes aren’t following the national trend of flying off the market  after receiving dozens of contingency-free, cash offers.

Here are a few multiple personality market musts for smart sellers…