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.
Category Archives: Sellers
After months of rising prices, is the Puget Sound housing market cooling off?
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.
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.
What’s in a name?
Surprising Foreclosure Hot Spots
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.
7 Home Features Buyers Love
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.
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…
The U.S. Housing Market and Its Huge Geographic Differences
The U.S. housing market can no longer be painted with one brush, as the housing recovery is playing out very differently across the country. Here are some anecdotes gleaned from a consulting team…
Home Prices Climb in Seattle and Beyond
Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities increased 12.2 percent in May compared to a year ago, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released on Tuesday.
And according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, prices locally continue to rise. The median price for last month’s closed sales area-wide was $279,950, which is about 9.8 percent higher than the year-ago.
The red hot housing market is prompting some realtors to get creative to satisfy eager home buyers that are tired of losing bids on their home of their choice.
New figures from the MLS also show pending sales during June jumped 10.6 percent from twelve months ago as buyers scrambled to lock in loan rates and bid on a limited supply of homes.
Building the Foundation for Successful Housing Reform
According to David Stevens, President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association:
“The U.S. housing market is showing definite signs of recovery with purchase originations beginning to increase and more liquidity in the market. The recent “good times” can be attributed to two factors – the federal government’s Quantitative Easing (QE) program which created extremely low interest rates, and refinancing ease of negative equity loans due to HARP.
Now that these programs have almost run their course and given a much-needed boost to the marketplace, as anticipated, the federal government is beginning to plan for reducing the QE program and the refinance boom is coming to an end, causing overall market contraction. When the market contracts we can see the true operational impacts of regulations.”
Managing The Real Estate Details 