Outside Things to do around your Home in the Fall

I was talking to my daughter about their home the other day, and in the course of the conversation she asked me to remind her of the things they should be doing to their home in the fall. As I thought about the different things to do, it dawned on me that other people might also be interested in being reminded of these things.

Here we go with the outside first-

One of the first things that come to mind is the gutters. They will keep your basement dry if you will keep them clean of leaves and branches! As the leaves start falling it may be necessary to clean them 3 or 4 times before the snow flies. I know this is a lot, but they need to be kept clear of leaves when it starts to freeze and snow falls.

Second, cut down all the stalky dead plants, this will prepare the gardens for new growth in the spring and also keep the mice from making winter nests under it.

Next, walk around your house with a caulk-gun and look for areas where the caulk has dried up or fallen out. This will keep the cold drafts from seeping into your warm cozy home in the winter months and the bees from making nests in the summer months.

The fourth thing to do is walk around your house again but this time with a paint scraper and look at your window sills or wood areas where the paint is peeling. Scrap the peeling paint, sand the area, paint a primer over the bare wood, and then paint with finish paint. This will prevent the snow from decaying the wood over the course of the winter months.

Now you are ready for the winter winds and snow! Ugh! Well, at least the house is!
For a complete list use this link.

Private Mortgage Insurance Backlash

In the old days if you got approved for a loan at the bank for a home mortgage, the private mortgage insurance was an automatic. The private mortgage insurance (PMI) was a protection policy the banks required if you were putting less than 20% down. It would insure the first 20% of the loan so the banks would feel safe in loaning you the money.

This has worked very well for decades to keep the whole system moving. The PMI companies have been making tons and tons of money from you and me on all our home mortgages which we did not default on.

Suddenly because of the banking industry screw up, the PMI companies have displayed a “knee-jerk” policy. You know the concept of the pendulum swing? Well, they are at the extreme right with over-critiquing every application that crosses their desk! Not only is it adding weeks on to the process, but they are turning down solid deals for insignificant reasons!

I could go on and on about this whole craziness going on in the home mortgage process, but I think I have said enough. If you have had a problem with the PMI companies with your home mortgage process, tell me about it.

How much is your Home Worth?

Whether you are selling or buying or refinancing or paying taxes, it’s important to know how much your home is worth.

Many people will tell me what their tax assessment is and think that it represents their home’s worth. Others will measure their home’s worth by comparing it with homes that are on the market or even worse, homes that have expired on the market.

The value your home has is never a fixed value. It is constantly changing with the economy. The interest rates affect it, the world economy affects it, the local economy affects it, and the real estate market affects.

Fortunately for us that live in Rochester, our home values have increased each year for the past 30 years that I have been in the real estate business until 2008 when they dropped slightly, about 1-3%.

What Realtors do to determine your home’s value is to do a CMA, comparative market analysis, which is a snapshot in time of your home. It is arrived at by a careful review of the recent sold homes that are similar to your home in square footage and features.

Usually we also have to make some additions or subtractions for features present or absent in the sold homes as they are compared to your home. This is a subjective valuation by the Realtor doing the CMA. Because of this subjective value, you could get different values for your home if you were to have several Realtors do a CMA for you.

This is why it is important for sellers who are interviewing several agents for listing their home that you don’t want to make your decision based on the highest price received from an agent, because they could be too high in their subjective additions. You need to look at the agent’s years in the business, experience, credentials, and marketing plan.

So if you would like to know you home’s worth, just call me or a Realtor in your area and we will be happy to meet with you and work up a CMA on your home.

The Reality of a Short Sale!

Over the past ten days I have been working with a property that is heading towards foreclosure. To sell it, the price will need to be less than the outstanding loan balance. This is called a short sale because it will be short of funds at closing to pay the loan balance and the closing expenses.

It is obvious to everyone that there is tremendous value in this property at the listed price which is below both the assessment value and the market value. So why is it, when we finally got an offer on the property, and we got two offers, that they are another $15,000 under the listed price?

Quite simply, Human Nature!!! The buyers are in the driver’s seat and the banks need to sell the property at the price the market will bear out, however low it is! Unfortunately, they are not helping the property values for the neighborhood that they are moving into by putting a sales comparable on record at that price. But at least, they are taking a vacant property off the market by buying it and moving in.

We need the small local investor!

I wrote up an offer this past week for a small investor to buy a foreclosed single family home in a suburb of Rochester. As I was working with it, I realized how much the neighborhood needs this “small investor!”

I had sold a home in this neighborhood a few years earlier and I was familiar with the values of the homes. At $70,000, this home was selling for $50,000 under what the average values are for this neighborhood. This small investor was going to clean, paint, carpet and repair this home, then put it back on the market for a price that would match the values of the neighborhood. In other words, flip it, a word that refers to process of buying a home, fixing it up quickly and selling it for a profit.

Nobody out there is giving these guys any assistance! Nobody is making it easy for them. They are using their cash and hard work! They are taking all the risks! The end results are a house is restored to its neighborhood value. Hopefully they will end up with a profit to make it all worthwhile too!

Think about it, who else is doing something like this with no government involvement? Next time you see one of these guys, give them a thumbs up! We need the small local investor now more than ever! Our neighborhoods need them. The economy needs them!

Is News Print passé?

Last week, I decided to hold two of my listings open on the weekend, usually on Sunday. I made a mental note to write up the Open House ads for them on Thursday. Well, Thursday came and I was crazy busy from the beginning of the day on and at 5pm when I was showing customers through my new listing, I suddenly realized I had not done the Open House ads and I had just missed the deadline!

At first, I was bummed because I had things in place for holding the two houses open and now I did not have an ad coming out in the Saturday Open House section of the newspaper. This has been the vehicle that the public and real estate agents have relied on for promoting and finding Open Houses in Rochester, New York.

But I decided to hold them open anyways, with just the internet postings and Open House signs. Wow! To my amazement, we had 7-8 groups through each house and possibility buyers for both of them.

Can we finally eliminate our need to pay for costly newspaper advertising and rely on the internet for exposing our listings to the public? Maybe the time has come! This REALTOR, who you may be following as @RochesterREguy, is leaning in this direction.

Let me know where you find the Open Houses to see or if you are an agent, are you moving in this direction too!

Sell Before Buying??

I was reading the Saturday morning real estate section from our local paper and the lead article was about move-up or scale-down buyers. The two agents interviewed both felt that they should sell first before they made an offer on another house. The problem I had with this article was not the position the agents had but the reasons they gave for doing so.

There are many areas in our marketplace where the purchase offer with a contingency of selling a house will not make any difference and will not affect the selling price that is negotiated. This is because the sellers are so glad to see an offer that they will readily accept one even with a contingency.

Unless a neighborhood has a shortage of inventory and is in high demand, most sellers, if properly advised by their agents, will accept a contingent offer. In our area, the listing does not have to be changed to reflect a contingent offer and no one knows it has an offer on it except the seller, that buyer and the agents.

This way, the odds are in the seller’s favor, because now there are two houses on the market and if either one of them gets an offer, the seller is good.

So why wouldn’t a buyer make a contingent offer? Yes, there is the possibility that another offer could come into the picture and they would have to do a bridge loan to keep their offer or they would lose it. But generally, if they price their house properly, de-clutter it, and then stage it, the house will sell fairly quickly. To wait until you have sold your home, to then start looking, you may not find something suitable and you will have to move twice, first into temporary rental housing and then into your next house. This would far out weigh the cost of carrying two mortgages for a few months.

The Upside & Downside of Home Inspections

I was sitting in a Board of Directors meeting this past week reviewing a new addendum form to approve for our Association to use for the inspection contingency in a purchase and sale offer. There was considerable discussion as to whether the buyer should have to indicate who they were selecting to do the inspection, whether it was Uncle Harry, a licensed home inspector, an engineer, a builder, etc. After all the discussion, the final decision by the Directors was the buyer did not have to disclose who they were choosing to do the home inspection for them on the addendum form.

The reason there was so much discussion around this rather simple item, was because of the experience all of us have had the past several years with home inspections. There are the home inspections that the buyer has their Uncle Harry do for them and he either talks about the selling price and everything else except the house or he finds fault with everything in the house.

Then we have the inspections done by a builder that compares everything to a new home and nothing is to code in the older home.

It seems that features that are characteristic of an older home are overlooked during the initial visit or even second visit, but with the home inspector, suddenly they aren’t acceptable. And even though the buyer may have negotiated off the sales price to address them after he buys the house, they ping the seller again with the list of repairs and ask for a credit at closing from the home inspection.

Inspections can and are an escape route for a buyer, plain and simple. If they want out of the deal after signing, the home inspection provides the door to escape. That’s the way it is and there is no changing it!

Home inspections are part of the process now and they are here to stay with the upside and downside they bring to the home buying process!