Having a real estate “app” on your Smartphone has become a great tool for house hunters. The mobile web has arrived like a storm for Northern Virginia real estate and properties need to be easily found... and mobile ready (that especially means photos, darn it). Here is an example: Using myself as the guinea pig… a current listing is a condo in Continue Reading
Home Seller Tips
Take a few minutes and scroll through this collection of tips for home seller. Just so you know, I like to write about experiences that clients have because you may be dealing with a similar issue, and it might shed a little helpful insight.
Replace those brass-toned light fixtures!
Home sellers need to take a close look at the light fixtures in their homes when they are preparing to go on the market. Those brass-tone or gold-tone fixtures that the builder put in the hallways, bathrooms and walk-in closets were probably the cheapest things he could find. Home lighting is very important and can't be overlooked. Those Continue Reading
Home Seller just isn’t negotiating!
One of the hardest parts of buying a home is making an offer. Really, it isn't easy to come up with the right offer, and I always tell my Northern Virginia real estate clients that their initial offer should be their "ideal scenario" from the start. Offer price, determined after looking at recent sales and condition of the home Closing or Continue Reading
In Real Estate, Online Photos are Essential
You would think that Northern Virginia Real Estate agents would get it by now, but I am still seeing some really bad house photos being posted online. It is a trend that a lot of agents across the country poke fun at, and even have blogs of the worst photos seen in their MLS. Anyone who is looking for a home to buy is starting out on the Continue Reading
McLean, VA Home Sales Stats | April 2010
Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr The warm scent of spring sent the McLean, VA real estate market up in April which should not surprise anyone who has followed Northern Virginia Real Estate Stats. There was a lot of snow during the winter months and those contracts written in late February or March came to a close in April. Although our Continue Reading
Vienna, VA Home Sales Stats | Hyper Local April 2010
April will be a month that most agents will want to revisit for a long time as buyers picked up the pace to buy before the April 30th tax credit deadline and home sellers rushed their homes to market to capture that demand (read: premium).These "under contract" homes will close in May and June so those numbers should be higher If you bought, Continue Reading
The Whimsical Zestimate Gone Awry
I had a good laugh recently when reading Kris Berg’s San Diego real estate blog as she discussed “Zestimates”. “Zestimates” are generated on the web site Zillow.com which has become one of the top-tier real estate web sites in the country. Zillow.com basically takes the MLS data, and then creates an exciting set of graphs and charts that people are Continue Reading
Selling a Home before the Bank Forecloses
Image by respres via Flickr As the closing date approached on one of my recent listings in Fairfax, VA, my clients who had moved due to a job-loss informed me that they had not made mortgage payments for the past few months. Now, when I am filling in my listing paperwork there is a section where I have to ask, “Are you current on your Continue Reading
