Considering buying a home with a central air conditioning or a heat pump system now that another Northern Virginia summer is approaching? Well it is essential that you know that as of January 1, 2010, manufacturers aren’t going to build any new systems using R-22 refrigerant or any new spare parts for those existing systems using R-22. And, Continue Reading
Vienna, Virginia | My Buyer’s Agent Advice of the Week
I had a home buyer Tweet me and ask if I had any words of wisdom to pass along. The funny thing is that I love giving advice, but 140 characters weren’t going to cut it because what I do really can’t be distilled down to a sound bite. It also raised an issue that many socialists folks have written dissertations on… the desire for a silver bullet or Continue Reading
Stillfield Place in Centreville, Virginia | just bought!
This fantastic four bedroom colonial in the Virginia Run community in Centreville, VA that backs to true parkland, has an oversize screened-in porch and was a really good house to buy for my buyer clients. Turn key and not a short-sale. Doug was the "buyer's agent" in this transaction. The home was built in 1993 and featured the expanded floor Continue Reading
Home Buyers on Google overload?
If you are looking to buy or sell a home, I'm sure you have used Google to do most of your research. In a recent conversation with a REALTOR colleague in Falls Church, Virginia, she shared how home buyers walking into her Sunday open-house already knowing the tax assessment, local school scores, neighborhood comparables and much more. They were Continue Reading
The Real Estate Consumer has changed…
Okay consumers… did you know that people buy homes differently today than ten years ago? Today’s real estate consumer has so much information available that is specific, in depth and literally on demand that it has transformed the role of the real estate agent… for the better. The way consumers get mortgage information is better too as home Continue Reading
It’s a Home Buyer’s Market, right?
Well, not really in Northern Virginia! In the grand scheme of things, we should see home buyers having the best of times with this real estate market. The available home buyer tax credits, home prices are the lowest in years, mortgage interest rates are still around 5%, spring is in the air... okay, that's a stretch. As I went over NVAR's end Continue Reading
It’s time to re-connect… my resolution for 2010
Happy New Year! Like most of you, I recently sat down to review the last year and look ahead to 2010. And like any business person, I took a long hard look at my real estate business, the Northern Virginia real estate market as a whole, my relationships with clients, and where I saw the business in the new year. One of my primary thoughts was Continue Reading
Winterize your house… before the freeze
Image by WIlly Volk via Flickr It has been really cold in the metro D.C. area over the past couple of weeks all starting with the pre-Christmas blizzard of '09 that dropped 20 inches of snow at my home in Vienna, Virginia. But two weeks later we still have piles of snow because it has not been above 40°. The historical average for this time of Continue Reading