Archive for the ‘General real estate information’ Category

There has been only one contract sale since the beginning of the year.  There are currently 87 properties available for sale in Bedminster, and Market Absorption is 12 months – this creates a really good opportunity for BUYERS in Bedminster.

Market absorption is defined as the rate at which currently available inventory will be sold based on the number of homes sold in the last thirty days.  It does NOT mean that it will take 12 months for your house to sell if you list it today.  It simply is an indicator of the strength of the market and helps us to define the best marketing strategy for a given property.

I just confirmed – but do not have dates yet – that we will once again be hosting home buyer seminars in our Basking Ridge office. I will post dates as we get them but there is no reason to wait!  If you are interested in learning more about the market – whether you are considering a purchase or a sale – please call me and we will get started at your convenience!

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This starts a series of blog posts in which I will talk about the top eight mistakes that home buyers make.  My intent is to help you avoid these pitfalls before you even get started!

MISTAKE #1: Failing To Have A Plan
MISTAKE #2: Thinking, “I Can’t Afford A Home”
MISTAKE #3: Failing To Properly “Screen” Your Realtor
MISTAKE #4: Failing To Get Pre-Qualified For A Mortgage Loan
MISTAKE #5: Choosing A Loan Based Only On The Interest Rate Myth
MISTAKE #6: Failing To Obtain A Home Inspection From A Qualified Inspector
MISTAKE #7: Not Knowing Your Rights And Obligations
MISTAKE #8: Failing To Make Your Own Inspection

MISTAKE #1: Failing To Have A Plan

Deciding to buy a home is probably the biggest financial decision you will ever make. It is an exciting decision, but it is serious business, too, and you deserve serious advice.

Zig Zigler, a famous motivational speaker, once said that people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan. With a game plan, you will eliminate many of the headaches involved in this complicated transaction.

You need a clear plan when deciding to buy a house. Evaluate your current situation. Do you currently own a home? If so, will it be necessary to sell before making another purchase? Are you renting? How much time is left on your lease? Do you and your family plan to use the back yard? What is important about the location of your house? Do you want to live within 10 minutes or one hour from the office?

Make a list of features which are important in your home. Write down desirable locations you would consider, an acceptable price range, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and any other amenities. Be specific. It is unlikely that you will find a home that offers every feature you desire. However, without a wish list, it will be more difficult to recognize a home which meets your expectations.

Provide your list to your Realtor. Your Realtor will look for homes that match your criteria. This will save you time – you won’t need to look at homes that do not fit your needs and desires.

A proper game plan will save you time and reduce the hassle of shopping for a home. Spend a little time in advance and save a lot of time and money in the future!

Subscribe to my Bedminster Homes blog for information on the next seven mistakes!

What happens first, what can wait for what?  Appraisals, inspections, second deposits, oh my!!

Here’s how it goes: you make an offer, accompanied by a $1000 good faith initial deposit.  Your Realtor will likely hold this check until the offer is negotiated and you will get it back if the deal doesn’t get agreed on. Your Realtor cannot hold a check for more than five days – so if it takes longer than that to negotiate, it might be deposited into the escrow account and will be returned to you if the purchase agreement is not executed.

Negotiate the contract, sign the contract.

Congratulations!

You have three days to get the executed contract to an attorney in order to start attorney review.  The duration of attorney review varies based on the availability of all parties to discuss the contract, make and agree to changes.

Once attorney review is completed you will schedule the inspection and apply for your mortgage.  These two things happen concurrently.  This is an important point to make – you cannot wait for the inspection contingency to be satisfied before you apply for your loan.  This means that you can’t hold off on ordering the appraisal either. If you wait too long to order the appraisal because you don’t want to spend the money you run the risk of missing your mortgage commitment date because you can’t predict what sort of issues might come up and you need to leave time to resolve them.  Losing the money you spent on the appraisal is a risk you have to take in order to continue the process in good faith.

Your second deposit will also likely be due before the inspection contingency is cleared – you can’t wait to write that check; you have to write it when it’s due; you will receive your deposit monies back if the deal falls apart over inspection items (as long as your contract allows for that).

It bears repeating — Ordering the appraisal and submitting the  second deposit are NOT intended to be contingent upon successful negotiation of the inspection items. Doing so may derail your purchase…..

I have had two deals in the last two months that almost fell apart because the buyers held off on making their deposit and ordering their appraisal until they were confident that inspection issues were resolved.  In one case we were having issues with repair requests – tempers were flaring and both parties were upset with the way things were going…having held back on the deposit led the sellers to believe that the buyers were not serious about the transaction and in turn that made them not want to work on the repairs…  In the other scenario, the buyers didn’t want to spend the money on the appraisal until they had resolution on some of the inspection issues (which, by the way, ended up being non-issues, but that’s for another post). Unfortunately, their appraisal came back with a glitch that in ten years neither I nor the buyers agent had ever encountered before!  More than likely this glitch will be resolved but as a result it is holding the sellers up from making their next purchase.  If the appraisal had been ordered when it was supposed to be, there would have been plenty of time to resolve this issue.

Keep your deal on track…. it’s the right thing to do.

Week of 10/9/2011

There were two contract sales last week – a two bedroom townhouse in the Fieldstone section featuring a one car garage and Brazilian cherry floors and a two bedroom townhouse in the Four Oaks section featuring a two car garage and an updated kitchen.  Both are scheduled to close before the end of the year.  I’m happy also to report that market absorption is under 8 months in Bedminster.

There are less than six weeks left in the fall market – things typically start to slow down after Thanksgiving.  If you are considering a move into Bedminster or the surrouding areas we can help!  Click here for information on what is currently available in Bedminster.

Bedminster Real Estate, Basking Ridge Real Estate

My webmaster has been encouraging me to add video to my blog posts. I created a test video this morning – a walking tour around my office. I simply can’t post it. It is very shaky and simply a very bad first attempt. But I can’t allow myself a complete ZERO for the assignment, so I created this instead:

I am hopeful that this will earn me at least half credit for the day!

“Today, Freddie Mac announced that the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell below 4 percent this week for the first time ever, to 3.94 percent.”

This all-time low rate represents an extraordinary opportunity for consumers, whether they are in the market to buy a home or not.

Homebuyers can purchase a home for less, sellers could see increased activity, and homeowners can refinance to lower their mortgage costs and free up money for other purposes.

Click here to Contact us or call me at 908-432-0318 to find out how to take advantage of these low rates to either buy or refinance!

Last night, I spent some time looking at Bridgewater market data for the month of September:  There were 62 new listings, 47 listings were price adjusted and there were 29 contract sales. There are currently 193 active listings (single family homes), there were 21 contract sales in the last 30 days and there are 10 properties with offers/contracts in attorney review.  That’s an absorption rate of 9 months (6.2 if we adjust for the attorney review properties and assume they were negotiated in the last 30 days).

I also narrowed it by price range – looking at listings and sales between $400,000 and $500,000.  There are 48 active listings and there were six sales in the last 30 days.  That’s an absorption rate of only 6 months.  19 of the listings in this price range are priced between $425,000 and $450,000 with six listings exactly at $499,000 and four exactly at $450,000.   Average days on market for these properties is about four months – they aren’t selling either….

I did this because I have a listing that is currently priced at $459,000 and I am trying to determine what to do next.  We have great open house traffic but we are not getting agent showings.  With absorption rates as low as six months; we should be getting more activity and I’m very disappointed in the lack of agent showings.  It’s only been two weeks since we adjusted the price – but we only have about six weeks left in the fall market

What would you do?

While the overall real estate market is not doing so great, the market here in Basking Ridge remains strong.  Sale prices may not be where we want them to be (as sellers and homeowners) but sales activity continues to remain steady with some properties attracting multiple bids and near-asking sale prices.  It’s a little hard these days to push the envelope on pricing – market value is going to become evident in the first few weeks that your house is listed and you and your agent will have only limited control over the final sale price.

What you can control is how the house shows.  I often tell prospective sellers to start packing.  Less is more, de-clutter and neutralize.  You are selling a house, not your home – to a buyer who is looking for a house which they can envision as their home.  You need to make it easy for them to do that.

Sharon Tara, a stager in NH wrote a great article for a real estate forum that I frequent.  She says that when preparing your house for sale, you should consider the “Perfect Crime”. Today’s buyers are like the detectives in those old time movies: leave them the smallest amount of evidence and they will find a way to use it against you!

She suggests that successfully selling your house requires leaving no evidence at the scene. Remove the DNA – your family photos, diplomas and degrees.  Clean up the fingerprints – medical equipment, medications, hobbies and collections.  Allow a prospective buyer to walk through your house and imagine it as their home.  I do not think you have to take away everything; it is important that your house be warm and inviting. But it should be presented in a way that is universally accepted as such: chocolate chip cookies or apple spices are much better aromas than last night’s garlic casserole!

Additionally, you should be prepared to flee the scene at a moment’s notice!  It is virtually impossible to keep your house in show shape 24 hours a day – but, of course, that is what today’s detectives expect (oops, I meant buyers).  I often tell people that we understand that people live here – and if you are feeding a toddler three meals a day it’s okay to leave the high chair in the kitchen. But it’s a good idea to keep a laundry basket or a plastic tote by the front door to hold the remnants of quick clean up so you can leave in a hurry if an agent calls to schedule a last minute showing.

The best way to ensure that your house will sell is to price it right and make sure it shows PERFECTLY.

Tim McLaughlin, VP Weichert Financial

http://twitter.com/TimMc86

•  The S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Indices showed a fourth consecutive month of increases for the 10 and 20 city composites, with both up 0.9% in July over June. ”With July’s data, we are seeing not only anticipated monthly increases, but some fairly broad improvement in the annual rates of change in home prices,” says David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Indices. “Monthly price increases -were seen in 17 of the 20 cities. The exceptions were Las Vegas and Phoenix, where prices fell, while Denver was flat. The better news is that 14 of 20 cities and both composites saw their annual rates of change improve in July. 
• Fixed mortgage rates sank to record lows over the past week following the Federal Reserve’s decision to buy longer term Treasuries and reinvest proceeds from MBS investment payoffs back into those securities, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey. The 30 year Fixed rate mortgage averaged 4.01% with .86 points for the week ended Thursday, down from 4.09% with .79 points the previous week and 4.32% with .62 points last year. Rates on 15 year Fixed rate mortgages averaged 3.28% with .77 points, down from 3.29% with .71 points last week and 3.75% with .72 points a year earlier. Freddie Mac Chief Economist Frank Nothaft said interest rates for Adjustable rate mortgages, however, were nearly unchanged due to the Fed’s plans to sell $400 billion in short term Treasury securities and buy longer term notes and bonds. Shorter term securities serve as benchmarks for many Adjustable rate mortgages. 
• On another note…The top 4 reasons borrowers refinanced in 1H11, according to a JD Powers Survey:

1. Reduce monthly mortgage payment
2. Reduce term of the mortgage
3. Consolidate debt
4. Cash out refinance for various purposes