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| Summary of their experience Ron Goldstein is a lucky charm. He sold our home in a matter of hours, because he is an expert salesman -- beautiful listing writeup, fantastic photos, and gives a heck of a tour! He's charming and knowledgeable and makes clients on both ends of the process feel at ease. We love Ron and will use him in a heartbeat if (when) we need to move again.
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Thought leadership on everything..Real Estate.. Carpe Diem..For the ongoing collection of Life! Sotheby's International Realty
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Fantastic new Zillow recommendations!
Monday, September 8, 2014
Buyers..getting your offers accepted! Strategies For The Buyer
There it sits—your dream home. Whether you’re parked in the driveway or viewing a video on your computer, you know it was meant to be yours. You can see your kids walking to the school nearby, your cat snoozing on the sunny porch. And the best news? It’s in your price range! Now, what can you do to make your dream come true?
There are a number of things you can do to increase your chances of having an offer accepted. No matter what the market conditions, bidding wars still break out over desirable properties. You need to let the seller know you’re serious, and you need to act quickly.
Act like a Boy Scout. That is, “be prepared.” Get your mortgage pre-approved. Start by checking all three of your credit reports. You can get your reports free once each year from the three major credit bureaus at annualcreditreport.com. Avoid other sites that say they’ll give you free reports—they will only do so IF you sign up for credit monitoring and other services. If you find errors on your report, even if it’s something as simple as a wrong address, get them corrected. Lenders will look for a credit score of 740 or above to give you the most favorable interest rate. If you can pay off credit cards and other debts, that will improve your score. Then get preapproved by a lender. A preapproval in writing will show sellers that the lender has determined that you can afford payments on a mortgage for a stated amount.
Cash is king. If you can swing it, make a cash offer. A lot of investors are buying homes to flip or rent, and they usually pay cash. Sellers are impressed by all-cash offers because they’re less likely to fall through. If you are going for a mortgage instead of a cash deal, a low appraisal could cause your lender to back out. That would force the seller to put the house back on the market—something every seller wants to avoid.
Give it your best shot. Don’t make a low-ball offer and expect to get a better deal by going back and forth with the seller a few times. Try making your best offer first and having your Realtor explain why; you can just about be assured the seller has never seen an offer like that. Before you make your offer, have your Realtor check on recent sale prices of comparable properties in the neighborhood so that the price you pay will qualify when the property is appraised. If you make a low-ball offer first, you could lose the property to another buyer who comes in at or near market.
Keep it clean. Sellers dislike contingencies, so if your offer includes any, try to offset the negative with a positive or two. If you include a financing contingency in your offer, balance that with a detailed pre-approval and a larger earnest money deposit. Most buyers include a home inspection contingency, so if you do, tell the seller that you’ll be willing to pay for necessary repairs, up to a certain reasonable amount.
Show me the money. Money talks, so kick your earnest money deposit up a notch. This will tell the seller you’re serious. You’re not at much risk, because if something happens in the appraisal process or elsewhere and you have to back out of the deal, you’ll get your money back. Just make sure your contract has the appropriate contingencies.
Pick up the tab. You score a lot of points by acting generous, so plan to pick up the tab for some or all of the “extras” yourself. These might include paying some of the closing costs, prepaying certain items like homeowner association dues, or offering to buy a home warranty.
Timing is everything. A seller who knows he or she has to move is under a lot of stress, so cut them some slack on time. Tell them you’re willing to work with their timetable on a closing date. If the seller can’t move immediately and needs to stay in the home after closing, offer them a “lease back” or rental situation. You will need to make this a legal arrangement, so ask your attorney to work out the details for you.
Tell them how much you love them. Whenever you have an opportunity, let the seller know personally how much you love their property. People feel attached to their homes, even if they want or need to move. Go out of your way to make a connection, even if you haven’t met the owners. Drop them a note or ask your Realtor to forward an email telling them how you feel about the home. If you run into them at an open house, compliment them on their rose bushes or granite countertops. Good manners make a difference!
If it truly is your dream home, remember the immortal words of Walt Disney: “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
Ron Goldstein,MBA
Certified Luxury Broker@Berkshire Hathaway Chicago & St. Petersburg
Principal, Silver Professionals
chicagoluxuryrealty.com stpeteluxuryrealty.com silverprofessionals.com
(o)312-264-5846 (c)312-771-7190 (f)312-264-5746
Offices in Chicago and St. Petersburg
Connecting people w/ jobs & homes!
#stpeteluxuryrealty#chicagoluxuryrealty#mdlstpete#mdlchicago
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Almost Labor day and my house hasn't sold..WHY?
If the listing for your home hasn’t been attracting buyers for a few weeks in a fast-paced real estate market, or for a few months in a slower one, you certainly have good reason to be worried.
A home doesn’t sell due to a variety of factors, some of which you can control and some of which you can’t.
Let’s start with the things you can control, which also happen to be the most important elements of any home’s appeal to buyers: price and condition.
Price Your Home Right, From the Start
As I tell my clients in the beginning, the correct price for your home is based on a thorough comparative market analysis (CMA). The reason it’s so important to price your home appropriately from the beginning is that a home that’s priced too high will languish on the market without any offers.
Even if you lower the price later, you will have lost the momentum of the initial listing period and buyers will assume there’s something wrong with the home. Eventually you may sell it, but more than likely the final sales price will be lower than your correct initial price would have been. Price your home too low and you have lost out on potential profit. Buyers today don’t care what you paid for your house when you bought it. They don’t care if you make a healthy profit when you sell. They only care about paying a fair price in today’s market.
Your price should be based on current local market conditions, not on what you need to pay off your mortgage, what your neighbor sold her place for a year ago, nor your guesstimate of what your home is worth. The comparative market analysis (CMA) will look at recent sales, homes that didn’t sell and were pulled off the market, and current listings to guide your price decision. If there aren’t any buyers making offers on your property, it might be time to lower your asking price.
Condition of Your Home- DeClutter and Curb Appeal
Regardless of your local market conditions, buyers have high expectations for your home, beginning with the exterior. While you don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money, you do need to raise the level of your home’s curb appeal with some sweat equity. Pull weeds, trim the grass, plant a few flowers and perhaps paint your front door to make sure prospective buyers don’t decide to drive away.
Inside, your home needs to be consistently clean, neat, decluttered and depersonalized so that buyers can visualize themselves living there. Your Broker should be able to suggest ways to prepare your home for a sale, which, by the way, is nothing like the way you live in it. Your kitchen counters should be cleared, your bed always made and your dishes always put away in case a buyer wants to visit.
Marketing Your Home
When you choose a REALTOR® to list your home, make sure you ask about photos and a marketing plan. 98% of buyers look online first at properties so it’s crucial that your home has multiple professional-quality photos that make it look as enticing as possible, and that your home appears on multiple websites so buyers can see it. A listing without a photo or with one badly lit photo isn’t likely to generate many offers.
Make Your Home Available
One of the more challenging aspects of listing your home for sale is that you must make it available to buyers as easily as possible. Buyers prefer to see a home without the owner there, so make sure there’s a lockbox at your property and that you allow nearly unlimited access to prospective buyers.
Overcome Challenges
Sometimes market conditions or a specific flaw in your home make it tougher to sell as quickly as you would like. I can help you evaluate the market and let you know if you need to offer particular incentives, such as closing-cost help. If your home has an awkward floorplan or is located on a busy street, allow me the opportunity to come up with ways to emphasize its positive aspects and deemphasize any negative aspects, such as by staging the backyard or highlighting the renovated kitchen.
#chicagoluxuryrealty.com #stpeteluxuryrealty.com
Ron Goldstein,MBA
Certified Luxury Broker@Berkshire Hathaway Chicago & St. Petersburg
Principal, Silver Professionals
chicagoluxuryrealty.com stpeteluxuryrealty.com silverprofessionals.com
(o)312-264-5846 (c)312-771-7190 (f)312-264-5746
Offices in Chicago and St. Petersburg
Connecting people w/ jobs & homes!
Monday, August 11, 2014
Sold..4000 SF Gold Coast Urban Oasis w/ Professor's Library. #mdlchicago
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