MADE MY EVENING!
Thought leadership on everything..Real Estate.. Carpe Diem..For the ongoing collection of Life! Sotheby's International Realty
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Trade in your Snow shovel for a Sand Shovel.. Life is short- Buy the beach house
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Trade
in your Snow shovel for a Sand Shovel.. Life is short- Buy the beach house
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Monday, February 6, 2017
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
It's Almost Spring Market and my home hasn't sold yet...Why?
It's Almost Spring Market and my home hasn't sold yet...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 | Vice President, Sales
Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty and Premier Sothebys
C: 312.771.7190 . C: 727.619.4LUX
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 | Vice President, Sales
Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty and Premier Sothebys
C: 312.771.7190 . C: 727.619.4LUX
Monday, December 19, 2016
Lower the Latitude..Better the Attitude --Your Chicago connection on the West Coast of FL
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Friday, November 11, 2016
Buy or Rent in the Windy City?
Buy or Rent in the Windy City?
With soaring rent prices across the country, it leaves many to wonder if buying is the better option.
While it may be a surprise, the answer is yes – in fact, it’s cheaper anywhere in the U.S. depending
on how long you live somewhere. According to Trulia, buying a home is 37.7 percent cheaper than
renting on a national basis, which is a .5 percent increase from this same time last year.
Chicago, Illinois, is a perfect example of where it is cheaper to buy than rent. High priced rentals
are common in Chicago’s metro areas where residents appreciate the city’s walkability,
architecture, art scene, cuisine, and are willing to pay a premium for these luxuries. But, Chicago’s
suburban neighborhoods are growing in popularity as people move outside the city limits to
purchase homes at very affordable prices.
A recent study by Trulia examines the cost benefits of homeownership versus renting. The Rent
vs. Buy Report’s methodology assumes a buyer secures a 30-year fixed rate mortgage with a 20
percent down payment and lives in the home longer than seven years. However, using the Census’
2014 American Community Survey and a Trulia consumer poll, information suggests that the math
is slightly different for Millennials, who tend to move every five years or less and can only afford
a 10 percent down payment. Furthermore, Trulia also looked at where and by how much mortgage
rates and home prices would have to increase to erase the benefits of homeownership by reaching
its tipping point.
In Chicago, median home prices hold at $216,875 and the median rental rate is $1,750 per month.
However, if the median home prices rose to $357,844, the home buyer advantage reaches its
tipping point and vanishes. While, mortgage rates have dropped since last year, rising home prices
have consumed some of the financial benefits of lower mortgage rates. But, homebuyers fear not!
The professionals at Jameson Sotheby's will help you land the Chicago home of your dreams, and
for the right price. And right now, mortgage rates are on your side of the bargain.
Mortgage rates would need to rise 145 percent over today’s current rate of 3.7 percent, and home
prices would have to go up significantly for Chicago’s real estate market to reach that tipping
point. This scenario is extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon, considering the Federal Open
Market Committee (FOMC) has only raised rates once over the past ten years. Furthermore, home
prices would have to grow to their tipping point with minimal change to rental rates for this
scenario to unfold. For an expert’s detailed opinion, consult with Ron Goldstein at
ron@chicagoluxuryrealty.com
While buying is always cheaper in the long run, there are still markets that offer competitive
prices. To show how each metro varies, Trulia grouped metros into three different categories:
where home buying beats renting by the largest margin, the slimmest margin, and metros on the
tipping point. Miami, FL, takes the top spot on this list where home buying beats renting by the
largest margin, while Honolulu, HI, has the slimmest financial advantage of homeownership. The
range between the two metro cities is 53.2percent cheaper to buy than rent in Miami, compared to
17.4 percent in Honolulu. Conversely, Chicago, IL, falls right in the middle of these two ranges at
36.9 percent.
Therefore, if a buyer is able to put a 20 percent down payment on a home and live in the home for
more than seven years, then home ownership is the way to go. With the information at hand, it
truly is less expensive to buy a home compared to renting a home in many of America’s largest
metro cities, including Chicago.
By Tara Scott-Johnson
With soaring rent prices across the country, it leaves many to wonder if buying is the better option.
While it may be a surprise, the answer is yes – in fact, it’s cheaper anywhere in the U.S. depending
on how long you live somewhere. According to Trulia, buying a home is 37.7 percent cheaper than
renting on a national basis, which is a .5 percent increase from this same time last year.
Chicago, Illinois, is a perfect example of where it is cheaper to buy than rent. High priced rentals
are common in Chicago’s metro areas where residents appreciate the city’s walkability,
architecture, art scene, cuisine, and are willing to pay a premium for these luxuries. But, Chicago’s
suburban neighborhoods are growing in popularity as people move outside the city limits to
purchase homes at very affordable prices.
vs. Buy Report’s methodology assumes a buyer secures a 30-year fixed rate mortgage with a 20
percent down payment and lives in the home longer than seven years. However, using the Census’
2014 American Community Survey and a Trulia consumer poll, information suggests that the math
is slightly different for Millennials, who tend to move every five years or less and can only afford
a 10 percent down payment. Furthermore, Trulia also looked at where and by how much mortgage
rates and home prices would have to increase to erase the benefits of homeownership by reaching
its tipping point.
In Chicago, median home prices hold at $216,875 and the median rental rate is $1,750 per month.
However, if the median home prices rose to $357,844, the home buyer advantage reaches its
tipping point and vanishes. While, mortgage rates have dropped since last year, rising home prices
have consumed some of the financial benefits of lower mortgage rates. But, homebuyers fear not!
The professionals at Jameson Sotheby's will help you land the Chicago home of your dreams, and
for the right price. And right now, mortgage rates are on your side of the bargain.
Mortgage rates would need to rise 145 percent over today’s current rate of 3.7 percent, and home
prices would have to go up significantly for Chicago’s real estate market to reach that tipping
point. This scenario is extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon, considering the Federal Open
Market Committee (FOMC) has only raised rates once over the past ten years. Furthermore, home
prices would have to grow to their tipping point with minimal change to rental rates for this
scenario to unfold. For an expert’s detailed opinion, consult with Ron Goldstein at
ron@chicagoluxuryrealty.com
While buying is always cheaper in the long run, there are still markets that offer competitive
prices. To show how each metro varies, Trulia grouped metros into three different categories:
where home buying beats renting by the largest margin, the slimmest margin, and metros on the
tipping point. Miami, FL, takes the top spot on this list where home buying beats renting by the
largest margin, while Honolulu, HI, has the slimmest financial advantage of homeownership. The
range between the two metro cities is 53.2percent cheaper to buy than rent in Miami, compared to
17.4 percent in Honolulu. Conversely, Chicago, IL, falls right in the middle of these two ranges at
36.9 percent.
Therefore, if a buyer is able to put a 20 percent down payment on a home and live in the home for
more than seven years, then home ownership is the way to go. With the information at hand, it
truly is less expensive to buy a home compared to renting a home in many of America’s largest
metro cities, including Chicago.
By Tara Scott-Johnson
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