For Sale By Owner Buyers Look to Agents for Safety

According to the National Association of Realtors, last year there was a 14% decline in the number of For Sale By Owner (FSBO) properties. Despite that decline, FSBO properties are still available in Savannah – and in an inventory-challenged market, you might find one of them is a pretty tempting buying opportunity.

But here is where caution is warranted — and where you may be amply rewarded by seeking a Savannah buyer’s agent to represent you. There’s more than one reason why:

FSBO owners may, er, hide things

It can be tempting for FSBO sellers to cover up problems that would have been picked up if a seller's agent had been involved. By using an experienced buyer's agent, you stand a much better chance of identifying those common problems. A qualified inspector (your agent will recommend a good one) can help you spot the more well-hidden ones.

FSBO properties usually cost more!

Statistics bear it out: it’s estimated that FSBO properties can cost 10 to 20% more than those listed via real estate agents. Owners just tend to overestimate their property's worth and selling potential. And without the counsel and guidance of a real estate professional, sellers usually establish a stronger emotional attachment to their first listing price. The presence of your buyer’s agent (with a notebook full of comps) is sure to power up your negotiating stance!

Legal issues

One of the main reasons to team with an agent is the plethora of legal issues that are interwoven with residential real estate sale transactions. By using an agent, you stand to identify any contractual mishaps before they are executed — and well before costly repercussions materialize. Since many owners who take the FSBO route in Savannah are usually short when it comes to real estate transactional expertise, there may be required disclosures and important paperwork that they have missed. You don’t want to find that out too late. 

If you wind up seriously eyeing a local FSBO home this summer, save future headaches by including your buyer’s agent commission in your offer. More questions? we’re available for consults this week!

Property Search Results Can Rise Through Social Media

By now, social media are an integral part of many peoples’ daily routine. If you are selling your home in Savannah this summer, you can decide to add your own social media clout to add further momentum to the professional campaign. Your agent already has a great website to attract anyone conducting a Savannah property search. Now many sellers are using their own social media network to link to it. 

No one wants to be spammed by a friend’s marketing on Facebook, but a few posts about your home-selling adventures can be interesting. When your home is first listed, announce it and post a link to your agent’s website. Be sure not to sound too sales-y (that’s your agent’s job). Instead, share items that relate to your life: “It’s really happening! Listing our home for sale in [insert your neighborhood] this weekend. Now I finally get to show off my new kitchen with its 6-burner Viking range!” Share photos, too.

The rules for Twitter marketing are similar. It’s social, so avoid outright sales tactics. Try asking engaging questions, like, “Do you think buyers in [insert your neighborhood] will want to check out our #solarpanels?” Don’t forget to #hashtag key words, and always link to the listing’s website so interested buyers click directly to it for their property search.

Photos sell — so if you have a Pinterest account, use it! Ask your agent for copies of your listing’s top-quality photographs, then post, post, post! Choose the top three features Savannah buyers might be looking for in their property search and create a Pinterest board for each. If you have a chef’s dream kitchen, create a board featuring gorgeous kitchens. If you have a waterfront property, make a board filled with beautiful waterfront properties (especially yours!) The boards will draw prospects whose property search keys on those features.

We welcome help from any homeowner who thinks their own social network will add to our full-time campaign. If you’re looking to sell your home in Savannah this summer, contact us today to discuss how our marketing plan can go to work for you!

Remodeling Projects Home Listings Results Don’t Support

We all do a mental survey before preparing to enter our home in the Savannah home listings. We ask ourselves something like, what should I improve that will pay for itself?

Since anything that improves home listings can result in better offers, the answer can never be proven absolutely. But Remodeling magazine gives it a try. After delving into the year’s home sales numbers, their “Remodeling 2012–13 Cost vs. Value Report” (www.costvsvalue.com) highlights some remodeling ideas that don’t return anything like what the investment is likely to cost.

Among midrange projects, boosting the number of bathrooms might seem to warrant the expense, yet that usually isn’t the case. A Bathroom Addition returns just 54.8% of the average cost of $37, 501. On the other hand, a more minor bathroom remodel of $15,000 or so averages more than a 10% greater return for about half the outlay.

Less costly (but still a dubious proposition) is putting in a Backup Power Generator. Count on just 52.7% of the $11,000 investment to be returned at sale.

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Second worst result in terms of percentages (but far and away the most costly) was the idea of putting in a Sunroom Addition. An average cost of $72,179 added just $33,529 at resale. That hefty price tag is probably too high a hurdle for many prospective buyers.

The Home Office Remodel weighed in as this year's biggest loser. Nationally, homeowners spent an average of $27,293, yet could expect to recoup only about 42.9%. Ouch. If you’re considering a remodel, opt for something that can be readily converted back into a bedroom or den, and call it a study, den or hobby room when it hits the Savannah home listings. Buyers like functional space they can reshape to their own family’s needs.

What are the best remodeling projects? Siding, garage door, and window replacements tend to head the list. Please feel free to contact us before you spend a single dollar on renovations. We’re here to help guide you in the right direction — and toward a top return!

Preparing Your Home for a Virtual Tour

Putting your Savannah home up for sale makes you a key player in a marketing team led by your real estate agent. But you don’t have to attend seminars on salesmanship or study the latest marketing best seller to make valuable contributions to your team: heeding a few guiding principles will take care of that.

One of the most valuable is simply this: great marketers know they should appeal to the widest

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market possible. Today, we can attract a much wider market than ever before — from across the nation to (amazingly enough) buyers around the globe! It’s due to an increasingly popular tool: the virtual tour on the Web.

Because a standout virtual tour doesn’t just happen by itself, here are some fundamentals for preparing the most effective virtual tour:

• Disorderly rooms as viewed through any old webcam don’t make the grade. Remember that details you see as assets may be perceived as clutter when viewed through the camera’s lens. This can include personal pictures, books, ornaments and toys. When your home is free from clutter, potential buyers can much more easily picture themselves living in it.
• Make sure your furniture is placed to communicate the appearance of spacious, open areas. This may means being willing to move furniture — even pieces that actually look great in person — away from the middle of the room.
• Since taste is an individual matter, it is hard to present a color scheme that appeals to everyone who views your virtual tour. The most universal rule of thumb is to stick to neutral color combinations. While you may love a vibrant blue wall, others may see it as an unwelcome chore — one extra thing they will have to change were they to purchase your home. In contrast, neutral colors can present a blank canvas.

Getting your virtual tour right means showing a pleasing series of comprehensive views that are neat and minimally but attractively furnished. Check out some of our Virtual Tours!

Do Savannah Home Prices Warrant a Bubble Watch?

As home prices continue to rise throughout most of the nation, sooner or later people begin to wonder whether we’ve crossed the threshold dividing undervalued from overvalued. Pundit shorthand for “overvalued” has gradually become almost synonymous with the far more fear-inducing term, “Bubble.” As with the chewing gum and soap-blowing varieties, the term can’t help but conjure up visions of the associated “Pop!”

Just worrying that we are in a home pricing bubble can cause sleepless nights and worse —  financial paralysis. As home prices in Savannah move higher, it’s natural to wonder if they are truly justified by economic fundamentals. While no one wants to be on the other side of wrong, no one wants to miss great deals on Savannah home prices, either. How to know?

Bubbles are notoriously hard to define, but to address the issue, the Trulia real estate web site has just come out with a new tool designed to assess whether today’s home prices — including those in Savannah — are overvalued or undervalued. They compare the latest prices with historical incomes, prices, and rents. 

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The first findings are reassuring. Although residential price gain percentages do rival those of the last decade’s bubble, that’s deceptive. They started from a much higher perch. The decline from 2005-2006 was steep enough that (aside from a few metro areas in California and Texas), the fundamentals show that the current gains look a lot more like a rebound than a bubble.

Trulia found that as of last month, national home prices remain undervalued by 7%. During last decade’s bubble, prices went as high as 39% overvalued. Their takeaway is that home prices remain considerably lower than they were during the last bubble.

So bubble-watchers can rejoice or rebel, but as far as we are concerned – Trulia has provided some very pleasant news. “Rebounds” bring about visions of happy kids on trampolines (and rebounds don’t pop). The news is excellent for instilling a positive national outlook, but more locally, if you’re looking for the latest information about Savannah’s home prices and activity, contact us for a no-cost, no-obligation consultation.

Options for Buying a Home After a Foreclosure Open Up

“Time flies when you’re having a good time” we hear. But time can also pass quickly for those who’ve had to go through difficult times. Case in point is a million and a half borrowers who have recently experienced the pain of a foreclosure. That’s the estimated number of those who, by this time next year, will have waited long enough to again become eligible for an FHA loan.

Anyone interested in buying a Savannah home after a foreclosure has come through a tough period. The standard waiting period for an FHA-guaranteed loan is 3-4 years following a foreclosure or short sale (though individual circumstances vary.) Now that the weeks and months have ticked by, this sizable crop of newly eligible prospective ‘boomerang buyers’ may soon find themselves contemplating the option of buying a home after a foreclosure.

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That estimate of the size of the newly eligible was provided by Moody’s Analytics. Since they are key players in determining creditworthiness, it’s a source we trust. A chart of Moody’s count from the second quarter in 2011 (when their number was a mere 285,000) to next year’s second quarter 1,500,000 provides a convincingly uphill slope.

Still, being eligible to apply does not mean automatically qualifying for an FHA (or any other) loan. Success in buying a Savannah home after a foreclosure continues to depend on the same standards that always apply. After the waiting game is over, having cured credit damage will become the prime requirement.

To increase their chances of successfully buying a home after a foreclosure, Savannah prospects will have paid existing credit card and loan debts with the kind of unfailing regularity that reassures loan officers and credit analysts alike. If that hasn’t been the case, the time to begin is ASAP.

Website Zillow predicts the next most influential group of buyers will be those who are looking to buy a home after a foreclosure or short sale. Savannah residents who are among them — and who are ready to make this their turnaround season — should give us a call. We can get started with the pre-approval process!

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