Simply Junior

Yard signs are the most obvious, yet underutilized selling tool in the Realtor’s arsenal. If you are one of those Realtors, who is still married to the gatekeeper business model in which all information about the home should be closely held, you may be missing real opportunities to expand your business. It begins with the ordinary real estate yard sign.

The real estate signs For Sale is your chance to show neighbors, seller’s relatives, buyers and other sellers how you can really pull out the stops to market a home. By festooning the sign with sign riders, feature sheet holders, and email addresses, you make the sign come alive with enthusiasm and energy. Anyone who looks at such a busy sign will see a busy agent who is determined to sell this particular home.

Think about the curiosity factor. Would not you be tempted to stop and look at a home that invites you to “Take One, Please?” By comparison, a sign with only a broker’s name and a phone number looks exactly like what it is – an advertisement for the broker, not the home.

The purpose of your sign is to stimulate activity around the home. By making people stop, look and think about this home, you are expanding your customer base. Curious neighbors and Sunday drivers could be your next clients.

A truly professional real estate agent uses colorful residential yard signs to increase traffic, communicate important information and make a stronger curbside impression. Lightweight curbside signs are very often used to list amenities and generate interest in my rental properties.

Make a great drive-up impression with a colorful yard sign and remember that realtors signs are the first point of contact you have.

Cheap, Bargain, Real Estate; Good Deals, Below Market, Low Priced properties are available if you know how to buy them. By Jody Hudson – Realtor since 1972. How to FIND and BUY: Cheap Bargain Real Estate, Good Deals, Below Market, Low Priced and Less Expensive; homes, lots, land, businesses, and condominiums. They are everywhere and easy to find. Here is how to find and buy them from anyone, anywhere. This article lays out the steps: How to find and buy a Bargain, A Good Deal, in real estate; that is; how to get it real cheap! Yes, there are ways! Nearly every call or e-mail that I get is asking me to find the buyer a bargain. We all feel that way when we are buying as well. All of us want a good deal. We all want to get cheap real estate. And we can all do it. There is a bit of a challenge however. Every single buyer that I’ve ever had in my thirty two years of selling real estate has wanted to sell the property they have for more than it is worth. Herein lays our challenge as Realtors — and of course for you as purchasers. To get those HOT deals in real estate there are at least three things you must do: 1. First of all as a buyer you must be able and willing to act faster than any other buyer. 2. Second you must be able to know a bargain when you see one. This takes experience and education in the specific market . Any assumptions made from other markets, about the subject-inteded market, will sentence you to certain failure… 3. Third you must BUY it. That is write a deposit check and write a contract that will win over the other contracts that may be presented at about the same time as yours. This group of three steps, sounds simple, but only about one buyer in each ten year period is willing to do these three things in order to get the cheap property they have asked us to find for them! I have several people, and so do most Realtors, that are the most; ready, willing and able and we call them first! If you want to be one of the ones called you must be MORE ready, willing and able! Recently, August 2002 the waterfront home next to ours was listed for sale for $249,000 and it was worth at the time about $350,000. Kate and I called each of our family members, our wonderful neighbors on the other side (one of whom is a local builder and the other a mortgage broker) and some of our best clients and a best friend of ours, a builder and investor, who had already said he liked the fine home. (Note that property is now worth about $800,000 Sept. 2004). We explained that the home was going on the market in a few hours and that they must act fast. Our neighbors on the other side, the most knowledgeable of the bunch wanted to make an offer of $180,000 saying they thought that was all the property was worth. They knew better or at least should have and they should have bought it. They just “hoped” they could get it for less and that they didn’t have to move fast. The offer they made was ignored and wasted our time. They did however get another property in a few days, for a lot more money, that was worth a lot less, as a result of improved alertness and awareness after loosing the one next to us. Our savvy investor friend put in a couple of offers below the asking price with several contingencies. Meanwhile we are telling everyone to write a contract for full price with no contingencies and calling on both our phones as fast as we could call. None of our best friends or family would pay attention. They were ALL too greedy. They knew the property was far under-priced but wanted it for even less… Lesson: when it’s a good deal – ACT instead of getting more greedy and losing the deal totally. Then our lovely new neighbors came and saw the property. They also were knowledgeable about similar properties, and had lost several properties they liked by moving slow, writing unreasonable contracts and not paying attention to real values. This time they did it correctly. In fact they wrote a contract on the spot, with no contingencies, and for MORE than full price so that if anyone did offer full price they would still have the best chance. They paid $5,000 more than the full price on the spot, told the sellers they could have settlement any time they wanted it and before they even heard back from the sellers they arranged for a mortgage of MORE than they needed and asked for the money to be immediately available. They did not ask for a home inspection, a survey, or for the sellers to fix anything. The home is 30 years old and has not had one bit of maintenance. There was a burst hot water tank, a roof that needs replacing and a few HUGE cracks in the foundation. All these problems cost them about $15,000. They have, as I write this, owned the property for several months and worked on it every weekend, before they could take a break and enjoy it. They love it. If they were to fix all of the things that need fixing, paint the trim and freshen up the yard and landscaping; we could get $900,000 to $950,000 for this home for them in a few months on the market. And, city sewer will be here in a few years, at that point the property will instantly go up another $200,000 and all the people we called knew about the pending sewer too. The buyers didn’t find out about the sewer coming to town until after they had contracted to purchase the property. The sewer is still not in — WOW. They are glad they did the One, Two, Three to make it happen! By doing the three things listed above the purchasers of the home next to us have made the wisest purchasing decision thus far in their lives and have one of the best bargains that have been available in the last several years. The sellers are happy too as they just wanted to sell it as fast as they possibly could, due to a sudden and dangerous illness of one of the owners. I’m writing this article to serve you the reader. But you must know it is self serving as well. Much of our time as Real Estate Agents is spent trying to successfully educate our buyers and sellers. If they would take our advice they could be far, far, more successful in selling or buying. The articles I write here [http://www.kate-jody.com/essays/index.html] are those advices that I give my customers and clients – if they ask. Most don’t and when they do, very few take the advice. Just like in every other profession, we the professionals do what we can to help those who come to us but it’s up to them to take the advice. Bargain homes are always available – but hard to sell. They are homes that are in need of some repair or cosmetic improvement or that are in an area of transition. We have several on the market right now and they are hard to sell. Someone with vision will eventually purchase them, fix them up and perhaps sell them at a huge profit – often to someone who says they want a bargain but won’t do what it takes to get a bargain. Funny isn’t it, and this sort of thing happens all the time. It has consistently happened in my 35 years in the real estate business and being a licensed Realtor since 1972. Just know this, if you want a fixer-upper, so does everyone else, but you need to be very, very, educated and able to spend the time and money to renovate the property effectively and affordably. And, you need to do One, Two, Three! If you want a bargain; educate yourself and be ready to DO — One, Two, and Three. We’ll try to help you. By Jody Hudson Copyright 2002-2004 www.Kate-Jody.com Jody Hudson: MrJodyHudson@earthlink.net

Summit County, Colorado is sitting smug in this realty crisis (if we admit there is one!) And why are some areas just breezing along while other areas are spiraling down the center of a tornado? Summit County is admitting that there may be a large inventory of the over $1million houses, but that the under $600,000 are just moving right along and sometimes with multiple offers!

One realtor in Summit County puts it all down to the baby boomers, and in Scottsdale and other prime retirement areas the buying up of second homes (often by baby boomers) is also recorded to be keeping the realty markets healthy.

Usually baby boomers – because of their age – are amongst the experienced borrowers in the realty market, and would not have had to negotiate any kind of mortgage that would lead them into the sub prime mess that we read about.

This means that if you are still looking for a realty investment, then any of these prime retirement areas would likely be a safe investment in a steady market. From an investment viewpoint they may even increase drastically in 2011 when the first wave of baby boomers officially reach 65!

Baby boomers are the prime buyers of second homes. They are either going to retire to them, or they are already retired and snow-birding it – so they want two homes. These baby boomers are reported to be the last generation that will have a generous private pension. They have also been saving for a long time, as they are from a generation that was taught the sense of saving and most of them have also benefited from the jumps in real estate prices. (Real estate has approximately doubled in the last ten years.)

Another reason that the baby boomers are still buying into today’s market is that they have seen mortgage rates of up to 13% in their time – and they KNOW this can happen. Consequently a rate of 6.5% that you can actually lock in for 15 years – and therefore budget your income – is a very good business proposition. Also it is often possible to get an equity mortgage if you have a large amount of paid off income in the home you are living in. However, here a home owner must proceed with caution; some people have taken so much ‘back’ from their houses that as the prices have dropped in their area, they have no chance of selling their home yet.

Another plus in buying a home is that the IRS will give you a tax break on it! The interest paid on a mortgage is tax deductible.

If the area you live in has been prudent about the issuing of building permits, and have limited the number of new properties coming on the market, this can keep the real estate market more active. A glut of new homes finished all at once tends to flood the market. This is a local factor, but it is the local factors that are keeping many areas off the national grid of falling prices.