Mar 22
Smart Reminders for Your Home Sellers Besides staging, sellers also should take a few more steps to ease the stress of their sale. Realtor.com® offers up some of the following often-overlooked tips: 1. Highlight improvements and any issues. “If you’ve owned your home for a while, make a list of all the problems you’ve …
Mar 21
Bidding Wars to Heat Up This Spring Likely to be a hallmark of this year’s spring home selling season: Bidding wars. As home listings are scarcer and buyer demand remains high, home shoppers are finding a lot more competition this spring, particularly in hot markets like the San Francisco Bay area, Denver, and Boston. …
Mar 20
3 Sources of Odors That Offend Buyers Your sellers may have “nose blindness.” The term refers to the process of adapting to the smells around you and becoming so desensitized to them that you learn to ignore them or become less sensitive to them, says Dr. Richard Doty, director of the Smell and Taste …
Mar 17
What to Watch for in Home Renovations Home renovations can help boost the resale value of a property, but they also can expose homeowners to costly repairs or even make them physically sick, if they don’t take some precautions. Help your renovating clients be on the lookout for some of these dangers that could …
Mar 16
Owners Overestimating Home Values The gap continues to widen between what homeowners say their home is worth and appraisers’ valuations. Homeowners’ estimates of values were, on average, 1.69 percent higher than appraisers’ home value opinions in February, according to Quicken Loans’ National Home Price Perception Index. The gap has been detected every month since …
Mar 15
What’s the House Size? No One Is Really Sure Just how large a house really is may depend on whom you ask, The Wall Street Journal reports. That’s because appraisers, developers, builders, real estate professionals, tax assessors, and architects all measure spaces differently. No universal standard exists for calculating a home’s square footage. Further, it …
Mar 13
Mortgage Rates Zoom to 2017 High The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage surged to its highest average of the year this week, reaching 4.21 percent, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey. “The 10-year Treasury yield rose about 10 basis points this week,” said Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “For the first time in …
Mar 10
Rising Rates Will Impact Home Prices Americans have, so far, stood resilient to rising mortgage rates, but a bigger impact will come soon, say Goldman Sachs economists. Housing’s share of the economy rose above normal levels from November to January, despite mortgage rates surging 60 basis points at the time. Still, economists caution that …
Mar 09
If Pets Could Pick a Home, They’d Pick Here Pet owners in some states do a better job than those in others creating a thriving home for their furry friends, according to a new survey by Care.com. Care.com recently looked at a variety of data about pet care to rank the states based on …
Mar 08
Social Networks Influence Home Buyers Social networks can carry a lot of weight in people’s lives, even having an impact on their real estate decisions. In a recent REALTOR® University Speaker Series presentation, Dr. Johannes Stroebel presented research about the influence of social networks on buyers’ home purchase decisions. Housing investment is a regular …
Mar 07
Homeowners Turn to Their Equity Again As home values rise fast, homeowners are starting to realize they have a lot of wealth tucked into their homes, and it’s become enticing to tap into it. Since the housing crash, homeowners have been shy about accessing any of their home equity, even those who still had money …
Mar 06
How Do Your Property Taxes Stack Up? The average American household spends $2,149 on property taxes for their homes each year, according to U.S. Census data. But depending on where you live, that can vary drastically. For the third consecutive year, New Jersey ranks as having the highest property taxes in the nation, according to …
