Selling your home – by owner, or FSBO isn’t for everyone – especially in the market we find ourselves in right now.  Check out this video.  Save valuable time.  Focus on what you know, and leave the home selling to the pro’s!

Proceed with caution, but Real Estate is still favored

consider home ownership to be MORE than just a simple financial investment. 

According to a recent Fannie Mae National Housing Survey:

* Eight out of 10 Americans believe home-ownership is important to the economy.

* 64 percent think it is a good time to buy a house,

* 37 percent of Americans think housing prices will rise and 36 percent think prices will stay the same over the next 12 months.

* 60 percent believe buying a home today is harder than it was for their parents, and 68 percent believe buying a home will be even more difficult for their children.

* Seven out of 10 homeowners say they believe buying a home continues to be one of the safest investments available.

* 65 percent say they prefer owning over renting.

* 93 percent of homeowners with fixed-rate loans and predictable payments say they are more satisfied than those with other types of mortgages.

Dusky day in Anchorage

Anchorage economy.  Chief executive officer, Bill Popp says Anchorage is expected to have “steady, solid growth” and the forecast offers some “cautious optimism for the business community“. 

Click here to download the full report here.

The report provides  a “big picture” of the forces shaping Anchorage’s economy and where they most likely will take us over the next several years.  The road to recovery may be a bumpy one, but the economic climate is much less turbulent in mid-2010 than it was 12 months ago.

The report says Anchorage’s population reached 290,588 in 2009, an increase of 2.4 percent over 2008.  The 2009 population increase was about twice the average annual rate of growth for the decade.  AEDC says this strong growth was dues to a surge in net migration as the economy remained relatively healthy during the deep national recession and consequently an attractive place for job seekers.  Overall, fewer Anchorage residents left the city to seek greener pastures in 2009, green pastures were hard to come by, and more people from outside the city and state to moved to Anchorage.

When you want a reliable agent who do you call?

If you are in your home-town, talking to your friends or people at work is a good way to get a referral of real estate agents that others have used, but what if you want to look at property in a new community and don’t know anyone in that town?

There are several ways to approach it.  One would be to look for an agent who has listings in areas that you like.  Obviously they are working and local sellers trust them enough to list their properties with them.  If you are in the community, look for the real estate “for-sale” signs of agents who are active in the area’s you like.

Look at the agents website and check out their blog to see if you can relate to the person and identify with them.  Do they have active listings on their website?  Some agents have a lot of sold and pending listings on their site, but you don’t know how recent those sales were. 

Most agents have a page on their website that says “About Me”.  Check it out, is this someone you feel you can trust and be comfortable with?  “Google” their name and see what comes up to get a feel for who they are and how large a real estate “foot print” they have on the Internet.  The agents who have been arouund the longest aren’t “secret agents.”  Their sucess leaves tracks where they’ve been.

The most seasoned and experienced real estate professionals remain in business because they receive referrals and repeat business from satisfied past customers.  Newer agents need to constantly prospect for business while building a clientele base.  Some agents, of course, never make it to “successful agent” status because it takes a lot of work and time to earn the reputation as an agent who “delivers the goods’.

The Pareto Principal (the 80/20 rule) certainly applies to real estate agents.   80% of the business is done by 20% of the licensees.  In fact, it may even be greater in our community, where 90% of the real estate business is done by 10% of the real estate practitioners.

If you are selling or buying, you want someone that is active in th market. If the agent isn’t active, you’ll get “guesses” on your questions and not answers you can be confident in.  If the agent doesn’t know the market, how can they assist you in what would be a good offer or when a property is over-priced?

Signing digitally can be very convenent in many situations!

The program turned out to be easy to use and such an obvious advantage that I’m amazed we didn’t have a program like it before now!

The program is incorporated into our FlexMLS document program.  When we type up a real estate document, such as a Listing Agreement or an Agreement to Purchase, we can click on the DocuSign tab and by following a series of screens, and email the form to one or more parties. 

When the customer gets the form via email, they can open the form and again by following easy screens, they can sign the form digitally on the screen and simply email the form back. The customer can create their own digital signature online without needing a scanner or any unusual equipment.

In the “old days“, we would fax the forms to be signed if the buyers couldn’t drive to our office.  One problem was by the time the form was signed and faxed around a couple times, the print would distort and become very difficult-or impossible- to read. 

In some transactions, contracts are negotiated at length, so buyers and sellers would have to run back and forth between their homes and the real estate office again and again; Sometimes there was the problem of  locating a fax machine….

Another nice thing about DocuSign is if their are more than one signer on the documents, they don’t have to be at the same location to sign digitally.  In other words, one party can sign online on one side of town, and the other party might be on a business trip or working on the North Slope, yet they can sign the same exact form – No more signing duplicate documents in counter-part!

After a month of using DocuSign, I’m amazed at how few problems my customers and I have had using this very convenient program!  Real estate buyers and sellers love the convenience, not to mention it’s green (your not killing trees) and maybe the best things is the program is just plan tech-y and cool!

City of Anchorage with the Chugach Range backdrop

Obviously, if a person doesn’t have the down payment or have a workable credit score, they won’t be able to seize this opportunity.  If a person is concerned about losing their job, that would be a valid reason for not buying now.  If you are planning on relocating in the next year or two, maybe now isn’t the time to buy.

On the other hand, if a person doesn’t own a home, has good credit and job stability, they should seriously consider capitalizing on this unique combination of opportunities. 

The Top 10 Reason’s to Buy  A Home NOW!

1. Interest Rates are incredibly low – rates are at near historic lows, often spiking below 5%.  Interest rates play a huge part in the cost of hosing together with the price and shouldn’t be overlooked.

The average interest rates for the past four decades were:  1970′s 8.9%; 1980′s 12.7%; 1990′s 8.1$; 2000′s 6.3%

2. Lower prices. Recent price adjustments have made good values that haven’t been available in some situations for years.

3. Selection is still good.  Home inventories in most real estate markets and in certain price ranges are higher which allow buyers better choices.

4. Negotiate financing concessions – FHA, VA and Conventional loans allow for the seller to pay some closing costs that traditionally would be a buyer cost.  This market may allow a buyer to get closing cost assistance.

5. Costs for FHA loan going up.  The annual MIP for FHA loans will probably be going up this year which will incrase the montly payment.  Buyers who get in now will pay lower fees.

6. Interest and property tax deductions- The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that allow an interest and property tax deduction for homeowners and taxpayers.

7. Capital Gain exclusion- the U.S. allows qualifed homeowners to make a profit on their home without having to pay tax on the gain.

9. Borrowing against your equity is  non-taxable event. taking money out of the equity in your home does not require you to recognize capital gains income.

10. The combination of reasons to buy a home may never be stronger than right now!

Interest rates are going up;  it’s just a matter of when.  Inventories are starting to be absorbed by current demand.  Prices have begun to climb in many U.S. markets.  Real estate inventories are beginning to decline.

A basic rule of investing is to buy low and sell high.  There will be some buyers who take advantage of he current opportunities and will look back and remark how fortunate they were to act when they did.  Th3ere will be others who look back on these conditions and say “We should have bought then.”

Hindsight is always 20/20.  Evaluating the present and acting takes equally clear vision.

A prototype of a real estate sign of the future!

Greg, my friend, said “wouldn’t it be cool to get a monitor on the curb so interested people could see a photo slide-show and even possibly virtual tours?”  I said, “yeah, that would be slick!” 

Greg brainstormed it a bit and came back to me with some drawings and a concept.  I agreed to fund the construction of a prototype. 

Greg built the sign in the photo and I have the sign planted at my listing on 4100 Caravelle Drive.  Not only is sign very attractive on the front of the house, it also has more benefits!

Look up at the top, see the angle piece?  It is a solar panel.  It charges a battery located in the base of the sign.  See the monitor?  Currently it is a slide-show of photographs from the backside of the home and interesting features inside the home. 

Right now Greg is monitoring the battery life to see if the solar panel produces enough energy to keep the battery charged, which keeps the 10 x 10 monitor working. 

Future plans include virtual tours on the screen.  The technology exists to link the sign to a lender or even to the realtor.  Stay tuned for future updates on the “high tech” real estate for sale sign!

The view from the kitchen towards Sand Lake

There are many lakes in Alaska, but not many in Anchorage.  One lake that is well known is called Campbell Lake.  Campbell Lake is a man-made lake where engineers restricted Campbell Creek and made a wide lake which is popular with owners of float plans.

Sand Lake is a natural lake, and most people agree has a different personality than Campbell Lake.

I just listed 4100 Campbell Lake.  The home is 4,300 square feet on three levels.  The lot is rectangular and fully usable.  The home boasts a “wall of windows” with a mesmerizing view south and west.  This home doesn’t look across the lake into other home looking back at it, like you see at Campbell Lake.  The north side of Sand Lake has a large marshy bank so it cannot be built upon.  This home look at trees and to the snow-capped mountains beyond!

The view of Sand Lake from the front deck

The home has a modern contemporary feel, too.  Many existing lake homes were built 30 years ago and now have very dated floor-plans and old styling, where this home is light, bright and updated!

Just sitting on the large deck is a very peaceful experiance.  You hear the loons calling out and see the ducks flying by!  Check out the virtual tours here.

The "before" photo of the vacant formal dining room

There are professionals who will come to your house and make recommendations and even rent furnishings to help a property show better and generally results in faster sales.

A new service has been introduced to real estate professional recently.  It is called virtual home staging.  Basically, we provide photographs of vacant rooms to the service and they add “digital furniture” to the empty rooms.

According to statistics compiled by National Association of Realtors, over 90% of the time, home buyers have viewed the home they ultimately purchased online before they physically veiwed the property.  This means that a buyers eye may stay on the photograph longer and increase the home’s visual appeal, hopefully resulting in the buyer asking to view the property.

Virtual furniture enhances a vacant room greatly!

Of course when the buyer shows up at the property, the rooms will be vacant.  There has been some discussion about whether or not this is a disclosure item, but most feel it’s not any different than when we take photo’s of the home prior to the seller moving out of the house.

Personally, I think it is very attractive!  What do you think?

Families with young children pay attention to sex offenders

Many people carry the new Internet enabled “smart phones“; programs are easily downloaded that tie into the State registry site and show where registered sex offenders are in relation to you and your smart cell phone.

It would appear as if the list of people registered as sex offenders has exploded over the past 15 years!  This isn’t because the number of high-risk perpetrators is increasing, but that we have lowered the bar of what constitutes a sex offender.  A person can wind up on the sex offender registry for urinating in public or, in 32 states, for “streaking” in public.  A person who gets caught with a prostitute can be placed on the list.

Probably the most problematic group of “sex offenders” are teens.  Teen boys that get caught having sex with younger girlfriends can be classified as a crime, even if it’s consensual.  In Texas alone, there are 4,000 registrants who landed on the list as juveniles.

A recent assessment of registered sex offenders in Georgia found that less than 1 percent were “predators,” defined as people who are driven by compulsion to commit sex crimes.

Round-the-clock media coverage of high profile abductions and murders has contributed to the general sense that society has run amok, when in fact violent crimes rates in most areas are generally lower now thane been since the ’70′s.

Sex offender registries are controversial by nature and some say, can generate more confusion than clarity.  For example, there are a growing number of cell phone apps that take information from the State registry site and place dots where the registered offenders are around your location. With this widely available technology people can get the idea some neighborhoods are much “scarier” than they might really be.

It’s been said that a better list would be to limit the list to the 1% of truly creepy individuals who really are offenders, rather than the teenager who made some poor choices on the list or the goof-ball who thought it would be cute to streak across the stadium naked.

The dots on your cell phone app might lead you believe the area of town you are in is worse than it may really be.