'Home Buying' Category

Most home buyers start their home shopping on the internet. Once you have engaged the help of a buyer’s agent there is no reason you should abandon this valuable tool. You want to work with an agent who is completely plugged in and unafraid of technology. A good agent will send you emails with links to new listings that have just popped up on the MLS. [...] Read More

Real estate agents can earn a number of professional designations from NAR and its affiliates. Three of those designations in particular, are good indication that the agent has at least invested more than the minimum required amount of time and training in the real estate business. Look for the designations ABR (Accredited Buyer’s Representative), GRI (Graduate, Realtor Institute) and CRS (Certified Residential Specialist). [...] Read More

Go ahead and make yourself a little cheat sheet. Use it as a guide, but customize it with your own hot-button wants and needs. If you absolutely have to have a sunny room for sewing, put that down on your cheat sheet. If you hate electric heat, mark that down. You're the only one who’ll be living there. In fact, you and your spouse could even draw up your own versions of a cheat sheet, allowing each of you to focus on the features most important to you. [...] Read More

There are a few more issues to take into consideration if you are trying to determine whether to close in late December or early January if you are purchasing your home at the end of the year. In some states, the homestead exemption is one of the most obvious reasons to make sure your loan closes on or before December 31. For example, in Florida, state law provides the home owner a $25,000 exemption from real estate tax assessment. [...] Read More

There are some common signs that can alert you to a home that is getting prepped for sale. If it is a particularly nice home or a particularly popular neighborhood, you could finds that the home ends up being sold before it hits the MLS. The early bird catches not the worm but the new birdhouse of course. [...] Read More

A strong move by the Bank of America Corp. (BAC) - the nation's largest bank comes amid evidence that mortgage companies have signed documents in foreclosure cases without verifying the information in them. The Bank of America said Friday, October 8th that it will halt sales of foreclosed homes in all 50 states as they look into reports about mortgage servicers who signed foreclosure documents without reading them, this is a practice known as "robo-signing." This move is expanding a crisis at a dangerous time for the US real estate industry. [...] Read More

Whether the ad is in the newspaper classifieds or posted on the internet, real estate ads can be marvels of creative writing. You need to decipher the abbreviations and read between the lines. Here’s a sampler. [...] Read More

Agents really don’t like it when you work with more than one of them at the same time and you can’t blame them. They could drive you all over the place looking at homes and spend hours researching tax records and recent sales prices for you, only to see you actually buy with one of their competitors. So there goes their payday despite all that work. In most cases your contract with a buyer’s agent will stipulate that they alone are representing you. [...] Read More

Most large real estate companies have relocation specialists who are tuned in to the specialists who are tuned in to the special needs of people who are moving great distances. For example, if you are using an agent affiliated with one of the big, national franchise companies to help you sell your old home, that agent can give you a referral to an agent who specializes in relocations in your new community. [...] Read More

In a perfect world, there would be some agents who only worked with sellers and others who worked only with buyers. The “Who represents whom?” question simply would not come up. But the real estate world does not work that way right now. Generally, there’s more money to be made listing homes than in representing buyers because, thanks to the MLS, the listing agent has an army of helpers trying to sell that home. [...] Read More