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Window of Opportunity
As anyone who's ever tried to sell a house will tell you, bad weather can definitely affect your ability to sell a home. If the weather is terrible, nobody comes out to shop, nobody makes offers, and sales numbers fizzle.
Well, we've just witnessed the "bad weather" impact on a national scale. After three straight months of steadily rising home sales nationwide, the stretch of stormy and frigid weather that hit many parts of the country in the early Spring took a chunk out of home sales numbers for the month -- they were down by 8.4 percent.
The chief economist for the National
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Association of Realtors, Dr. David Lereah, said the sharp decline was not a total surprise. "For months," he said, "we've been expecting a weather 'hit' on home sales" -- and it finally arrived with a
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Mixed Messages For
Real Estate Buyers
It's a great time to buy, says the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Alternatively, says NAR, existing home prices in February 2007 were down 1.3 percent when compared with a year earlier.
So can this really be a great time to buy if home values are falling? The answer is yes.
Increased real estate ownership is a national goal which has produced helpful and useful national policies. For instance, we encourage homeownership by tilting the tax system to favor owners. As a property owner you can write off property taxes, you can deduct mortgage interest in most cases and when you sell you can shelter profits of up to $500,000 if married and $250,000 if single from federal taxes.
We do these things because we believe that ownership gives people a greater stake in local communities and because owning a home affords individuals a certain ego, status and financial standing. We also encourage ownership for a very simple reason: Money. In addition to all the good
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Counteroffer is Rejection
Of The Earlier Offer
A counteroffer is a rejection of the offer (or a previous counteroffer) to which it is a response. This is an important point for sellers to remember in this "normal" market in which we now find ourselves. Of course, it is an important point for buyers to remember as well.
Imagine the following scenario:
The Smiths have had their home on the market for about five months now. When the property first came on the market, both they and their agent agreed that the property stood a chance of fetching $625,000. It turned out that they were wrong. After the first couple of months of no buyer interest at all, they dropped the price to $610,000. Now it is it at $585,000, and they have yet to have what seemed even a serious offer. That is why they were pretty excited about the offer on the table Monday. The buyer had a good deposit; there was no for-sale contingency; the escrow period was agreeable; and the buyer already pre-approved for a loan. The only hitch was the price of $565,000. The offer gave them seven days to respond.
Actually, Mr. Smith confided with his agent, the $565,000 was a price they could live with -- they never had counted on being in the $600,000s. Still, though, they wanted as much as they could possibly get -- who wouldn't? -- so they made a written counter offer of $575,000.
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Consumers Want Digitally Tricked-Out Kitchens
A new study reveals home owners want their kitchen, not the home office or the game room, to be the digital nerve center of the home, as well as a social hub.
The finding was discovered after the Internet Home Alliance commissioned research and consulting firm Zanthus to determine how home owners wanted to customize their kitchens.
The pollster put a host of questions to 602 home owners responsible for making household purchasing decisions about kitchen appliances and consumer electronics and the answers surprised the alliance.
"While we expected to learn that the kitchen continues to serve as the hub of the home, we were surprised to find that
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