Archives for February, 2009

Selling Your House Quick & Cheap

Posted on Feb 28, 2009 under Real Estate Sales Tips | 12 Comments

housesalegraphicSelling a house quick and cheap

Companies that promise to buy homes for cash will do it, but their lowball offers probably will appeal only to desperate sellers.

Q: Our house has been on the market for nearly eight months. I recently transferred jobs to another city, and we desperately need to sell because we are now paying two mortgages. Should we relent and turn to one of those “buy your house for cash” operations? How do these businesses operate, and how much do they typically pay? Read the rest of this entry »

6 Reasons Your House Isn’t Selling

Posted on Feb 28, 2009 under Real Estate Sales Tips | 2 Comments

4sale3a6 Reasons Your Home isn’t Selling

#1 Your home is overpriced

Optimistic home sellers love to parrot the old adage, “There’s a buyer for every home.” But they often leave off the qualifier: “at the buyer’s price.”

The fact is that buyers, not sellers, ultimately determine the market value of a home. You can ask for the moon and set your listing price well above comparable properties in your neighborhood, but at some point it will be up to you, the seller, to accept what the buyer thinks your home is worth.

Read the rest of this entry »

Flipping Houses - Don’t Believe The Hype

Posted on Feb 28, 2009 under Real Estate Sales Tips | 1 Comment

‘Flipping’ houses: Don’t believe the hype

The booming real estate market is driven by historically low mortgage rates, solid employment growth and brisk demand — not wild speculation.houseflip

Flippers — those who buy a house and quickly sell it at a profit in a hot market — are active, but there are no definitive nationwide statistics compiled on the number of mortgages turned over in a year or less. However, the number of flippers appears to be small.

“Investor interest in the U.S. housing market does not seem to be driving local house-price patterns,” Freddie Mac says. “While there has been some rise in the investor share of overall U.S. home-purchase lending in recent years (from 7% of purchase-money loans in 1998 to 11% in 2003), the investor share has generally remained near or below 7% in most markets experiencing significant price gains in recent years.” Read the rest of this entry »