Price Your Home Right to Help Speed a Sale:
RealEstateJournal | Price Your Home Right To Help Speed a Sale:
"With home sales slumping and inventories on the rise, experts say getting your home sold depends a lot on pricing it correctly. One tool sellers can fall back on when the market is shifting is a home appraisal.
You can have an appraisal done before you contact a broker or if you're just curious what your home would be worth. They cost, on average, from $250 to $400 for a single-family home, slightly more for multiple-family dwellings.
An appraiser will physically inspect your house for shoddy workmanship or needed repairs, measure its dimensions and takes notes on the floor plan, utilities and other factors that affect pricing.
He or she should also look at three or four "comps" -- comparable homes in your neighborhood that have sold within the past six months -- and analyze how homes currently on the market are faring, says William J. Doka, owner and president of Erickson Appraisal Company in Fair Lawn, NJ."
sales decrease slightly
Inman News Story
"About 26 states had an increase in sales activity in first-quarter 2006 compared to first-quarter 2005, the National Association of Realtors trade group reported today, while the national rate of sales dropped 2.1 percent.
The seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales was 6.8 million units in the first quarter, the association reported. This rate is a projection of a quarterly sales total over a full year, adjusted for seasonal fluctuations in sales activity. Sales volume normally is higher in the summer and relatively light in winter, primarily because of differences in the weather and household buying patterns, the group reported.
The biggest increase was in New Mexico, where existing-home sales rose 26.2 percent from the first quarter of 2005. Louisiana's first-quarter resale pace rose 22.9 percent from a year earlier, while Montana experienced the third-strongest gain, up 17.5 percent. Six other states recorded double-digit sales increases from a year ago. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia experienced declines. Complete data for three states was not available, the association reported.
Regionally, the strongest performance was in the South, which reported an increase of 2.3 percent to an existing-home sales pace of 2.71 million units in the first quarter in comparison with a year ago. After Louisiana, the strongest increase in the South was in Mississippi, up 17.3 percent from the first quarter of 2005; resales in North Carolina rose 17 percent; Arkansas and Tennessee also posted double-digit sales increases."
Generation Y Enters Housing Market Search
"RISMEDIA, May 4, 2006-(KRT)-Bryan Hollermeier paid $273,000 for his first house when he was 23 years old.
He took out an interest-only, 30-year mortgage with no money down and planned to keep it for no more than five years. To enhance its resale value, he spent as much as he could afford on upgrades that would make the home attractive to families.
"What I would pay in principal I'm putting into mutual funds and investment accounts that make returns," said Hollermeier, now 26 and a mortgage banker with Merchants Mortgage. "Equity just sits in your house."
Hollermeier represents Generation Y, the group born between 1979 and 1984 that is now coming of age and buying homes. Demographers estimate about 65.3 million people fall into that age group, and they're changing the way moderately priced homes are sold.
"Several years ago, the average first-time homebuyer was 30 years old," said Justin Juarez, broker/owner of Metro Brokers Liberty Home Group LLC. "Nowadays, there are people who are 18 or 19 years old." Generation Y buyers -- roughly 22 to 27 years old -- are more technically savvy than the Gen-X buyers who preceded them. Generally, they've done their homework online before physically inspecting the house."
