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Top Listing Agent: Brian Rust
Top Listing, Selling, & Producing Team: The Pagans
Top Selling Agent: Mary Ann
Morando
Top Producing Agent: Pam
Gabriel
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Our Realtors at Lake & Land Realty insure your property get the maximum exposure. Learn about our Agents under the Agents tab on our website. They will insure that your.....
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homes
are listed on the area’s Multiple Listing Service or MLS. We belong to both Roanoke & Lynchburg VA MLS.
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homes
are listed on major real estate search engines. We list your home on Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, Craigslist, SWVAhomes, Hotpads and multiple other sites. Contact us for a complete list of websites that we post your property to.
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homes
are listed online with multiple and good quality property photos.
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Lake & Land Realty also handles property rentals. Search out newest rentals on www.RentalsAtTheLake.com. We handle both long term & vacation rentals.
Your ONE company that serves all of your real estate needs. |
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Home Sales for March, 2013
Active Listing Inventory: 2,996
Number of Homes Sold: 302
Number of Homes Placed Under Contract: 456
Median Price of Listings Sold: $142,300
Average Price of Listings Sold: $169,155
The home sales statistics are pulled from the Multiple Listing System of Roanoke Valley, which encompasses the following areas: Cities of Roanoke and Salem, Town of Vinton and Counties of Roanoke, Botetourt and Craig plus portions of Bedford and Franklin Counties.
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Congrats to our Top Agents for March! Learn more about these
Real Estate Agents on our Home Page under the Agents Tab.
Top Listing Agent: Catina Wright
Top Listing Team: The Pagans
Top Selling Agent: Duff Eckstein
Top Selling Team: Cathy Hummon and Karlen Tinti
Top Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Producing Team: George & Cindy Loyd
Way to Go!
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Working with a Realtor® can save you time, money and trouble. Nearly eight out of ten consumers believe Realtors® can show buyers a better selection of homes than they can find on their own, according to an independent survey of the general public released by the National Association of REALTORS. |
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February existing-home sales and prices affirm a healthy recovery is underway in the housing sector, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Sales have been above year-ago levels for 20 consecutive months. We here at Lake & Land Realty have been busy too. Please contact us for a market analysis today. Our Real Estate Agents will be glad to assist you with all of your real estate needs.
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Congrats to our Top Agents at Lake & Land Realty for February!
Top Listing & Selling Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Listing & Top Producing Team: Cathy Hummon & Karlen Tinti
Top Selling Team: Brenda & George Huggins
Top Producing Agent: Brian Rust |
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Lake & Land Realty advertises your home everywhere with our Internet package! With us, your property will get maximum exposure! List with us and we will advertise your home on National web sites like Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, Hotpads, Craigslist and multiple other sites. Contact us for a complete list today.
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Congratulations to our Top Agents at for January 2013! Way to Go!
Top Listing Agent: Kay DeGiorgi
Top Listing Team: The Pagans
Top Selling Agent: Pam Gabriel
Top Selling Team: Karlen Tinti & Cathy Hummon
Top Producing Agent: Sylvia McDowell-Kent |
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The home sales statistics are pulled from the Multiple Listing System of Roanoke Valley, which encompasses the following areas: Cities of Roanoke and Salem, Town of Vinton and Counties of Roanoke, Botetourt and Craig plus portions of Bedford and Franklin Counties.
Active Listing Inventory: 2,756
Number of Homes Sold: 238
Number of Homes Placed Under Contract: 350
Median Price of Listings Sold: $138,750
Average Price of Listings Sold: $159,461 |
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After the holidays, prospective homebuyers and renters in Virginia typically begin or renew their home search at the start of a new year. At the national level, online real estate search activity picks up in January and reaches its peak in March and April, after stripping out the upward trend from Trulia’s traffic growth over time. Following a slight dip in May, a second peak occurs during the summer months of June and July. As the year ends, home searches slow down, hitting their lowest level in December. |
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Home prices rose 7.4% in November 2012 according to Core Logic Inc. It was the largest 12 month gain in 6 years. More good news for Real Estate. |
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Congratulations to our Top Real Estate Agents for December 2012!
Top Listing Agent: Pam Gabriel
Top Selling Agent: Brian Rust
Top Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Selling & Producing Team: Cathy Hummon & Karlen Tinti
Learn more about these Real Estate Agents and their listings
on our website under the "Our Agents" Tab.
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Congratulations to our Top Agents
at Lake & Land Realty for 2012!
Top Listing Agent: Catina Wright
Top Selling & Top Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Listing, Selling & Producing Team: The Pagans
Way to Go!
Learn more about these Real Estate Agents
on our website under the Agents Tab.
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Asking prices increased 5.1% nationally year-over-year (Y-O-Y), marking a huge turnaround from being down 4.3 percent in December 2011. Moreover, not only are prices rising, these gains have accelerated in the last year. Quarter-over-quarter price changes were 0.8% in Q1 (March 2012), 0.4% in Q2 (June 2012), 1.4% in Q3 (September 2012), and 2.3% in Q4 (December 2012), seasonally adjusted. More good news for the Real Estate Industry!
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Congratulations to our November 2012 Top Agents
Top Listing Agent: Harris Ferguson
Top Listing Team: The Pagans
Top Selling & Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Selling Team: The Johnsons
Top Producing Team: The Pagans
Way to Go! |
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Lake & Land Realty at beautiful Smith Mountain Lake in VA celbrated it's 7th anniversary this month! The company was established in 2005 & is now located at 17 Bridgewater Plaza, right in the heart of Smith Mountan Lake! We have grown from 15 to 30+ Realtors. Our broker & owner is Dexter Rakes. He is from the area and feels that he has the best Real Estate Agents. They will go the extra mile to get the job done. Our company recentlty opened a Rental Company-Lake & Land Property Rentals. Our company is a full service comapny that handles Real Estate, Rentals and Appraisals. Contact us for all your Real Estate Needs.
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In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the Virginia Association of REALTORS® Board of Directors has approved a $10,000 donation to the REALTORS® Relief Foundation to help assist those in areas severely affected by Sandy. As REALTORS®, we help build and maintain communities. We aren’t just there when the time comes to buy or sell a home. We are there during periods of need as well. Now—in the wake of Hurricane Sandy—is one of those occasions. |
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Our Rental Website was Just Launced this Week! Please visit www.RentalsAtTheLake.com !
We Manage Both Long Term & Vacation Rentals! |
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When viewed on a quarterly basis, the third quarter of 2012 shows further growth in Virginia’s residential real estate market with a 6% increase in home sales as compared to the third quarter of 2011. To view report, click on below link.
2012_Q3_Report
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Congratulations to our October 2012 Top Agents
Top Listing Agent: Roni Caron
Top Listing & Producing Team: The Johnsons
Top Selling & Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Selling Team: The Pagans
Way to Go! |
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Per Virginia Association of Realtors, the Third Quarter Virginia Home Sales Report has been released and yet again, most state-wide indicators show an improved housing market in the Commonwealth.
Great news for the Real Estate Market! Feel free to call Lake & Land Realty today for a free market analysis!
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- For every two homes sold, one job is created in the U.S.
- Each purchase generates as much as $60,000 in economic activity over time.
Owning your own home is not only beneficial to you; it also helps create jobs and stimulate the economy.
This article came from houselogic.com.
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Congratulations to our Top Agents for Septmeber 2012!
Top Listing Agent & Top Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Listing, Selling & Producing Team: The Pagans
Top Selling Agent: Catina Wright
To learn more about these agents and their property listings, go to our office website at www.RealtyAtTheLake.com! |
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Houselogic.com, a comprehensive website about all aspects of homeownership from the National Association of Realtors®, has won Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) 2012 Content Marketing Orange Award for the Content Marketing “Program of the Year” in the online channel. Just another tool to help the homeowner!
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A local bank quoted these rates this week:
30 Year Conventional 3.25%
15 Year Conventional 2.75%
30 Year FHA 3.00%
15 Year FHA 2.65%
Wow...a great time to purchase a home!
Rates are subject to change. |
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The Roanoke Valley Association of Realtors reported 384 homes sold last month, marking the highest monthly total in more than two years. In August 2011, 346 homes sold.
The organization tracks home sales in Roanoke and Salem, the counties of Roanoke, Botetourt and Craig, and portions of Bedford and Franklin counties.
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The following were our top Real Estate Agents for August 2012 at Lake & Land Realty! Ricky Smith was our Top Listing Agent: Pam Gabriel was our Top Selling & Top Producing Agent; Mike, Sylvia & Matt Pagans were our Top Listing Team and Manley & Trish Johnson were our Top Selling and Top Producing Team. Learn more about these Top Producers on our website-www.realtyatthelake.com. |
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Please follow us on Twitter now. Thank you for following Lake & Land Realty. |
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WASHINGTON (August 22, 2012) – Sales of existing homes rose in July even with constraints of affordable inventory, and the national median price is showing five consecutive months of year-over-year increases, according to the National Association of Realtors. Monthly sales rose in every region but the West, where inventory is very tight....
Contact Lake & Land Realty at Smith Mountain Lake for a market anaylsis of your property today. www.realtyatthelake.com
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Go for the long haul....
When looking for a home, search for one that you could see yourself living in for several years -- at least five to seven years is ideal. Buying -- and moving -- to a new home takes a lot of time and effort, and can add up significantly in closing and moving costs, etc. Staying in place longer will help you avoid those added expenses. Plus, the extra time spent in your home could be just enough to help you ride out a downturn in the real estate market.
Contact Lake & Land Realty at Smith Mountain Lake to let one of our experienced Real Estate Agents assist you in purchasing the home of your dreams. www.realtyatthlake.com
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Home sales up 11%, prices up 7% in 2012-Q2
The Second Quarter 2012 Virginia Home Sales Report has been released and nearly all state-wide indicators show a much improved housing market in the Commonwealth. To read more about this visit the Virginia Association of Realtors website. |
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June Existing Home Prices Rise Again
WASHINGTON (July 19, 2012) - Existing-home prices continued to show gains but sales fell in June with tight supplies of affordable homes limiting first-time buyers, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
Total existing-home sales1, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, declined 5.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.37 million in June from an upwardly revised 4.62 million in May, but are 4.5 percent higher than the 4.18 million-unit level in June 2011.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the bigger story is lower inventory and the recovery in home prices. "Despite the frictions related to obtaining mortgages, buyer interest remains solid. But inventory continues to shrink and that is limiting buying opportunities. This, in turn, is pushing up home prices in many markets," he said. "The price improvement also results from fewer distressed homes in the sales mix."
According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage fell to a record low 3.68 percent in June from 3.80 percent in May; the rate was 4.51 percent in June 2011; recordkeeping began in 1971.
The national median existing-home price2 for all housing types was $189,400 in June, up 7.9 percent from a year ago. This marks four back-to-back monthly price increases from a year earlier, which last occurred in February to May of 2006. June's gain was the strongest since February 2006 when the median price rose 8.7 percent from a year prior.
Distressed homes3 - foreclosures and short sales sold at deep discounts - accounted for 25 percent of June sales (13 percent were foreclosures and 12 percent were short sales), unchanged from May but down from 30 percent in June 2011. Foreclosures sold for an average discount of 18 percent below market value in June, while short sales were discounted 15 percent. "The distressed portion of the market will further diminish because the number of seriously delinquent mortgages has been falling," said Yun.
NAR President Moe Veissi, broker-owner of Veissi & Associates Inc., in Miami, said there's been a steady growth in buyer interest. "Buyer traffic has virtually doubled from last fall, while seller traffic has risen only modestly," he said. "The very favorable market conditions are helping to unleash a pent-up demand, which is why housing supplies have tightened and are supporting growth in home prices. Nonetheless, incorrectly priced homes will not attract buyers."
Total housing inventory at the end June fell another 3.2 percent to 2.39 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 6.6-month supply4 at the current sales pace, up from a 6.4-month supply in May. Listed inventory is 24.4 percent below a year ago when there was a 9.1-month supply.
First-time buyers accounted for 32 percent of purchasers in June, compared with 34 percent in May and 31 percent in June 2011. "A healthy market share of first-time buyers would be about 40 percent, so these figures show that tight inventory in the lower price ranges, along with unnecessarily tight credit standards, are holding back entry level activity," Yun said.
All-cash sales edged up to 29 percent of transactions in June from 28 percent in May; they were 29 percent in June 2011. Investors, who account for the bulk of cash sales, purchased 19 percent of homes in June, up from 17 percent in May; they were 19 percent in June 2011.
Single-family home sales declined 5.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.90 million in June from 4.11 million in May, but are 4.8 percent above the 3.72 million-unit pace in June 2011. The median existing single-family home price was $190,100 in June, up 8.0 percent from a year ago.
Existing condominium and co-op sales fell 7.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 470,000 in June from 510,000 in May, but are 2.2 percent higher than the 460,000-unit level a year ago. The median existing condo price was $183,200 in June, which is 6.9 percent above June 2011.
Regionally, existing-home sales in the Northeast dropped 11.5 percent to an annual pace of 540,000 in June but are 1.9 percent above June 2011. The median price in the Northeast was $253,700, down 1.8 percent from a year ago.
Existing-home sales in the Midwest slipped 1.9 percent in June to a level of 1.02 million but are 14.6 percent higher than a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $157,600, up 8.4 percent from June 2011.
In the South, existing-home sales declined 4.4 percent to an annual pace of 1.73 million in June but are 5.5 percent above June 2011. The median price in the South was $165,000, up 6.6 percent from a year ago.
Existing-home sales in the West fell 6.9 percent to an annual level of 1.08 million in June and are 3.6 percent below a year ago. The median price in the West was $233,300, up 13.3 percent from May 2011. Given tight supply in both the low and middle price ranges in this region, sales in the West are stronger in the higher price ranges.
The National Association of Realtors®, "The Voice for Real Estate," is America's largest trade association, representing 1 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
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Postive real estate news from Lake & Land Realty at Smith Mountain Lake Virginia.
Article from Trulia Archives.
Once upon a time (i.e., 2006) in a magical place called the Bay Area, the real estate  market got so heated that it became commonplace to hear coffee shop patrons trading stories about their little old million-dollar houses. It became equally commonplace for this excess of home equity to create a false sense of financial security, causing many a homeowner to save less for the future than they might have otherwise. This practice was just as inadvisable as it was common, as evidenced by a retirement planner’s primely located billboard at the time, which read:
“My house is worth a million dollars” is NOT a retirement plan.
But many people treated it like it was, to their detriment.
Relying upon your home equity for retirement requires that you sell the place at some point, cashing out and moving to someplace cheaper (and potentially less desirable) to live, when you stop working. That said, there are a number of other, less risky ways you can use your home 5, 10, even 20 years in advance of your planned retirement date to:
- save cash now, so you can add it to your investments
- increase your income now, also adding it to your retirement nest egg, and/or
- reduce your expenses later, which might allow you to retire sooner (at a time when retiring at all is a true feat).
Here are six sets of strategies for using your home to help you retire - without having to sell the place and retire in Timbuktu:1. Put your spare space to work. Depending on where you live and whether you have room, you may be able to rent your home out, a little bit at a time. On sites like VRBO and Airbnb you can rent out as little as one room, your mother-in-law unit or your whole house for one night, one week or one month (or any combination of these). Also, savvy homeowners are increasingly renting out spare rooms or floors for the long-term. I know a number of people who are now renting out their own homes while they travel on their own vacations, and still others who rent out their extra rooms while they’re at home, enjoying the side benefit of meeting new people. If you do put your extra rooms to work, you can use the extra income to pay down your debt or to pile onto your retirement fund - just be careful of your local rent control laws, especially if you’re doing anything longer than a vacation rental.2. Hack your utilities. If you do the whole weather-stripping-and-dual-pane-windowing drill, you definitely stand to save some cash on your monthly utility bills. But in some areas, homeowners might also be able to save, big-time, with little or no cash out of pocket by opting out of their regular utility service and into something called solar power service. These companies sell solar power as a service, on a long-term contract, so home owners don’t have to pay for panels, then charge a lower power rate than the traditional utilities. What you save over these years you can redirect to your retirement. And to boot, some of these companies also allow you to fix your utility rate for a 20-year period so that in your retirement years, you will not be exposed to the unpredictability of energy rate increases. 3. Pay your mortgage off early. There are two levers you can pull to supercharge your retirement plan: (1) you can boost the income you’ll have to save and live on or (2) you can slash your future living expenses. The largest of these living expenses is, of course, your mortgage. For my grandmother’s generation, the norm was to pay off your 30-year mortgage right about the same time you were winding down a 30-year career. But today, it’s much more common for people to retire with 5, 10, 15 years or more still left on their mortgages.One way to get to retirement sooner? Pay your mortgage off early. Enter three different time frames in which you’d like to pay your home loan off (i.e., in 7, 9 and 11 years from now) and enter that time period and the current balance you still owe on your mortgage (loan amount) into our mortgage terms calculator to figure out how much you’d have to pay every month to meet any of these targets. If you can’t swing making a higher payment for one of your ideal payoff time frames, try this: simply round your monthly payment up to the nearest hundred or thousand dollars every month, if you can afford it. You’d be surprised at how even small, extra payments can snowball into an early mortgage payoff.Here’s another option: pay 1/2 of your monthly every two weeks - because there are 52 weeks in the year, paying on that schedule results in making 26 half, and 13 full payments each year. The extra payment can pay off a 30 year loan as much as 4 or 5 years early! (Note: you can get the same result by simply paying an extra 1/12th of your mortgage payment every month.) However you do it, make sure you tell your mortgage servicer to dedicate any overage you pay toward your principal balance.4. Tune up your mortgage. If you’ve been in your home a few years, it can be easy to tune out of the whole mortgage scene - especially after five years of mostly bad news. But the news now might be better than you think, as home values are starting to steady and even edge up, and rates are still uber-low. If you have a 6 percent home loan you got 6 years ago, you stand to save thousands and thousands of dollars by refinancing into a 3.6 percent loan (the going rate this week). And that’s thousands and thousands you can put into your retirement fund. (Of course, the precise amount that you personally will save from refinancing depends on your current interest rate, your loan amount and the costs you incur refinancing.)So, reconnect with your mortgage broker and pay attention to interest rates - especially if you’re paying more than 5 percent. And just generally click out of mortgage autopilot, watching your statements and asking questions about things you don’t understand. For example, you might still be paying a Private Mortgage Insurance premium that you can get removed upon request, assuming you’ve been in the loan long enough and your home has enough value beyond the loan amount (the precise standards vary from loan to loan, but check in with your mortgage broker and your lender to see if you can ditch your PMI payments anytime soon and put that money toward your retirement savings). 5. Start a side business from home. Put your home to work! Whether you use your space to dog-sit, baby-sit, bake or make preserves to sell at the farmer’s market, using your home to start a side business or to work a side job can pull the “extra income” lever of the retirement cushion-fluffing equation. It might also enable you to claim a home office deduction from your income taxes, depending on whether you’re able to dedicate the space completely to your business endeavor. Read The $100 Startup to make sure you don’t spend more in startup expenses than you make. Also, consult with a tax expert to be sure that you dot your i’s and cross your t’s; depending on how you structure your business, you may end up increasing your tax burden, an unpleasant result a real pro can help you avoid.6. Trim your taxes. Follow these steps:
- Type your address into the search box at Trulia.com.
- Compare the Trulia Estimate against the tax assessment (you can find your assessed value on the same page under Property Taxes, or on your tax bill).
- If your Trulia Estimate - or the prices you know nearby homes have recently sold for - is at or below the assessed value, you may want to apply to have your home’s value reassessed.
On your county tax assessor’s website, you’ll find the instructions and paperwork for submitting this request. (If you don’t, give them a ring!) They generally will ask you to tell them what you think your home is actually worth, and to provide some recent, comparable sales to back that dollar amount up (scroll all the way down on your home’s Trulia page, to the Sold Properties section for recently sold homes that might work).The theme? If you can save on taxes, utilities or mortgage interest, we’re talking about the potential to save tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years between now and retirement - much more than cutting back on coffee or the occasional meal out. Same goes with using your home to bring in some extra income or paying off your mortgage early - the potential retirement-boosting results are unparalleled. |
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Lake & Land Realty wanted to share this artice published on Trulia.com as it is positive news for the Real Estate Market!
SAN FRANCISCO, June 20, 2012 – Trulia today released the results of its American Dream survey, which has tracked American attitudes towards homeownership since 2008. Harris Interactive conducted this online survey on behalf of Trulia among 2,205 U.S. adults, age 18 and over, between May 22 - 24 and among 2,230 U.S. adults, age 18 and older, between June 4-6, 2012.
KEY FINDINGS:
Optimism Runs Ahead of Housing Market Reality: With prices rising quarter over quarter in 86 of the 100 largest U.S. metros in May, according to the Trulia Price Monitor, it’s not surprising that nearly two-thirds (61 percent) of Americans believe home prices in their local market will rise in the next year. However, American’s hope for a real estate market bounce-back may be too high. Even though prices in many markets reached unprecedented and unsustainable levels during the boom, 58 percent of Americans believe home prices in their local markets will return to their previous high in the next 10 years.
Return of Super-Sized Homes: After veering away from super-sized homes throughout the recession, Americans are yet again attracted to the idea of bigger homes. According to the survey, more than 1 in 4 (27 percent) Americans who believe home ownership is part of achieving their personal American Dream said that their ideal home size is over 2,600 square feet – up from 17 percent in 2011. In fact, interest in homes of more than 3,200 square feet nearly doubled in the last year from 6 percent in 2011 to 11 percent in 2012.
Starter Home Reality Check: Homeownership remains central to the American Dream. In fact, 72 percent said owning a home is part of achieving their personal American Dream. Among renters, 78 percent—many of whom may be first-time homebuyers—aspire to buy a home at some point in the future. However, most have unrealistic expectations about their prospective starter home. When surveying renters on what amenities would make them fall in love with a home if they were in the market for a home today, the top amenities were a master bathroom (62 percent), walk-in closet (56 percent) and gourmet kitchen (50 percent). However, there is a clear disconnect between what renters want and the reality of what actual homeowners said they had in their first home. Only 26 percent of homeowners said that they had an en-suite master bathroom in their first home, while just 35 percent had a walk-in closet and 9 percent had a gourmet kitchen.
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Real Estate Expectations vs. Reality: Hard Pill to Swallow
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Amenity
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Renter Dreams2
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First-Time Homeowner Realities
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En-suite master bathroom
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62%
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26%
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Walk-in closet
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56%
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35%
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Gourmet kitchen
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50%
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9%
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Outdoor deck
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50%
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28%
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Wood floors
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47%
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35%
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Pre-wired entertainment system
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31%
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7%
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Pool
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24%
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10%
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Hot tub
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22%
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6% | |
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Congratulations to our Top Agents for May-Way to Go!
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Congratulations to our Top Agents for April 2012-Way to Go!
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Down payment: the mere utterance of the term strikes dread in the hearts of many a  homebuyer-to-be. Coming up with a down payment often seems like an obstacle that must be overcome, as it is the biggest test of our ability to save money most of us will ever face and it’s a test that stands between us and our ability to become a homeowner.I think it’s time to flip the script on how we think about down payments. What if we looked at them less as an obstacle, and more as an opportunity? Saving and collecting a down payment takes time, discipline and financial planning. It forces us into creating and practicing sound money management skills and habits, and into making clear choices about what’s important to us - things that will stand us in good stead throughout our tenure as home owners. To boot, the more money we have to put down, the more choice we have in terms of our purchase price range and the more control we have over our monthly payment.
All that said, down payments can be take years to save for, and some buyers are concerned they might miss a good market opportunity by continuing to wait. If you count yourself in that number, here are a handful of less-well known sources for boosting your down payment stockpile:
1. Your City. Most of us remember the days of the zero-down loan, the federal home buyer tax credit era, and even have memories of when we could use tax credit funds toward our down payment and closing cost requirements. The keyword here is ‘memories’ - those days are long gone, as are the times when there were nationwide programs that allowed a home’s seller to ‘gift’ the buyer a down payment from the overall purchase price of the home.
Where have all the down payment assistance programs gone? Local, that’s where.
The best programs of this sort are now largely operated by local governments, primarily cities and counties. As such, the rules vary widely. Some are exclusively operated for buyers with low or moderate incomes. Others are dedicated to helping first-time home buyers, usually defined as someone who hasn’t owned a home in the past 3 years. Many of these programs have a limited pool of funds that may run out over the course of the fiscal or calendar year, and almost all of them require buyers to jump some major hoops in terms of:
- bringing their own funds to the table
- picking a home that meets certain minimum condition criteria and/or
- completing a course of homeowner education classes
in order to qualify for the funds. Some state and local programs in areas which were particularly hard hit by the recession also offer big-time bonuses for buyers who agree to purchase a bank-owned home or a property in a designated economic recovery zone.
To find these programs, just run a series of Google searches to find your city, county and state websites. Most will have a link for Residents, Housing, Homebuyer Assistance or some similar category of resources. And here’s a hint - make sure you’re on a site that ends in .gov - scammers posing as governmental agencies abound. Also, talk with your trusted, local real estate agent or mortgage broker; they often know the ins and outs of the local programs that can help a home buyer out.
2. Your Parents, Family and Friends. Many more home buyers than you might think get by with a little help from their friends (and relatives). Most mortgage programs will allow for some portion of your down payment to come in the form of ‘gift money,’ which is exactly what it sounds like: money someone gives you to help you buy a home. Check in with your mortgage pro about how much of your down payment needs you can satisfy with gift money - guidelines varies widely based on how much of your own cash you have to put down and what loan programs you’re applying for.
While gift money sounds great, it’s far from a panacea to the problem of coming up with a down payment. Taking gift money from a relative may create relationship issues or come with emotional strings attached, something you should consider and evaluate before you even have conversations about it with your potential benefactors.
And gift money generally also comes with lender strings attached, as well. Namely, lenders almost always require that gift money be contributed along with a gift letter that states that the giver is a relative and that the money is a gift, not a loan. The lender may also require to see a bank account statement from the giver showing that the money was theirs to give - just to be sure they didn’t go out and get some sort of loan that they expect you to help them repay.
Most insiders think of gift money as large gifts exclusively allowable in the context of a familial relationship, but at least one program I know of allows any general well-wisher to contribute any amount to your cause, whether or not they are a relative. The FHA Bridal Registry program allows couples to open a down payment registry account with their lender, and to deposit checks into that account from anyone who wants to give any amount to help them become home owners. Talk to your FHA mortgage broker for more information on how to open such a registry account.
3. Your Employer. Universities and the municipal agencies that employ first responders like police and fire personnel frequently make available down payment and other home buying assistance programs to their staffers. So do some large employers or even smaller companies who are seeking to lure top-level recruits, in the form of relocation assistance programs. Check in with your employers’ Human Resource division to explore whether any such assistance is available - and if you happen to find yourself a hot prospect on the job market, consider trying to negotiate relocation or down payment assistance into your offer package.
4. Your Income. This is not about cutting out a cup of coffee here or there. Euro-style austerity measures are just too hard to keep up for the months or years it can take to save up a down payment. Rather, the idea is to get gut-level real with yourself about what’s really important to you. And if the answer is buying a home, then it’s time to go through your spending with a fine tooth comb and look for the leakage you can stop up - cash you can redirect to your down payment savings.
If you spend $20 a workday on oatmeal and coffee at breakfast and your takeout lunch, that’s $400 per month - almost $5000 a year, you can save by simply bringing these things from home (not to mention the health and other benefits you’ll gain). And those numbers are not inflated, if you work in a big city. Nor is the $100/month cable bill, the $15 yoga class or the $2,000 vacation.
Fact is, you can have much of the enjoyment of these things for much, much less than you’re used to spending - at least while you’re in down payment-saving mode. Stream TV shows and movies online at Netflix, Hulu or Amazon - you can also find great workout videos on some of these channels for 10 percent of what you’d pay to go to a class! Bring the staycation back, or cut hotel costs by renting a private room or small apartment on a site like VRBO or Airbnb (you might be surprised at how nice the experience is if you stick with the vacation rentals that have rave reviews - I certainly was.)
Redirecting the dollars you would normally spend - whether intentionally or on autopilot - for some of these big-ticket items back into your down payment savings account is like pressing fast forward on your home buying timeline. The key is to click out of money-spending autopilot and to transfer the saved money, asap, into a separate down payment savings account - ideally one that is online, so you have to think hard and wait a few days before pulling money out.
5. Your Assets. Some retirement accounts allow you to borrow against or pull out funds, penalty-free, to apply them toward your down payment on a home. Is it advisable for everyone, in every situation to deplete their 401K or IRA to plug that cash into a house? Absolutely not. But there are situations in which it may make sense to get your down payment up to 20%, say, by borrowing a few thousand dollars from yourself.
If getting your down payment to the 20 percent mark by borrowing from your 401K gets your mortgage interest rate down and allows you to repay that cash to your own retirement account (vs. to your mortgage lender) with interest, you and your financial advisor might agree that this move is the right move for you. Or not - this is a highly personal decision that must be made strategically, but some home buyers should at least explore whether their retirement accounts are a sensible source of some portion of their down payment funds.
And these aren’t the only assets that can help fund your down payment. I know a young family who has given themselves a complete financial makeover over the last few years by getting rid of unnecessary belongings and selling them at flea markets, yard sales and online. Don’t underestimate what reselling your stuff can yield; my own Mom has had a few four-figure yard sales over the years!
Do you have ‘stuff’ you don’t need or use that someone else would love? Consider liquidating it online or taking it to a consignment store, and using the cash to fluff your down payment savings. Side benefit: you’ll have less to move when you’re ready to move into your new home!
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The Smith Mountain Lake Visitor's Guide has just been published. A great resource for those thinking of relocating or vacationing our beautiful lake.
See our ad showcasing our Real Estate Agents!
Contact us for your copy today!
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1. Banish chips, scuffs and the like with a fresh coat of paint. I believe that eliminating nicks, scuffs and scratches on any painted or finished surface is one of the cheapest, easiest and most impactful spruces a seller-to-be can do. That’s because these little tiny blemishes create a shabby appearance on a home that might otherwise be in great shape, but can be entirely banished with a good washing and some fresh paint.
This goes for interior and exterior walls, floors, and especially any sort of trims that are painted white, as is common with crown and floor moldings - scuff marks and blemishes seem to pop out from these items. Also, the edges of cupboards, doors and drawers are places where chips and nicks are so common that homeowners overlook them, but can be super visible to buyers who visit your home for the first time.
2. Brighten, polish and replace all trims. One day, I’ll do a scientific study, and I predict the results will reveal that if you put two identical homes side-by-side and give one a set of tricked-out trims - exterior shutters, front door, eaves - even your house numbers, door knockers, kickplates and other exterior hardware - people will rate the house with the beautiful trims way higher on the ‘pride of ownership’ scale than you’d expect.
Go stand on your own curb to get the buyer’s-eye view of your home, and then drive around your own neighborhood or the nicest part of town and flip through some home improvement mags or websites for ideas. If you can add attractive trims, freshen up the ones you have or paint them to create an unexpected but attractive color combination with the body of your house, you can skyrocket your home’s standing on my (newly invented) ‘pride of ownership’ scale.
3. Furry, drippy, noisy or broken HVAC systems. Maintaining your heating and air conditioning systems is not that expensive, but buyers think it is. In fact, your furnace and AC are precisely the sort of major household machinery that intimidate first-time home buyers. So, if they show up to the open house or a private showing of your home in June and the AC is making a funny knocking sound or just flat out doesn’t work well enough to keep the house cool, buyers might perceive that as a more serious red flag than it truly is.
Does your AC has that furry ‘science experiment’ look to it? Not only are you paying for the energy it’s probably wasting to push the air pass all that dust and dirt, the gross-out factor will have even the hardiest buyer wondering what else might be wrong with your home.
On the flip side, letting prospective buyers know that your home’s HVAC systems have been recently maintained or upgraded is a nice touch that makes itself obvious during showings and allows buyers to breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to concerns about short-term repair bills and the comfort level of family members who may have allergies and asthma.
Side note: if your AC does make a funny sound you might be so accustomed to you can’t hear it anymore - check in with your agent unless you know as a matter of fact that your AC is in tip-top shape. One more side note: if you live someplace where it gets cold around the holidays and you don’t plan to list your home until wintertime, right now may be the ideal time to have your heating system serviced. Off-season repairs and maintenance are often discounted.
4. Mend and tend to your fences, gates and screens. These items may not jump out at us in our own home - in fact, these are things I often see sellers skimp on or run out of time and money to tend to. And it’s easy to rationalize your way out of dealing with them, as they seem like relatively inexpensive fixes for buyers to make themselves. But screens with holes in them and gates that don’t budge or hang off their hinges are precisely the sorts of things I’ve seen make buyers walk back through a home looking for other flaws; and anything to do with fences makes them envision neighbor disputes over bills. You have the power to avoid sparking these concerns in the minds of house hunters by mending these items this Spring.
5. Doors, cupboards and drawers. One creaky door or squeaky cupboard does not kill a deal. But keep in mind that in some homes, other than the lights, these are the only functioning systems of your home that house hunting visitors will almost certainly use during the course of a viewing. Making sure your entry, interior closet and cupboard doors are in good cosmetic shape and that they work well and don’t stick is an easy, inexpensive way to position your home as a (literally) well-oiled machine.
One point of clarification – it’s less the case that buyers will notice, ooh and ahh over your smoothly sliding drawers than that they will notice and grow concerned if they don’t.
6. Have everything cleaned and washed. Even the most immaculate of housekeepers can realize a massive refresh to the look, feel, smell and the overall air quality of their homes by having professional cleaners come take a tour through the place. Springtime is a great time to ask your agent for referrals to the best local vendors to power wash your house, windows and driveway, as well as to have your carpets, rugs and window coverings cleaned. For those who are on a tight budget, many vendors offer Spring cleaning promotions for these services right about now (and if your budget is even tighter, there are products you can buy and machines you can rent to do these things yourself – just make sure you account for the value of your time).
7. Shred it up. Some might say this is more like Spring cleaning than home maintenance, but I’ve noticed that the clutter of boxes and boxes of paperwork, old file cabinets and the like have a tendency to contribute to the sense that a listed property might be unkempt, the aura of stagnation. If you have no cash to do anything else on this list, one thing you can do for free is to go through all your files and boxes, get rid of old papers and shred anything with sensitive information.
Just think – you’ll have to do it anyway when you move, so this is like giving yourself a head start and your attic, basement office or other rooms a fresh start. You can count it as a staging tactic as well, as it gives the rooms at issue some added visual white space, making them seem larger!
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Contact Dexter Rakes at Lake & Land Realty for info on this Property. Listing # 781011 Amenities Galore!
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Congratulations to our Top Agents for March 2012! Way to Go!
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Smith Mountain Lake Real Estate.
Contact Lake & Land Realty.
Spring is in the Air!
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When recently surveyed, over a third of real estate agents reported having had one or more home sale contracts fall out of escrow per month. Autopsies of these dead deals often surface a truly lethal culprit: appraisals that come in below the agreed-upon purchase price. You see, mortgage lenders will only fund transactions up to a certain percentage of the appraised value of the home. If the home appraises low, either the buyer must come up with an increased down payment amount, the parties must agree to a price reduction, some combination of both of these must happen, or the deal is off.
While low appraisals can be particularly potent deal killers, their danger to your deal can be neutralized in some cases. If you find yourself facing an appraisal lower than the sale price in the contract, add these five steps to your immediate action plan.
1. Appeal errors or bad comps to the appraiser. Read the entire appraisal report, cover to cover. See if you spot any errors – it’s not at all unheard of for an appraisal report to miss a bedroom or underreport the home’s square footage. The trouble is that what starts out as a clerical error can often result in the application of the wrong “comparables” when it comes time for the appraiser to pick the properties to use as benchmarks of your home’s fair market value.
Whether or not you find actual errors in the details about the home you’re buying or selling, check in with your agent about whether the comparable properties used by the appraiser were reasonable, especially if they are from a different neighborhood, school district, town or construction era than the home you’re trying to buy or you are aware that much more similar or nearby homes have been sold in recent times than the comparable properties you see in the appraisal. In my town, for example, within a half-mile radius you can find vast variations in property values based on neighborhood and schools and city limits that change almost imperceptibly. Changes in the mortgage industry over the last few years have created situations in which appraisers are sometimes assigned who have little or no familiarity with these hyperlocal types of nuances which you, as a party to the transaction, might be more readily able to detect and appreciate.
If you find errors or feel that there are much more comparable recent sales that justify a higher price for the property, work with your agent to send the correct information and the applicable comps you would propose to your mortgage professional, who can relay that information to the appraiser or Appraisal Management Company and request that the appraiser revise their report and estimate of value. The appraiser has no obligation to make the change, but the more glaring the error, the more likely it is that they will.
2. Ask for a second opinion. Particularly in cases of error or bad comps, if the appraiser ignores your request to revise the report, you might need to escalate your request to the lender itself. Here’s where it’s important to be working with an expert agent and mortgage pro with a great reputation; if they believe strongly in your case, they may be able to plead it to the underwriter and request that a second appraisal be done. The idea here is that if the second appraisal backs up your arguments, listing the correct property details or more accurate comparables, the lender is much more likely to exercise its discretion to deem the first one a dud and go with the second opinion.
3. Renegotiate. Low appraisals disappoint everyone around the negotiating table. If the sellers have the leeway (read: equity) or their bank agrees (in short sales), they might agree to bring the price down to the appraised value or near enough that the buyer feels comfortable putting some extra cash into the deal to close the purchase price-to-appraised price gap. Some buyers refuse to ever do this on general principal, as they feel like it’s overpaying for the property. Others realize that appraisals may come in low for reasons less indicative of the property’s value, like a dearth of comparable sales in the area, and figure that to get the home they want, they’re willing to kick in a little extra dough.
Of course, ‘little’ is relative, and neither position is right or wrong for everyone.
And the decision for sellers is just as personal. When the differential between the purchase price and the appraised value is small, it can seem like a no-brainer to bring the price down if mortgage considerations allow, but it can also seem sensible to request the buyer to make up such a small difference – especially in markets where properties are getting multiple offers. On the other end of the spectrum, when the differential is big, it is less likely that the buyer will want to come up with the cash to close the gap, and also less likely another buyer will come along and offer the appraised price.
You would think these things would make a seller more willing to slash the price where the gap is big, but it also may make their moving plans less feasible, and tempt them to stay put and wait on the market to be more active and bear better comps.
Work with your agent to figure out what re-bargaining position really works for you.
If you do find yourself renegotiating price due to a low appraisal, remember that this is real estate, so everything is back on the table. For example, when the appraisal gap is only $1,000, a buyer might be willing to close the gap if the seller agrees to leave the lawn mower and do some small repairs.
4. Pay the difference or split the difference. On the flip side of renegotiating is reconsidering your personal position. If you’ve been house hunting for two years, forgoing low rates and the tax and lifestyle advantages of owning your home, and you’ve finally found ‘the one’ – in great condition, not a short sale, perfect location – you might think long and hard about whether you are willing to pay the difference between a low appraisal and the purchase price. This is especially so when the gap is small and you have the cash, or when you know the seller is barely breaking even on the deal or has offered to split the difference with you, or the short sale bank refuses to go any lower.
And sellers, this goes for you, too: if you’re committed to trying to close the deal, it behooves you to consider whether you can reduce the price on the home. Consider that in some states and loan situations, a low appraisal report in a deal that dies may become a disclosure the seller must provide to future buyers (ask your agent whether this will apply to you). The fact is, if you don’t agree to a price reduction of some sort, the buyer could very well walk, limiting your options to selling at a lower price, doing a short sale or staying put anyway.
5. Change lenders. Mortgage banks have more control when it comes to choosing appraisers than mortgage brokers do. (Fortunately, many experienced local mortgage brokers work for companies that also have banking divisions, and may be able to process your loan through that division in an effort to get your transaction a fresh start and work around a low appraisal. Ask your mortgage broker if their office has a banking division, if you’re not sure.)
Mortgage brokers are no longer able to hand-pick appraisers for a given transaction like they once could, but unlike broker-only firms (who are forced to work through a middleman company that may pay a cut rate, attracting less experienced appraisers), mortgage banks and hybrid broker-bankers are allowed to pick the set of people included on their own short list of appraisers. I’ve found that lenders use this short list for good much more often than to try to exert any sort of inappropriate influence.
My experience has been that, when compared with the appraisers national lenders and the middleman companies put to work on brokered transactions, small mortgage banks and local, hybrid broker-bankers tend to fill their lists with appraisers who have more local experience and can appreciate the uber-important local nuances like those described in #1, above.
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When You List Your Property with Lake & Land Realty,
Your Home is Linked to Multiple National & Local Websites!
Contact Us Today!
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Congrats to our Top Agents for January
  
 
Top Listing Agent: Brian Rust
Top Listing, Selling & Producing Team: Manley & Trish Johnson
Top Selling Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Producing Agent: Pam Gabriel
WAY TO GO!
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Freud was famously (and incorrectly) quoted as having said “sometime s a cigar is just a cigar.” But with real estate, the exact opposite is true. Buying, selling, even staying in or moving from your home is rarely just about picking a place to hang your hat. Rather, real estate decisions are whole-life decisions, because they impact and are impacted by nearly every other area of your life.
Most people are highly aware of the fact that their real estate decisions are related to their family matters and their money matters, but many don’t give nearly as much thought to the interconnectedness of whether, how and where you buy your home with your career: past, present and future.
Here are five ways your career and real estate decisions are linked, and some new ways to think about these topics together, to make decisions that better serve both these areas of your life.
Link #1: Location, location, location. At the top of the market, many areas saw an outflow of professionals from urban areas to the rows of McMansions that lined the gated cul-de-sacs and subdivisions of the suburbs. But as the prices of closer-in homes have declined, home values have melted down in many of these suburban areas and gas prices skyrocketed, many buyers have begun to prioritize urban areas to be closer to their jobs, some even ditching their cars and taking public transportation or walking to work.
Buying a home near work has obvious efficiencies and conveniences, including giving you back the hours you might otherwise have devoted to your commute. However, if your job is located far away from other companies, buying a home to be very nearby can cause issues – especially if your employer ever hits hard times or closes that location.
Link #2: Job choices and income can limit or enlarge your home options. As you’ve probably heard by now, mortgage guidelines have gotten very tight lately, with lenders forcing borrowers to stay well within their means, shrinking the amount of documented current monthly income that can be consumed by the new mortgage, property tax and home/mortgage insurance payments. Lenders also view your job history as relevant; large gaps of unemployed time and even major career moves from one industry to another can trigger a lender to require that you be in a stable work situation for at least two years before they agree to finance your home purchase.
While it might seem obvious that your income would have a direct effect of limiting how much you can afford to spend on a home, what is somewhat less obvious is that the way you make it can also have an impact. Borrowers who work on commission, earn cash tips and even are self-employed or small business owners may find themselves subjected to stricter guidelines than those who earn a salary, because of the greater burden of documentation lenders may impose. For example, if you’re self-employed, your “income” will likely be determined by your Adjusted Gross Income on your last two years’ federal tax returns, which many entrepreneurs work hard to bring down by making aggressive deductions.
Link #3: Home and mortgage obligations can limit your career decisions. While most home buyers are very aware of the extent to which their past job decisions and income impact their real estate moves, there are many ways our real estate commitments can impact our future career decisions. Smart agents advise their clients not to make any major job moves or go from, say, a salaried position to starting that business you’ve always wanted to in the weeks and months just prior to buying your home. But even after you’ve committed to make a mortgage payment in a market like today’s, where selling can take many months or longer, these obligations can actually limit your ability to work fewer hours, move to a lower-paying job in a field you want to break into, or quit your day job and become an entrepreneur without much more intensive planning and saving than you would have had to do otherwise.
Buying a home on today’s market is a long term commitment; most insiders recommend you not buy unless you are okay staying put at least 5 to 7 years (longer if you’re buying in a locale that has been hard hit by the foreclosure crisis; shorter if your market was relatively immune to the recession). At the same time, the length of time Americans work for one employer is getting shorter and shorter. Gone are the days when your 30-year mortgage matched right up with the 30 years you could expect to stay on a single job. Over the past few years, I’ve heard more than a few reports of unemployed homeowners who felt stuck in their homes, unable to accept job offers across the country because they were deeply underwater or other market forces made it impossible for them to sell their homes.
The upshot? It’s important to feel comfortable making a long-term geographic commitment to an area before you buy; if you expect you may need to move in the near-term for work, it might be best to rent unless you are able to negotiate for your compensation package to include relocation assistance from your employer.
Link #4: Health of your local job market impacts your home’s value. Many news stories have reported how the Silicon Valley real estate market has thrived of late, despite the home value doldrums still being experienced across the rest of the nation. In San Francisco and the South Bay Area, the tech boom means the local job market is booming and employees are being made millionaires by cashing in their stock options when tech companies go public. One of the first purchases many of these new millionaires make is a home.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve seen entire regional real estate markets fall into incurable recessions when the only major employer or two in town moves away or shuts down. Then, not only are you stuck with a home and no job prospects nearby, it becomes very difficult for you to find anyone else to buy it. When an area has a high unemployment rate or no new jobs are being created, not only does it increase the rate of foreclosures and make it difficult to find buyers, it also makes locals who do have jobs very nervous about their job security and hesitant to make the long-term financial and geographic commitment to buying a home.
My advice is to prioritize homes located near bustling job centers and areas with multiple industries that are thriving (and projected to continue doing so), areas in which the job market is not dependent on a single employer or even a single industry.
Link #5: Your home’s infrastructure can impact your ability to work there. Things like local internet speeds and networks available, lighting, room configuration - even the age of your home’s electrical system can have a major impact on how comfortably or effectively you are able to work at home – or whether you can work at home at all. And if you are looking to create an area in your home exclusively devoted to working or running a business, that may impact your ability to take extra tax deductions for a home office (a topic you should discuss with your tax professional).
This also highlights the holistic view you should take on how your choice of home impacts the entirety of your life. If you are able to work at home, your choice of home location vis-à-vis work location might be different than if you are not, which might impact what sort of work you do and which employers you prioritize, if you’re looking for a job.
It's like Freud didn't say, but could have - in real estate, nothing is just a cigar.
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Waterfront Home Just Listed! Contact Sylvia Pagans, REALTOR for more info on this property!
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In the wild world of dating, when you encounter a “turn-off,” you can just pack it in and not to go on another date with that guy or gal again. But turnoffs can be much more detrimental when they come up in the realm of your real estate goals. Indeed, turn a buyer off, dear sellers, and you risk not selling your home - period - or getting a lower price than you might have otherwise.
And, contrary to what you might assume, the same goes for buyers. Even in today’s ‘buyer’s markets,’ multiple offers do happen. And even in cases when you’re the only buyer on the scene, having a cooperative seller goes a long way toward everything from getting access to the place for inspections to getting a price reduction when the appraisal comes in low. Thus, the potential still exists for buyers to turn sellers off, and risk having their dream home slip right through their fingers.
As you proceed on your quest for drama-free real estate, factor in these frequently occurring gaffes that turn off buyers and sellers, and my tips for avoiding them.
Top 3 Ways to Turn a Buyer Off: If you’re a seller courting buyers, here are 3 faux-pas to avoid:
1. Hanging out when buyers are viewing your home: Buyers stalk properties online and off, checking obsessively for price reductions and the like. But buyer-side home stalking is unobtrusive to sellers. On the other hand, buyers can feel personally stalked and stifled in their ability to fully explore or verbally process their impressions of a home when you, seller, hang out inside your home while it’s being shown.
As soon as a buyer sees you in the house, it instantly becomes much more difficult for them to”
(a) envision themselves living there (it’s your house, after all),
(b) be comfortable opening up drawers, closet doors, etc., and
(c) express their thoughts about how this house might be exactly what they’re looking for, if they can knock out that wall and get rid of those cukoo murals you so lovingly painted in your children’s rooms.
Sellers: If you want to sell your home, it’s best to not be around when buyers are looking. Give them some breathing space and a chance to truly walk around and consider what they like and/or dislike about your home without lurking and looming (and, let’s be real - eavesdropping) nearby.
2. Showing a messy house: Life gets hectic, and it’s easy for things like laundry, dishes and other house cleaning tasks to fall by the wayside. It’s also difficult to keep the home in which you and your 4 kids, 3 gerbils and 2 Labrador Retrievers live perfectly spotless for months at a time, while you’re waiting for an offer. But when you decide that you’re going to sell your home, it’s imperative that you make a pact and a plan with yourself and your family that the place will be in tip-top shape when buyers come knocking.
Remember: your home is competing with dozens of others, as well as with buyer’s HGTV-infused visions of what their next home should look like, so first impressions really count.
Sellers: Stuffing the closet is not the answer. (Buyers will be opening that closet door, after all.) Pack up your personals like you were moving (best case: you are), and put all but the essentials in storage, if needed. Get the carpets cleaned, do the dishes, make the beds, mow the lawn, dust, sweep and mop. Ask your agent to give you a gut check on whether your idea of clean is clean enough (better yet - ask them for the number of a house cleaner who you can engage to get the job done to showable standards).
This might all seem obvious, but agents and buyers alike are constantly amazed at the condition of some of the homes they walk into. Take my word for it; I’ll spare you the ‘ewww’-inducing stories.
3. Overpricing your home: Buyers already have lots to do before making the largest purchase of their lives. They have to wrangle their finances into order, jump hoops to qualify for a loan, collect the cash for down payment and closing costs, and invest sometimes hundreds of hours into market research and house hunting. With all of this already on their plates, the prospect of trying to negotiate down a crazily high asking price is just too much work (and too outside their comfort zones) for most buyers to deal with. The average buyer won’t even bother looking at your home if the asking price is clearly high and off base compared with other similar, nearby homes for sale; they’d rather sit tight and wait .
Sellers: Price to sell from the beginning. Work with your agent to determine a price that is supported by the data on how much nearby homes have recently sold for. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and anguish and get a lot more legitimate bites from serious, qualified buyers.
Top 3 Ways to Turn a Seller Off: Buyers, if you want a home’s seller to play ball, best practice is to avoid these 3 pitfalls:
1. Unjustified, extreme lowball offers: It’s no secret that buyers have the upper hand in many markets right now. (To be clear, I said ‘many’ - not ‘every’ - your agent can help you understand what the dynamics are in your market.) But let’s be realistic, here. No seller can afford to give away their home at a price far below what it’s worth on today’s market. Lowballing a seller at a price far below the recent sales prices of similar homes in the neighborhood on the ‘let’s-take-a-stab’ plan, is highly likely to turn them off. And that, in turn, will cause the seller to view your offer - and you - as disrespectful and wasteful of their time.
Not only will they turn down your offer, but they may not even bother with a counteroffer, rendering your efforts at securing that particular home dead in the water.
Buyers: Review the recent sale prices of similar homes in the neighborhood (aka “comps”) with your agent before you make your offer. Also, ask them to help you factor in other market data, like the average list price-to-sale price ratio and the average number of days neighborhood homes stay on the market. It’s all right to come in lower than asking, if the market data supports such an offer; just be sure your offer is based on reality - and not your fantastical hallucination about scoring the bargain of the millennium.
2. Buyer-side mortgage fails: Plenty of employed buyers with decent credit and cash in the bank have been turned down for a mortgage these past few years. That means buyers can’t assume (a) that they’ll be approved for the amount of loan they need to buy the house they want, or (b) that they’ll be approved for a loan at all. Your inability to get approved for a home loan can create all sorts of problems not just for you, but also for your home’s seller. The average seller’s worst case scenario is that they accept your offer only to find out a few weeks, or months, later that you can’t get the loan you need to close the deal.
Buyers: It’s not overkill to start working with a mortgage professional as far as six months or a year in advance of starting your house hunt to get pre-approved for a loan. Make sure you get a clear understanding of the amount you qualify for, then work with your real estate agent from there to determine the price range you should house hunt in. And whatever you do - don’t buy a new car, open new credit cards or even change your line of work before your escrow closes, unless you consult closely with your mortgage professional before you make that move.
Tip for Sellers: Work with your agent to vet buyers before you sign a contract. Factor in their down payment and earnest money deposit, and feel free to counteroffer these items, not just the offer price. It’s not overkill to have your agent contact the buyer’s mortgage broker to see how reliable the buyer’s pre-approval really is.
3. Bashing the seller’s home: Home bashing happens when buyers start bad-mouthing (aka “trash talking”) the place and/or the neighborhood in hopes of getting a lower asking price. Examples: pointing out all the foreclosures in the area, saying the house down the street just sold for much lower than the asking price on this house, saying you’ll need to rip out the entire kitchen before you even consider moving in - saying any of these things to a seller who happens to be at home during the showing or the inspection is probably one of the fastest ways to turn them all the way off.
Buyers: Bad-mouthing a house or neighborhood won’t work to get you a lower price. Instead, it only serves to irritate the seller and motivate them to come up with all sorts of reasons why they shouldn’t sell their home to you! Remember: homes hold incredible emotional experiences for owners. Make an offer you’re comfortable with and keep the negative comments to yourself.
If there are legitimate, factual reasons underlying your decision to make an offer at a price the seller might see as a lowball, ask your agent to respectfully communicate those facts to the seller’s agent.
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Reactions to the prospect of negotiating run the gamut, almost like a Rorschach of  people’s comfort levels when it comes to thinking, talking and asserting themselves about money matters. Some people get so excited about haggling they adopt an entirely new persona when the time comes to talk their way into saving even a few bucks here or there. Others cringe at the mere thought of trying to suss out what’s going on in the minds of those on the other side of the bargaining table in order to strike a deal, even when hundreds of thousands of dollars (and their own best interests) are at stake.
And in light of the current market, it can seem like every real estate pundit you’ve ever seen on TV, the old guys from the Fed, Suze Orman, Jim Cramer - even the President! - have each pulled a chair up to the table and chimed into your transaction, too! Trying to factor market dynamics into your personal negotiation equation only ups the complexity factor (and the fear factor to boot).When it comes to buying or selling your home, there is a handful of negotiation need-to-knows that can go a long way toward protecting your best interests - and your cash! Here are five essential negotiation need-to-knows for savvy home buyers and sellers:1. Work from a foundation of sound information. It’s essential that you amass an arsenal of information, and use that as the basis for your negotiation. You are in no position to negotiate, aggressively or otherwise, unless and until you are well acquainted with the real estate market immediately surrounding your home, including:
- what have similar homes recently sold for;
- how much above or below asking do they normally sell for;
- how long do homes stay on the market, on average, compared with the home you’re buying or selling?
Not only will your agent help you understand these numbers and how they should relate to your own offer or response, your agent is also in a good position to reach out to the other agent and collect any available information about what is important to the other party: do they care more about moving quickly, getting top dollar, or certainty that the other side can close the deal? The other agent isn’t obligated to divulge any information but often will, in the interest of facilitating a deal that addresses their client’s priorities.Finally, it’s uber-critical to know what your own priorities are. Ultimately, the bar for whether your negotiation for your home is successful is based on what the home and the terms of the contract are worth to you. Know your own bottom and top line for price, and what your own priorities are, before the negotiation begins. 2. Approach the negotiation as a problem-solving challenge. Today’s negotiations are really more like problem solving scenarios, when you take into account all the parties whose needs must be met for the transaction to move forward. Traditionally, negotiations were a two-way power struggle between the buyer and seller, based primarily on their wants and their respective bargaining leverage. But on today’s market, the bank - or banks on both sides -- often have their own guidelines and needs that impact the terms of the deal, whether it be the seller’s lender insisting on a certain price in a short sale, or the buyer’s lender and appraiser refusing to lend anything above a certain price.Many a buyer has thought they were scoring a great deal by scoring a bargain basement price on a short sale, only to have the seller’s bank condition approval of the deal on a massive increase in the sale price. And the opposite is also true: a significant number of the deals that fall apart on today’s market do so because the home fails to appraise for the purchase price the buyer has agreed to pay. Ultimately, this is even the case when it comes to the buyer’s and seller’s needs: if the buyer can’t qualify for a high enough mortgage, or the seller can’t pay their mortgage balance off, at the price in the other party’s mind, there will be no deal, and the negotiation is inherently unsuccessful.In this context, it’s more important than ever to approach your negotiation as an exercise in problem solving, with the aim of meeting the needs of as many parties involved as possible. If you get some of your wants met, too, you’re golden!3. Manage your own mindset. You probably shouldn’t even try to buy a home that you don’t strongly like, or even love. It often makes sense to hone in on a specific offer price (within the range what is reasonable for a home) based on how much you want it, or how much you’d hate to lose it - especially in a multiple offer situation, where you may only have one chance to make an offer. With that said, be aware that when it comes to negotiating, she who is the least emotionally attached to a particular outcome usually has the greater bargaining power. The more attached you are to a particular home or a particular price point or set of terms for your home, the more likely you are to panic, freak out, throw money at the situation or cave in on important points unnecessarily when you get even the faintest sense that your desires may be at risk. When it comes to managing your own mindset and stamina through the course of a negotiation (uncertainty is tiring!), knowing what is and what isn’t within each party’s - control is key. Your agent can help you stay clear on this, which will help you avoid the emotional exhaustion that results from trying to negotiate things that are not really negotiable (e.g., the bank’s bottom line, cosmetic repairs on most foreclosures, etc.). On the flip side, knowing the full range of items that can be negotiated - which extends beyond price into areas like deposit amount, length of escrow, seller repairs, and whether the property is to be taken in as-is condition - empowers you to maximize how compelling your offer is to the other side, given the resources at your disposal.4. Minimize time pressures. Over the years, I have seen many a buyer and seller make brow-raisingly questionable offers and counteroffers based solely on the fact that they have to move by a certain deadline. Because shelter is a basic human need, the prospect of having to move out, relocating to a new job or moving to a new town without having housing in place can cause even the most nimble among us to feel ungrounded. Problem is, in the context of buying a home, moving deadlines can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars - and can even cause you to make needless compromises in terms of the actual property itself: compromises you might later (deeply) regret. If you are approaching a deadline for moving out or relocating, you’d do better to find a rental housing situation that will work for awhile or will work as a Plan B than to try to hurry your home’s purchase or sale to meet the deadline.5. Act and react quickly - not impulsively. When you find ‘your’ place, make an offer. When you get an offer or counteroffer), respond to it. In real estate, time is always of the essence, and prolonged hesitation often results in lost opportunities. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping on a decision overnight, especially if the ‘right’ move is unclear. But you never know when another buyer or another property might show up on the scene and change the whole bargaining dynamic, costing you more money or wooing away your home’s buyer. This is why it’s so important to be clear on the market data, your own budget and your own top and bottom lines from the start, so that you are positioned to act quickly, strategically and intelligently when the circumstances require it.Buyers, sellers and agents: what negotiation insights have you gleaned from your own real estate experiences? |
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Reactions to the prospect of negotiating run the gamut, almost like a Rorschach of people’s comfort levels when it comes to thinking, talking and asserting themselves about money matters. Some people get so excited about haggling they adopt an entirely new persona when the time comes to talk their way into saving even a few bucks here or there. Others cringe at the mere thought of trying to suss out what’s going on in the minds of those on the other side of the bargaining table in order to strike a deal, even when hundreds of thousands of dollars (and their own best interests) are at stake.
And in light of the current market, it can seem like every real estate pundit you’ve ever seen on TV, the old guys from the Fed, Suze Orman, Jim Cramer - even the President! - have each pulled a chair up to the table and chimed into your transaction, too! Trying to factor market dynamics into your personal negotiation equation only ups the complexity factor (and the fear factor to boot).When it comes to buying or selling your home, there is a handful of negotiation need-to-knows that can go a long way toward protecting your best interests - and your cash! Here are five essential negotiation need-to-knows for savvy home buyers and sellers:1. Work from a foundation of sound information. It’s essential that you amass an arsenal of information, and use that as the basis for your negotiation. You are in no position to negotiate, aggressively or otherwise, unless and until you are well acquainted with the real estate market immediately surrounding your home, including:
- what have similar homes recently sold for;
- how much above or below asking do they normally sell for;
- how long do homes stay on the market, on average, compared with the home you’re buying or selling?
Not only will your agent help you understand these numbers and how they should relate to your own offer or response, your agent is also in a good position to reach out to the other agent and collect any available information about what is important to the other party: do they care more about moving quickly, getting top dollar, or certainty that the other side can close the deal? The other agent isn’t obligated to divulge any information but often will, in the interest of facilitating a deal that addresses their client’s priorities.Finally, it’s uber-critical to know what your own priorities are. Ultimately, the bar for whether your negotiation for your home is successful is based on what the home and the terms of the contract are worth to you. Know your own bottom and top line for price, and what your own priorities are, before the negotiation begins. 2. Approach the negotiation as a problem-solving challenge. Today’s negotiations are really more like problem solving scenarios, when you take into account all the parties whose needs must be met for the transaction to move forward. Traditionally, negotiations were a two-way power struggle between the buyer and seller, based primarily on their wants and their respective bargaining leverage. But on today’s market, the bank - or banks on both sides -- often have their own guidelines and needs that impact the terms of the deal, whether it be the seller’s lender insisting on a certain price in a short sale, or the buyer’s lender and appraiser refusing to lend anything above a certain price.Many a buyer has thought they were scoring a great deal by scoring a bargain basement price on a short sale, only to have the seller’s bank condition approval of the deal on a massive increase in the sale price. And the opposite is also true: a significant number of the deals that fall apart on today’s market do so because the home fails to appraise for the purchase price the buyer has agreed to pay. Ultimately, this is even the case when it comes to the buyer’s and seller’s needs: if the buyer can’t qualify for a high enough mortgage, or the seller can’t pay their mortgage balance off, at the price in the other party’s mind, there will be no deal, and the negotiation is inherently unsuccessful.In this context, it’s more important than ever to approach your negotiation as an exercise in problem solving, with the aim of meeting the needs of as many parties involved as possible. If you get some of your wants met, too, you’re golden!3. Manage your own mindset. You probably shouldn’t even try to buy a home that you don’t strongly like, or even love. It often makes sense to hone in on a specific offer price (within the range what is reasonable for a home) based on how much you want it, or how much you’d hate to lose it - especially in a multiple offer situation, where you may only have one chance to make an offer. With that said, be aware that when it comes to negotiating, she who is the least emotionally attached to a particular outcome usually has the greater bargaining power. The more attached you are to a particular home or a particular price point or set of terms for your home, the more likely you are to panic, freak out, throw money at the situation or cave in on important points unnecessarily when you get even the faintest sense that your desires may be at risk. When it comes to managing your own mindset and stamina through the course of a negotiation (uncertainty is tiring!), knowing what is and what isn’t within each party’s - control is key. Your agent can help you stay clear on this, which will help you avoid the emotional exhaustion that results from trying to negotiate things that are not really negotiable (e.g., the bank’s bottom line, cosmetic repairs on most foreclosures, etc.). On the flip side, knowing the full range of items that can be negotiated - which extends beyond price into areas like deposit amount, length of escrow, seller repairs, and whether the property is to be taken in as-is condition - empowers you to maximize how compelling your offer is to the other side, given the resources at your disposal.4. Minimize time pressures. Over the years, I have seen many a buyer and seller make brow-raisingly questionable offers and counteroffers based solely on the fact that they have to move by a certain deadline. Because shelter is a basic human need, the prospect of having to move out, relocating to a new job or moving to a new town without having housing in place can cause even the most nimble among us to feel ungrounded. Problem is, in the context of buying a home, moving deadlines can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars - and can even cause you to make needless compromises in terms of the actual property itself: compromises you might later (deeply) regret. If you are approaching a deadline for moving out or relocating, you’d do better to find a rental housing situation that will work for awhile or will work as a Plan B than to try to hurry your home’s purchase or sale to meet the deadline.5. Act and react quickly - not impulsively. When you find ‘your’ place, make an offer. When you get an offer or counteroffer), respond to it. In real estate, time is always of the essence, and prolonged hesitation often results in lost opportunities. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping on a decision overnight, especially if the ‘right’ move is unclear. But you never know when another buyer or another property might show up on the scene and change the whole bargaining dynamic, costing you more money or wooing away your home’s buyer. This is why it’s so important to be clear on the market data, your own budget and your own top and bottom lines from the start, so that you are positioned to act quickly, strategically and intelligently when the circumstances require it.Buyers, sellers and agents: what negotiation insights have you gleaned from your own real estate experiences? |
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Congratulations to our Top Agents for 2011-Way to Go! |
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 Technically speaking, April 15th is tax day. But for Americans who expect a refund - including many homeowners who want to cash in on real estate-related tax perks - filing sooner holds the promise of getting that check in hand, stat.
If you count yourself in that number, here's a handy guide for 9 pieces of paper you should be sure to round up as you prepare to file, in order to reap every penny of the tax rewards you've earned by virtue of owning a home.
- Mortgage Interest Statement - IRS Form 1098. The meatiest real estate tax deduction on the books is the one that allows you to deduct 100 percent of the mortgage interest you paid in a year - including prepaid interest or points you might have paid at close of escrow, if you bought a home last year. By now, you should have received in the mail a Form 1098 from your mortgage lender that reports how much that interest totaled up to in 2011. If you itemize your taxes and claim a mortgage interest deduction, you must include this form with your tax form when you file.
(If you haven't received yours yet, most lenders that have online account management services also post the form digitally in your secure account on the web. Just login like you would to make your monthly payment, and look for a notice that says you can now download your 2011 Form 1098.)
- Property Tax Statements. In addition to deducting your mortgage interest, if you own a home you are eligible to deduct the property taxes you pay to your local city, county and/or state. You are not allowed to deduct some of the other miscellaneous expenses that some localities bundle up with the taxes they collect, like waste management and local assessments for things like street lighting, libraries and sidewalk construction. To get this deduction right, the best practice is to have your property tax statements at hand and make sure you're only deducting what's allowed.
If you bought your home this year, it's highly possible that you might not even have received a property tax statement yet - if that's the case, look to #3, below.
- Uniform Settlement Statement (HUD-1). If you bought or sold a home last year, right after closing you should have received a form called the HUD-1 Settlement Statement (hint: it's usually on legal-sized paper and contains an accounting of credits and debits for you and your home's buyer or seller). That form documents a number of line items which might help you out at tax time, including prepaid interest, the prorated property taxes you paid at closing, and closing costs like original fees and discount points. Some states offer tax credits for buying a foreclosure; check with your tax pro to find out if any such credits apply to you. If so, this statement might be your ticket to lower taxes.
And here's another handy hint - if you can't find your copy, you might have gotten it on a disk - and you can always email your real estate or escrow agent for a copy, as well.
- Moving Expense Receipts. Moving expenses are tax deductible, if your move is closely related, both in time and in place, to the start of work at a new or changed job location and you meet the IRS' time and distance tests. Long story short, your new home must be at least 50 miles farther from your new workplace than your old home was from your prior place of work, and you must work essentially full-time. So, if you bought or sold a home and moved in 2011, you'll need to include receipts from expenses you incurred making the move (meals not included) in your tax prep paperwork.
- Cancellation of Debt Statement - IRS Form 1099. Homeowners who lost a home to foreclosure, or divested of one by negotiating a short sale or deed in lieu of foreclosure with their lender might receive some version of Form 1099 from their lenders, charging them with income in the amount of the mortgage debt that has been cancelled. You see, if you borrow money from someone, then they cancel the debt, that money you originally borrowed becomes income in the eyes of the IRS - and income is, as you know, taxable.
- Utility statements for home office. For the average everyday homeowner who works at their employer's place of business, utilities are not deductible (sorry!). But if there is a part of your home that is "regularly and exclusively" used for business, you might be able to claim that portion of your home as a home office, and deduct some portion of your home utilities and costs of painting and repairs, as a result.Talk with your tax provider about what expenses are allowable to be claimed under your home office deduction, and whether or not you should take it.
- Income and Expense statements from rental properties. Some of you have elevated the art of home ownership to a business! If you are a landlord, your tax situation is more complicated than that of the average bear; you'll need to have complete income and expense statements when you put your tax returns together. It might actually behoove you to consult with a tax professional to make sure you are appropriately depreciating the property over time and not taking deductions that will expose you to the risk of audits, as well as to begin cultivating a long-term tax strategy for your real estate portfolio.
- Contractor receipts from energy efficient home improvements. Under the Nonbusiness Energy Tax Credit, homeowners who have made improvements to their homes that fall within a list of energy efficient upgrades might be eligible to claim tax credits. If, during 2011, you installed energy efficient improvements such as insulation, new dual-paned windows and furnaces, you might be eligible for a tax credit of 10 percent of the cost of these upgrades, up to $500 - only $200 of which may be used to offset the cost of windows.
- Mortgage Credit Certificate (MCC). If you own a home you bought in the last few years using a Mortgage Credit Certificate issued by a local housing authority, that Certificate may entitle you to a pretty hefty tax credit, based on a percentage of the mortgage interest you paid - on top of your mortgage interest deduction. MCCs apply as long as you live in the home and have a mortgage on it, but they only apply to defray taxes you actually owe - you can't use them to get a refund. In any event, your mortgage credit certificate, if you have one, is a must-have document as you start putting your tax prep plan in play.
No matter what your tax situation is, if you own a home, it absolutely cannot hurt to get some professional help and advice to make sure you maximize your deductions, while minimizing your exposure to audit. And you should always consult with a tax attorney or certified public accountant regarding your tax liabilities and implications when you buy, sell, short sell or lose a home to foreclosure. |
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Lake & Land Property Rentals is now Accepting Vacation & Long Term Rentals!
Contact Tracy David to List your Rental Property.
. Your Rentals Will Get Optimum Exposure as Our Office is Located at Bridgewater Plaza-in the Heart of Smith Mountain Lake!
www.lakeandlandrental.com
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The once-funny statement that “there’s an app for that” is now true much more often than not. With close to 1 million mobile apps available for download, it can be an overwhelming task to sort out the truly useful from those that are simply entertaining - not to mention those that are just plain silly.
So, I’ve done some homework for you! Here’s a short list of mobile apps I think you’ll find super useful for saving time, making smart decisions and keeping you organized while you’re hunting for your next home.1. Genius Scan What it does: Puts a document scanner in your pocket. Enables you to use your phone’s camera to take a picture of a document, then email it to anyone in PDF or JPEG format.Why it’s useful: Many real estate agents now use digital document signature software which allow you to sign with a click and, more importantly, without faxing documents back and forth. But some don’t - and some mortgage lenders will simply not accept anything but a copy or scan of your ‘wet ink’ signature. Throughout your transaction, you might find yourself needing to scan and email your contract documents with your original signature, a copy of your deposit check, new payroll check stubs as you receive them, your driver’s license, a gift letter from your Auntie Grace or any of a number of other documents you’ll need to get to your agent or mortgage pro across town - or across the country. Having the ability to scan documents and checks and email them right from your phone can save you a lot of time and hassle - not to mention gas and cash. Works with: iOSPrice: FreeAndroid Alternative: Document Scanner (Free 7-day trial/$3.98 for full version.)2. Dictionary of Real Estate TermsWhat it does: Translates the vast universe of real estate jargon and acronyms into plain English, putting a decoder at your fingertips for easy reference any time you need it during your house hunt or transaction. The Dictionary includes over 3,000 real estate terms, charts and graphs. You can save your searches and email terms to others. Your phone does not have to be connected to the Internet to use the Dictionary, which can be useful if you need to look up a term on an inspection or appraisal report while you’re in a home or office where you don’t have a great connection.Why it’s useful: I can guarantee few things in life, but one thing I do feel comfortable assuring you is that home buying will expose you to terms you have never heard before. You need to know what the terms used in your inspection, disclosure, contract and loan documents mean, and sometimes looking them up is the best way to do that.Works with: iOS and AndroidPrice: $1.99 (iOS) and 99 cents (Android)3. House HunterWhat it does: Helps you organize your house-hunting notes and priorities so you can more easily remember and compare the homes you’ve seen. The app also helps you evaluate the homes you’ve seen by providing a scorecard that weighs features against what you’ve identified as requirements and priorities. It includes a mortgage calculator, photo storage, and a feature that allows you to share your notes with your agent, among other bells and whistles.Why it’s useful: After you see about five houses, they can all blend together. This app helps you keep it all straight, while also keeping you mindful of what your original priorities were and how the homes you see measure up against them. Works with: iOSPrice: $3.994. SpringPadWhat it does: Helps you keep track of any and every thing you want to remember in a digital notebook you can access from anywhere, on any device. You can:
- scan barcodes of home furnishings, appliances and other items you want to buy after you move;
- save ideas, property addresses, online clippings from design and news sites, photos from decor mags and to do lists from your mortgage broker;
- categorize all these things - and more - by house hunt, mortgage and escrow, moving, and decorating; and
- set reminders, share your notes with your agent or even get an email alert when the duvet you want goes on sale.
All without a single scrap of paper!Why it’s useful: Empowers you to organize the hundreds of elements of your home buying adventure into a single spot and access it wherever you are - without carrying a bulky, messy binder or folder around.Works with: iOS and AndroidPrice: Free5. ColorSnapWhat it does: Allows you to take a picture with your phone’s camera from anything in the world that inspires you, then discover the corresponding Sherwin-Williams paint color. Why it’s useful: If you see a wall color you love in a home you, well, don’t like too much otherwise, you can capture the color and replicate that once you do find your dream home. Same goes for if you come across any other item in a color you love and would like to incorporate into your design scheme.Works with: iOS and AndroidPrice: Free6. Karl’s Mortgage CalculatorWhat it does: Calculates mortgage payments using the principal loan amount, interest and term (and can solve for any of these if you input the other three variables). This app also gives you a more precise idea of what your total monthly expenses will be on a given home by factoring in line items other calculators leave out, like mortgage insurance, homeowners association dues, property taxes and homeowners’ insurance. You can also see what kind of savings you might be able to achieve - and how early you can pay your mortgage off - by running scenarios that add in extra loan payments. Why it’s useful: Having this mortgage calculator handy during your house-hunting adventures will enable you to quickly calculate how a given increase in your offer price will change your monthly payment.Works with: AndroidPrice: FreeiOS alternative: Mortgage Calculator Pro (99 cents)7. Trulia Real Estate AppWhat it does: SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT. Seriously, no mobile app list for home buyers would be complete without the Trulia app. It uses your phone’s GPS function to serve you up nearby listings and their details if you happen to find yourself in a neighborhood you love, or in front of a home with a for sale sign - but no flyers! The Trulia app also finds the banks, restaurants and gas stations near any given listing, and can even create instant heat maps showing neighborhood differences in prices.Why it’s useful: You may find that you like a particular neighborhood, but not the individual home you came to see. Or you might visit a friend and fall in love with their street, but have no idea what homes in the area go for. Having an easy-to-use mobile app that helps you discover more nearby homes for sale, wherever you are, is actually quite indispensable. It eliminates the need to scrawl down numbers on scraps of paper or squint to see the faded numbers on the curb then wait until you’re in front of the computer to try to match an online listing to a real-world house. |
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This fantastic home on beautiful Smith Mountain Lake just reduced by $100,000!
Contact Ronnie Doss, REALTOR for more details on the property! |
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 Top Producing Agent
Fritz Ralph
Top Producing, Selling & Listing Team
Manley & Trish Johnson
 Top Selling & Listing Agent
Catina Wright
Congratulations for being our Top Agents for 2011! Learn more about these Top Agents and their properties on www.RealtyatTheLake.com
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Immaculate Waterfront Home! Contact Sylvia McDowell-Kent for more information on this beautiful home on Smith Mountain Lake!
#770415
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At this point in December, it can start to feel like the New Year – along with all our hopes, dreams, wishes and expectations for it – are barreling down on us. Personally, I’m a rabid  Resolution-setter, and I have a pretty strong track record of making New Year’s changes actually happen – and stick. But what I know after years of using the New Year as a great excuse to set and meet some goals is that it’s very, very helpful to get a head start, ramping-up to new habits, behaviors and target goals achievements starting in December. If you’re one of the millions who has an eye on 2012 as the year in which you’ll buy a home (first or not), here are five things you can do now to put yourself on the right path:
1. Check your credit. Take my word for it: there is no bad surprise worse than a bad credit surprise. Okay, maybe there is one thing worse – a credit surprise you receive while you’re in the midst of trying to buy a home! Recent studies have revealed that a record high number of real estate transactions are falling out of escrow, and that credit “issues” are a leading cause of these dead deals. Your best chance at catching and correcting score-lowering errors and other derogatory items before they destroy your personal American Dream is to start checking and correcting while you still have time on your side. 2. Do your research. The more rapidly the real estate market changes, the more it behooves smart buyers to study up before they jump in. And now’s the time – you can start doing online and in-person research into topics ranging from: · Target states, cities and neighborhoods. Whether you’re relocating or simply trying to narrow down the local districts to focus on during your 2012 house hunt, December is a great time to start your online research into decision-driving factors like tax rates, school districts, neighborhood character and even prices in various areas. Resident ratings and reviews sites like Trulia and NabeWise can help you make the neighborhood-lifestyle match. Once you narrow things down and start speaking to local agents, ask them to brief you on the local market dynamics, including how long homes typically stay on the market and whether they generally go for more or less than the asking price, so you can be smart about how you search. (And yes, Virginia, there are areas where homes sell for more than asking, even as we speak!) · Real estate and mortgage pros. If you don’t already have your pros picked out, now is the time to get on the horn or drop an email or Facebook message to your circle of contacts, asking them for a referral to a broker or agent they love. Follow up by: checking whether these pros are active in answering questions on Trulia Voices, searching for their name and seeing what sort of feedback on them you can cull from the web, then giving them a ring and launching a conversation about whether you and they might be a good partnership.
· Short sales and REOs. Distressed property sales are not for the unwary. If you want to target upside down or foreclosed homes, or are planning to house hunt in an area where many of the listings are described as short sales or foreclosures, get educated about what you can expect from a distressed property purchase transaction before you get your heart set on a short sale. · What you get for the money. Online house hunting is a powerful tool – especially when it’s cold and wet! But there comes a point in your house hunt where you’ve got to just get out into the actual physical homes you’re seeing online in order to get a strong, accurate sense of what home features, aesthetics and location characteristics correlate with what price points. · Mortgage musts. You can read a bunch of articles about mortgages and get yourself pretty far down the path toward qualifying for a home loan, but you can only get a personalized action plan for a smooth road ‘home’ by talking with a local mortgage broker and having them assess your basic financials. They might say you need to move funds around, pay a bill down or off or produce some sort of documentation from your employer. And the time to start all that is now. 3. Fluff up your cash cushion. So, you’ve saved up your 3.5 percent down payment. Perhaps you saved a little extra for closing costs. Or maybe you’re even one of those uber-aggressive 20-percent-down-ers. No matter how much you’ve saved, you’ll find that you could use more once you activate your home buying action plan. Mark my words – after closing, you’ll crave extra cash to do some repairs, upgrade a couple of things, buy appliances or even just to hold onto in order to minimize your anxiety about depleting your savings! So, if homebuying is on your personal 2012 action plan, don’t go hog wild on holiday gifts. Instead, wait until next year and give yourself the gift of a home. 4. Shed some stuff. Sell it. Donate it. Give it to relatives who’ve always coveted it. Just get rid of it. If you do it before year’s end, you can kill three birds with one stone: (a) getting some cold hard cash to go toward your savings, (b) getting some tax receipts so you can deduct the value of your donations in January, (c) minimizing money spent on holiday gifts for loved ones and these two bonus birds – clearing the mental clutter that physical clutter creates and prepping for your move in advance.
5. Sit very, very still. Sometimes, the best way to further our goals is to stop tripping ourselves up. In that vein, commit right now to refrain from making any major financial moves until you buy your home. Don’t quit your job to start that personal chef business (yet), don’t pull a bunch of cash out of your savings account (without getting clearance form your mortgage pro first), and don’t start buying cars and boats on credit – even if you do love the idea of putting the red bow on the car you give your wife, like in the commercials. I assure you, the bow you’ll be able to put on that house or condo will be much bigger, redder and more tax-advantaged! |
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Today's home sellers have a hard row to hoe, as my Mom would say. Home values have dropped, the market is flooded with competition and even if a buyer does come along, a recor d high number of deals fall through. On top of that, they face the age-old conundrum of having two seemingly conflicting aims: they want to get their homes sold, fast, but also want - and need - to squeeze every single possible dollar out of it. While it's tempting to price your place on the high side and 'test the market' or 'negotiate down,' overpricing your home can actually deter buyers, cause your home to lag on the market and eventually even expose you to the risk of being perceived as desperate and receiving lowball offers. Here are 5 'cures' to the temptation to overprice your home, all of which can help you max out the chance that your home will sell.1. Check the Comps! "Comps" is real estate lingo for comparable sales - the nearby, similar homes that have recently sold. You might think that your taste level, aesthetic style and home maintenance practices are vastly superior to those of your neighbors - and you might be right. But this will be the single largest purchase your home's eventual buyer will ever make, and trust me - they will be doing the research. The small contingent of urgent and qualified buyers who are active on today's market do not want to overpay for a home, and most will view your home as overpriced and not worth the hassle (or the haggle) if it is out of whack with the recent sales prices of similar homes.Similarly, appraisers will use these numbers when figuring out your home's value. Even if you do get an offer at a higher-than-justified price, if the buyer's appraiser finds that your home is overvalued compared to other nearby recent sales, it can cause major delays in your buyer's mortgage process - or derail it altogether.Work with your agent to find and evaluate the recent sales in the area, and to ensure that your home's list price makes sense vis-a-vis the comps. 2. Get inside the minds of the local home buyers. The vast majority of buyers - over 90 percent - start their house huntinhg online. And what most of them do is type in a price range, a range of bedrooms and bathrooms and a geographic area, then spend dozens of obsessive hours perusing hundreds of listings. Given the flooded market and buyers' busy lives, many will screen your home off their interest list in a New York minute if it seems overpriced from its online listing. If that one-inch picture and the number of beds, baths and square feet either (a) doesn't make it into their search results because the price is so much higher than what most local buyers want to spend on a home with those criteria, or (b) seems underwhelming, for the price, compared to the other online listings of similar homes, prospective buyers will never even make it into your home, and all your stunning staging and crave-able curb appeal will never have the opportunity to work their magic. Local agents have an inside track on what local buyers care about and what they will and will not spend. Talk to your agent about it, but don't forget to actually listen to and consider what your agent has to say! If you don't trust what an agent is telling you about where you should list your home, talk to several agents - if the consensus is a recommended list price range lower than what you had in mind, that's a sign you should reconsider.Also, search for similar homes to yours on Trulia, to see how it would stack up against similar listings online at the price range you have in mind. That's where local prospective buyers will see it (and screen it in or out) first.3. Visit competing Open Houses. Buyers do not shop for homes in a vacuum. They're out there looking at dozens of homes - or more - to make sure they're (a) getting the best deal possible, and (b) not missing 'the one.' So, while viewing a thumbnail image of your competition and seeing the list prices of other homes online is informative, it is even more useful to walk through the actual properties with which your home is competing, in living color. Before you put your home on the market, take a few hours and visit nearby Open Houses. This exercise is the most vivid way to get a reality check about what you're up against and what your home's strengths and weaknesses are compared with the other homes buyers will see, which will go a long way in getting you to the right asking price. Even if you are unpleasantly surprised at how nice the neighboring homes are at low prices, taking this information in before you list your home is much less painful than waiting months for the market to give you this education (in the form of no or uber-low offers).4. Get an inspection - in advance. Home buyers have long used the home inspection as a negotiating tool to get the seller to come down on the sale price mid-stream. Get ahead of the game by getting your own inspection(s) - talk with your agent about which ones are appropriate - and getting the skinny on your home's condition before you list it. Keep in mind that you will likely need to provide any written professional inspections you obtain before listing your home to the buyer under your state's real estate disclosure laws.You might be able to repair some things at relatively low cost and include the recent improvements in your marketing. Alternatively, you can set and negotiate pricing based on any condition issues or needed repairs you want to pass down to the buyer. This empowers you to get to a final price that aligns with market conditions and the condition of your home without taking massive mid-escrow hits on pricing. It also empowers you to offer a discount for needed fixes up front, when the price break has the most power to help attract bargain-seeking buyers.5. When in doubt, go low. An overpriced home, in most cases, will cause a lot more problems in your real estate journey than an underpriced one. Think about it: an overpriced home just sits on the market with little or no buyer interest until the seller cuts the price. And many interested buyers just sit, waiting for that price cut, seeing it as a cue to make an even lower offer. Now, consider the opposite end of the pricing spectrum: you start with a lower price than you want, but one that is supported by the comps in your market - or even goes a tad bit lower than recent homes have sold for. Lots of buyers are attracted to your house, in part because it looks like a great value for the price. You end up with multiple offers, which gives you the upper hand in negotiating a higher price. The moral: if you aren't sure about what price to place on your home, go a little bit lower than the recent comps sold for. Insiders know from experience that you'll sell your home faster this way - and at a better price than if you overprice it out of the gate.These steps can help you get out of your own way, get a bird's eye view on the market and see your home as buyers will see it. And that's a reality check that can make the difference between selling your home and not.
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Lake & Land Realty congratulates our Top Agents for December! Top Listing Agent-Kay DeGiorgi; Top Listing Team- George & Cindy Loyd; Top Selling Agent-Pam Gabriel; Top Selling Team- The Pagans; Top Producing Agent- Ricky Smith; Top Producing Team-The Pagans. Way to Go!
  
   
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Lake & Land Realty is Growing!
We are delighted to have Kaye DeGiorgi join us! Kay has been a Realtor for 20 years and looks forward to assisting you with your Real Estate needs in 2012!
Welcome Kay!
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Lake & Land wishes you a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
We appreciate your business this past year and look forward to assisting you with
your Real Estate & Property Rental needs in 2012.
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It’s that time of year when most of us start to count our blessings, look back at what we’ve accomplished in 2011 and think about what we’ll get done in 2012. If selling your home is part of  your resolution list for next year, there’s plenty of prep work you can do to set yourself up for home selling success. Here are 5 things you can and should start working on without further ado, if you want to get your home sold - smoothly and for top dollar - in 2012. 1. Put your intentions in writing. The first step to any real estate transaction - actually, to anything important in life! - is to get clear on your goals. Unexpected challenges and situations might very well come up in the course of selling your home, so having a clear idea of your ultimate goals at the outset is a must to help you make the right decisions along the way and to remind you when you might need to course correct. When you’re setting your objective and writing it down, it’s critical to be specific and holistic, drilling down to the details of what result it is you want your home sale to achieve in your life. Also, establish where your priorities lie: with speed or with dollars? For example, your goal might be to sell your house as quickly as possible so you can relocate your family by spring. Or, your goal may be to sell your house at the best possible price no matter how long it takes. Getting as clear as possible from the very beginning on your priorities and ultimate life objectives for the sale will allow you to communicate these crucial things clearly to your agent, and will power your decisions on issues like:
- which home improvement projects, if any, to complete before you sell;
- whether to accept a particular offer; and
- how aggressively to negotiate counter-offers, and on which points to push back against a buyer’s offer.
2. Study the local market. The most successful home sales are the listings that are priced right from day one. Ask any agent: even in the toughest markets, there are listing that sell quickly, mostly because the one-two punch of the property and its price look to buyers like a very strong value. In order to position yourself and your property at the point of pricing nirvana, you’ll need to do some leg work. stat. You don’t need to pick an exact price this moment, unless you’re planning to list your home super soon, but you can get started on what I like to think of as the ‘thinking seller’s’ three-pronged approach to pricing now, by:
- visiting open houses,
- studying nearby listings, and
- talking with local agents.
Before the year is up, try to visit a handful of open houses in your neighborhood. This will help you get a sense of the types of homes that are on the market, what condition they’re in, and how they are priced. Keep in mind that no home is going to be exactly like yours, but if it’s similar in size, location and features, then buyers that see that property will probably be the same buyers that come to see yours - and they will be comparing list prices. Another great prep tool in gearing up to sell your home in 2012 is to study similar homes for sale on Trulia! Pay particular attention to what features they have, how they are described and priced, any incentives the sellers are offering (e.g., closing cost credits, etc.) and how long they’ve been on the market. (Hint: you might not want to price your home right in line with one that’s been on the market over a year. Obviously, that home is overpriced, and that is NOT a result you want to replicate!) Finally, one of the most efficient and nuanced ways to get to know your local market is to begin speaking with agents who sell homes in your area. Get a few referrals, call them up and tour them through your home. Then, ask these pros for their opinion on what you should list your home for, what recent sales they think are the most comparable (and why), and how long they would expect your sale to take given their experience and current conditions. You can use these same home tours to get a head start on selecting your listing agent by asking the agents you interview to give you a preview of what they would recommend in the way of preparing your home, timing your listing and marketing your house to achieve the objectives you set in Step 1. 3. Gather your paperwork. In planning for your sale next year, you can get a great head start by pulling together the necessary paperwork now. Keep in mind that the specific requirements vary by state, so this is not an exhaustive list. In general, you’ll need to have these ready:
- Disclosure documents: This includes any documentation of anything that might impact a buyer’s decision about your home, whether it be inspection reports, repair receipts or estimates for repairs you haven’t actually had done yet. Your local real estate pro will help determine what exactly is needed here.
- Compliance certificates: In some cities, the local government will require certain conditions be met before a property is transferred to another owner. Examples of these requirements include sewer line condition guidelines, and energy conservation ordinances that require low-flow toilets and shower heads to be installed. Again, your real estate agent and your city’s website can help you figure out which, if any, of these types of ordinances might apply to your home.
- Mortgage statements: Before the property’s title can transfer to another owner, the escrow or title company will need your mortgage statements to order payoff demands from any mortgage holder who has to get paid before that can happen.
- Financials: If you’re planning on a short sale, you’ll have a lot more paperwork to gather in your process, including paycheck stubs, bank and investment account statements, and two years’ W-2 forms or tax returns - the bank will review these to determine whether they will authorize you to sell the home for less than what you owe.
4. Prep your listing plan and timeline. After you’ve done all your pricing homework and have chosen a listing agent, you can create a plan and timeline for how all the moving pieces will come together - including who is responsible for getting which tasks done. At minimum, your plan should specify:
- prep work you’ll be doing to your property before it’s listed for sale - including decluttering, staging and any repairs or cosmetic power-tweaks you plan to make;
- if you’re planning a short sale, a timeline for submitting an application to your lender for approval (this might be before or after the property is listed - consult with your lender and your agent on the matter)
- planned list price (based on current local market conditions - this could change if you don’t plan to list your home for several months);
- the target date on which your home will be listed for sale in the local MLS; and
- how showing arrangements will work so that local agents can get prospective buyers into your house to see the place, and what.
Agents: What other elements do you encourage sellers to include in their listing plans? 5. Get a head start on your ‘home’work. How much prep work your home needs really depends on its current condition. A good starting point for many sellers is to order an inspection. Most buyers will get their own inspection before closing a deal, but getting ahead of them with your own will help you avoid any unwanted surprises later on in the transaction. An inspection will give you a reality check on your home’s condition, enabling you to decide upfront whether it’s worth it to fix something now or simply reduce the price in consideration thereof. Your holiday vacation from work is a great time to: (a) obtain any advance inspections your real estate agent recommends, (b) have any reasonable repairs completed, (c) pre-pack and declutter your place, and (d) prettify your home’s curb appeal - painting the shutters and sprucing the landscaping goes a long way toward attracting buyers. Kudos, in advance, for taking the time now to prepare for your home sale in 2012! Selling in today’s market is no easy task, and doing the heavy lifting now - before your home goes on the market and, hopefully, while you're on vacation! - will help tremendously in making things go as smoothly, and profitably, as possible. |
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Top Agent Ad for November 2011
Congratualtions to the following Lake & Land Realty Agents!
Tracy David: Top Listing Agent
Trish & Manley Johnson: Top Listing, Selling & Producing Team
Catina Wright: Top Selling Agent
Ricky Smith: Top Producing Agent
Way to Go! |
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Some people have home-finding stories that are the real estate equivalent of the skywritten marriage proposal tales. They drove by their dre  am home, knocked on the front door and the elderly owner offered it to them for a song. However, most recent home buyers have tales on the other end of the charming-and-easy spectrum; tales of year-long house hunts and fruitless offer after fruitless offer, followed by a nerve-wracking, hair-pulling, interminable negotiation with the bank are much more typical. If you've been in the market for a home for what seems like a very long time to no avail, here are five strategies for getting things back on track. 1. Know how long is (truly) too long. If you've been saving up, primping your credit and fantasizing about your dream home for 5 years, then waiting for exact right moment in your life and the market to pull the trigger for 4, viewing 15 houses over 3 weeks might seem like an interminable amount of time. And if you make an offer that is rejected? The agony of that defeat is outweighed only by the pain of your dream (home) being deferred. Be aware that today's market is a very slow-moving one. It's completely normal in some areas for buyers to view dozens of homes over as many months, and have several offers rejected before getting into contract. Talk with your agent about how long local buyers normally have to prowl today's market before getting some home buying satisfaction. 2. Identify where your process is breaking down. In order to course-correct your wayward house hunt, you first have to figure out what the problem actually is. If you're looking at lots of homes, but not finding anything that suits you, you might have an expectation issue. These range from having champagne tastes on a beer budget to being part of a pair of buyers with conflicting expectations that no home will ever be able to satisfy (e.g., husband wants a fixer, wife wants move-in ready). If you're finding places you like, but your offers are consistently being shot down, you might need to work on bringing your home picks into alignment with your budget by increasing your price range, decreasing your wish list, or looking at a lower price range and making higher, more competitive offers. Fact: an experienced buyer's agent is an expert diagnostician of house hunt ailments. If your agent told you 7 months, 43 prospective homes and 9 offers ago that your expectations are out of whack or that you need to consider some compromises, you might circle back to that advice - and consider taking it. 3. Remember how many houses are in the world, but don't try to see them all. It's easy - but unproductive - to get upset about "the one that got away;" counter that frustration by reminding yourself that you are house hunting in a market relatively flooded with housing inventory. On the other end of the getting-out-of-your-own-way spectrum, if you do find a home that really works for you in your price range, get over the idea that you have to see everything in town before you make an offer. One more mindset reset along these lines: understand that the *perfect* house does not exist - at any price range. Petra Ecclestone just dropped $80 million in cash to buy Candy Spelling's Hollywood home and reportedly had the whole place gutted because the decor was not to her taste. In the same way people with curly hair wish they had straight and vice versa, people who have hilltop vistas wish they lived nearer to the grocery store and people who can walk to the store wish they had better views. No single home will ever satisfy every single one of your preferences, so don't hold out waiting for one that will. 4. Rethink your deal-breakers. The greater the number of absolute deal-breakers you've communicated to your agent, the fewer prospective homes you'll see. And the more flexible you can be about which listings you'll look at, the higher the chances you'll find something you like. I recently read an article in an architectural magazine about a woman who house hunted ad nauseum in a very small neighborhood she needed to be in, only finding success when her agent showed her a fourplex she could convert into the single family home she was looking for. If you think your agent simply doesn't understand what you want, ask them to remove all pricing filters and send you homes that reflect what they think your dream house really is. Alternatively, drive around and find homes for sale or visit Open Houses that you think are closer to what you want - then investigate their list prices, or send the addresses of "suitable" homes that aren't for sale to your agent to find out what that house would go for today. These exercises will get you and your agent communicating on the same page; will help you understand tradeoffs, wants and needs more concretely; and will very likely flick some of your mental switches around what you can expect from a property at various price ranges. This strategy is especially useful for reality-checking the expectation of home buyers relocating to a town with a higher cost of living than their current hometown. 5. Ignore the peanut gallery. People who have not bought a home in your town, your desired neighborhood and your price range at the same moment in time you find yourself house hunting are not authorities on any of the following: (a) how dirt cheap 'those foreclosures' are, (b) how much of a discount you should be able to negotiate, (c) how much is too much for you to pay, or (d) how desperate the banks or sellers are to sell. That lack of authority, though, will not stop your family members, friends and neighbors from chiming in and offering their own critiques, exasperation, suggestions, or "what I would do if I were you is. . ."-style analyses of your own home buying strategies. Many a would-be homeowner has remained just that - a would-be homeowner - by following the advice or suggestions of someone who read a headline but has no idea of the real market dynamics you face. Depending on where you're buying, those dynamics might include:
- banks that refuse to do repairs and may take 6 months to green-light a short sale,
- sellers who are so upside down they can barely afford to sell for the list price -- and certainly can't afford to sell for less, and
- areas in which the norm is for foreclosed homes to sell above asking after receiving multiple offers.
So, check your own references - double and triple check where you are getting your information about what homes should cost and what you should offer, and make sure that the sources are expert and up-to-date, like from our experienced agents from Lake & Land Realty! |
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We all know how important home staging is if you’re trying to sell a home. It’s equally important when you’re buying real estate for exactly the same reasons. Just like a person you meet on a blind date, staging is all about highlighting assets and deflecting your attention from any flaws. As a buyer, you have to learn to look past the staging and see what lies underneath. That’s not as easy as it sounds because clever staging can be hypnotic. I once had a client who called this the "vortex of cute." If you hear yourself oohing and aahing over wall hangings or a fabulous sectional, watch out! Even if you’re buying a furnished home, which is rarely the case, you're focusing on the wrong thing. Understanding hypnotic staging techniques will help you break their spells. Here are five of the most common, along with corresponding tips that will help snap you back to reality so that you can really see what you’re buying. Hypnotic Staging See-Through #1: Tiny Furniture. I’m sure that you’ve gone through your closet at one time or another to put together an outfit that made you look smaller than you are (fine, then – I’ll speak for myself!). Well, house staging aims to accomplish the exact opposite. By opting for very small furniture, rooms can be made to appear much larger than they really are. That can be a problem if those rooms don’t accommodate your lifestyle. I’m not recommending you turn away from a potential home just because it won’t fit your Nana’s custom-made-for-her-13-kids-and-their-spouses dining room table. But if the 'kids bedroom" won’t fit a standard-sized bed and dresser, or you’d have to be the size of a Barbie doll to fit on the chaise lounge that the living room is sized to fit, you’ve got a problem. Should you fall in love with a place that's heavily staged with tiny furniture, bring measurements of your furniture and a tape measure on your second look to make sure they’ll actually, comfortably fit. Hypnotic Staging See-Through #2: Camoflauge and Cover-Ups. Just like baked cookies can make a house smell homey, gauzy wall and window coverings and soft music can make it seem positively dreamy. Downside: they can also camouflage a whole lot of nastiness. Don’t be fooled: investigate. You need to know what the natural light and sounds will be like after the gauze is gone, so ask for the music to be turned off and throw open the curtains. Then look outside the various windows to see what’s out there – I’ve seen power poles, neighbors’ patchwork roof repairs and even, once, a backyard dog fighting ring, obscured by gorgeous window coverings. Speaking of looking, make sure you draw back any and all coverings, and open all closet and cupboard doors. I know a homeowner who only found out after she had purchased her home that the built-in microwave was powered by an extension cord. She hadn’t wanted to snoop, so (much to her electrician’s subsequent delight) she simply didn’t check behind door #17. Hypnotic Staging See-Through #3: Activity Props You’ll Never Use. Don’t you just feel all warm and fuzzy when you walk into a room with a lovely crib and a baby mobile? See a room with well-organized shelving and a craft table and you immediately imagine yourself scrapbooking or quilting. Yoga mats and meditation pillows almost make you want to find your mantra, but also make a room seem more serene than it will ever feel when you actually live there (considering you’ve never said a single ‘om’.) Come on, now - this is you we’re talking about. Unless you have—or plan to have—a baby or already do crafts or meditate, you need a home that will fit your lifestyle, your needs and your wish list. So when you feel yourself being swayed, just make a list of the activities you actually do in your current home and want to do in your new one, and pay attention to whether a given prospective property actually has space for those items. (I’ve heard that stamp collecting can take up almost as much space as cultivating orchids – who knew?!) Hypnotic Staging See-Through #4: Any item that seems to be there strictly for appearances. Décor can often hide or diminish the appearance of flaws that seem like small potatoes in light of the overall fabulosity of the place, but can actually prove expensive to change. So check for items that seem like they might have been put in just for looks—including curtains, rugs, paintings and doorways with no doors on them—and then don your sleuthing hat to figure out what flaws they might be concealing. Water stains and wall cracks can be covered up (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) by area rugs and wall hangings, and wonky floor plans can be staged as more open by taking the doors off their hinges. Hypnotic Staging See-Through #5: Neighborhood staging. Before you get off investigative mode, you’ll also want to check out the neighborhood. Not the staged neighborhood -- the real thing, warts and cars on the lawn and screaming schoolkids and all. I've actually seen neighbors move their cars and refrain from their normal (noisy) activities when there’s an open house on the block. Even without that kind of intentional neighborhood staging, most open houses are held on a relatively calm days of the week and times of day, when traffic is light and noise is low. To get the real scoop, make sure to visit the house at different times of day and on different days of the week in order to determine what the noise levels are like at evenings and weekend. You also want to make a point of showing up at the hours you’ll normally be coming and going, so you can check to see how easy it is to get in and out of the driveway vis-a-vis traffic and what the noise levels are like at evenings and weekend.  |
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Lake & Land Realty congratulates the following agents
for being our Top Agents for October 2011!
Top Listing Agent: Fritz Ralph
Top Listing & Producing Team: Manley & Trish Jonson
Top Selling Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Selling Team: The Pagans
Top Producing Agent: Mary Ann Morando
Way to Go! |
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Enjoy the 9th Annual Smith Mountain Lake Fall Chili and Crafts Festival this weekend on November 5, 2011! This event features a full day of music, crafts and a spectacular competitive cook-off. Come to beautiful Smith Mountain Lake and enjoy this fun event! Held lakeside at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta at Hales Ford Bridge. Come see us as we are located at Bridewater Plaza too!
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We Wish You A Happy Halloween!
Who is this Mystery Agent?
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With so many homes on the market, many buyers house hunt for months, even years before hitting property pay-dirt. Even for the savvy buyers who have narrowed their house hunt to an affordable price range, the condition issues so common in distressed homes can make choosing a home difficult.
And on the flip side, some subdivisions have scads of similar homes, all of which are in good shape, all listed at a similar price, making it nearly impossible to choose just one.
Here are five indicators that a particular home you’re viewing might be “The One” – the property on which you’ll want to place an offer:
1. You feel possessive about it, instantly. I once showed a less-than-fabulous home to a buyer who stepped in the front door, opened her eyes wide, and uttered in a much-quieter-than-normal voice, “I would cry.” We got a good laugh out of this later, after she found and bought a home that made her feel virtually the opposite.
Not only did the winning home bring a smile to her face, it also made her instantly possessive. She didn’t just want it - she wanted it immediately. She could barely even wait to write the offer paperwork! When another agent showed up to bring a buyer through the place while we were still there, she lingered leisurely (in hopes they would just leave) and secretly looked at them with daggers in her eyes (out of competitiveness, because in her heart, the home had already become hers).
If you walk through a place and leave wondering how quickly you can get your offer in, how much you’d offer to beat someone else out, or what you can do to lock it down quickly, it might be “The One.”
2. You start rationalizing its flaws away. Train tracks 10 feet from the bedroom window? Next door neighbor that runs a pigeon-sitting service? Okay – I exaggerate. But if you find yourself viewing a home with traits that you would normally deem undesirable or as deal-killers, yet you like the place so much that you instinctively compile a mental list of reasons those traits just don’t matter, you might have found “The One.”
Now, smart buyers should be aware of a syndrome I like to call “Pottery Barn Psychosis,” whereby the aesthetics of a wonderfully staged home with amazing curb appeal can hypnotize a buyer, rendering them blind to the negative property features, which would be glaring or grave concerns if the place weren’t so stinking cute. It’s fine to make a conscious decision that the pros of a place outweigh its cons, and even to consciously re-rank your priorities in light of a particular property’s advantages. But buyers should take steps to avoid falling victim to Pottery Barn Psychosis (and the Buyer’s Remorse that often follows suit) by writing down your absolute musts and deal-breakers before you ever step foot in a single property – and by revisiting this document before you write an offer and again before you remove your contingencies.
3. The bathroom and kitchen don’t disgust you. We humans are born with only two fears in life: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. By about eight months old, we start to acquire new fears, and most of us never stop. Among the first fear most people learn: the fear of other people’s kitchens and bathrooms.
I exaggerate (again!), but it is true that generally speaking, other people’s kitchens and bathrooms hold definite gross-out potential. There’s just something about what goes on in those rooms that seems exceptionally intimate and even unsanitary. So, if you happen to find yourself falling in love with a home’s river rock shower floor or drooling over the pot-filler over the stove and the built-in cookbook stand on the countertop, that’s a sign that you’re falling head over heels with a home that might just be “The One.”
4. You involuntarily envision your own family, furniture, decor, daily activities or remodeling choices in/to the home. They say that the best staging helps prospective buyers envision their own idealized lives taking place in the staged home. But whether or not a property is staged, if you find your mind’s eye Photoshopping a given property to insert your own kids and sofa into the living room, your dining table and favorite wall hangings into place in the dining room, and your daily meditation in the breakfast nook – or even start mentally removing walls entirely – it’s entirely possible that the home you’re in could be “The One” for you.
5. You lose interest in seeing other homes. I once took some buyers out for their first house hunt in my territory after they’d spent two years looking for homes in a neighboring area, without ever making a single offer. I’d planned to show them seven homes, but when they got to the fourth property, they declared that they’d found their home, and they neither wanted nor needed to see any more. I insisted that they finish the list, if for no other reason than to confirm their choice and to avoid feeling later that they hadn’t seen enough nearby homes to compare theirs to. They humored me and saw the last three places on the list, then promptly bought house #4 and still live there, blissfully happy, to this day.
When you find “The One,” continuing the house hunt you may have obsessed over for months, even years, starts to seem silly, like a waste of the energy you could be using to move into your new home.
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One of the many reasons I love growing with Lake & Land Realty is that it is an independently owned company and our Broker Dexter Rakes hand picks each Agent. Many of the Agents are home grown from the Bedford/Franklin County which provides a great resource. You get 100 % personal assistance from the support staff as well as from Dexter which really feels like a family, because we are free to talk to each other with any problems or questions that may come up in the daily Realtor life. This is a great place to work, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else period.
Tracy David
Lake & Land Realty
Realtor/Appraiser
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Lake & Land Realty Congratulates our
Top Agents for September 2011!
Top Listing Agent: Roni Caron
Top Listing Team: Manley & Trish Johnson
Top Selling Agent: Pam Gabriel
Top Selling Team: Manley & Trish Johnson
Top Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Producing Team: Manley & Trish Johnson
Way to Go!
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The Smith Mountain Lake Charity Home Tour is this weekend. View beautiful homes on Smith Mountain Lake beginning Friday, October 7th and ending Sunday, October 9th! Ticket sales support local and regional charities.
Tickets to this great event can be purchased at
our visitor's center-located to Lake & Land Realty. |
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It’s a highly competitive market for home sellers right now. More homes to compete with means that the impression your homes makes - from the curb, and on the inside - matter now more than ever. You can increase your chances of selling faster - and at today’s top dollar - by investing in a select few home improvement projects that have been shown to make a big impact on buyers.Bad news alert: it might cost you a little time, effort and cash. The good news, though, is that the best projects for quickly increasing your home’s resale value tend to be cosmetic and fairly simple and inexpensive to do. Here are five projects with big-time return on investment for home sellers-to-be, in terms of their power to attract buyers, and to attract dollars from those buyers.1. Painting: Adding a fresh coat of paint to ceilings and walls is a tried and true way to increase your home’s appeal to buyers. Go for white or neutral tones that help lighten your rooms. (Now is not the time to show off your fascination with fuschia and lime  green.) Buyers will have an easier time envisioning how they will infuse their own personalities into your home if they’re looking at a relatively blank slate.
Painting lightens and brightens rooms, instantly removes scuffs and dings and gives every room a fresh, polished feel. Fresh exterior paint - even if your time or cash budget limits your efforts to accents like eaves, shutters, doors and trims - is also a quick, inexpensive way to polish the look of your home from the curb.2. Landscaping: Everything you’ve heard about curb appeal is true. First impressions matter - especially if your house is one of eight or nine a buyer has seen in one day. Buyers will be more excited to look at the inside your home if the outside looks clean, charming and inviting. Mow the lawn, trim the hedges, pull the weeds and plant some flowers, bushes or shrubs for the biggest impact - and be diligent about keeping your landscaping very well-manicured throughout the time your home is on the market. Be sure to keep it low-key, relatively low maintenance and neutral, though. This is not the time to indulge your personal fantasies of living in an exotic paradise, unless that matches the existing look and feel of your home, nor is it the time to install a time-intensive English garden that buyers will love, but not want to take on. Think clean, simple and elegant for the biggest boost in value.3. Cleaning and de-cluttering: Start by removing all your family photos from the walls and all sorts of tchochkes and clutter from the tops of tables, desks, dressers and counters. Buyers want to be able to envision their lives in the house, not yours. Personal items - and the visual clutter they create - have been shown time and time again to block buyers’ ability to create this vision.
Also, remember that buyers are coming to see the house and evaluate its space, not to bear witness to all the fabulous furniture that means so much to you (no matter how amazing your personal taste). Remove furniture that takes up too much space and fills up rooms. Get rid of clutter such as clothes, boxes, piles of mail and other items.
And then clean - and keep cleaning obsessively, the entire time your place is on the market. Kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms should look unlived in when they are shown. And don't forget to clean less obvious places like windows, walls, doors and and floors, to dust off shelves and furniture, and to polish appliances. 4. Plumbing repairs and water stain/damage repair: Paying a plumber to make a few stops throughout your home can be well worth the investment. Leaky faucet in the master bathroom? Get it fixed. Does the space under your kitchen sink look like a science experiment? Leaks and water stains definitely provoke disgust and exasperation on the part of the buyers you want and need to impress. And they can be pretty cost effective to fix - ask your agent for a referral, if you need one.5. Staging: Staging your home can make a dramatic difference in the price for which your home sells. Good staging is equal parts:
(a) removing your personal belongings and replacing it with more artwork, decor and cleaner-looking furniture,
(b) and tweaking the home’s paint, wall coverings and even landscaping to show the place in its very best light. When done well, staging can convert your home from just another listing on a buyer’s list to the setting for a fresh, new start to the fresh, new life of their dreams. Professional stagers, in particular, have special skills and materials they use, from convincing you to get rid of a bunch of things you value (but read: junk to a buyer), to items like mirrors, plants, art work, lamps, pillows and even furniture that tells a visual story of the life buyers can fantasize about living in your home.Talk to your agent about staging - some agents have the skill to do this on their own, while others might have a professional stager they frequently work with.In some cases, you might want to take on even larger projects. Before you go that route, talk with a local real estate agent; they are well-positioned to know what sort of updates and features will make the most impact on local buyers. Not all major, non-cosmetic upgrades to your home will create a significant difference in the price it commands, so take advantage of your agent’s expertise as you make decisions about whichproperty preparation investments to make (and which to forego
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1. Paint to create the feel you want, inside and out. Painting your home with the colors and effects of your choice is one of the most cost-effective ways to create a completely personalized living space. And studies show that color choices, in particular, can have a massive impact on the mood and even the happiness of a home’s residents!
There are several ways - across a wide spectrum of cost and time required - you can use paint to personalize your property:
- Exterior. The single fastest way to change your home’s look to match your personal preferences is to paint its exeterior. What did your lifelong dream home look like? What color was it? Repainting your home can make a massive change to its look and curb appeal, and can turn the home you can afford into the home you've always dreamed of.
- Front door, shutters and fences. If you bought a home that has a relatively fresh paint job or an overall color you like, consider painting just the front door to inject some color and your personal touch. Aquas and greens, rusty or brick reds and even chic greys and blacks all make for a polished entrance – and the addition of a kick plate or engraved knocker can create a 100 percent personalized look. Painting shutters, fences, eaves and other exterior accents a contrasting color of your choice are additional quick and inexpensive – but powerful – tweaks that can also make your home look buttoned up and, well, yours.
- Interior. The individual inhabitants of different rooms can pick their colors and custom effects, like harlequin diamonds or fun, personalized murals for kids’ rooms. Aim to match colors to a room’s purpose, so that bedrooms have a sense of restful sanctuary, bathroom walls read “clean,” and common living areas are warm or energizing, as you wish! Glidden has a fabulous interactive inspiration tool with amazing suggested palettes that coordinate with the various uses of individual rooms, like Growing Up Colors, for kids' rooms, Fresh Baked Kitchen palettes and my personal favorite: the palette dedicated to Man Cave Colors.
If you have a limited time or budget, or you're afraid you'll regret bold color choices, try accent walls - a single wall of color in every otherwise neutral room can go a long way toward customizing your home.
2. Inventory your space and your stuff before you unpack. Many people are buying smaller homes in an effort to manage costs of ownership and live closer to where their jobs are (gas prices certainly don’t look to be getting cheaper any time soon!). Even if you’re not moving into a small place, moving in – period – presents an opportunity to truly customize your living spaces for the activities you want to do and things you want to “live” in them.
There's no rule that says the table and chairs have to go in the dining room just because it’s called that; it's your house - take control! Maybe it’d be better as an office for you and homework space for the kids, and you can ‘dine’ in the kitchen or part of the living room. The windowless “extra” room might make for the perfect yoga room, craft room or space to plot your fantasy football world domination schemes.
Make a chart that divides all your home’s spaces – all of them, including any seemingly wasted spaces or nook-ey areas under the stairs or in the garage, before you move in. Then, decide what you want to (a) do, and (b) store in each area. This approach empowers you to make sure every person, activity and thing in your home has the right amount and type of space.
3. Build organization in. Built-ins make a world of difference, and I’m not just talking about the ones your home’s builder installed. It’s relatively low-cost and low-effort to build in items like:
a. closet organizers,
b. window seats,
c. desktops and bookshelves,
d. pantry-optimizing shelves, spinners and drawers, and
e. medicine and linen cabinets.
If you’re looking for some inspiration as to what sorts of custom organization systems are even possible, and/or you’re intimidated at the mere prospect of doing-anything-yourself, master carpenter and home improvement show host Karl Champley just released a great book on the subject, Same Place, More Space (Chronicle Books, 2011).
4. Match your furniture to your space, your activities and your stuff. Remember the space issues you couldn’t stand in your last place? Anticipate them, and as you plan to buy your furniture, look for things that offer extra organizational or storage features. I have a little “issue” with shoes at my house – they’re always everywhere! So, we put a cubby in the entryway for shoes, and each bedroom has a specific place to store them (an ottoman in mine, shoe shelves for my son.)
Also, if your space inventory (see #1 on this list) showed up lots of stuff with no place to go, make an effort to buy armoires, storage closets and sheds. To give your home a polished look that reflects your (perhaps newly!) organized personal style, a good rule of thumb is to make an effort to have a closed storage space for every item that has a label or would otherwise have to sit on top of a table or counter.
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RealtyatTheLake.com
Check out Smith Mountain Lake Real Estate in one place!
View Lake & Land Realty's newest office listings under the Featured Homes Section!
You can Always view all our office listings and
ALL the area listings too on ONE site!
Smith Mountain Lake properties are updated every night on RealtyatTheLake.com so you know you are always viewing the latest & most up to date information!
Learn about our Smith Mountain Lake's Realtors(the best) on our website too!
RealtyatTheLake.com-Visit us today!
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Congratulations to our Top Agents for August 2011!
Top Listing Agent: Catina Wright
Top Listing Team: The Pagans
Top Selling Agent: Fritz Ralph
Top Selling Team: Manley & Tricia Johnson
Top Producing Agent: Carol Brundege
Top Producing Team: Cathy Hummon & Karlen Tinti
Way To Go!
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Fall is just around the corner and so is the anuunal Smith Mountain Lake Wine Festival! Mark your calendars for the 23rd Wine Festival! It will take place on September 24-25 and will be at Lakewatch Plantation...just up the road from Lake & Land Realty! There will be 26 Virginia wineries participating this year...so pack a picnic and come enjoy the day at Smith Mountain Lake!
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Our Agents at Lake & Land Realty work hard for you! Please read on about one of our agents, Karlen Tinti! Learn more about Karlen on RealtyAtTheLake.com under the Agent Tab on the home page. You can view all of her listings here too!
During the past several years, Karlen has been our agent for 3 real estate transactions: 2 as seller’s agent and 1 as buyer’s agent with excellent results. She used the Internet extensively to market our properties and communicate with us. Her weekly emails provided us with the current status of market conditions: sales – price reductions – new listings. She also invested in traditional marketing channels: aerial photographs, banners, brochures, publications, etc. Her attention to detail and knowledge of the processes made all the transactions go smoothly. Five STARS!
Ed and Mary Ellen Whyte
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Top Agents for July
Lake & Land would like to congratulate our Top Agents for July!
Top Listing Agent: Tracy David
Top Listing Team: Duff & Sharri Eckstein
Top Selling Agent: Carol Brundege
Top Selling Team: Manley & Trish Johnson
Top Producing Agent: Brian Rust
Top Producing Team: The Pagans
Way to Go!
If you would like to learn more our these Top Agents, just go to RealtyAtTheLake.com & click on the Agents Tab on our home page. You can also view all of there listings there. |
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Find us now on Facebook!
Lake & Land Realty has a facebook page.
Please visit it by entering "Lake & Land Realty" to view our Listing of the Week and other information about our great company. Like us too! |
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Top Agents for June
Lake & Land Realty would like to congratulate the following agents:
Top Listing Agent: Fritz Ralph
Top Listing Team: Manley & Trish Johnson
Top Selling Agent: Brian Rust
Top Selling Team: Cathy Hummon & Karlen Tinti
Top Producing Agent: Carol Brundege
Top Producing Team: The Pagans
Learn more about these top agents from the Agents tab on our home page at RealtyAtTheLake.com! |
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With all the dim real estate news, it is important to point out a recurring topic -- now is the time to buy. In the past few weeks several financial organizations, including the Wall Street Journal, CBS Money Watch, and Forbes, have published articles on why now is the time to buy. What's their reasoning? Even if prices continue to fall, the COST of homeownership is about to increase. Interest rates are projected to increase 1% in the next year. It is important to know that a 1% increase in rate negates a 10% fall in prices. Contact Lake & Land Realty today for the buying opportunity of a lifetime! |
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We would like to congratulate our
Top Agents for May!
Top Listing Agent: Catina Wright
Top Listing Team: The Pagans
Top Selling Agent: Carol Brundege
Top Selling Team: Manley & Trish Johnson
Top Producing Agent: Ricky Smith
Top Producing Team: George & Cindy Loyd
Way to Go! |
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Mark your calendars! Best selling author David Baldacci will be signing his most recent book at The Little Gallery! He will be there on Sunday, June 26th from 1 to 3. The Little Art Gallery is located also at Bridgewater Plaza...just below Lake & Land Realty. |
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Mortgage expense is a major component of homeownership. Make sure you consider it when timing your decision to buy. Here are four great financial reasons why not to wait before taking the plunge into home ownership:
1. Interest Rates are increasing
2. The 30-year mortgage may disappear
3. Qualified Residential Mortgage requirements will be more stringent
4. Rent is expected to increase
Contact Lake & Land Realty for all of your Real Estate Needs today! |
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Lake & Land Realty wants your property to receive maximum exposure on the internet! When you list your property with us, it is linked to 33 national sites and numerous
local sites. Just another reason to choose Lake & Land Realty!
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The SML Tom Maynard Memorial Poker Run is an annual charity event held on Smith Mountain Lake every spring. .This is the “kick-off” to the summer season at the lake!
The Tom Maynard Memorial Poker Run at Smith Mountain Lake will be on Saturday May 21st, 2011. This will be our 14th annual event, and if 2010 is any indication, 2011 will be great!
The actual event consists of captains and their crews scouring the lake for the best poker hand. All boats leave from a common marina, and will return there after they have collected cards from all registered card stops. Due to the size of the lake and distances traveled between stops this will take several hours.
When all boats return, cards are submitted, and registered. Of course you will have a winner for the best hand, but we also have winners for the worst hand, marked aces, best dressed crew, best engineered boat, best appearing boat, most players on a boat, and if ever to happen four aces.
The fun starts on the Friday before the event. Everybody signs in to receive their captain’s packet, and then an evening of food, fun, and music commences. But don’t stay out too late; there is a Poker Run on Saturday that is followed by an awards cookout.
While you are out & about this weekend during The Poker Run, come visit us at Lake & Land Realty! |
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Lake & Land Realty has a new realtor! Kim Taylor recently joined our company! Kim has returned"home" to the area as well as Lake & Land Realty. We are excited to have her on our fine staff of Realtors! Lake & Land Realty is the fastest growing company at Smith Mountain Lake! |
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Congrats to our Top Listing Agent for April,
Carol Brundege!
Congrats also to Our Top Listing Team for April,
Manley & Trish Johnson!
View Their New Listings on RealtyAtTheLake.com!
Way to Go!  |
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Smith Mountain Lake's 2011 Visitor's Guide is out! This great magazine was released April/22/2011.
For your free guide contact the Visitor's Center(next door to Lake & Land Realty). You can also view this great publication online! To view magazine online or request, go to VisitSmithMountainLake.com.
Check out Lake & Land's Realty's Ad ad on page 15! |
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Top 10 Reasons to Use
Lake & Land Realty!
1. LOCATION-LOCATION-LOCATION- We Are Located Next to SML Visitor's Center...Where Your Property Gets Maximum Exposure!
2. EXPERIENCE-Our Agents have Over 400 Years of it!
3. EXPOSURE- RealtyAtTheLake.com...Our Company Website Links to ALL Area Properties! !
4. SIZE-We Are The Fastest Growing Company At The Lake-34 Agents!
5. AREA-We Serve the Lake & Surrounding Areas!
6. ADVERTISING-See Our Ads in Local Newspapers, Lake Publications & Internet Sites!
7. MULTIPLE LISTING SERVICE- We are Members of Roanoke AND Lynchburg MLS!
8. INTERNET EXPOSURE-We Have the Enhanced Listing Package on REALTOR.com-Your Home Stands Out! We also link your property to 33 National Sites & Multiple Local Websites!
9. NO FRANCHISE FEES!
10. SALES-We had a 47% Increase in 2010! |
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Sonya Mullins has joined Lake & Land Realty! She represents buyers and sellers, residential and investors. She is a native of Franklin County an d has more than 12 years of real estate experience. She has two children and lives at Smith Mountain Lake. Give Sonya a call today! |
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Lake & Land Realty would like to meet your Real Estate Appraisail needs in 2011! We have two appraisers on board!
Contact Dexter Rakes at 540-580-9007
or Tracy David at 540-263-0007.
Let Lake & Land Realty be your Full Service Real Estate Company! |
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Lake & Land Realty would like to congratulate our top agents for February 2011!
Congrats to Brian Rust: Top Listing Agent!
Congrats to Top Selling Agent & Top Producing Agent-Catina Wright!
Congrats to Top Listing Team: The Pagans Team!
Conrats to Top Selling Team & Top Producing Team-Manley & Trish Johnson!
We are proud of our Lake & Land Realty Agents. Way to go!
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Mark your calendars! The annual 2011 Southwest Boatshow is coming to the Roanoke Civic Center on February 25, 2011!
The boat show is offering FREE Friday! There is no admission charge on Friday, February 25th!
Hours are:
Friday, February 25, 1pm-7pm
Saturday, February 26, 10am-7pm
Sunday, February 27, 10am-5pm
See you at the Boat Show! |
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