Wednesday, December 13th, 2006
Everyone has heard about motivated sellers. Find one who is desparate to sell and there’s a good chance that they’ll be willing to come down in price. Have you ever thought about how important it is to have a motivated listing agent?
In negotiations, I always try to understand the goals and the fears of all participants. What would be a fear of the listing agent if their listing was going to expire soon and there was a good chance that the sellers were going to find another agent? They would fear ending up with absolutely nothing after having invested a lot of time and energy into marketing the home. They would be very motivated to do whatever it took to put the home under contract.
In the FMLS, they don’t post the list date or the expiration date. What you have to do is keep a running tally of listing numbers so you can estimate about when a listing was first entered. Usually listings are for periods of 90 days. So agents begin getting a little antsy about 60 days into the listing. They dread the thought of having to talk with the seller about relisting for another 90 days. If you submit a reasonable offer, you should have a better chance of getting the listing agent to present it to the seller as a good deal for them.
Getting a good deal in real estate many times depends on timing. Motivations are very dynamic. A “low ball offer” on day one might look like an answer to a prayer on day 81. Just another little thing to keep in mind.
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Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
Who can ever know for certain where the boundaries for a particular zip code are? If you have a typical Realtor map book you can go crazy going from page to page piecing together a zip code area. I found a great site where you type in a zip code and you get a Google map that has a zip code boundary overlay on it. You can zoom in to street level. It’s your typical Google map. Here’s the link to the zip code map.
This should help a home buyer when using various home search tools or help them define a targetted home search. Many times searching on city names doesn’t give you a well defined area as zip codes do.
Call me a geek, but finding a little, easy to use tool like this brings a little joy to my life. Hope you enjoy this tool also.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta real estate info, Atlanta home search tools | No Comments »
Friday, November 24th, 2006
Who would have thought of Atlanta as a place that someone would want to retire to. But in the last two years I’ve been working with people coming from California, Arizona and Florida who are finding Atlanta as a great place to retire. Most are impressed with the type of home that they can buy in the outer suburbs such as Forsyth county. They don’t have to commute so the traffic isn’t a big deal. There are some really nice golf club communities and the Mall of Georgia and North Point Mall are pretty close by.
The biggest incentive is the low property taxes. In Forsyth county, you don’t pay school taxes if you are over 65 years of age. That is huge. A $700,000 home would have property taxes of less than $1000 per year! (Forsyth tax faqs)
I was working with a couple from Florida where taxes for a $700,000 are $15,000 and home insurance was an additional $15,000/year. They couldn’t believe how cheap it was going to be for them in Forsyth county.
Cobb county also has a great tax break for seniors.
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