Archive for the 'For Sellers' Category
Selling Your Home During The Holidays? Don’t Overdo The Ho-Ho-Ho
December 2nd, 2011 categories: FSBO's, For Homeowners, For Sellers, Staging Advice
It’s fun to decorate your home for the holidays. No one denies this. But if you’re trying to sell your Chicago condominium or single-family home during the holidays, don’t overdo the Santas, reindeer and twinkling lights.
Simply put, too much holiday cheer can turn off potential buyers. It can also make your home look cluttered and small. And those are two adjectives you don’t want buyers to associate with your condo or single-family home.
Remember, selling a home is a very different process than is living in it. When you’re selling, your home must also look its best. And you must always have it decorated to showcase its most positive features. When potential buyers tour your residence, you want them to remember the size of your generous master bedroom, the modern appliances in your updated kitchen and the open space in your living room.
You don’t want them remembering that 10-foot-tall Santa waving to them from your front lawn.
Tasteful decorating is even more important today. The number of home buyers shrinks during the holidays and winter months even in the strongest of residential housing markets. It’s not as much fun to tour homes when the temperature plunges below the freezing mark.
But in today’s challenging housing market, one in which it’s difficult to even move condos and single-family homes in top neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park, Lakeview and Lincoln Square, it’s more important than ever to showcase your home to its fullest. The number of buyers out there is low. And they have plenty of homes from which to choose when they’re finally ready to purchase.
Don’t give these buyers a reason to bypass your residence. It’s OK to decorate. No one will hold your holiday cheer against you. But when you overdo it, and when your home looks more like an amusement park ride than a residence, you run the real risk of turning way those elusive buyers that are actually out there today.
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Home Sales Up or Down? It Depends on the Numbers You Use
September 16th, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, Economic Recovery, For Buyers, For Homeowners, For Sellers
How healthy is the Chicago housing market? The short answer is that it’s as healthy as most housing markets across the country. The more complicated answer? That depends upon what numbers you use.
According to the most recent sales statistics from the Illinois Association of REALTORS®, the sale of single-family homes and condominiums in Chicago fell 19.5 percent in July from the same month one year earlier. In July, 1,589 homes were sold. That’s down from 1,975 homes sold in the same month in 2009.
Now, that number seems awfully bad. But it isn’t as bad when you consider that condominium and single-family home sales fell 27 percent across the nation in July.
Chicago home sales also look stronger if you consider year-to-date sales. Thanks in no small part to the federal first-time and move-up buyer tax credits, both of which expired on midnight on April 30, Chicago’s year-to-date home sales are ahead of what we saw last year.
According to the numbers from the Illinois Association of REALTORS®, Chicago’s housing sales from January through July were up 25 percent from the same period in 2009. So far this year, Chicago has seen 12,397 home sales. That’s far ahead of the 9,915 home sales the city saw from January through July of 2009.
If you’re still looking for bad news from the REALTORS® association, you can always study its median sales price numbers. The median price is an important one; it’s the figure at which half of homes sold for higher prices and half for lower.
According to the association, the city of Chicago’s median home price in July stood at $196,000. That’s down 19.8 percent from the $245,000 at which the median stood in the same month one year earlier. The year-to-date median sales price of $215,000 is down 6 percent. The median price was $229,000 for the period of January through July of 2009.
The point of all this isn’t to confuse home buyers or sellers. It’s to point out one fact: The Chicago housing market is a mixed bag of positive and negative news today. In that respect, it’s little different from the majority of housing markets across the country.
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Residential Real Estate Continues Move To Hi-Tech
June 16th, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, For Buyers, For Sellers, Technology
There was a time when critics claimed that REALTORS® were afraid of technology. I don’t know anyone making this claim now.
REALTORS®, in fact, have embraced technology as much as have any sales professionals. Search the Web and you’ll find pages of blogs written by REALTORS®. Search the MLS online and you’ll find a growing number of condominium and single-family home listings that have virtual tours attached to them.
And if you ever see a REALTOR® hustling to a showing, you’ll undoubtedly notice a smart phone clutched in this professional’s hand.
REALTORS® are married to technology. Of course, this was inevitable; home buyers and sellers are the same way.
The Chicago Tribune recently ran a feature story on the changing ways in which consumers buy and sell houses.
The most interesting fact in the Tribune story is this: 90 percent of consumers are going online to help find their homes, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.
For sellers, this is an important stat. They absolutely have to list their homes prominently online if they want to compete for buyers in today’s market. And it’s not just about listing a home on the Multiple Listing Service any more. Sellers need to showcase their homes with virtual tours. They need the written copy describing their homes to contain the right keywords to attract potential buyers. And they need lots of photos to accompany their online listings.
It makes sense, then, for sellers to work with tech-savvy REALTORS® who boast busy Web sites and who write well-trafficked blogs. These are the REALTORS® in today’s online marketplace who will attract the most potential buyers for sellers’ homes.
I still remember the days when online marketing was in its infancy. At that time, no one was quite sure how to best spotlight residential real estate on the Web. Today, it’s amazing how far we’ve all come. Just count how many “FOR SALE” signs boast a separate Web site address that’s unique to that particular property being sold.
It’s a new world today. And in a slow market like this one, it’s crucial for sellers to take full advantage of all the marketing opportunities that the Internet provides them.
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April Was Another Big Month For Chicago Home Sales
June 3rd, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, Economic Recovery, For Buyers, For Sellers, Housing Market
April marked the eighth straight month in which Chicago home sales showed an increase, according to the Illinois Association of REALTORS®. Housing industry analysts, though, are wondering if April’s big showing was largely the result of the impending expiration of the federal government’s home-buying tax credits.
Both the first-time homebuyers’ credit – which provided first-time buyers a tax credit of up to $8,000 – and the move-up buyers’ credit – which gavemost other buyers a tax credit of up to $6,500 – expired at midnight on April 30. This has led economists and housing experts to wonder if buyers across the nation were in a race to beat this deadline.
And if that’s the case, they add, the housing sales numbers in May and beyond might suffer with no tax credit to inspire buyers.
Personally, I can’t deny that both tax credits have played a large role in encouraging buyers to enter the Chicago market. But I think that the city’s affordable housing prices have played as important a role. Buyers know that they can purchase a condominium or single-family home in even the best neighborhoods of Chicago, places like Lakeview, Lincoln Square or Lincoln Park, at extremely reasonable prices.
Whatever the case, you can’t deny that April’s sales numbers were strong ones. The sales of single-family homes and condominiums rose 41.1 percent in April when compared to the same month one year earlier. The city saw 1,985 housing sales in the month compared to 1,407 in April of 2009.
The best news is that housing sales have been trending up for quite some time now. April marked the eighth consecutive month in which housing sales showed a year-over-year sales gain.
At the same time, there was a glimmer of good news regarding Chicago housing prices. The city median sales price in April stood at $225,000. That’s up 3.2 percent from a year ago, when the median sales price had fallen to $218,000.
These are all solid numbers, and I’m glad to see them. I’m sure the tax credits did play a role in them. But I also think that buyers recognize just how good a value Chicago homes are today.
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Wall Street Journal: Housing Prices Won’t Rise Anytime Soon
April 29th, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, Economic Recovery, For Buyers, For Homeowners, For Sellers
If you’re a home seller waiting for the median sales prices of condominiums and single-family homes to rise in Chicago and the rest of the nation, you might be waiting for a while, at least according to a Wall Street Journal study of the country’s residential real estate market.
The Journal’s most recent quarterly survey of housing-market conditions in 28 metropolitan areas found that inventories of homes for sale remain quite high in many big cities, including in Chicago. At the same time, the number of distressed buyers who face potential foreclosures also remains high in many cities.
This combination is a perfect recipe for keeping housing prices at their current affordable levels. When buyers have many homes from which to choose, they don’t have to overpay to land their dream home. When more homes fall into foreclosure, it tends to drag down the asking prices of other residences in the surrounding neighborhood. After all, it’s not easy to ask $300,000 for a condo when the neighbor’s place, in foreclosure, is selling for $220,000.
While this is bad news for sellers, it’s the opposite for buyers. They can still find high-quality homes in Chicago for prices that are more than fair.
The Wall Street Journal forecast specifically mentions Chicago, saying that our city is similar to places like Charlotte, N.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Nashville; and Philadelphia: The supply of homes already on the market is far higher than the national average.
Again, this is good news for buyers. It means that they have plenty of good homes to chose from in Chicago.
The local housing market is in a solid recovery. But the number of sales is increasing faster than is the median sales price of homes. This means that sellers have a choice to make: If they don’t have to sell, they might want to wait a year or more in the hope that housing prices will rise. If they do need to sell, they have to commit to working with their REALTORS® to find the right price for their home in this market.
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