Posts with tag 'COVID'

From Deciding to Sell to Sold

I have the pleasure of speaking to the residents at Wesley Woods of Newnan this week regarding the listing process. I thought I would share a condensed version here. My presentation was entitled "From Deciding to Sell to Sold."

The first step in deciding to sell is to think about where you are in life. Maybe you own your first home, and you need a bigger house for a growing family. Maybe you have a large home, and your children are grown. It may be time to downsize and purchase a smaller house. Wherever you are in life, it is important to really think about what you need moving forward. Often, though, sellers don't have a choice in selling, as they may be moving for a job, due to a foreclosure, or divorce, or even death.

What is the local market like where your property is located? Is it a buyer's market or a seller's market? Maybe it is not the...

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You may have noticed that mortgage rates are on the rise. We have seen rates increase from three percent to four percent, earlier this year, up to nearly eight percent now. Rising inflation is mostly responsible for this. The Federal Reserve, which is responsible for setting the interest rates that directly affect the mortgage rates, has been very clear on their stance with the housing market. Jerome Powell, who is The Federal Reserve Chair, has said the Federal Reserve is trying to "reset" the housing market after prices skyrocketed up to all-time highs in 2022. United States Home prices increased nearly 40 percent in only two years.

            We are now in a totally different housing market. The market has softened, and the market is more buyer friendly. The only problem is that mortgage rates are the highest they have been in nearly fifteen years. What can buyers do to combat this high cost of borrowing?

            You can "buy down" your...

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You may have noticed that the real estate market has changed dramatically recently. We saw the strong seller's market peak earlier this year. Homes were selling at all-time high prices with record demand from buyers. We were regularly seeing multiple offers over list price with cash buyers typically wining these competitive bidding wars. I received 23 offers on one listing and 21 on another. This has all changed.

With mortgage rates up from three percent and four percent to seven and eight percent, the market has really changed. The number of homes available for sale, which was a huge problem earlier this year, is slowly increasing but demand has cooled off. Many buyers have decided to wait to purchase until interest rates go down. These two developments, along with a historic inflation increase, have slowed down the real estate market considerably. Listings are taking much longer to sell, weeks and months instead of days. The number of showings has decreased considerably as...

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The real estate market continues to shift. The market is shifting from a seller's market to a more neutral market. We are seeing homes listed take much longer to sell. There are more sellers reducing their list prices. The real estate market was so strong in the spring of 2022 that you were rarely seeing price reductions. Things have changed.

We are seeing an increase in properties listed for sale. At the time I am writing this, there are 398 residential listings for sale in Coweta County. We were typically dealing with only 140 listings for sale just a few months ago. At the same time, mortgage rates have increased dramatically. Mortgage rates nearly touched seven percent during the week of September 19^th, 2022. This is the highest rates have been in years. The mortgage rates increase curbed buyer enthusiasm as we are seeing less buyers with less buying power. So, all of this should decrease property prices, right? This is not the case at all right now.

P...

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Common Real Estate Scams

The most common forms of scams I see in my real estate business are rental scams involving deposits and earnest money and wire fraud. I have had the local Sherriff's Department contact me looking to track a rental scam prospect down. 

One of our agents recently had his father in law's residential property listed for sale. He was online and saw where someone took the pictures of the house and posted that the home was available for lease when it in fact was not. The scam artist was cold calling prospects to rent the property. He just happened to contact our agent's friend, so she called our agent and made him aware of the scam. The scam artist was using the money payment application, "Zelle", and asking the prospective renters to put both a security deposit and first month's rent down. He created urgency by telling people they had to put the money down as soon as possible or someone else would lease the prope...

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