June 25, 2019
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3 Tips Before Starting Your Real Estate Career

By | Uncategorized

A career in real estate can be a rich and rewarding experience, but before earning your license, there are three things to consider.

Buying a home? Click here to search all homes for sale.
Selling your home? Click here to learn more about our home selling system.

You’re aspiring to earn your real estate license. Great! Before starting the process, though, I’d like to offer three tips for you to know beforehand:

1. The ability to generate business. There’s a fairly common misconception that as soon as you’re licensed and working at a brokerage, clients will be lining up at your door for help with their buying and selling needs. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It takes time, energy, and effort to see success, and you’ll be vying for business in a crowded field of agents. For perspective, here in Brevard County, we have over 4,000 agents. Therefore, you’ll need to develop the qualities and skills that make you a cut above the rest in the eyes of consumers.

2. You need to have money saved up. The real estate transaction spans 30 to 45 days until closing, and that’s only after you’ve earned a client’s business. When you’re first getting your business off the ground, it could foreseeably be three months before your first transaction, so be prepared for that financially.

3. Learn to enjoy rejection and failure. Having a thick skin is part and parcel of finding success in this business. You’re going to be inundated with calls, texts, emails, and the like all hours of the day, night, and weekend, so knowing how to prioritize is crucial. In addition, you may run into situations where you’re certain a friend of yours is going to turn to you for help buying or selling a home, only to discover they went with someone else. Every agent, including myself, has been there, and it’s natural to take it personally. Despite that, your mental toughness has to prevail in those moments.   

If you have any questions about what it takes to crack into the real estate profession, don’t hesitate to let me know. I’d be happy to help!   

May 29, 2019
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Is the Convenience of Selling to an iBuyer Worth the Cost?

By | Uncategorized

Selling your home to an iBuyer offers a lot in terms of convenience, but it also comes with certain costs.

 

Buying a home? Click here to search all homes for sale.
Selling your home? Click here to learn more about our home selling system.

Selling to an iBuyer offers a lot in terms of convenience, but it also comes with certain costs you should consider before deciding to do so.

How does the process work? You go to a site like Opendoor, Offerpad, or Zillow and enter your home’s address (and perhaps submit a few pictures). Then, they come up with an offer for it. If you accept the offer, they’ll send a representative out to your house to do a quick walk-through and make sure everything is in working order. After that, all you have to do is pick the closing date.

In addition to this convenience, many people assume they can skip the closing costs of a normal transaction, but that’s not true.

Offerpad, for example, charges a service fee between 6% and 10%. After they buy your home, you also need to pay all the normal transaction costs that come with selling it, including the buyer’s agent’s commission, concessions to the buyer, holding costs, maintenance fees, and taxes, and other costs to list and market the home.

“If you’re willing to sell for less money and pay more in terms of fees for the sake of convenience, then, by all means, sell to an iBuyer.”

Opendoor charges between 6.5% and 13%—the exact figure varies based on how long they think it’ll take for them to sell the home after they buy it.

Zillow, meanwhile, states the following on their website: “There is no cost to request or receive an offer from Zillow. If you choose to sell your home to Zillow, you will receive a clear statement outlining any fees associated with the offer.” By reading this, it’s safe to assume they charge roughly the same rate as the other two.

The bottom line is this: The fees you’d have to pay when selling through these companies is more than what you’d have to pay when listing the conventional way. If you’re willing to sell for less money and pay more in terms of fees for the sake of convenience, then, by all means, sell to an iBuyer. Otherwise, you’re better off putting your home on the open market.

As always, if you have any questions about this or any other real estate topic, feel free to call or email me. I’d be happy to speak with you.

April 8, 2019
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How To Tell The Difference Between Concrete Block & Frame Homes

By | Blog


Homes in Florida are built from concrete block and/or frame, but what makes one different from the other? Beyond cosmetics, what value does exterior paint hold? I’ll answer these questions and more today.

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Selling your home? Click here to learn more about our home selling system.

Home construction can be split into two types: concrete block and frame homes. Today we’ll talk about the ways they can be discerned from each other.

Here in Florida, it’s not out of the ordinary for a home to be built from both concrete block and frame. To highlight some of the key differences, I’m outside of a home today that was constructed in this way.

A home with recessed windows, as seen at 0:30 in the video, is your first clue that a home was built—or partially built, at least—from concrete block. Recessed windows sit further back and aren’t flush with the connecting exterior wall. At 0:38 in the video, you’ll see that, on the second story, it’s just the opposite—this window is perfectly flush and frame-level, which indicates it’s frame construction.

“the gap that borders bottom of a home separates ground and stucco has two main purposes: to alert an inspector termite presence prevent water intrusion.

It’s commonly (and erroneously) believed that paint is nothing more than a cosmetic consideration for a house, but this just isn’t true. In fact, painting your home’s exterior can prevent water intrusion.

If you’ve owned a home in Florida for any length of time, you’re probably no stranger to cracks in your stucco. With the amount of rainfall we get, your home could definitely be at risk of water seepage.

Stucco painted over the top of a frame exterior is something you’ll see in many Florida homes. The gap that borders the bottom of the home, shown at 2:07, serves to separate the ground and the stucco and has two main purposes: to alert an inspector to termite presence and to prevent water intrusion.

As I mentioned earlier, frame homes tend to have windows that are flush with the exterior wall. There are exceptions, though. The home I’m next to at 2:48 in the video is a case in point—as a faux brick property, this is considered a frame home, but its windows are recessed. You’ll notice that, unlike the home I showed you at 2:07, this home doesn’t have the gap where the brick meets the grass. For termite inspection purposes, it’s very important that your home has that gap.

If you have any questions about today’s topic or anything else related to real estate, let us know. We’d be happy to help!

March 21, 2019
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What the Stats Say About Our Brevard County Market

By | Blog


Inventory is rising in Brevard County, which means buyers have more leverage and sellers need to be more careful when pricing their homes.

Buying a home? Click here to search all homes for sale.
Selling your home? Click here to learn more about our home selling system.

What’s the latest news from our Brevard County market? Let’s look at some year-over-year statistics for single-family homes.

For several years now, prices have been rising, and the average sale price at the end of 2018 was $272,000—a full 7% higher than in 2017. Currently, there are 3,038 single-family homes on the market, which is a 29% increase compared to 2017. This bump in inventory has caused the average days on market for single-family homes to increase by about six days.

“If you’re a buyer, this shift means you have more leverage when dealing with sellers. ”

Moving forward, I predict that inventory will continue to increase—not just for single-family homes, but also for condos and townhomes. If you’re a seller, you need to take this into consideration when pricing your home. Buyers have more homes to choose from, so it’s important that you not overprice yours. If you’re a buyer, this shift means you have more leverage when dealing with sellers.

If you have any more questions about our market or you have any other real estate needs I can take care of, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you.