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Ah, the famous landlords of yesteryear ... Stanley Roper, Ralph Furley, Edna Babish, Fred and Ethel Mertz. Those were the days! Of course, in TV sitcom land, being a landlord seemed like such an easy job. You make friends with your tenants, hangout for hours and maybe grab a bite to eat from time to time. Rent and repairs were rarely an issue. A small toolbox, a charming smile, and you were all set. Fast forward to 2011 where problems are rarely resolved in 30 minutes and Jack, Chrissie and Janet have all been downsized! Today's low prices, low interest rates and high inventory areas are once again seducing investors to jump into the rental game. Ironically, it makes great sense for former flippers to become landlords. You remember the flippers don't you? Those were the guys (and gals) who bought property "cheap", made a few changes or upgrades and then sold for a big profit. Now these same investors are seeing opportunity in the distance. Instead of flipping, they are ho...Read more

What do you get when you cross a real estate agent with a smart phone? Six months ago, this riddle would have stumped me. I probably would have answered with, "Don't know. What do you get?" I imagine many of you may be scrunching your face right now wondering what I am talking about. Admittedly, I've celebrated the anniversary of my 30th birthday a few times more than I wish to count. I didn't grow up with the technology that my kids have today. And, although my generation is quickly learning the basics of iPads, virtual meetings, Nooks and more, there always seems to be something new just beyond the bend. In our quest to keep up with trends and the latest technology, we stumnled upon an idea that I wish had been invented years ago. Many of you may have noticed a black and white, matrix-like barcode popping up on everything from cereal boxes to magazines. These little graphical elements are sometimes called QR codes and when you scan them with your smart phone, they can provi...Read more

September 2010 Goes Down in History With a Record 100,000 Foreclosures! I’m not celebrating this achievement. This, my friends, is a mess of monumental proportions! Maybe you’ve heard foreclosure scuttlebutt recently with words that include robo signing, botched signatures and forgery. Unfortunately, the banks we all know and love are being accused of all of the above, along with fake notaries, bogus social security numbers and unknown witnesses. Just a few months ago, I wrote it was probably better for homebuyers to consider a REO (Real Estate Owned) property from the bank, rather than getting involved in a short sale. The gist of my statement was that with REO's, a bank has already set a price for the home, listed it with an agent and is generally ready to take the property to a successful closing. Well, forget everything I said. Although the information was accurate a few months ago, it is a whole other story today. Welcome to the new world of real estate. Understan...Read more

Every Tuesday morning, without exception, our weekly sales meeting topic shifts to the current market, lower home market values and comparable listing prices. The questions go something like this, “How do you tell someone that their home isn’t valued at even close to what they paid for it? How do you explain that even though a client’s home is immaculate with everything in top condition, that an appraiser will likely compare it to a short sale or foreclosure property? How can you tell someone that is still current on their payments that their home is worth tens of thousands less than their mortgage payoff?” Quite honestly, unless someone has been living without a television, radio, Internet or a newspaper, they probably have a pretty good idea that values have dropped. However, it probably isn’t until you are ready to sell that you fully understand to what extent. A Realtor’s job is to assist you with the sale of your home. We can price your home to be for sale, OR we...Read more

When we were kids, alphabet soup offered a wonderful eating diversion. We scoured the bowl for delicious letters and attempted to spell out common words on our plates. Once accomplished, all that was left was a jumble of letters, none of which seemed to make any sense when put together…sometimes we left them behind. The fun was gone. The real estate market has been a bit like that lately, with common terms and descriptions easy to find and digest. However, at the end of the day, many buyers and sellers are still left to wonder what the heck all these crazy new terms mean. There’s FHA, VA, USDA, HAMP, and so on. We would have had a field day with this stuff as kids! However, if you’ve been searching for a mortgage, there’s little doubt these terms have caused confusion. The plethora of loan-program acronyms is certainly enough to make someone’s head spin! But stop the presses! Here comes yet another delightful alphabet jumble for us to sink our teeth into. It’s called...Read more