• 13 Lucky Superstitions for Your Home in 2013

  Is 13 an unlucky number? We don’t think so. But just to be safe, we found 13 superstitions that just might bring your home a little luck this year. Read

“Time Is Money”

The amount of time and effort it takes to sell a home by yourself can be brutal, not to mention expensive! For Sale By Owners don’t have the luxury of showing up on the Multiple Listing Service which shoots the property to thousands and thousands of websites. With virtually every buyer starting their search online, FSBO sellers are already far behind. Nightly postings on Craigslist. Weekends consumed by open houses. Weekdays consumed by making flyers and taking phone calls. Weeknights consumed by strangers knocking on your door asking about your house for sale while you are sitting down for dinner. Your job isn’t to sell houses like a professional real estate agent.  An agent does 100′s of tasks to get your house from before it’s listed, to listed, negotiated, sold, inspected, appraised, and closed.

Legal Issues

In the state of Minnesota, it is required you provide disclosures to a potential buyer to disclose material facts about the home. This needs to be done before signing any type of agreement between the seller and buyer. Many sellers are unfamiliar with this. Virtually nothing keeps real estate attorneys busier than disclosure laws and failures to disclose material facts. This is only one of many legal issues that sellers face when trying to sell a house on their own.

Real Estate Agents And Buyers Avoid FSBO Properties

No one has more pre-qualified and motivated buyers than real estate agents. To find homes for these buyers, they traditionally rely on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Non-represented sellers of for sale by owner homes cannot appear on the MLS without an agreement with a real estate broker in the state of Minnesota. Real estate agents are paid on commission, not a salary. A seller that is trying to sell on their own typically don’t promise a commission. Like any other profession, agents don’t like to work for free.

Most buyers are scared. Terrified even. They don’t want to be taken advantage of by a seller. The first step most buyers take is to meet with a trusted real estate professional or mortgage officer. Only the savviest of buyers actively seek out homes for sale by owner. These savvy buyers typically destroy the asking price of the sellers. What little these sellers are saving by going on their own is quickly washed away by a hard-nosed buyer. Sellers of FSBO’s are notorious for over-pricing their homes and many buyers know this. Sellers have a lot of emotion tied into their price.

Statistics

According to the National Association of REALTORS®: ”Sellers who use a real estate professional make 16 percent more on the sale of their home than do sellers who go it alone. Unrepresented sellers often do not understand the complexity, range and timing of tasks they will have to perform if they don’t use a professional.”

16% is a lot to of equity to give up trying to save money by paying a real estate agents commission. A professional real estate agent will negotiate in your interests to sell your home for the most possible amount. The more your home sells for, the more the agent will make off the transaction.

Though it’s hard to know exactly how many attempt to sell themselves without success, estimates show between 80-90% of for sale by owners eventually list with an agent or decide not to sell altogether. The average time an owner attempts to sell on their own is about 8 weeks.

Remember: You have ONE opportunity to impress a buyer. You never get a second chance to make a great first impression.  Your goal is to de-clutter, simplify, clean, and organize the home in order for it to show larger and brighter. This will give a more spacious feeling to potential buyers.  These few tips will provide you with an advantage over the competition.

Tip 1

Consider a garage sale or throwing away items that won’t make the move. Don’t wait until you are about to move!

Simplify! The more floor space a buyer can see, the bigger the room will appear. One of the best return on investments is renting a unit in a local storage facility. You’re moving anyway right? Why not pack it up and get a head start? Here are some items that you may want to consider storing:

-          Remove extra furniture that shrinks the spaces in your home.

-          Boxes from when you moved last time that you still haven’t unpacked. We all have them.

-          Seasonal clothes and decorations.

-          Items that may be considered fixtures and attached to the home that you may want to take with when you sell. Mirrors, shelving, drapery, removable fireplaces, landscaping items, and bars are a few popular examples.

-           Children’s toys.

-          Remove extra clothes, linens, towels, bathroom products and other items stored in closets. This will help them all appear bigger. People love big closets.

-          Workout equipment.

-          Extra kitchen equipment. Buyers are turned off if there is not enough counter or cabinet space.

Tip 2

Remove extra kitchen appliances that may be on the counter top  You do not need a toaster, toaster oven, mixer, jerky maker, 30 piece knife set, and rice steamer on your counter. A toaster, one or two small decorative pieces, and maybe another small appliance is about all you should have maximum. Clean the inside of the oven, the range, and replace the drip pans with new ones. They are inexpensive and can be found virtually anywhere in the kitchen section.

Tip 3

If you have a particularly small room, turn it into an office or nursery. Even if you don’t have a small child, it’s easy to ask friends and family for a crib, a few stuffed animals, and small dresser to borrow. If you have a queen bed in a rarely used spare bedroom, consider moving in a twin air mattress and storing a few boxes under for the time being.

Tip 4

Painting the garage floor with epoxy is a great and relatively easy and inexpensive option to brighten up the garage and give it a fresh look.  Similar to the house, re-organize and de-clutter. People love big garages where they can store a lot of stuff and easily fit in cars. A packed garage will make it appear as if you don’t have enough storage room in your house and garage.

Tip 5

In living spaces, Add lamps to brighten up the space as needed. Remove extra furniture to open it up as well. Store extra books, magazines, DVD’s, and electronics. These will distract and can clutter up an area. Also, de-personalize! People love to picture themselves in the home, not you. A few pictures are fine here and there, but remove huge pictures, awards, sports/hunting memorabilia, and collections. Patch and paint over the holes. It will also allow the walls to look bigger which will allow the house to look bigger.

If you are considering selling your home, contact me! I can provide you with my 15 additional tips and also stop by your house for a consultation.  

Click Here For List Of Foreclosures Under $150,000 in Coon Rapids.

A great way to spot a great deal when looking to buy a home is to look at the price history. Many sellers choose to drop the price of there home every 30-60 days. It’s not uncommon to see that drop between 1%-5%. Sometimes sellers decide to make bigger drops when they are looking for an offer or multiple offer situation. I’ve compiled this list and it gets updated daily. This is the list for the North Metro: Blaine, Andover, Coon Rapids, Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, Crystal, Fridley, Spring Lake Park, New Brighton, Lino Lakes, Anoka, Circle Pines, Maple Grove, Champlin, Columbia Heights, Vadnais Heights and the surrounding areas. If you would like a customized list of the homes in a particular area with these huge price reductions, click here.

For the list of homes in the North Metro with HUGE price reductions in the last 30 days, click here!!!

For additional information on moving to Lino Lakes, fill out the form below!

For additional information on moving to Lino Lakes, fill out the form below!

Date:  June 13, 2012

LOCAL REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONAL COLLIN VOLD

BECOMES MEMBER OF 

MILITARY VETERANS ASSOCIATION OF REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS

The Military Veterans Association of Real Estate Professionals is proud to announce the addition of our newest member – Collin Vold with Edina Realty in Blaine, Minnesota.   By becoming a member of MVAREP, Collin has joined a dynamic group of concerned citizens and real estate industry professionals committed to promoting home ownership opportunities within the military and veteran community.

MVAREP was formed with many goals in mind.  First and foremost, the main objective will be to promote home ownership within the military and veteran community.  MVAREP will do this by creating and developing programs to educate both the real estate community and general public on the benefits of working with a VA (military) home buyer as well as provide the tools and training for the real estate community to better help and serve members of the military and veteran community.  From there, local and national events will be held with distinguished key note speakers, as well as tools and training provided to all members.

MVAREP was founded by David E. Dion of Solutions Real Estate with offices in both Arizona and California.  David is a Service Connected Disabled Air Force Veteran who served on active duty from 1986 – 1990 and also the Massachusetts Air National Guard from 1990 – 1995.  David himself was recently trying to use his VA Home Loan Guarantee benefit for his own home purchase in Southern California and realized the challenges first hand.  He had made a full price offer (and higher) on more than one home and each time had his offer rejected.  In competitive selling situations, the VA Home Buyer offer is frequently put on the bottom of the pile, or identified as the least desirable offer when compared to a cash buyer, a conventional buyer and even an FHA buyer.

MVAREP is open to all with members from the real estate community including real estate agents, real estate brokers, lenders, loan officers, title and escrow, home inspectors, insurance representatives, etc.,  as well as concerned citizens and anyone who wants to recognize the sacrifices of military service members including military veterans, active duty service members and national guard members.

For more information about Military Veterans Association of Real Estate Professionals (MVAREP), be sure to visit www.MVAREP.org  or email us at info@MVAREP.org.

Contact: David E. Dion – MVAREP Founder – www.MVAREP.org – email at info@MVAREP.org

The vision of being a rock star real estate agent isn’t something I’ve always had. I never considered it growing up and it honestly never crossed my mind.

There was a small squad of us soldiers out all alone in the mountains of Afghanistan. Every night we rotated and each of us stayed awake for an hour providing security while the other soldier slept. It was a difficult mission, but truly an amazing time. No showers, no electricity, and nothing but MRE’s and bottled water.

It was one of these dark, quiet evenings standing guard that I had what is referred to as a ‘flash of insight’. I knew at that moment where the rest of my life would take me. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I needed to do with my life. I don’t have a clue where it came from or what it would entail to accomplish that, but my goal at that moment was to be a real estate agent. Not just any real estate agent, but the best real estate agent that I could be.

From that moment, that was my focus. I would have real estate books shipped to me, scour blogs, and contact other agents.

Real estate was my drug…and I loved it. 

It was my focus in Afghanistan. It was my focus in Iraq. It kept me sane when everything was chaotic. It was my escape in the dark, dangerous world I was living in. Someone recently asked me: “How did you come back from it all so normal? Why are you always smiling?” Don’t get me wrong, it was tough. I had my challenges just like every other soldier coming back from a couple dangerous deployments. 

I definitely didn’t get in the business in any sort of prime time. People thought I was crazy getting out of the military and into real estate at the time I was. “I didn’t have the ‘experience’…Everybody is getting out real estate… I wouldn’t be able to cut it.”

The last thing you  tell an American soldier is that they can’t do something. Nothing pushes them harder and farther.

Good market, bad market. Good day, bad day. No business, tons of business. I owe it so much. I’m grateful for it every day.

To say I have a passion for real estate is an understatement.

Real estate saved me.