Hiring the right real estate agent to sell your house is absolutely crucial. Here are four tips to help you choose the best agent for the job. Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale. When you plan on selling your house, it is crucial to hire the right agent. How do you know which agent is the best one for the job? Here are a few tips: 1. Work with an agent who specializes in selling houses. Don’t work with a buyer’s agent. Listing agents are experienced in negotiating with buyers. They know what to do to sell your home and will give you the best advice to help you move forward, avoid surprises, and net the most money. 2. You should hire an active agent. Over 80% of agents only sell four properties a year. They are not actively working in the real estate industry every day to sell homes. Hire a listing agent who is active in the market every day. 3. Ask how much experience they have. You need an experienced agent who has seen both the peak and the lowest point of the market. They will know how to handle every situation that may arise during the transaction. Keep in mind that some experienced agents only do four deals a year, so ask how many transactions they do as well. 4. Ask for references. Ask the agent for three or four references. Check their past sales on Zillow and other review sites to make sure that you hire a good listing agent. Keep these four things in mind when hiring a listing agent and you will hire the right one for the job. If you have any other questions about selling your house, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

What happens if you're selling your house and the appraised value comes in lower than the purchase price? You can choose from one of these three courses of action. Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale. If you're selling your home and the appraised value comes in lower than the purchase price, what should you do? This is common in the Las Vegas market because of how much home values have appreciated. Appraisers don't take our low supply, high demand, and appreciation into consideration when appraising a home's value. They only look at the most recent sales within the area. If your home's appraisal comes in low, you have three options. As a home seller, you have three options: We ask the buyer to come up with the difference in cash out of pocket. This is ideal for the seller because it keeps the deal together and gets you the same amount of money as you expected from the beginning.The seller can lower the sales price to the appraised value. In this case, you will net less money, but if you're really motivated to keep a deal together and move, this might be the best solution.We can renegotiate the deal and meet the buyer halfway. Meeting halfway means the buyer will come up with some cash for the difference and the seller brings the sales price down a bit. We can also renegotiate to have the buyer pay some or all of the closing costs. If you're thinking about selling your house and you'd like to know what it's worth in today's market, give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help you.

After five years of appreciation, our market should see a bit of a slowdown. That slowdown should affect different price brackets in different ways. Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale. What can you expect from the Las Vegas real estate market going into 2017? Over the past five years, our market has been steadily appreciating. Looking back at the history of real estate in our country, though, five-year growth periods tend to be followed by a market correction or slowdown. I don’t expect our market to depreciate, but I do expect some kind of slowdown based on the supply and demand. Houses listed above the $300,000 to $400,000 range should be the price bracket most directly affected by this slowdown. As the number of buyers in this area decreases, the number of sellers should increase because of the overall appreciation and a better opportunity to sell those kinds of homes. There aren’t a lot of buyers out there who can qualify for that kind of loan, so if you’re selling your home above this price bracket, I would be very aggressive with pricing it before the competition increases. Overall, things are looking positive. If your house is worth less than $280,000, that’s a great place to be, because that’s the maximum mortgage amount the majority of home buyers can qualify for here in Las Vegas. If you’re buying a house under $280,000, I would get very aggressive when submitting an offer, because the competition is far greater in this price bracket. Overall, things are looking positive. As our population continues to grow, so will our real estate market. If you have any questions or are interested in buying or selling a house in this market, feel free to give me a call. I’d be happy to help!

Today I wanted to take a moment to say thanks to everyone who helped us make 2016 great. Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale. Today I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that we did business with in 2016. May you and your family have a merry Christmas and a safe, happy new year as we head into 2017. We hope you have a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season. We're always here to help you or anyone you know who is looking to buy or sell a home in Las Vegas in 2017 and beyond. Just give me a call!

Many home sellers think they can overprice their home and then come down in negotiations. There are three reasons why this strategy doesn’t work. Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale. Many home sellers say, “I know my home is priced a little high, but why don’t buyers make an offer anyway? I can always negotiate and come down.” Contrary to popular belief, overpricing your home with the intent of negotiating with a buyer is not the best way to sell your home. Serious, pre-qualified buyers that are working with a real estate agent want to buy a house right away and move their family in. They don’t want to waste their time on an overpriced property. An overpriced home tells buyers that you are not serious about selling. There are three main reasons why overpricing your home will not net you the most money on your home sale: 1. Buyers will overlook your home and move on to the next one. They know the market value of your home and will pass by it to look at another, more fairly-priced property. 2. Buyers do not want to insult you by offering less money. Not only that, an overpriced home tells buyers that maybe you aren’t ready to sell. 3. Buyers have a lot of inventory to choose from. In our current market, buyers have a lot of options. They will find a house that is priced correctly and make a strong offer because they don’t want to waste their time experimenting and negotiating. In order to net the most money on your home sale, you need to price your home at its fair market value. If you have any questions about what your home is worth in today’s market or about real estate in general, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

When selling your home, you only get one chance to make a great first impression. Using professional photography will show your home in the best possible light. Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale. Why are high-quality photos of your property important to have when selling your house? To put it simply, it’s because it all starts with the pictures. Buyers today almost always begin their search online, so it’s key that you make a good first impression. High-quality, attention-grabbing photos are the best way to do this. If the home fits buyers’ criteria, along with the price, size, and location of the home, photos can be the deciding factor as far as whether the buyer will take action. The more traffic your home generates, the better your chances are of getting multiple offers, and netting more money. Professional photos will help sell homes of any size. The size of the home doesn’t matter; professional photos will help sell any home, from small condos to million-dollar mansions. If you have any questions about getting professional photos taken of your home, or buying and selling in general, please give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!

A lot of people ask me, “What is the difference between a pre-qualification and a pre-approval? Aren’t they the same thing?” The short answer is no. Whenever I work with a seller, I always recommend that they go with a pre-approved offer rather than a pre-qualified one. As a buyer, a pre-approval is much stronger and proves that you are serious about buying the home. If a buyer is pre-qualified, the lender has simply checked their credit score. A pre-qualification is a shortcut that means someone is going to look into your finances. Get pre-approved by a lender before you start looking at homes. If a buyer is pre-approved, the loan officer has checked everything about their financials. The loan officer will gather documents like tax returns and pay stubs, confirm your job, and run a complete credit check before issuing the pre-approval. Some lenders will even run your file through the underwriter. When you are buying a home, make sure you get pre-approved before you start looking at properties. Not only will your offer be more appealing to sellers, you will also know exactly what you can afford and what your monthly payments will be. Pre-approvals allow you to make the best, most informed decision when purchasing a home. If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale. As a seller, you have three options when the appraisal comes back at less than the sale price: Ask the buyer to pay the difference in cash. This is what they would have to do at this point in order to buy the house. However, most of the time, buyers barely have enough for their down payment.Renegotiate the deal. If you were paying closing costs before, for example, a renegotiation might lift that stipulation or lower the price to the appraised value. I always tell sellers to put themselves in the buyer’s shoes - if you’re buying something that’s worth less than what you’re paying for it, would you go through with the transaction? Accept the appraised value. This is the option I most often encourage sellers to go with. At the end of the day, that’s how much your house is worth. Accepting the appraised value is the quickest way to close the contract and move on to wherever you were planning to move.If you have any questions about selling your house or would like more information regarding this topic, give me a call directly or email me. I look forward to hearing from you! “ I strongly encourage sellers to accept the appraised value. ”