Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected].

When you're buying a home, determining your housing needs is incredibly important. The key is to plan ahead.

If you're moving from a smaller property into a larger one, you'll want to plan for the next three to five years. You should have a list of absolutely non-negotiable things like which area you're going to be in, which school district, as well as bedroom and bathroom counts, but it's also important to be realistic about your budget and needs so that you can find the best house to fill them.

You should have a list of non-negotiables.

While you're considering which home to buy, you also need to consider location and the amenities you need to be nearby. For example, if you're commuting a lot, you may want proximity to I-25 so you can get north and south easily. If you're at one of our many military installations, it might also be important to be close to the Powers Corridor.

Location is important, but you also have to consider your distance to work. How long do you want to commute every day? How far away do the kids have to go to get to school? A lot of factors can determine where your new home will be, and a real estate professional can help you make the best decision to find the right home for you and your family.

If you have any questions for me about determining your home needs, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected].

I’m often asked whether Zillow’s Zestimates are an accurate way to determine the value of your home. Here’s the thing: Zestimates are a software that takes square footage and recent comparable sales into account in order to arrive at a value. As a former appraiser, I’m here to tell you that pricing your home just isn’t that simple.

Zillow’s Zestimate does not factor in specific features of your home, your home’s view, or any other renovations you may have made to the home to improve its value.

Zestimates are not the final word on your home’s value.

The best way to determine your home’s value is to talk to a licensed professional agent to give you a free equity evaluation. Zillow is a great tool to get a base price on your home to begin with, but is not the end of the conversation. An experienced agent will do the research, find comparable sales, physically assess the property, and then analyze the data in order to properly price your home in today’s rapidly changing market. There is no way for Zillow to account for all of the factors that give a property its value.

If you have any other questions about pricing your home properly for the market or would like a free equity evaluation, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected].

We certainly recommend that you do an open house on your property when selling.

My open house system is a little bit different than the standard open house, though. The standard open house is usually a one or two-hour event with a directional sign at a major intersection. My open houses start the Friday evening before the open house.

We put out more than 100 directional signs all around the neighborhood directing traffic to your home.

From there, we really hit the Facebook marketing hard, broadcasting that we'll have the house open both Saturday and Sunday. This allows for a 16-hour open house and allows us to maximize foot traffic. At our best attempts, we’ll see 30 to 40 buyers come through your property during the open house.

Preparing for the open house is going to be important when there is that many people. We want to make sure all your valuables are locked up and out of sight since we're going to have a lot of strangers coming through your property in a short period of time. We work with you to prepare the open house and get your home in showable condition, but most importantly, secure your valuables to avoid any problems.

Our open houses system is guaranteed to get results.

The best thing you can do for the open house process is to get yourself out of the property. Since our open houses are longer than normal, you want to have your kids and pets at a different location for up to two days while we perform the open house. The great news is that the open house has been so effective for us that we can get an offer from our first day. This helps you get the most amount of money in the least amount of time by getting foot traffic in an open house system that's guaranteed to get results.

If you have any questions about our open house system or any questions about the Colorado Springs real estate market in general, give me a call or send me an email. Let's talk soon!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected].

As a real estate professional, my job is negotiating.

One common misconception is that the only thing negotiated in a home sale is the price. While price is very important, there are more things to negotiate besides price. For example, one other negotiation is the inspection items. When the inspection objection comes back, there will be a list of items we have to determine and negotiate in terms of which items are important to fix and which are a necessary expense for you as the seller.

Move out date is another important negotiation item. In certain markets, it's important to have some transition time to move from your previous home to the new one. By negotiating move out dates, we can allow you to lease back your current property from the new owner, which allows you to transition to your new home without the stress of needing to do a very instantaneous move.

Price isn't the only item that's negotiated.

While it's common to move out the same day as closing, lately, we've negotiated a lot of deals that allow the sellers to stay in the home for a couple weeks or even months to allow for a smoother transition.

There are other conditional items in a contract that need to be negotiated as well, like closing costs. In most markets, it's standard for the seller to pay closing costs, but in other markets, as they heat up, we may find that closing costs are something we can negotiate out by increasing the purchase price of the home.

As a real estate professional, I'm often asked what the pitfalls of pricing your home too high or too low are.

Pricing your house is not an exact science. To determine the value of a home, you need to really know what's going on in the marketplace at that time. If the market is on an upward tear, you want to price your home just above what you expect to get for it. This allows you to adapt to the current market conditions and avoid leaving any money on the table. On the other hand, if the market is heading downward, you want to price your home just below what you expect to get.

Market data will tell us what the trend of the neighborhood is.

To determine these values, we look at comparable home sales in your neighborhood. What did your neighbor's house sell for? What have homes in your neighborhood with similar square footage sold for in the last six to 12 months?

Analyzing this data will tell us what the trend of the market is, which allows us to price your home within that data. As a former registered appraiser, my job is to find the right value for your home and price it within the market constraints. Pricing too high will lead to your home sitting on the market for a long time and receiving multiple lowball offers and not getting the most money possible. Pricing too low may leave money on the table.

If you're thinking about selling your home, I'd love to sit down and talk with you about maximizing your sale based on today's market conditions in Colorado Springs. Give me a call or send me an email and let's keep this conversation going.

If you are attempting to sell your home For Sale By Owner (FSBO), I get what you’re going for. You don’t want to have to pay that commission, and you think by selling your own home you’ll save all that commission.

However, you should know that the leading reason that sellers end up in litigation in real estate is due to FSBO situations. By not having the proper contracts or negotiations, you can leave yourself exposed to long-term liability issues with your former home.

I encounter a lot of FSBOs and I’m happy to say I’ve been able to work with quite a few of these sellers to ultimately end up netting them more money than they thought they would get on their own.

We simply have the systems and marketing in place to capitalize on the market, get you the most money possible for your home, reduce your liability, and do it in the least amount of time possible.

We can minimize your cost while maximizing your net.

If you would like to work with a licensed professional in selling your home, I would be happy to discuss with you how we can market and sell your property for minimal cost while maximizing your net. FSBOs can be difficult because a lot of people simply don’t know all it takes to close a sale.

The final walkthrough is a crucial part of the closing process. Days or hours before you close on your home, we will walk through the property to make sure it’s in working condition.

It’s very important that you use a checklist during the walkthrough to make sure that you don’t miss anything. Part of that checklist will include your inspection resolution items, but there will also be other features on the list that we need to look at before closing.

After the walkthrough, you will head to the title company and close on the home, so it’s incredibly important that you check on the property one last time in order to verify that there have been no conditional changes that may prevent you from wanting to close on the home.

If the property is vacant, the final walkthrough is extra important because there might have been vandalism or theft since you last looked at the property. The walkthrough allows you to take appropriate action with any issues before you actually own the home.

At this stage in the home buying game, you don’t want any surprises.

At this stage in the game, you don’t want any surprises. By using a checklist, we can ensure that all of the repairs you requested have been taken care of and that no additional issues have popped up in the meantime.

Our checklist really saved one of my clients a lot of hassle. We walked through the property just hours before heading to the title company only to discover that the water heater had been stolen. It would have been terrible for my client to find out the water heater was missing after closing. However, since we did the final walkthrough, the seller replaced the water heater before my client closed on the home.

As you can see, the final walkthrough is an awesome way to avoid a lot of pitfalls in the process of buying a home, especially if the home is vacant. You simply don’t know what’s going to happen before you close on it.

As a real estate agent, people always ask me if they should buy or rent their home. You'd think as an agent, my obvious answer would be to buy a home, but that's just not the case. A lot of it is personal preference, as well as market conditions.

As we've seen the market rise here in Colorado Springs, the cost to rent today is 20% more than it was just two years ago. So today, buying a home with really low interest rates and high rentals makes the most sense. As the market shifts though, that might not be the case. In markets like Denver, for example, the prices have gotten so high that you're better off renting, and not paying the top of the market prices.

"Luckily, the Colorado Springs market has not peaked yet."

Luckily, the Colorado Springs market has not peaked yet. I would say today, your best bet is to buy a home, but you really have to determine what your long-term goals for homeownership are. Treat your home like an investment, not just a place to live. Buying the right home will protect your financial investment for years and years. Whether you're buying a new home or a resale home, you want to think not about what it's worth today, but what it will be worth in the long run.

Most homeowners live in a house for three to five years, so you want to try to guess what your home is going to be worth three to five years from your move. By looking at your house this way as an investment rather than just a place to live, you can avoid what's happened in previous markets, where collapse has left people upside down on their mortgages.

If you have any questions about buying versus renting, let's talk soon. I can help you find the right investment for years to come.

Many people ask me what happens after a home inspection.

After the inspection, an inspection resolution is delivered, which determines what items are requested to be repaired on the home. In most cases, if these items are minor issues and are worth it to get through to closing, we can get those fixed. The seller has the option not to fix these items, but assuming that everything is decided on and is satisfactory, after that, the loan process takes over.

"The seller has the option not to fix items that come up."

The next step after the inspection is typically the appraisal, which is conducted by a licensed appraiser to determine the home's value. After the appraisal is done, the inspection items are completed, the value of the home is verified, and we proceed to closing. Then you get your keys and move into your new home!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I know many reputable vendors and contractors that can fix repairs that come up during an inspection to keep the process smooth and painless. Let's talk soon.

Determining whether you’re ready to buy a home or not is more of a personal decision than anything else. 

If you’ve been a renter for years, that’s one sign you might be ready to buy a home. Let’s face it, you’re writing a check every month to your landlord, and that’s just the beginning of the picture.

Determining whether or not to buy a home depends on how long you intend to stay in one place. There’s a common misconception that when you sign a 30-year mortgage, you have to stay in the house for 30 years. 

I look at this a lot differently. Buying a home is an investment tool that increases your net worth and spending power. By owning a property, you’re applying some of your payment towards equity. This equity grows over the years. You take that equity and roll it into each property as you move forward. 

Buying the right home in this marketplace is crucial because you want to build equity for the long-term future. When you sell that home, you’ll be able to take that equity and maybe buy a larger home or downsize. 

Ultimately, whether or not you buy a home is largely decided by your goals and how you want to protect your financial future. If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!