Delaware Home Gallery Real Estate Video Blog With Jason Morris

I’ve been through several elections in my lifetime, and the one thing you can always count on after a controversial election such as the one we just had is everybody getting riled up over it. For a short period of time, there’s usually a great deal of concern from the half of the population who didn’t get their preferred candidate. However, eventually everyone slides back into their normal routines.

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In the long term, the power of habit usually takes over.

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This is because supply and demand are what determine the housing market—not who is president. Folks buy and sell homes based on life motivators and their respective financial capability. While an election may rattle consumer confidence in the short term, in the long term, you’ll find that the power of habit usually takes over. Houses will continue to be bought and sold based on familiar motivators determined by supply and demand.

Based on the initial impact of the election, not much has changed in our market. My office has still been selling homes at a rapid pace, and I think we will see a strong housing market going into the spring. We still have fairly high demand and a low level of inventory. Not only that, but interest rates are still very low.

If you have any questions or are thinking of buying or selling a home in today’s market, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help!

The fall market looks to be wrapping up for the year, so today I wanted to give you a closer look.

When you compare this year to last year, we're essentially looking about the same. Inventory is down slightly from 2,505 units to 2,437, indicating that homes are selling faster than they're being listed.

This is a good sign for sellers.

Inventory this year is still hovering around five months of supply, which is basically a balanced market. Settle volume is down slightly from 501 units to 493, which indicates that buyers might not be getting homes as quickly as they have in the past.

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The market needs inventory, making now a great time for sellers.

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When settle volume goes down, it's a good sign for prices. It means that there's still demand for inventory. This will continue to drive the price increase, which we've already seen go up from $226,000 to $228,000 on average.

List-to-sales price ratio is exactly the same, with sellers getting 94.7% of asking price. You should expect a few points to come off your list price, but that's been commonplace forever.

Simply put, the market is still strong this year and not many things have changed. It looks like we'll still be strong heading into the spring, too. The market needs sellers, so if you've had any thoughts about selling, don't let the weather or the season deter you. Thanks to low inventory, now is an excellent time to get a great price for your home. You have motivated buyers in the market slogging through the cold, sloppy conditions outside because they so badly need to buy a home.

If you've got any questions or you're interested in talking about selling your house, give me a call or send me an email today. I'd love to hear from you!

You have probably heard about the importance of staging your home before you put it on the market. Today, I want to focus on one specific aspect of staging: removing your family photos.

Everybody sets up their homes to be attractive and comfortable to live in, but the way we live in a home and the way we sell a home are very different. Of course, you love your family and take pride in your family photos. However, in the eyes of a buyer, family photos are actually a territory marker. 

Like cave paintings, family photos send a subtle message to people. To buyers, that message is, “If you don’t see yourself in these photos, then you don’t belong here.”

It’s very interesting to go through a home with buyers when family photos are out. At the beginning of the showing, everyone is excited and chatting in their normal voices. As we go through the house more and more, they start to bring their voices down and whisper. Why? They feel like they’re in someone else’s den.

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Buyers need to be able to envision themselves in your home.

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That is not what you want when you are trying to sell your home. You want potential buyers to feel welcome, but family photos make them feel “other.” That is the anthropological psychology behind family photos.

So, box up your family photos before home showings. If you have photos that are hanging up and you think you still need a picture on the wall, here’s a quick tip: slide some kind of neutral magazine clipping or landscape between the glass and the family photo, and then you can leave the frame on the wall.

If you have any other questions about staging your home in order to sell for top dollar, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

What’s going on right now in the fall market? Let’s take a look at the numbers from the month of September and see how they stack up against September of last year:

Overall, this information indicates that there is currently more demand than supply. Why is the sales-to-list price ratio going down? Sellers are starting to realize that the market is favoring them, and they’re increasing their asking prices accordingly; however, they may be getting too aggressive, resulting in them giving a little bit more away in negotiations than what they may have originally thought.

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The market is favoring sellers.

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As we start to enter the colder weather months and we lose time off the daylight clock, you’ll start to see the majority of the home searching activity shift over to the weekends. You should also see fewer homes on the market, which could mean an increase in prices due to the low inventory.

If you have any questions about what’s going on in the market right now, please feel free to email me or give me a call. I look forward to hearing from you!

If you’re selling your house and an agent is trying to buy your listing, they’re simply over-guaranteeing on the sale price in order to convince you to list with them.

This typically happens when multiple agents are competing for the same listing. Sellers have every right to interview multiple agents, but keep in mind that one single agent can’t make the market move. A house will sell for what it’s going to sell for. What’s more, agents who become aware that there is competition for the listing also have a tendency to slant the figures and promise you more of a net payout on the house than what can actually be obtained. They do this knowing that they can always talk you into a price reduction later on.

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Don’t listen to the agent’s promises—look at the results.

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The question then becomes, how do you avoid this scenario when interviewing multiple agents?

The easiest way is to look at the results. It’s simple enough to look up an agent’s track record and their customer reviews on a site like Zillow. Once you’ve done your research and have begun the interviewing process, be wary of them telling you what you want to hear and trying to buy your listing. Remember—overpriced houses don’t sell.

You can also just choose to withhold the fact that you’re interviewing multiple agents from the agents you’re interviewing. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, and it won’t hurt you, either.

If you have any questions or topics in mind you’d me to address, don’t hesitate to give me a call or shoot me an email. I look forward to hearing from you!

If you tried to sell your home and were unsuccessful, how long should you keep it off the market before resetting and trying again?

The official reset time period for the MLS is 60 to 90 days, but buyers tend to be active on the market for anywhere between six and 18 months. This means the MLS will reset your house’s number of days on market back to zero, but the buyers won’t be fooled. They’ve been watching homes roll through for much longer to see what kind of deals they can get.

What does this mean for you? You can either wait an extremely long time to try again and do it the same way in the hope of introducing yourself to some new buyers, or you can jump right back in and correct all the problems that caused your home sale to fail in the first place.

Generally, these problems are limited to two areas: price and condition. The two of them almost go hand in hand; you can offset condition issues by price, and vice versa. The tendency is to assume your failure had more to do with poor marketing on behalf of your agent. While that can certainly be true, more often than not, it boils down to factors that you control yourself.

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If your home is overpriced, you will compete in the wrong market & draw the wrong buyers.

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If you’re overpriced, that dictates who you’re competing with, meaning you’re competing with the wrong houses and have the wrong buyers looking at your house. You’re doomed to fail right before you start. If you’re under-conditioned, nobody will want to buy your house. They’ll consider it all the way up until another home comes along offering them a better value or better condition for the same price.

At the end of the day, you’re better off hiring a new agent, making a rapid course correction, and jumping right back into the fray.

If you’d like an evaluation or some assistance with trying to resell your home with a different agent, we’d be happy to help. If you have any other questions, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

Summer is nearly over, but the summer real estate market isn’t. We’ve got an update for you today complete with the latest numbers for the Middletown market.

We’ve got a quick summer market update to share with you about how the housing market is doing right now in the Middletown area. To look at how the market is doing, we look at the numbers and figures for the most recent months vs. the numbers we saw at the same time last year. Here’s what we found:

Available homes are down by 9% from this time last year. Inventory is getting thinner.

The median price for homes has increased by $7,000 since last year.

The list-to-sales ratio has improved by ⅓ of a percent. Sellers are getting more for their homes.

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You can get top dollar for your home now.

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We are shifting more towards a seller’s market, which is great news if you’ve been thinking about listing. If you have any questions for us or you’re interested in getting your home on the market, give us a call or send us an email. We would love to hear from you.

When is the best time to put your home on the market? This is one of the most frequently asked questions that I get as a real estate agent.

The general public seems to believe that spring is the best time of year to sell a house. However, I've seen that the decision to sell your home is usually triggered by a life-changing event. A baby being born, someone dying, someone getting married, someone getting divorced, someone’s job being transferred, a home burning down, or maybe wanting your kids to get into a different school -  these are all the types of life events that could dictate when to move that aren’t tied to a certain month or season.

The exception, of course, could be the school cycle, with most families wanting to move before the school year starts, if schools are a factor. I think this is where the notion of the Spring selling season comes from. The reality is that buyers are out there every single month of the year because they’re driven by those triggering events.

Life events should determine when to move, not seasons.

If you’re thinking about selling your home and looking at the calendar thinking you missed the Spring market and you have to wait for next year - know that’s not the case!

Our Decembers are often as busy as July or August. It really depends on when your house is truly ready. If you have a house you’re thinking about selling, go ahead and do it. Buyers are out there, and they will look for a property in the dead of winter if they need to move. Remember, it’s the triggering event that matters, not the month of the year.

If you have any questions about the home selling process or real estate in general, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

Today we are excited to talk about what’s going on in the local housing market here in Middletown. While each neighborhood market can vary, overall we are seeing an increase in the number of sold properties. We’re up by 21.3% from this time last year! At the same time, we are only seeing a slight increase in the number of new homes available, at 1.3%. There is a pretty big gap of what’s been sold and what’s coming on the market.

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Buyers will be competing for your home

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For sellers, a well-priced home in good condition should have competition. Buyers will be competing for your home, and you should sell in fewer days than the average days on market.  On the buying side, be prepared to act quickly, because the competition for these homes will be stiff. Don’t be surprised if you have to put in a really strong offer in order to get that really great house.

The real exciting piece to all of this is that interest rates are still very low, below 4% in most cases. We don’t know how long this is going to last, but an increase is inevitable, so take advantage of the  situation now.

If you have any questions for us about the market or if you’re looking to buy or sell a home, don’t hesitate to reach out to us via phone or email. We’d love to hear from you!