Jacksonville Florida Real Estate Podcast with Brad Officer

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When it comes to impressing buyers with certain features in a home, there are a few things that they absolutely do not want to see. The following six items may be considered beneficial to the homeowner but not to buyers. Here are some projects and home features to avoid:

1. Wallpaper. We are seeing a lot of old wallpaper in homes with yesterday’s colors and designs. Buyers just see wallpaper as another expense that they have to maintain. Most will remove it because no one wants to paint over it.

2. Lavish lighting. Buyers don’t really care for fancy light fixtures. Large, ornate fixtures are also viewed as an expense because the buyer will have to get them removed and changed.

3. Textured walls. This used to be a hot trend, but that’s not longer the case. Most buyers want smooth walls and ceilings these days.

4. Mismatched flooring. Buyers like cohesiveness. A home that has carpet in one room, hardwood in another, and tile in a third is not cohesive. Buyers want the flooring in a home to be consistent and high-quality. They can spot cheap, laminate wood flooring a mile away.

5. Bad paint colors. For a while, buyers were into very rich colors like gold, green, and red. Those colors are not desirable anymore. Buyers want bright, airy, and neutral colors.

6. Hot tubs. Hot tubs are great for homeowners who have them, but no matter how nice the tub is, buyers usually don’t want to take on that expense themselves. They are expensive to get removed.

These are the home improvements to avoid.

These are just a few of the things that will turn buyers off about a home that is for sale. If you have any questions for us or if you’re looking to buy or sell a home, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you.

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The answer to both questions is yes. Open houses are mutually beneficial, but it’s more beneficial for you. However, they must be done correctly.

Most open houses I see are very small and unimpressive. There are usually only a couple signs outside and maybe a flat balloon laid out in the grass that nobody can see anymore. It’s no small wonder that when you show up to one of these open houses there’s nobody there.

The open houses that we do, on the other hand, are much larger. We facilitate a lot of social marketing and produce a lot of signage for each one. In most instances, we have as many as 20, 30, or even 40 people show up in a concentrated period of time. This allows us to get an immediate litmus test for how the market is reacting to your home and whether the opinion is that it’s underpriced, overpriced, too dirty, outdated, etc.

Open houses, when done right, generate legitimate interest.

We hear the negatives, but we also hear the positives, such as how many other people are there at the same time. We refer to this as social proof. If you’re a home buyer at an open house and you’re surrounded by a lot of other home buyers, that’s social proof that other people are interested in that house.

If done correctly, open houses represent the best chance of getting the highest price for your home. The concentration of people will result in any interested parties making an offer that’s going to be real, as opposed to lowballing you. We’ve been reaping the benefits of this effect a lot this year. In many open houses, we’ve gotten multiple offers on the very same day.

If you have any questions about open houses or are thinking about selling your home, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by phone or email. I look forward to hearing from you!

How do you time the market to get the most money from your home sale? Most people think you should list in the spring because there are more buyers on the market.

However, I want to challenge that line of thinking. Instead of planning your home sale based on the time of year, you should time the market based on the amount of inventory available. After all, real estate is all about supply and demand.

Right now, supply is super low in our area. If there are six to seven months of inventory available, that would be considered a balanced market. Anything under that is considered a seller’s market, while anything over seven months is considered a buyer’s market.

Now would be a great time to sell because supply is low in many price points.

With that in mind, I’m going to break down the supply by price point so you have an idea on how your home will stack up against the competition:

Under $150,000 - 2.5 months of inventory available

$200,000 to $300,000 -  2.9 months of inventory available

$300,000 to $500,000 - 5.6 months of inventory available

$500,000 to $1 million - 11 months of inventory available

Over $1 million - 24 months of inventory available

As you can see, any single-family homes priced under $500,000 are in a seller’s market. Homes below $300,000 are in extremely competitive seller’s markets. Once you cross that $500,000 mark, though, you are in a buyer’s market. This gives you a unique opportunity to sell your home for top dollar and move up into a higher price bracket. If you are moving up into a buyer’s market, you can get a great deal.

If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how the upcoming election is affecting our current real estate market. Many agents are saying that the election prevents some buyers and sellers from entering the market because they are waiting to see who will be in the White House this fall.

Here in our local market, though, the election is not affecting anything. All that talk about the election might just be an excuse some agents have for why a home hasn’t sold yet because if you look at the market numbers, things have not slowed down yet.

The election certainly isn’t holding home sales back; in fact, they have gone up. So far this year, 13,700 homes have sold. That number is up almost 5% from the same period last year.

The median sales price has also gone up 7% year over year. On a local level, I don’t see any impact from the election. If anything, the market has actually gotten stronger. I don’t see anything holding us back as we get closer and closer to this election.

Home sales and home prices are both up year over year!

If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

There are two markets that exist right now here in the Jacksonville area.

The first is the market for houses below $500,000. This is definitely a seller’s market, meaning there is not a lot of inventory but it’s selling very quickly. A lot of our buyers are taking the opportunity in relation to this by selling their houses below the $500,000 mark. Then, they're taking advantage of low interest rates and their new buying power to move up over the $500,000 mark in their next purchase. The market for houses between $500,000 and one million, then, represents the buyer’s market.

So, you see people selling in the seller’s market - which they’re doing quickly for top dollar and without many contingencies - and then moving up to buy in the buyer’s market where there are more choices and more room to negotiate. For the select few of us who are able to get into that higher end luxury market above $1 million, we’re seeing more than a 24-month supply. That’s an extreme buyer’s market, so if you have the means and the ability to get into that price point, you have a lot of choices and a lot of opportunities to get the right house at the right terms that are best for you and your family.

If you’d like to talk about positioning your home for sale or you’d like to discuss getting yourself in position to get out and buy the right home, reach out by emailing me directly or visiting our website and contacting me from there. Also, make sure you listen to our radio show, Real Estate 911, every Wednesday on WBOB AM 600 from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm. I’ll talk to you soon.

There's a new technology upgrade we've invested in for our business, and I'm excited about the benefits that it allows us to provide to our clients.

We're constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve in the real estate market. We've been paperless for a long time now, using iPads for our listing presentations and our contracts. Our recent upgrade was to the iPad Pro, which is much bigger - it's the size of a full piece of paper. I'll admit I questioned at the beginning how useful it would be, since it just appeared to be a huge iPad. But after using it and seeing how much easier it is to see entire documents like contracts, I've been seeing that our customers absolutely love it. We don't have to zoom in and zoom out, scrolling through a number of different pages that we were limited to by the smaller iPads.

To boot, it also comes with the Apple Pencil, so you can sign contracts right on it. Our team members have been able to win more bids, because it allows us to sign documents on the spot after home showings. It makes things so much easier for listing agents, giving us and our customers a big advantage. It has helped us help our customers win the houses they want, and even a lot of times, get better deals because the negotiation activity is so fast when using the iPad.

If you're interested in buying a home or selling a home in Jacksonville, we'd love to talk with you and provide some more details about all the advantages we can provide in this great market we're in. Send us an email or give us a call, and let's talk soon!

Today, I want to talk about the importance of presentation when you list your Jacksonville home. Cleaning and decluttering the property is just the first step. You need to have your home staged and professionally photographed.

Home staging doesn’t involve bringing in furniture or artwork, except in some instances where the home is vacant. Our professional home stager describes the process as editing your home. A good home stager works through what you currently have and reconfigures furniture to make the home more appealing to the buyer.

Once your home is staged, you need to take professional photographs of the property. You have probably searched online for homes in the past and come across some bad photos. The lighting makes the home look dingy and dirty, or someone is standing in the frame. It’s hard for homes with bad photos to compete because no one wants to see them.

Nowadays, the first showing is online and the second showing is in person. If your home looks bad online, that will directly affect your bottom line. Professional photography is imperative to getting top value for your home.

A recent study followed 350 professionally photographed homes and 350 other comparable homes throughout the selling process. Homes that were professionally photographed sold 50% faster and were 39% closer to the list price. Homes with professional photos were viewed 118% more than comparable listings. This research proves homes can sell faster and for more money with professional photography.

If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

As a real estate professional, I'm continually bombarded by the question, "Why does Zillow price my Jacksonville home differently?"

If we go on Zillow's website, this is how they explain it: The Zestimate is created by an automatic software process designed by statisticians, and there is no ability for humans to manually alter the Zestimate for a specific property.

To make that more clear, let's say a home is estimated to be worth $500,000. If the Zestimate is off by 10%, that's a difference of $50,000! If the home is under-priced, you're missing out on tens of thousands of dollars. If your home is overpriced by 10%, it will sit on the market for awhile, and you might have to drop the price, causing buyers to wonder what's wrong with the home.

It's been estimated that Zillow's home estimates are only right 7% of the time. That means that they are wrong 93% of the time! That is a terrible success rate.

Remember, Zillow can't take features or upgrades on your property and compare them to other recently closed homes in your area, even though doing so gives you a more updated value on your property. Zillow doesn't walk through your home, and that's where my team can come in and place an accurate value on your home.

Ultimately, if you want the most accurate price for your home, make an appointment with a real estate professional. Skip the nonsense and have a real estate professional find the true market value of your home. They'll factor in the condition, location, upgrades, and amenities of the home in order to find it. If you have any questions about how we can do that for you, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We would love to help!

If you have any questions, or if you're interested in a home valuation, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

Today, I want to go over my 2016 real estate market predictions. In order to understand where we're going, first you have to know where we're coming from.

2015 had the highest volume of sales in Northeast Florida that we've seen since the bubble years. Last year, 26,607 properties sold. That is an incredibly high number of transactions!

Not only did the number of transactions increase, but home values are up as well. Overall, our market saw an average of 6.9% appreciation, which is way over what a normal average would be.

In 2016, I believe the volume of home sales will be somewhere in that mid-20,000 range, with 24,000 to 26,000 transactions. However, we should see more modest appreciation in the 3 to 5% range.

I also predict that 2016 will be the year of the buyer. The Fed started raising interest rates at the end of 2015, and they should continue to increase throughout 2016. I expect interest rates will be at 5.25% by the end of the year, so buyers will be trying to lock in low rates this year.

Additionally, here in Jacksonville, a lot of our renters put 50% of their income into their lease. In short, most renters are paying way more money than they should. These renters could probably buy a house for less money than what they're paying to rent it.

Finally, Jacksonville has an incredibly young population. Millennial buyers should be out and about in 2016 looking to make that first real estate purchase. These three factors combined make 2016 the year of the buyer.

However, all this market activity still makes 2016 a great year to sell. If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

This ready to move in beautiful home is conveniently located near JTB, Beaches, UNF, & St. Johns Town Center! Wood laminate floors through open living areas and dining room, and tile in the large kitchen, breakfast area, and bathrooms. Open family room w/vaulted ceiling and fireplace. Owner's suite is complete with his and hers closets. Large peaceful backyard is fully fenced w/gorgeous view of preserve. Clean and move in ready. A MUST SEE!

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Bradley Officer

REALTOR

RE/MAX Specialists

904-234-5196

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MLS#: 708154

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Bradley Wayne Officer, PA

REALTOR

RE/MAX Specialists

Florida Real Estate Licensed