Northeast Florida Real Estate Tips for Buyers and Sellers by Chris Snow

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There are many sellers out there who are preparing their homes for the market, and they ask me, “Should I get my home appraised before I list it?” I have a list of pros and cons to help you make that decision.

First, what is an appraisal? An appraisal is a third-party opinion of the value of the property and is coming from a certified appraiser— a licensed professional who comes out and takes any sales that have happened in the last 12 months in a certain area. They then also make adjustments for bedrooms, bathrooms, and any other unique features to the house.

The typical cost of an appraisal is between $300 and $500, depending on the complexity of the appraisal. One way an appraisal can become complex is if it’s a brand new construction home. They’ll certify it one way if it isn’t a resale, but if it is, they’ll certify the value a different way.

The typical cost of an appraisal is going to be between $300 and $500.

A key benefit to getting the appraisal done up front is that it can let you know a price point where you can start marketing your property. Then you won’t have an issue on the back side when it goes under contract and you already know what it could appraise for.

Another benefit is appraisals remove some risk for the buyer when done up front. Buyers feel more comfortable that the value can be proven when looking at the home.

The downside of having an appraisal done up front is that it only proves the value of your home on paper. It doesn’t take into account what someone is actually willing to pay for your property, or how the market will be when you list your home.

A lot of times we find that the market value and the appraised value never match one another, so you’re taking a risk—and maybe even setting yourself up for failure if your appraised value is much higher than what the market is willing to pay.

If you have any questions about this or any other real estate topic, or you’re looking to buy or sell a home, please give me a call. I’d be happy to help!

Buying a home? Click here to search Northeast FL homes.

Selling a home? Click here to use our FREE home evaluation tool.

Call us at (904)-250-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation.

The conversation of “Is it time to drop the price of my home?” is one we have quite frequently with our sellers. When they see their home sit on the market for longer than others, it’s a question every seller inevitably has.

Part of this conversation revolves around the current price, while the rest of it revolves around the property’s condition, as well as where the property is being marketed. Those are the three main influences for us. Before we get into price reductions, let’s talk about the home’s marketing and condition.

We always ask our clients the questions that get to the heart of their home’s marketing; things like what websites the home is being marketed on and which social media platforms you are utilizing tell us whether you’re getting a wide variety of exposure.

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The home’s condition plays a huge role in any of these discussions. Professional photos are a must-have, and they need to show the property in its best possible light. After that, it’s all about getting the home show-ready.

After we’ve looked at condition and exposure but before we’ve made a price reduction, we want to take a look at the showings that the property has been getting. If there have been a lot of showings, we know we are priced within the realm of possibility. However, if we aren’t getting any offers, we will typically do a 1% to 3% price reduction to give the buyer an incentive to move on the property. If we aren’t getting any showings but we’re getting a lot of views online, that’s when we know we will need to make anywhere from a 5% to 10% reduction in price.

If you have any questions for us at all, don’t hesitate to reach out by phone or email. We look forward to hearing from you.

Buying a home? Click here to search Northeast FL homes.

Selling a home? Click here to use our FREE home evaluation tool.

Call us at (904)-250-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation.

There are three surefire ways to know you've found the right home:

1. Find the neighborhood that fits your needs: It should match up with what you're looking for. I always say that the right home in the wrong neighborhood is still the wrong home. Try spending a little time before or after the home showing in the neighborhood to make sure it has all the things you're looking for.

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2. The floor plan fits: It can show well and have a lot of the amenities you're looking for, but if the floor plan doesn't fit your lifestyle, it's not the right house for you. You should walk through and try to see yourself living there.

3. Rank the house from one to 10: This is an unscientific, informal way to look at things, but I like to have a ranking system with one being "Why did you bring me to this house?" to 10 being "I'm ready to move in tomorrow!" If you rank the home anywhere above seven, it's likely you've found a strong house.

If you have any other questions about deciding on the right home, don't hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We'd love to help you out!

Buying a home? Click here to search Northeast FL homes.

Selling a home? Click here to use our FREE home evaluation tool.

Call us at (904)-250-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation.

Buying a home is a fun and exciting time, but you want to make sure you don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Even if everything looks perfect and you get a warm feeling about a home, you can’t let that feeling cloud your judgment.

So, what are the three things you should never overlook when buying a home?

1. Resale value. If you’re trying to buy the largest and most expensive home in the neighborhood, you might have trouble getting the value back out of the property. Make sure you consider resale value with any property you’re looking at.

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2. Potential structural issues or maintenance issues. Mold and moisture show up a lot in Florida, so make sure you’re checking out the ceilings for any moist spots or blemishes. A home inspector will be able to help you locate structural issues, but when you are first looking at the home you should check the door frames for signs of tilting. Tilting door frames to signal structural issues right off the bat.

3. Deferred maintenance issues. What is the age of the roof? When will it need to be replaced? How old is the AC unit? If anything needs to be replaced, you can either ask the seller to replace the items or work the cost of replacing them into your offer price. Make sure you check the windows to see if those need to be replaced as well.

If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’m always happy to help!

Buying a home? Click here to search Northeast FL homes.

Selling a home? Click here to use our FREE home evaluation tool.

Call us at (904)-250-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation.

With demand so high and inventory so low, it’s safe to say that there are a ton of buyers out there. However, not all buyers are the same. There are actually three different types that I want to go over today.

The first type is the traditional retail buyer. These are people who are looking for a home to live in as their primary residence. Traditional retail buyers have a certain type of property that they are looking for and a list of needs that need to be met. They also typically pay the highest amount for a property because they become emotionally attached. This type makes up the majority of our market.

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Next is the fix and flip buyer. These are people who buy a home in order to renovate it and sell it for a profit. The nice thing about this type of buyer is that they pay with cash and can close quickly. They also buy the home as is and don’t ask for repairs, making the process very simple. If you’re more concerned with the time it will take to sell your home than how much of a profit you’ll make, this is your type of buyer.

The final type is a rental investment buyer. These are people who purchase a home in order to rent it out long term. These buyers can usually pay more than a fix and flip buyer because they are not on a time crunch to resell it. They are mostly concerned with what return they’ll be getting from the rental, so as long as rents in your area look good, they’ll be interested.

If you’re thinking about selling your house this year and would like to know what each type of buyer would pay for your home, give us a call or send us an email. We would be more than happy to go over what those offers would look like!

Looking to sell your home? Click here to use our home evaluation tool.

Looking to buy a home? Click here to search all Coastal Florida homes for sale.

You’ve probably seen the ads out there that tell you to just enter your address to get an automated estimate of your home’s value. Websites like Zillow have features like this too. You’ve got a few different options out there to get a valuation for your home, but do they truly tell you what it’s worth?

Before you figure out where you’re going to get your valuation from, you have to ask yourself why you are getting it. If it’s purely for informational purposes, any automated system will satisfy that curiosity. They are typically within 5% to 15% of your home’s value. A rough estimate, if you will.

However, if you want something more that you can use to determine a potential sale or refinance, you want to get in touch with a professional Realtor. A third-party site won't be able to give you accurate data. A Realtor can go through the numbers and tell you what to expect from the market.

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If you’re thinking about refinancing, a Realtor can help determine if it’s the right move. Any refinance will require an appraisal, so the Realtor can look at your home’s current value and determine what it will appraise for.

A good Realtor can look at the latest market numbers to determine your optimal price. In this case, they aren’t looking at what the home will appraise for; they are looking at what the market will pay for it in today’s environment. It’s based on what homes have sold for, what homes are under contract, and what homes are currently on the market.

If you feel like you need more than just an automated estimate, reach out to a local professional. If you have any questions for us or would like our assistance, don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We would love to help you out.

Buying a home? Click here to search Northeast FL homes.

Selling a home? Click here to use our FREE home evaluation tool.

Call us at (904)-250-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation.

What are the five things you need when purchasing a home?

The first is to know where the money is coming from. If you’re paying cash for the property,  that makes things easier because the money is in your account already. If you need to take out a loan, you need a loan approval. If you’re not sure who to get a loan approval from or which lender to work with, reach out to a real estate agent to find out. They typically work with multiple lenders and know each one’s level of service and the rates they provide, so they should be able to provide you with a couple of names to work with.

The second thing you need is money for your earnest money deposit. Once you’ve identified a home you want to purchase and you put a contract on it, your earnest money deposit is a sum that allows the seller to take the home off the market and reserve it for you while you go through the loan and inspection processes. Typically in our area, these deposits range from 1% to 2% of the eventual purchase price.

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The third thing you will need is the down payment. The down payment amount is determined by you and your lender. As you’re interviewing different lenders, you’ll discover what loan programs they have. This amount can range from no money down to 20% down, depending on what your credit situation is and what type of program or rate you want to have.

The fourth thing you will need is an appraisal and home inspection. These are for both you and your lender’s protection. This way, you can ensure the home is in move-in condition and notify the owner of the property of any items that need to be fixed. You’ll need to have the monies for the appraisal, though, because the lender needs to verify that the agreed upon price is valid in the market area and that you’re not overpaying for the home.

The final thing you need is money set aside for your closing costs. Depending on the loan program you choose, your closing costs will range anywhere from 3% and 4% of the purchase price. There are ways you can reduce this amount or shift the closing costs to the seller, but you’ll have to ask your agent about that sooner in the transaction rather than later. If you want seller participation in any closing costs, that needs to be illustrated up front in the initial negotiations.

If you have any questions about this topic, just give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help!

Looking to sell your home? Click here to use our home evaluation tool.

Looking to buy a home? Click here to search all Coastal Florida homes for sale.

When you're searching for homes, it's better to look to local websites rather than national websites. Why?

National websites tend to focus on a bigger geographic area and the data is not as specific as the data you'd find on a local website put out by a local agent. You'll also find a lot of advertisements on national websites, which is where a majority of their revenue comes from. They also generate revenue by selling your information to third parties.

When you look at local websites, you won't have to put up with advertisements and you don't have to worry about your info getting sold off to any third parties. The information you provide is used by the local agent to contact you and give you whatever information you're looking for.

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The third reason to use local sites rather than a national site is that you get a local real estate professional attached to that website. On our website, for example, you find that we have a lot of neighborhood data already populated in there along with school information. We also break up the information by neighborhood to speed up the process for someone searching for a home in a particular area.

If you have any other questions about the benefits of using a local real estate search website over a national site or you're thinking about buying or selling a home in the northwest Florida area, give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help you.

Looking to sell your home? Click here to use our home evaluation tool.

Looking to buy a home? Click here to search all Coastal Florida homes for sale.

When you sell your home, there are six things that can sink your sale.

Today, I wanted to give you some tips on how to avoid these six sale sinkers.

1. Don't go it alone. Use a Realtor to help you, because 90% of all home sales take place with a Realtor. Last year, the National Association of Realtors found that homes that were sold 'for sale by owner' sold for an average of $210,000, while homes sold with a Realtor sold for an average of $249,000. Homes sold with a Realtor sell faster, too.

2. When interviewing agents, don't make your decision based on the price they tell you for your home. Instead, ask what they will do to market your home and what kind of pricing strategy they will use.

3. Don't trust the automated values. It's easy to get an automated value from sites like Zillow or Trulia. In many cases, we find that these automated values are either much higher or much lower than the home's true market value. Make sure you get a complete equity evaluation on your property that uses many points of data, not just one set.

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you can't trust their automated values.

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4. Make sure you have professional photos taken of your home. Buyers on the Internet gravitate toward homes with great photos, so don't try to take listing photos of your home with an iPhone. Even if you have to wait an extra week to list your home for the photographer to take their pictures, it's well worth it.

5. Don't ignore your agent's requests to do some fixes to your home, or at minimum, a deep clean of the house. Buyers are very sensitive to a home's presentation, so if you could also stage your home, it would be the best of both worlds.

6. Don't refuse to negotiate. At times, you may receive a really low offer on your home. The best way to handle this is to give a counter offer no matter what, even if it's just $100 off your list price. I say this because you always want to keep things moving forward. When you draw a line in the sand, it takes the opportunity to potentially bring that buyer back into your camp away. When an offer doesn't meet what we're looking for, we tell them 'We really appreciate you taking the time putting the offer together, but unfortunately, it doesn't allow us to exit the property the way we need to, so we'd like to give you a counteroffer back at...'

If you have any questions about these tips, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help you.

Looking to sell your home? Click here to use our home evaluation tool.

Looking to buy a home? Click here to search all Coastal Florida homes for sale.

When you make an offer on a home, there are a few tricks you can use to get the price that you want.

First of all, put a face with the offer. In real estate, things can get very cut and dry sometimes, and people forget about the human element. In order to put a face with the offer, I recommend writing a letter to the seller explaining who you are, what your situation is, how many people are in your family, and what you love about the house.

There should be an emotional connection between you and the home and between you and the seller. The more the seller knows about you, the better off your offer will be. While considering your offer, the seller will see you as a human being rather than just focusing on the number that is being presented.

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My second tip is to make sure you write a clean offer to the seller. Make sure to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. The last thing we want is an error in the contract that we have to go back and scratch out or initial. We don’t want to give the seller any reason to pause when looking at your offer.

The cleaner your offer is, the easier we make it for the seller to sign off on it and send it back to us. Remember, time is of the essence in real estate. Any delay gives someone else the opportunity to sneak in and make a competing offer on the home.

Finally, make sure you detail the credentials of the buyer’s agent that you are working with. Listing agents often receive offers from buyer’s agents that are part-time or inexperienced, which creates more work for the listing agent. Make sure that your buyer’s agent has a lot of experience and writes many offers, and let the listing agent know that’s the case. That way, they know your agent will make the transaction as easy as possible and will do their fair share of work to get everyone to the closing table on time.

If you follow these tips, your offer is sure to stand out. If you have any other questions about buying a home or about real estate in general, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!