We just listed this beautiful 3/2 home in the Camden Club subdivision which is located in the heart of Altamonte Springs.
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9429 Southern Garden Circle Listing
July 28, 2013 by
Are 1 in 3 buyers willing to over bid on a house in Orlando?
July 25, 2013 by
As we’ve discussed recently in some of our posts, we’re seeing people engage in multiple offer situations and over bidding on houses again. According to a recent survey conducted by Trulia and Harris Interactive, 1 in 3 buyers or roughly 33% of people are willing to bid higher than a homes asking price in an effort to win. A really shocking statistic is that 1 in 4 said they would offer to pay a SELLERS closing costs. If that’s not a sign that that we’re transitioning away from a dominant buyers market, then I don’t know what is.
“Tight inventory means slim pickings for buyers. Even though inventory is starting to expand, and rising home prices should bring more for-sale homes onto the market, people who actually want to buy within the next year are feeling the pressure of competing buyers and limited inventory,” wrote Trulia Chief Economist Jed Kolko in a recent blog post about the survey. This survey may have been done nationally but this is the direction the Central Florida/Orlando Real Estate Market is headed. This survey also pointed out that consumers who said they might soon purchase indicated that their greatest two fears are mortgage rates and home prices rising.
What I like most in this survey was that more than 60% of respondents indicated that they still believe homeownership is still one of the best long-term investments. This is a great improvement from where we were two years ago at only 47%.
Central Florida Real Estate Market Is Going Multiple Offer Again
July 23, 2013 by
Well today marks the 5 deal straight where we’ve had a multiple offer situation on a traditional sale in the Orlando real estate market. The crazy thing is that buyers are still trying to sneak in provisions like 3% towards closing costs and prepaids, thousands of dollars in repair limits, and extended closing windows. We can tell you from our experience backed by what we’ve seen in 2013 is that if you want to buy a home in Central Florida, you need to make quick aggressive offers with no contigencies. Each buyer that has won one of our listings this year has had to do so by submitting what we call a “clean offer”. I know what you’re thinking Central Florida buyers what’s truly a clean offer? Well we’ll tell you exactly what works with our buyers and sellers. First and foremost, you have to provide a strong deposit. A good rule of thumb is at least 1% of the purchase price or more depending on your financial capabilities and desire to purchase that particular home. A good deposit says alot about the buyers intentions and is one of the first things that a seller looks at. Just below that on any standard real estate contract is the obvious factor, the price! If you want to buy a home in the Orlando real estate market, then you need to be aggressive right now. We don’t recommend you blindly offer full price because of the poor listing practices of some people who over price houses just to take listings. Instead, we recommend you hire a professional Realtor to look at the hard core numbers for the last 90 days. Factors to consider at solds, actives, and pending homes for sale. We also suggest that you keep the radius within 1 mile when finding comparable properties. After the price, you need to strongly consider a closing date that is both quick and actually attainable. There’s nothing worse than promising to make a date and then having your lender tell you at the last minute you need to acquire an extension. To be a strong buyer, your mortgage lender needs to tell you with absolute confidence when they can get the deal closed by. Following a closing date would be repair limits. The contract standard verbiage is 1.5% of the purchase price which many people simply leave blank so that it defaults to the 1.5%. The buyers when they’re called on it will then say “oops we missed that” and then try to make a last minute change. In the Orlando real estate market, $500 for each repair category is pretty standard and we don’ t recommend going above that unless you feel there could be substantial problems with the home. In speaking about repairs, getting the home inspected in a timely fashion is paramount. This is a major hurdle for both parties and the faster it’s done the faster both sides feel good about proceeding. Some contracts stipulate 15 days, others 10, etc. We recommend performing inspections within 7 days to be aggressive. Most professional inspection companies can be scheduled, complete the inspection, and have you a report within 48-72 hours, if not faster. Again, short inspection windows show the seller you mean business and this can be achieved by pre-scheduling the inspection to coincide with your offer submission, you can always cancel the inspection if necessary. A strong buyer will also order an appraisal shortly thereafter receiving a green light on an inspection. The appraisal is one of the last major hurdles to jump which truly lets both parties know that the likelihood of the sale proceeding to closing is high. Lastly, we recommend avoiding any uneccessary contigencies like requesting 3% of the purchase price to be put towards a buyers closing costs and prepaids. This may work in some cases but in recent times here in Central Florida, it’s simply not flying anymore. Is this a sign that we’re moving away from a buyers market? We would say it’s certainly a sign but only that a sign, we still have more steps to take to get back to where most would like to see the Central Florida market. There are obviously more things that you can do to tighten up your offer but these are some core concepts that if put into practice will help the majority of home buyers in todays Central Florida real estate market win bidding wars. Happy hunting and please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can help you in house hunting or the sale of your current home. If you’re needing to sell your home in today’s market we might certainly be able to add you to the list of our multiple offer properties!
Low Inventory in Central Florida Pushing Prices Up
July 18, 2013 by
The greater Orlando area is seeing a reduction in inventory which is helping to drive prices somewhat higher. The median home price right now has exceeded $150,000 for the first time since 2008. The month of June is showing an increase of 22.4% when compared to June of last year. According to the Orlando Regional Realtors Association “As more homeowners are recognizing that now is a great time to sell and are adding their homes to the inventory, we’re shifting from a market dominated by lower-priced distressed sales to one dominated by higher-priced normal sales”. What we’re seeing happen is good deals last only a few days in this Central Florida Real Estate Market. In spite of this, we’re having tremendous success getting our clients offers accepted. We’re winning in these bidding wars because our clients trust us and are prepared. The formula for success is being prepared to strike quickly which all our clients are. Our clients receive daily email updates with new properties as they come on the market. In many cases, we’re showing houses the very day the properties are listed for sale and then when our client gives the green light we craft offers quickly that are accepted. All our clients have their pre-approval letters so there’s no waiting on a lender when submitting an offer. Most importantly we work with our clients to submit strong offers that are clean and devoid of contingencies. In todays market, you need to make aggressively priced offers with short inspection periods, strong deposits, and no contingencies like asking the seller to contribute 3% towards closing costs. The days of that market are gone unless you’re going after a home that’s been on the market so long its considered stale. Most people would be surprised to see how effective removing contingencies are and simply reducing the price. When you don’t have a bunch of things to negotiate back and forth over, it makes the negotiation process quicker which means getting your offer accepted before the competition gets a chance to get in the game. For more information on how we’re getting real estate offers accepted in the Central Florida area, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.
Try The Coldwell Banker iPhone/iPad App
July 3, 2013 by
Whether you’re in the market to buy a home or if you’re simply curious about home values in Central Florida, then you need to get the Coldwell Banker App for your smartphone or tablet. The app is available for both iPhone or Android users which is huge. What this Coldwell Banker app can do is actually amazing. When you open it, you’re presented with the options of doing a general property search, luxury search, agent search, office search, view “On Location” videos of homes, or designate your agent.
So here’s how we recommend you use app. The first thing you do when you want to search for Central Florida Homes is you open the app and click on “My Agent”. You’ll then be taken to a screen where you need to input the city the agent works out of which for us is “Winter Park”. You then type in the first and last name of the agent which in this case would be “James Clark”. Once you see the picture of us come up, you select us as “Your Agent”. What this does is allow you to send us properties you’re interested in by one simple click when you’re viewing the property. Once you’re selected James & Christine Clark as your agents, you can then begin your search for Central Florida homes. You begin by clicking on property search and you’ll then be given some self explanatory fields to complete to help narrow your criteria. You can use your current GPS location by clicking on the blue square with the white GPS symbol or you can enter City, State or Zip as criteria. Once you hit search, you’ll see push pins pop up on the map with the Coldwell Banker logo designating homes for sale. If the list price exceeds $1,000,000 then you’ll see the Coldwell Banker Previews icon come up.
Once you click on an icon, you’ll be able to see all the specs of the home to include any and all pictures loaded into the multiple listing service. In addition, you can see why restaurants, shopping, and transportation are nearby all within the app. As an added bonus, if the listed property has a video virtual tour, you can view it from within the app as well. You can also save properties in a folder, share it with your social media, or send it to your agent, all while on the go. If you’re simply a curious neighbor who wants to know what a home that just went on the market in your Central Florida neighborhood is listed for, you can find out the scoop in seconds. Regardless of how you’d use the Coldwell Banker real estate app, one this is for certain and that’s once you’ve used it you’ll never use anything else.
Interest rates jump, time to panic?
July 2, 2013 by
Interest rates last week jumped more than half of a percentage point in just one week. The average rate on the 30-year fixed loan soared last week to 4.46 percent, according to a report Thursday from mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. That’s the highest average in two years and a full point more than a month ago. Needless to say that’s a significant event that hasn’t happened for the last 26 years, but what does it mean and why did it happen. What we do know is the surge in mortgage rates follows the Federal Reserve’s signal that it could slow its bond purchases later this year. Many experts feel that a pullback by the Fed would likely send long-term interest rates even higher. So what does all this possibly mean for the housing market? Well, it could signal an increase in home sales as people that are on the fence or have been thinking about buying take the plunge to avoid future interest rate hikes. I know many of you may be thinking, well how much do these rate increases actually affect. Well I’m glad you asked so here’s an example. A buyer who locked in a 3.35 percent rate in early May on a $200,000 mortgage would pay $881 a month, according to Bankrate.com. The same mortgage at a 4.46 percent rate would run $1,008 a month. The difference is approximately $127 more a month, or $45,720 over the lifetime of the loan. I don’t know about you but an additional $45,720 is alot of money. The real concern comes with are we headed for more interest rate hikes in the coming months? Regardless of all of this, now is a great time to buy and people are taking advantage which is spurring positive change in our local Central Florida real estate market. We’ve seen consistent trends from reduction of inventory to increases in average home sales. The hope is we continue on this path and work our way back to a thriving market.
We’ve Joined Coldwell Banker
June 29, 2013 by
We’re proud to announce that James & Christine Clark | The Clark Real Estate Team, has joined Coldwell Banker Winter Park. Coldwell Banker is the most powerful real estate brand nationally and Coldwell Banker Winter Park is the #1 Coldwell Banker office in the state of Florida for 2010, 2011, and 2012. In addition to joining the most powerful real estate brokerage, we’re also proud to announce that the Clark Real Estate Team now offers professional real estate photography and HD videography with every listing we take, regardless of the list price. We don’t stop there, each listing also now comes with a custom property website that showcases the HD Photos & Videos in Virtual Tour form, Photo Galleries, and so much more. 2013 has been a huge year for the Clark Real Estate Team and so far but the year’s not done yet.
Please keep us in mind if you or someone you know needs to buy or sell a home, we’d be grateful for the opportunity and will treat them just like if it was you!
Home Prices To Decline 8.9%, Is It True?
March 4, 2013 by
If you read the Orlando Sentinel today, you’ll see that they published an 8.9 percent decline in home prices according to research analytics firm Fiserv. This would put Orlando just outside the top five in major U.S. cities with regard to the falling home prices nationally. The question is how reliable is this information?
Fiserv is well known for its forecasting but not in a good way. For example, in 2011 Fiserv projected that the greater Orlando area would experience upwards of a 19 percent decline in home values. What actually happened is that home prices remained virtually the same which certainly caused alot of doubt in Fiserv’s abilities to forecast values.
Contrary to their current assessment, Fiserv also has recently predicted the recovery rates for U.S. metro areas through 2017. According to this 5 year window analysis, Orlando home prices are projected to gain 2.2 percent during that time. Nationally, home prices are projected to grow at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent from the third quarter of 2012 through the third quarter of 2017.
What does this mean for us, well it’s pretty simple. Home values aren’t making a drastic change anytime soon. What everyone needs to keep an eye on in my opinion are the interest rates. Typically you’ll see interest rates rise ahead of market conditions improving. This is a tried and true method for evaluating where the market is or where its going. With interest rates still at low levels, you can be rest assured that values are staying steady. If you’re thinking about buying, now is a great time. Most of the research and analysis points to a slow steady rise which begs the question, have we reached the bottom and if so should I buy now while deals are still being had. Ultimately, do your own research and determine if nows the time for you.
