GemOfTheWeek.com

Snooping time with nosy Gladys Kravitz!

Join me in checking out how much are people paying for property in your town.

Here are the latest property transfers:

Westport

Fairfield

Easton

Weston

Ridgefield

WIlton

Norwalk

Mortgages play a HUGE role in what I do for a living. They are probably the most important element of any house purchase. They are not only important at the time of the purchase and but they will also affect a homebuyer for the next 30 years over the life of a loan.

That said, I really do not know the specific ins and outs of a mortgage. I know the basics and that’s it. Truthfully, I am one of those financial dum-dums…I do not have a head for it AT ALL. I spent over 20 years in advertising where I encountered very little “financial talk” and that was a-ok by me.

As a result, I have surrounded myself by wonderful mortgage people. I have a list of about four mortgage specialists that I recommend to my clients. I know that, if they work with any one of those four people, my transactions will go smoothly and my clients will be very well cared for. Usually a house purchase is a person’s biggest investment and that’s nothing to fool around with or take lightly. I trust these people so much, I have used them myself for my own personal mortgage transactions.

As I have suspected all along, I am not the only one who glazes over when nitty-gritty mortgage “talk” starts. According to an article on CNNMoney, a third of all buyers have no clue about mortgages.

I have tried to put together a couple of links that may help explain how mortgage work and some of the key terminology you will be most likely to hear. If you are in the market to purchase a house, it may be worth a few minutes of your time to give them a quick read. Good luck!

What are mortgages - more detailed

What are mortgages – less detailed

How interest rates work

Mortgage glossary

Image: Google Images

Source: Greater Fairfield County CMLS,  HOUSES Sold = Single Family, Multi-Family, Condo/Co-Op

My desire to flip a house has moved to the front burner again. Ever since my husband and I discussed selling one of our rental houses to do a flip, I’ve been thinking about it more and more. Don’t misunderstand, I ALWAYS think about it, but when the idea moves to the front burner, I spend at least 50% of my day thinking about it. Thinking about it and not doing it is just pure torture.

I recently ran across a Washington Post Blog journalist who is a full time house flipper (he prefers to call it rehabbing) and he occasionally writes about his flipping/rehabbing experience. He wrote a great piece as to what motivates him to flip and I think it totally captures the way I feel.

It’s not about flipping for money, it’s about taking a rundown house and making it good again. The check you receive at the end of the project is just verification that you did a good job. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. The money is incidental to the experience…although losing money isn’t really an option for me either

I definitely need to flip a house SOON!

Read the article here.

Image: exploringscrum.com 

As I mentioned the other day, I am finally going to change the front door color on my sweet little rental. So yesterday, with my pumpkin-colored paint chips in hand, I went to see which would be a suitable complement to the beige color of the house.

As I was there, my lovely tenant came out to take a look. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that my back up color, in the event that pumpkin didn’t work, was navy blue. When I said this her eyes lit up. So, while I was there I did a quick flip through my paint chip fan-deck and came up with a lovely shade of blue that worked well with the house.

When I came home I was torn. Should I go with the pumpkin color that amuses me at this moment or should I provide my tenant with a color she’d like to look at every day? I asked my husband his opinion and he said go with the blue. It’s only fair since our tenant looks at it every day and I will only have momentary amusement on those occasions when I drive by. Did I mention that I hate when he’s right?

So, the pumpkin-colored door will have to wait for another time and another house as this go-round we are going with Benjamin Moore’s Blue Heron.

Image: Benjamin Moore

As I have mentioned, we’ve recently adopted a rescue dog named Edgar. Edgar is as cute and as spirited as they go. All of the doors in our house that face into the backyard are top-to-bottom glass. We did that to open up the house and bring the outside in. It’s one of my favorite things about my house. We chose those doors BEFORE my son was of walking-age and BEFORE we had a dog. I’m not sure that if I knew then what I know now about little boys and dogs I would change my decision, but I certainly might have given it a bit more consideration

I am happy to report that my seven-year-old son is past the fingerprint stage (sort of), but my spirited Edgar loves to look outside at all the backyard has to offer and, as a result, all the windows on my doors are full of his schnozzberries.

Schnozzberries are those milky marks a dog’s nose leaves on glass as the dog is yapping away at something that does not deserve being yapped at. My house AND my car windows are rife with schnozzberries at the moment.

The rest of my house could be completely clean, but those schnozzberries on the windows really make the house seem “dog-ish”. You know what I mean… those houses that, when you enter them, feel like the dog has been on every surface in the house. If you are not a “dog person” [or even if you are] it gives you this subliminal gross, unclean feeling.

So, if your house is on the market and you have a dog, make sure you rid your windows of any schnozzberries before a showing. I know cleaning the schnozzberries is an UNENDING job, but it will definitely send a much better subliminal message about your house to any potential buyers.

Image: pawposse.com

Since we seem so very focused on our little rental house these days (see here, here, and here), I’ve decided to complete the focus by FINALLY changing the front door color. No more teal!

After much consideration, the winning color is…Pumpkin!

I am going for a look like this:

I’ll let you know how I make out with it when it’s done.

Images: Pinterest

Snooping time with nosy Gladys Kravitz!

Join me in checking out how much are people paying for property in your town.

Here are the latest property transfers:

Westport

Fairfield

Easton

Weston

Ridgefield

WIlton

Norwalk

Not all that long ago I had a cute little listing. It was a sweet little house and beautifully decorated. It had a few flaws, but nothing that good pricing couldn’t overcome.

When I first listed the house, there weren’t very many comparable houses that had recently sold in the area that would help me determine a listing price. We used what we had and my seller was clear that she wanted to get as much as she possibly could for the house [don't we all!] We agreed to list at the tippity-top  range I felt the house could support with the caveat that we’d lower the price if we didn’t get any offers within the first few weeks. Listing at the wrong price can be all but certain death for a house.

Well, shame on this dopey Realtor for trusting someone at their word. The entire time I had the listing I was constantly explaining why we needed to lower the price..all to no avail. When the spring market started picking up, many similar houses in the area were coming on the market at the lower price point I had been recommending. Needless to say we had LOTS of showings [over 70] and not one offer. A sure sign that a house is incorrectly priced.

Despite having spent HUNDREDS of my own dollars marketing this house, not to mention many, many hours of my own personal time doing open houses, as the spring market progressed I advised my client that if she wasn’t going to lower the price she should take the house off the market and refinance. At least that way she’d ease her financial burden which had always been her reason for selling. It wasn’t really the outcome that either of us wanted, but in the end, that’s exactly what she did.

About six months later she decided to re-list the house. She told me she felt she “needed to go in a different direction” and hired a different agent. In a way, I understand, she didn’t want to admit her house wasn’t worth what she thought it was and it was easier to blame me. When I told my husband what happened, he told me he was glad. He said he watched me be miserable the entire time I had the listing and he felt the whole experience had “sucked the life out of my soul.”

Needless to say, I checked in on the MLS listing from time to time. It listed at a lower price right off the bat…perhaps the new agent had been more persuasive than I had been or, more likely, I had done all the work wearing the seller down. That said, even at the lower price, it sat for many months until the price was lowered again. This time the price was the exact amount the seller had told me was her absolute minimum she’d sell for…now, when you list at a certain price, you have to remember that will most likely NOT be the price you GET as a buyer will expect a negotiation. Ultimately the house did sell for $7,000 less than I had wanted to list it for the year prior and $13,000 less than the minimum the seller said she would EVER accept and $8,000 less than she actually paid for the house when she bought it. Proof that overpricing is an evil, evil demon.

Most Realtors would tell you this happens to everyone and it is just a Realtor’s occupational hazard. Perhaps this situation left such a mark on me because this was the first and only time I ever had a client throw me over for another Realtor. I feel somewhat vindicated due to the ultimate sale price of the house, but let me tell you, my husband was right, the whole situation sucked the life right out of my soul.

As my dear mother would have said, the whole thing just “frosts my petunias.”

Source: Greater Fairfield County CMLS,  HOUSES Sold = Single Family, Multi-Family, Condo/Co-Op