Charlottesville's Real Estate Blog. Buyer &/or Seller Representation, Real Estate News
I met some new – new to me and new to the process – buyers recently who said something in our conversation that really struck me.
When I asked if they had a buyers agent representing them, they said no, because they didn’t want to drag one out on these types of viewings. Interesting.
I spend a lot of time thinking about connectivity and connectedness – “being part of something” is one of the most important criteria my buyer clients define.
What are some questions that buyers should be asking in the Charlottesville real estate market – of themselves, of the agents, and of the market?
Know what this is? (we wouldn’t have had we not done the well inspection)
This week I had the opportunity to talk to a small group of first time homebuyers. In preparing, I asked social media, “What one piece of advice would you give a first-time homebuyer?”
The answers – from clients (recent and not), friends, and good real estate professionals – were outstanding. I’m grateful for their sharing. I thought about highlighting one or two or ranking them in order from best to not-quite-best, but each is the best piece in its own category.
How does one rank these? They’re all really important – and these aren’t even a third of the great advice offered.
– Buy below your means
– Profits are made when purchasing a house not selling
– ignore HGTV
– Pay attention to the things that really matter (layout, size, neighborhood, etc.); don’t focus on aesthetics like paint color and appliances that can be changed.
Have savings after you close; cash solves a lot of future problems
– Don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if you’re worried they’ll make you sound dumb.
There are a lot more after the break.
Some of the notes I used to prepare and speak: (naturally, in writing this post, I was able to find and references stories I’ve written over the past 9 years)
– When to start? I’d say to engage with a good Realtor and lender about 9-18 months before you’re aiming to close. Take time to learn the area, the market, your life patterns, growth and development patterns. Read all that you can.
– Rent first.
– Always visit the area around your house before you buy – at multiple times of day on multiple days.
– Questions a Realtor can’t answer (related: Big data and civil rights. Also:
– Questions to ask your prospective Buyers Agent (My advice: don’t hire a part-timer) Also: Why hiring family may be a bad idea.
– How to search for homes without a Realtor (in Charlottesville)
– Assembling the team. How your Realtor helps assemble the necessary A-Team.
– Work with a local lender. These are the two I tend to recommend the most.
– How to choose the right buyers agent (hint: it’s sort of like dating)
– I highly recommend reading RealCentralVA and, if you’re interested in Crozet, RealCrozetVA. But at the very least, please do subscribe to my monthly note, in which I summarize the best posts from the previous month, among other original stories. In fact, the quote I read during the talk from a buyer client was published in my monthly note.
And because I’m writing this post purely as advice from a real estate professional, my name is Jim Duncan. I’m a real estate agent. I’m a partner at Nest Realty in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Call or email me anytime with questions – even ones you think are dumb.
If the “open rate†for my monthly note is only 2% yet it generates this kind of response, I’ll be happy. I’ll lead with “thank you†to the reader who took a great deal of time to email me this response, and for the three stories her response has generated.
Part 1 of 3 …
This month I asked what you (consumers) would change about the real estate process.
A reader responded – (bolding mine)
I wish house listings included a floor plan, even if it were a rough, not-to-scale, sketch. We’d be able to understand better if a house would or would not work for us if we knew the relationships of the rooms to each other. If the agent/photographer is good, we can sometimes get this from the photos — if they are presented in a rational, spatial sequence, and include the transitions from one space to the next — but the quality of the photos is many times misleading (if they look good) or downright awful.
(It amazes me that owners allow their agents to post pictures that are dark, out of focus, include inadvertent selfies in mirrors, or show clutter and junk that could have been picked up and moved out of the field of the photo for 30 seconds.)
Look – providing floor plans isn’t a difficult task; it’s not inexpensive, but neither are houses.
I noted the advent of affordable floor plan technology in 2010. I hand sketch floor plans all the time – just Saturday I drew for a client a house I’d seen a few days’ prior. From memory on a piece of scrap paper, and it worked (maps are useful when combined with verbal descriptions). I don’t know my older daughter’s phone number (which she’s had for 5 years) but can typically recall the layout of a property I saw five years ago.
I’ve written many, many times (and so have my clients!) – since at least 2007 – about real estate photos. The only thing that will change poor photos being used is for consumers to demand more. I send the photos to my seller clients before using them on anything – I want to make sure they both approve and feel good about how we’re marketing their homes.
I’d love to be able to provide recent examples from the Charlottesville MLS of head-smashingly bad photos – photos so bad I wish I could call the seller and ask them what they’re thinking. In one example, I know the agent consistently takes bad photos, and the seller would have known that if they’d spent 30 seconds researching. That the seller permits these photos to be used is confounding, but there you go.
Floorplans – yes, they cost money. So do professional photographers. So do professional Realtors’ services.
I have never shown a house in the neighborhood where the neighbors waving was deemed offensive by my buyer client evaluating the neighborhood.
Two of the criteria I and my clients tend to frequently apply when evaluating neighborhoods and areas is how friendly the neighbors appear to be. Think about it the next time you’re out for a walk. A wave and a smile go a long way.
I drive through a lot of neighborhoods in the course of a week and while there’s not yet an algorithm that measures the waviness of a neighborhood and I haven’t yet seen a smileZestimate for a neighborhood, friendliness is pretty easy to discern.
The family riding bikes together in the middle of the day last weekend? Left a great impression on my clients (and they were all wearing helmets).