Thieves, Fraud and Real Estate Con Artists Every once in a while I publish an attempt (even ridiculous and feeble attempts) at committing fraud in the real estate industry. Real estate fraud is ever evolving. This is the first time I ever had the fraudster suggest that I conveniently send the real estate contract via [...]
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Bonita Springs Real Estate Cover Your Assets If you’re buying Bonita Springs real estate, what exactly should you, as a consumer, be entitled to or legally expecting form “the other side” when it comes to information pertaining to the homeowner association? Here it is in a nutshell: A selling consumer is required to be notified [...]
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Hidden Bonita Springs Home Seller Tools Most sellers of real estate in Bonita Springs probably don’t know or realize there are some tools in the “back end” of the local MLS that can help other agents sell your home or condo. The consumer facing side of Sunshine MLS is the part that exposes public remarks [...]
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Home Inspections – What is Considered a Defect? There is almost nothing as challenging as attending a home inspection on a beautiful, seemingly perfect home only to learn that a home inspector has discovered a larger issue which requires significant, costly repairs. Buyers can become apprehensive, sellers can become defensive and the entire transaction can [...]
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For Sale By Owner in Bonita Springs Florida So I’m up at the dog park trying to burn some energy off of “hell on four legs” and one of the regular dog park attendees strikes up a conversation with me and says, “I’m thinking of getting a real estate license so I can sell my [...]
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Tourist Season and Real Estate Rapture There’s no doubt we have a seasonal resident population in southwest Florida. The other day, I pulled up to an intersection on a busy street and there were no cars coming, either direction. It had been months of bumper to bumper traffic on that street and it was quite [...]
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The Truth About That 10% Real Estate Value Increase Did you know that the second Tuesday of every month all of the real estate agents of southwest Florida show up at a secret location, one minute before midnight, to formulate a plan to manipulate the entire real estate industry? Well neither did I. Apparently, I [...]
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Negotiating the X Factor in Real Estate The last ditch grasp … as long as they pay closing cost. It never fails, sooner or later there is a negotiation for real estate volleying back and forth and one party will agree with the condition of “as long as they pay closing costs.” The average consumer [...]
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Bonita Springs Real Estate – Buyer’s Remorse Sometimes it’s just the quiet, the way too quiet that is the first sign. Calls aren’t being returned or some type of required, follow up documentation isn’t being produced in a timely fashion. In this day and age of nearly constant contact it doesn’t take long to figure [...]
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Renegotiate the Real Estate Contract – Concessions It doesn’t matter what side of the transaction you’re on sooner or later the question, “what can we ask for” is going to come up. It’s the nature of the game, human nature even; to question, to negotiate or renegotiate as a real estate transaction evolves from initial [...]
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How To Measure Real Estate Agents and Brokerages What do you mean you’re not with Coldwell Banker real estate? I was sitting in a listing presentation interview when the home owner asked that question. Why he thought I was with that particular real estate brokerage, I’ll never know. I’ve never been with that brokerage in [...]
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Selling Real Estate With Care After Probate The only thing certain in life is death and taxes … and probably how emotionally taxing death is when liquidating real estate. Selling real estate is stressful enough for some folks without compounding it with the emotional burden of liquidating the remaining assets of someone dear or even [...]
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Why Are There So Many Real Estate Addendums About a decade ago I faxed (fax machines were once bleeding edge) a contract to a prospective real estate purchaser. She worked in the Pennsylvania school system and gave me a number at work to fax it to. A few hours later she called and said, I [...]
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Selling Your Bonita Springs Home – Remove Dated Decor There isn’t a more magical time of the year than Christmas, uh, “the holidays”. A good portion of the masses deck their halls and don their lights with gay apparel as early as, well, before Thanksgiving now. I think it was a little about two [...]
Real Estate Lead Capture Maybe you’re curious about what your home is worth or you’re a serious buyer prowling the web for the latest new listings or price reductions in the area you want to buy a home in, sooner or later a pop up window will ask for more information. Whether you’re a buyer [...]
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And Sometimes Real Estate Buyers Back Out There you are minding your own bees wax. You’ve tended your real estate, preparing it for sale the way a dutiful seller should, shining it sparkling clean, pricing it right, listing it for sale and before you know it, an offer comes in. The bantering counter offers go [...]
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Condo Inspections, AS-IS Contracts and Nit Pickery It’s mail day! There have been a variety of question regarding home inspections from both buyers and sellers. Here’s the latest and greatest from the mail bag that I’m able to squeeze into six-hundred-ish words or less: Question: The home we’re interested in is offered as-is with the [...]
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Save The Drama For Your Mama There’s no crying in real estate. At least there really shouldn’t be. Typically, all parties involved in the transaction have a common goal for real estate to change hands so what is it that makes it all go haywire? So there everyone is, minding their own business when “exhibit [...]
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Price, Condition, Location & Value in Real Estate The snow birds are on their way. This year, like many of the other years, the first signs of their return are the transport trucks delivering their automobiles. To that end, let it be known that a winner of the Facebook “car hauler bingo 2011” contest is [...]
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Last Ditch Home Selling Method When I was growing up in Northern Ohio I recall finding Indian artifacts in the fields. I grew up on a farm near the river and not far from Lake Erie so it would appear that it was a primo spot for hunting and growing crops. There were arrowheads all [...]
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Choosing a Real Estate Attorney or Law Office You may have already asked or someone may have told you but using a real estate attorney to close your real estate transaction isn’t required in Florida. It is, in professional opinion of most real estate agents, a very wise choice for most transactions. The real estate [...]
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Is Your Agent Selling Buggy Whips or Real Estate? There are plenty of folks reading this in black and white print who don’t use or enjoy computers. I’ve had a few phone calls (and letters) from folks who remind me that not everybody has access to the internet. As a consumer, you don’t have to [...]
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A Fool and His Money … It only takes running an ad or two on Craigslist to open the flood gates of scammerific emails engineered specifically to pry a person away from their money. There’s always someone with an angle out there but there are ways to figure out whether the request is legitimate or [...]
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Qualifying and Hiring a Florida Real Estate Agent Brace yourselves, Florida consumers, I just read that real estate licensee enrollments are on the rise. Apparently, the current one-quarter of a million licensees simply isn’t enough to properly service the sunshine state. It’s pretty easy to pick on Florida real estate agents for doing a crappy [...]
Tempting Fate with Poor Real Estate Advice The World Wide Web has opened the doors of information for real estate consumers. The possibilities are almost limitless. Online home searches are a breeze, public and tax information is a click away and even community information, walk-ability statistics and crime rates are at the other end of [...]
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Marketing Wind Storm Code Compliance Impact Glass and Shutters It’s quite an adventure for buyers to house hunt these days. While the internet has made it easy for consumers to find homes and research the real estate market there is still some valuable information that can only come from really digging for it. Features and [...]
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Selling Real Estate Before Season Ends It’s crunch time. There are about ten weeks before Easter and the beginning of the end to our busy tourist season. If you are a southwest Florida home owner whose goal is to sell your real estate by the end of “season” it’s time to reevaluate the market and [...]
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Keys to a Successful Short Sale There have been several calls and emails from home owners who are either are struggling through the short sale process or wondering what it really takes to negotiate a short sale. From the outside looking in, they some like hostages to transactions going nowhere so I thought I’d just [...]
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Choosing a Short Sale Listing Agent While email isn’t new or revolutionary in real estate it has become instrumental to the success of most contract negotiations and closings, especially when a property is a short sale or a foreclosure. This isn’t a general whine about real estate agents that don’t or won’t properly use email. [...]
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Home buyers who make elaborate excuses to get out of real estate transactions when the “out” is only an inspection away.
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Selling for sale by owner and inviting real estate agents to show and sell.
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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Home Crisis Investigation www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests Geitner Claims The Housing Crisis is Over If you don’t see the video above CLICK HERE
Maybe You Should Test The System There’s currently a fair sized pile of printed out property reports on my desk that have been marked up and highlighted from last weeks showings. Almost thirty percent of them have a big black slash across the page. The agents who were supposed to be marketing the properties were [...]
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Buyers don’t have the attention span to wait out short sales in real estate.
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Shouldn’t Real Estate Buyers Actually Buy? Never will your home seem to be instantly sold more so than the day you mention to your friends, neighbors or colleagues that you’re putting it on the market. Suddenly, it seems people come out of the woodwork that really, really secretly loved your home and have always wanted [...]
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Things to Do at Riverside Park | Bonita Springs, Fl This Friday, April 10, enjoy Evenings in the Park Six Artists – Six Cottages – 5:00pm – 8:00pm A delightful evening with friends, meeting the artists while enjoying music, wine and refreshments. Sunday, April 12, 2009, 2:00pm (Happy Easter!) Free Concert – Bonita Springs Concert [...]
Bee Bravery at Riverside Park These flowers grow in the park right behind Engle’s Bike Shop on Old 41 Road, just before you get to the Artist’s Cottages. Yes, they’re really that colorful. This is an unretouched image.
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