Bonita Springs Fl Real Estate » Seller Tips

Selling Bonita Springs Real Estate FSBO

chrisgriffith — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:46:39 +0000

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 house.” Besides being absolutely shocked that I was standing in the presence of a living, breathing, Floridian without a real estate license, I was also surprised that someone would go to the trouble of real estate school for the sole purpose of selling their own house.

Out of curiosity I asked what the motivation was to become licensed just to sell their own home. I was genuinely curious since licensure is not a legal requirement to sell one’s own home. Surprisingly, this person thought there were all sorts of financial advantages. I suspect that, just now, one out of every one hundred seventy-five people reading this hit the floor laughing because they know differently. In the state of Florida alone, 1 in every 175 residents is a Realtor® according to a recent report. In case you were curious, Florida is number three in the nation behind Arizona and Hawaii.

While there may be some advantages on part of the commission depending upon the end result of who brings in the buyer, there is nothing about being a real estate licensee that absolves a person from the responsibility of closing costs; documentary stamps on deed, prorated taxes and HOA fees and possibly title insurance. Having a real estate license also doesn’t protect your home from being overpriced, not appraising for the buyers mortgage or for not selling.

So here’s the deal about selling your home yourself. You don’t need a real estate license; you just need motivation, a plan and to be more honest with yourself about your home than you probably can even imagine, which is the biggest obstacle for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) home owners have. Some of what sellers need to accomplish isn’t markedly different than employing a real estate agent. Depending upon inventory, which is particularly low in entry level pricing, it’s now more probable that real estate will actually sell FSBO.

If you have the desire, time and inclination to sell your own home here is a list of eight action items for the FSBO home owner:

1. Pricing – Just like listing your home with a real estate agent, ninety percent of your success is going to be determined on properly pricing your home. It just is. Read that sentence again, slowly.

2. Prepare your home for sale. You can’t get it clean enough or organized enough.

3. Interview and hire a real estate attorney to protect your interests, prepare your contracts and to close the sale of the property. There is so more to selling a home than just finding a buyer.

4. Market your home, especially on the internet. About 90% of home buyers search for real estate on the internet. Also, don’t overlook neighbors as a resource for knowing people who are interested in the neighborhood.

5. Keep up on closed sales in the area. Think the neighbor’s house or a house in the area sold? Call the agent and find out. They will tell you the price after it has closed sale. The closed sales, good or bad, influence valuation and the ability of your home to qualify for financing.

6. Network with real estate agents in the area with similar listings and offering a co-broke fee for bringing in a buyer. If supply in the area is low, they’ll probably be calling you asking to bring in buyers.

7. Ask for showing feedback from the agents if they do show it. While buyers may not be as honest about pricing, condition, location an agent will and it will help you adjust to entice new buyers.

8. Read item number one again.

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Real Life in Bonita Springs is a project by Chris Griffith dedicated to writing useful blog posts for consumers about the Bonita Springs, Florida area. Find out what it is really like to live in Bonita Springs, Florida by reading about our fair city. You’ll get the latest in local real estate information, Bonita Springs real estate market reports and a little bit of humor. If you have topic ideas, feel free to request a story about the idea, after all, this site is just for you.

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Get a Comparative Market Analysis Before Negotiating Sale Price

chrisgriffith — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:11:14 +0000

Your Second or Even Third Comparative Market Analysis

Chances are you probably had a CMA, a comparative market analysis, when you listed your real estate for sale. If you didn’t, you should have. What many home sellers do not realize is that there probably should be more than one CMA over the life of a home’s listing period.

Sooner or later your home is going to interest the right buyer and you will receive an offer. How you choose to respond to the offer, if you choose to respond to the offer, if you choose to counter the offer should be based on current, I repeat current, closed sale statistics and current market conditions.

The real estate market has been shifting and the inventory is tightening up. The market has undoubtedly changed enough for most home owners to get a current updated market on their property when an offer comes in. Whether the home was listed for one year or one month prior to the offer coming in a seller should receive an update on what has closed sale in the past six month time period, which properties are pending sale and how many active homes are now on the market competing with the subject property for the same buyer.

Every day that a home is on the market the sand is flowing through the hourglass. The comparable sales used on the day that a home is listed actually have a freshness date. If a buyer is getting a mortgage that freshness date has never been so important. The buyer’s lender is going to have an appraisal which is used to value the home as part of the mortgage process and the appraiser will only be using the fresh comparables, not the now stale comparables used to estimate the value of the home when it was listed.

If a home has been listed for three months at the time an offer comes in, there are three months of stale comparables which, in most circumstances, are no longer relevant. There are also potentially three months of fresh, new comparables which may be beneficial or possibly detrimental to supporting the offer price. These recent sales will be part of the new comparative market analysis.

Sometimes what a home seller perceives as a low-ball offer may be, in fact, based on similar closed sales which have occurred between the date a home was listed and the date the offer was presented. It may not be pretty but a closed sale is a closed sale.

So what’s a seller to do in this evolving market when an offer comes in? Demand a fresh CMA if your real estate agent hasn’t provided one so a decision can be made based on the same critical, current sales prices everyone else involved in the transaction is going to be using.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to have your agent ask the buyer’s agent to see the CMA they created when they chose their offer price. There are a few reasons this can benefit a home seller:

· To determine if they even did a CMA or they’re just tossing out offers.

· To verify that the buyer is actually using the most qualified, recent comparable sale prices.

· To make sure that there isn’t a closed sale that you and your real estate agent could have overlooked or not yet discovered.

Always get the facts and figures before you start negotiating or you could be negotiating a sale price which won’t appraise or, even worse, leave money on the negotiating table.

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Is Selling Real Estate Off Season Worth The Hassle?

chrisgriffith — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:33:20 +0000

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 a surprise to see nothing but a dashed yellow line. I said to my friend in the car, “Do you suppose the rapture finally happened and we didn’t make the cut?”

The off-season real estate season is back on the minds of real estate sellers again … and maybe even a few buyers. A reader has asked the reoccurring, annual question; is it even worth the hassle to list real estate for sale in the summer?

The question is not without basis. Not long after the Easter holiday we see the swarm of car carriers parked on the side of US 41 loading up vehicles to take them back north. As a matter of fact, I saw three of them on-loading cars in front of Bonita Bay the day before yesterday. Those who see the vacationers and snowbirds leaving wonder if there are going to be any opportunities to sell their real estate if there aren’t buyers in town.

First, not all of the real estate buyers are from outside the area. If a prospective buyer is, in fact, a northerner their access to resources has changed dramatically. As technology would have it, Google has made the world a much smaller place. Those buyers and sellers of real estate motoring north on I-75 don’t always forget about southwest Florida as soon as they get home. They’re quietly pecking away at the keyboard from their northern base, keeping tabs on the market and absorbing information for their return real estate buying trip and, believe it or not, many times that trip is actually in the summer. A summer buyer once told me that buying real estate in tourist season was like trying to buy a boat on Fourth of July, which is what prompted his return in the summer.

The approach of the summer real estate buyer is quite different from that of the typical winter vacation or seasonal resident buyer. The tire kicking is over. They’ve watched, learned and dialed into focus, more precisely, what they’re looking for in a Florida home or condo. This means that homes for sale may actually have fewer showings but the buyers who are looking are more focused and committed to buying.

Our unit sales do not sell at the same heightened level as in tourist season but we do have a respectable, healthy real estate market over the summer. Out of curiosity I checked and thought I’d share closed unit sales statistics over the summer last year; January 872, February 1,017, March 1,485, April 1,515, May 1,319, June 1,245, July 897, Aug 947, September 801, October 779, November 796, December 927.

Keep in mind that the exaggerated March 2011 through June 2011 sales indicate the big come back and sell-off of the then saturated market. The closed sale figures in winter 2011 actually rivaled the 2004-2005 recorded unit sales. It should be pointed out, for reference, so that it’s understood that those months were unusually high unit sales figures which cast a shadowing the respectable numbers that closed sale over the summer.

Real estate actually does continue to sell over the summer in Southwest Florida. When it’s priced appropriately and has been properly prepped for the market there is no reason why it shouldn’t sell over what is typically thought of by many as the “off season” summer market.

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SWFL Real Estate Values and the Economists

chrisgriffith — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:42:20 +0000

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 didn’t get the invitation.

Believe it or not, there really isn’t a huge, clandestine plan to dupe the general public into buying real estate they don’t want or need. The market will and is ironing itself out. It’s true.

It shouldn’t be that hard to believe that a down real estate market wouldn’t last for forever. Not that any consumer shouldn’t be cautious and do their homework as they’re preparing to buy or sell real estate. Those same economists throwing around that projected ten percent value increase figure have been “off” before.

The fact of the matter is that the now watered down phrase “real estate is local” is true and has never been more important. The answer to the state of your real estate, not my real estate, not your friend’s real estate, has been sitting pretty, all this time, right there in the local numbers. All that most heard from the report last week was that real estate values in Naples would be up by “as much as ten percent” by the end of the year. It’s plausible given the market conditions but not a definite for every single real estate owner.

It’s sort of like the surgeon general announcing that the average life expectancy in the United States has been extended to the age of seventy-eight and then someone you know or love passes at the age of fifty-three. Rip off or reality? It was an average and unfortunately we all know someone out there who is going to draw a shorter straw than someone else in life expectancy and in the real estate market.

So, what’s a home owner or a home buyer to do? Get to the bottom of the numbers. Either figure out how to calculate the numbers yourself or find a real estate agent who is capable of calculating inventory absorption rates for you, for the area in which you live or are thinking of purchasing real estate. A simple calculation can tell you where the market stands and likely which direction the real estate values are moving.

The reality is that there are still a few communities out there with excessive inventory. I attended a meeting in a bundled golf community where the manager of the community boasted that only six percent of the real estate behind the gates of the community was currently listed for sale. Six percent sounds optimistic but given the rate of closed sales recorded in that particular community there was fifteen months of standing inventory. Meaning that theoretically, if no other real estate were listed in that community, ever again, it would take approximately fifteen months to sell off the existing inventory.

Unless there is a surprise run on real estate in that particular community it could be speculated that there is a strong possibility that they are not going to enjoy “up to a ten percent increase” in property values across the board when the New Year rings in. There may be a particularly popular floor plan experiencing a surge in sales that will, however.

It takes drilling down and running the numbers level by level from the county, from the city, to the neighborhood, to the street or even to the floor plan to determine the inventory, the direction of that particular local market and a reasonable projection of that market in the near future … that’s the local in “real estate is local” and the truth about which side of that projected “up to ten percent value increase” your real estate is currently positioned and where it might be at the end of the year.

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Negotiating Real Estate Closing Costs

chrisgriffith — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:12:00 +0000

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 usually doesn’t fully understand what the closing costs actually are and how it is or is not going to affect their bottom line. They just know that closing costs are going to cost them money and they don’t want to pay any more money than they have to.

Why a consumer would be going into a purchase or a sale without knowing what their bottom line and closing expenses will be is a mystery. The real estate agents involved have hopefully closed a transaction or two and should be familiar enough to create some sort of an expense or a seller’s net sheet. If that doesn’t happen or the agent can’t or didn’t do it, the selected title agent can even mock up a draft settlement statement which would probably be within a fist full of dollars of the actual bottom line after the final prorations are calculated.

Not knowing those costs is the X factor that I’ve seen more than a few buyers and sellers try to negotiate away over this last fantabulous real estate selling season. From the perspective of being on both sides of the “X” equation at one time or another I can share that everyone thinks of closing costs differently.

There have been buyers who have finally agreed to a final price negotiation with the stipulation that the seller pays closing costs. Now, the contract indicates that the seller was paying for the owner’s title policy and the documentary stamps on deed, what’s left after those two larger fees are a few minor recording fees, title settlement fee and prorated taxes and HOA dues, if applicable. All of which are relatively minor expenses. It’s almost as though they didn’t know what costs or the value of those costs that they were attempting to negotiate away. If someone had asked the buyers to place a dollar figure on the actual cash amount that that negotiation tactic would have benefited them, they probably would have not been able to answer.

There have been circumstances when sellers have also tried to negotiate the same position and demand that the buyers pay all closing cost. It’s like this game of tag … you’re it, you pay the fees. What if the fee isn’t that large? Does the seller realize they are playing chicken with a buyer over a few hundred bucks in closing costs when the monthly holding costs for the property shadow that figure. What’s the point if it fractures the negotiation? If they stick to their guns they could potentially cost the deal and waste hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in carrying costs while essentially fighting over pennies in the grand scheme of things.

Being aware of what the customary closing expenses are going to be before you start negotiating is important. Besides knowing your own bottom line you really need to know if there is any leverage or disadvantage in who is or isn’t paying for specific closing costs should the other party throw the X factor into the mix.

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Buyers Remorse When Purchasing Real Estate

chrisgriffith — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:18:17 +0000

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 out what’s going on. For whatever reason, the buyers go radio silent; no calls, no email, not text. Finally, the light comes on and everyone realizes that someone is experiencing a little bit of regret for the purchase.

Usually, the buyers have found their dream home or dream condo, negotiated their deal to an executed contract and then the little voices start injecting doubt into their thoughts. Did I over pay? Is now the right time to buy? They just read xyz about the economy in the news. Whatever the reason, regret is a powerful emotion and when a buyer has a change of heart the last thing they should do is to start sending calls to voicemail.

Ignoring the situation doesn’t make it go away. I’m not sure why anyone would just pretend their executed contract “just never happened” when they’re in a potentially, vulnerable legal pickle. It is a legal issue, after all, and precious days and hours that go by are being wasted. Rest assured, the sellers aren’t going to forget they negotiated a contract and accidentally sell the real estate to someone else absolving a buyer of their responsibilities.

Unfortunately, at one point or another I’ve had the distinct displeasure of experiencing buyer’s remorse from both the buyer’s side and seller’s side of the transaction. While it’s never fun to be in the middle, there’s work to be done and the matters need to be handled as efficiently and as effectively as possible.

Regardless of how badly a buyer feels there are time sensitive issues that need to be addressed regarding the transaction. Some of the time-sensitive issues actually protect the buyer or could allow them the opportunity to excuse themselves from the contract without any or with little legal or financial consequences.

If you’re a buyer experiencing remorse, face reality and be honest with your real estate agent and your real estate attorney. This is a business transaction so learn and understand the facts about your contract, including any contingencies. There are a variety of clauses that may be in the purchase and sale agreement which could offer a buyer the ability to cancel the contract. For example, short sales or bank involved purchases are contracted as-is with the right to inspect … and walk away if the results are not satisfactory to the purchaser. Also, if the subject property is condominium there are timeframes for review and acceptance of condominium association documents, budgets, frequently asked questions, rules and regulations.

If a seller is within their legal rights to hold a buyer’s feet and their escrow deposit to the fire they should but time is also money and sellers often benefit from moving on, when necessary, to find a willing buyer without shaky legs. Of course, it’s never pleasant for seller’s to be in this position. The fact of the matter is that if a transaction is going to fall apart, it’s better for all concerned that it happens up front and not weeks or months into the transaction wasting valuable marketing time and costing the seller’s additional holding costs that can never be recouped.

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Asking For Concessions–Renegotiating The Contract

chrisgriffith — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:26:35 +0000

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 offer to a closed sale.

Buyers and sellers of real estate frequently ask the same question just from different perspectives; “Can we ask for that?” and “Can they really ask for that?”

The short answer is that you can ask for anything and anything can be asked of you. By Jove, you can even ask for a vintage G.I. Joe with the Kung Fu Grip action figure to be delivered to the closing while you’re signing the settlement papers if that’s what you really, really want. You might actually get it if the market can bear it. What the market can bear is the big gray area the consumers are trying to feel their way through.

What a buyer or seller can ask for is more or less commensurate with the volatility or stability of the real estate market. Remember back to the bubble years when new real estate would hit the market and collect a couple of offers within a few hours. If a buyer asked for any special concessions they would have been kindly been left to go pound salt.

Locally, we’ve been absorbing a lot of excess real estate inventory and what the market will bear has been quietly shifting. The list prices that the real estate market will bear are changing and so are the demands that both sellers and buyers request during negotiation or attempt to renegotiate after the fact.

Not long ago a buyer was visually inspecting a property which had been purchased sight unseen. The buyer decided that road noise was far louder than he had imagined it would be. The buyer felt that the noise was so disruptive, in fact, that the only way he could see moving forward with the purchase was if the sellers included all of their magical, sound deadening furniture in the sale. Now, a few years ago it might have tilted in the buyers favor to pull a last minute run on chattel but we’ve turned a point in that particular community and price point where there wasn’t a list of standing real estate like there was a few years ago. As a matter of fact, there were even a few prospective buyers waiting to see if this particular sale stayed together.

Years ago a seller may have simply conceded to ensure the sale because offers were few and far between. The market has now recovered enough that it would not jeopardize the property closing if the seller held the course. This little game of chicken ended with the buyer proceeding to close and the sellers moved their furniture to their new home.

Most commonly, renegotiating the original purchase price and value adjustments for major inspection repairs can pop up as a transaction evolves. A real estate transaction, after all, can be a low appraisal or inspection discovery away from a significant value or price change in the home. It’s the market that will determine whether a buyer can successfully ask for and be awarded concessions or whether the seller will accept or deny them.

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Which Bonita Springs Real Estate Brokerage is Best?

chrisgriffith — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:10:17 +0000

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 my twelve plus years of being a Bonita Springs real estate agent.

It sort of surprised me that he seemed so shocked. He thought he had carefully chosen three or four real estate agents from different Bonita Springs real estate brokerages in an attempt to find the best agent. Little did he, or most consumers, realize that that real estate agents are independent contractors who merely have their license under the brokerage “umbrella”.

Most accomplished real estate agents run their own careers with little to no input from the broker or the real estate brokerage. We run our own websites, we control our own transactions, we service our own listings. What is required of the agent by the brokerage is to follow their rules, account for paperwork and occasionally make sure they obtain any mandatory addendums required by the brokerage such as the Defective Chinese Drywall Addendum.

There is good and bad in every business, including real estate. The best real estate agents are just that, the best. The worst real estate agents are probably the worst … or just having a bad day. The brokerage they work for often is irrelevant.

To put it into perspective, a real estate consumer could call five agent from the same brokerage and be please with some and not like the others. It’s about the the agent, the person; their work ethic, their web presence, their professionalism, attention to detail, experience, and their years of cumulative work knowledge and battle scars

The logo doesn’t make the real estate agent better. After all, you could take a so-called green horn real estate agent in a brokerage with a great reputation and not get the results you were expecting because it’s about the individual agent the overwhelming majority of the time. It didn’t really matter what brokerage I was with when that home owner was interviewing me. It just mattered that I did what I said and performed above his expectations.

If you’re interested in reading more tips for sellers of Bonita Springs real estate, visit the category titled: Seller Tips

Selling Real Estate of the Dearly Departed | Probate

chrisgriffith — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:11:10 +0000

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 your own assets after losing a spouse and choosing to move on.

Real estate agents are in a unique position when they’re called for basic advice and to find out where to start, what to do. In the last few months I’ve had a few close friends, family members and acquaintances call because they simply didn’t know where to start. My advice is generally to be patient, be brave enough to ask for advice and to hire experts to represent their best interests or those of the estate.

Be patient: Because every circumstance is different, the first thing I tell people is to not act in haste. Don’t sell in a panic just because you feel you need to get rid of the real estate as soon as possible.

There’s a huge difference between deciding to liquidate real estate and selling to purge the horrible feelings and be rid of the state of affairs everyone involved is experiencing. Emotions can easily become the largest hidden expense of selling real estate when grief is involved, whether it’s selling the assets from a death, divorce or unemployment. It can become a business decision clouded by heartache. Many sellers become rushed and don’t take the time to pause and analyze the financial benefits of holding or selling their real estate. Money is thrown away when there’s panic and a decision to sell, as soon as possible, at a price that is below market.

Ask for advice: Besides speaking with attorneys and real estate agents, ask for the advice of trusted family members, close friends, clergy or even a grief counselor. While there are many organizations offering free counsel, making an appointment and paying for private grief counseling to help with important decision making, will pay for itself. Plus, it’s a third party with nothing to gain when there are family dynamics and added stress pulling from different directions.

Find experts to help: There are a few interviews that should take place when you’ve decided to liquidate real estate. If there isn’t an attorney involved, it would be wise to find a great real estate attorney. Also, interview three or more real estate agents to verify the state of the market and qualify the suggested market price and to gauge the experience and ability of the real estate agent. Always write down the suggestions and advice so you can weigh and balance the answers of everyone you’ve interviewed and spoken to.

Last but not least, it is easy to become overwhelmed. If you’re feeling uncomfortable when hiring someone to help settle the estate or hiring someone to sell the real estate, pump the brakes. Remember the old adage to measure twice, cut once. It’s always more costly to make a bad hire than to carefully screen for an experienced, qualified hire and that includes settling the final affairs of liquidating real estate.

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Real Estate Disclosures and Paper Cuts

chrisgriffith — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:21:41 +0000

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 had no idea it would be that many pages. Why are there so many pages? At the time it was a mere twelve or thirteen pages, total.

Since then, contracts have gradually expanded from four pages to ten pages. On top of that, there is a disclosure for just about everything except for disclosing the hair color of the buyers placing the offer. I just glanced at my last sales contract which happened to be a modest condo with no bank involvement or legal issues – twenty two brilliant white pages, half of the pages were contract and the other half disclosures.

Since we live in such a litigious society, it only takes one little lawsuit to inspire a new disclosure that will hopefully be a preventative measure to deter a similar situation from happening again. Buyers and sellers of real estate are consumers and the powers that be in the State of Florida want to make sure the consumers are protected and that they’ll enjoy their shopping experience. That is good … and with that protection comes the paperwork.

For example, they want to make sure you don’t wake up and suddenly realize that with your home purchase you ended up belonging to a homeowner association that you didn’t know you were going to belong to … and it’s mandatory. (Insert ominous, echo.) It obviously happened to someone, somewhere or the proper fee wasn’t disclosed to the buyers and that’s how that disclosure was born.

Any legal measure generally boils down to money and consumer safety. As a consumer they’re trying to make sure your money is safe, there are no hidden expenses or fees and, after you move in, your family lives in an environment free from toxins or hazardous materials.

There are disclosures, such as the defective drywall disclosure and a mold disclosure that are meant to protect your money and safety and disclose that a buyer is permitted to obtain those inspections at their own expense, of course. Certainly consumers from outside of the area may not know about or understand defective drywall so it brings it to their attention, or a new level of worry. It’s currently a mandatory disclosure by many real estate brokerages in the Southwest Florida area, whether the home was built in 2004 or 1973.

There’s a mountain of disclosures that accompany real estate transactions these days. It’s not going away any time soon. Hopefully, your agent will be joining the paperless movement so you can sign documents electronically and if you’re fortunate the lender involved will recognize and accept electronic signatures on the contract. They didn’t like fax machines once, either.

Before electronic signatures are mainstream consumers will still be printing, signing, and scanning a couple dozen pages just to make sure everyone is properly informed and that all material facts and defects are disclosed to all parties. The paper cuts and spent ink cartridges are the cost of doing business.

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