Buying a Home in Randolph County Brings Final Walk-Through

After weeks of dealing with inspections, appraisals, repairs, and the sheaf of paperwork created by your mortgage company, The Final Walk-Through should come as a welcome relief to those buying a home in Randolph County this summer. Despite its ominous name, that final walk-through is anything but — it provides a last layer of protection for the new homebuyers.

Typically occurring in the final 24 hours before the scheduled close of escrow, this is no mere formality. It’s your ultimate opportunity to inspect the home and ensure that it is in the same condition as when you agreed to purchase it. It is also your chance to make sure that the seller has completed any agreed-upon repairs, and to see that the home is being turned over in “broom clean” condition.

As the formalities of buying a home in Randolph County conclude, it is easy to see how the excitement and relief of finally closing the deal can distract from the serious business at the very end. Nonetheless, it is definitely to your advantage to be methodical during that walk-through:

1. Bring along a camera (one you’ve used recently) so you can easily document any issues should they arise.
2. Make sure the seller left all of the owner’s manuals for appliances and home systems (air-conditioning, heating, fireplace units, alarm systems, etc.), as well as permits, warranties and receipts. Also easy to overlook: remote control devices for garage doors, ceiling fans, and alarms.
3. Before you leave the house, remember to double-check that everything has been shut down properly. Did you turn off the irrigation system; HVAC system; and driveway, pool and spa heaters? You don’t want to come home to your new house only to find a flooded basement!

Although nobody wants to prolong a closing, your agent should be there to help protect your interests. If repair or other important issue come up, you can request compensation at closing. If you’re thinking of buying a home in Randolph County this summer, I’m standing by — call me anytime!

Virtual Tours Add Clout to Asheboro NC Home Listings

This spring’s release of National Housing Data from realtor.com shows yet another rise in list prices, which, as expected, apparently spurred more previously reluctant sellers to put their homes on the market. The pressure to jump on board continued as “the home buying season shifted into high gear…”

With more Asheboro NC listings competing for prospects’ interest, one of the features I like to provide for my clients are the increasingly valuable virtual tours.

The advantages are many, both for Asheboro NC sellers and the prospective buyers they attract. Online marketing has long enabled maximum exposure. Where the audience for a new listing used to be limited to the area reached by local advertising outlets, we now cross state and international borders instantaneously. But what Asheboro NC virtual tours add in terms of marketing power is immense: instead of words and a single picture, now the most remote prospect can really get a feel for a property — and even end up buying! When a virtual tour sets your home apart from the others, there’s no doubt it adds measurably to its marketability.

And there are other advantages when virtual tours are added to an Asheboro NC listing. They can help sort out potential time-wasters. Online house hunters can take a 360-degree look at key areas before requesting a live tour, which can sort out the idly curious. It means that you save time prepping for showings to window-shoppers. You can focus your efforts on the prospects who will wind up making a serious offer.

Virtual tours also allow your potential buyers the ability to look at the property over and over again following an in-person viewing. They don’t have to try to remember the points that attracted them to your home: they can view them as often as they like. They can share your virtual tour with their own families and friends…the spillover enthusiasm can become the final impetus that spurs a winning offer.

If you’re considering selling your home in Asheboro NC, why not contact me today? We will talk over a marketing plan that moves your property for top dollar in today’s market!

Asheboro NC For Sale by Owner Offerings Face Hurdles

In the business publishing world, one of the most reliable bestseller categories is Marketing and Sales: How to Sell This, or Tips for Selling That. Selling may be a complicated business, but one approach always sets you ahead of the pack: putting yourself in the shoes of the customer.

Selling an Asheboro NC home is a case in point. When it comes to searching for a new home, today’s prospects find two types of homes for sale — ones offered by an Asheboro NC real estate agent, and those For Sale by Owner (FSBO). When you look at the rate of sales between the two, it has long been the case that most often the FSBOs do poorly compared with those sold by agents.

So why, exactly, do so many FSBOs fail to live up to expectations?

Putting yourself in the shoes of the customer sheds light on at least one good reason. Real estate professionals make their living by closing sales, and that means knowing how to handle the technical details: the paperwork. Customers (the home buyers) can usually tell right away if a property is being marketed by someone who is a real estate amateur. With an investment as large as a home at stake, no one welcomes a gamble that any part of the documentation may later prove flawed in some detail. There is also the fact that Realtors® sometimes steer their own home-buying clients away from Asheboro NC For Sale by Owner properties — especially after seeing too many instances of sellers not educated enough about required disclosures, inclusions, etc.

 The For Sale by Owner route also sometimes hits a pricing snag. Owners often set a price on their home that they feel they deserve — rather than a realistic price supported by current market research. An average of 12% FSBOs get the pricing right…barely more than 1 in 10.

If you are currently trying an Asheboro NC For Sale by Owner gambit that’s not getting results, I am always happy to offer a complimentary consultation. It’s a second opinion that will open up new options (and maybe save you a lot!)

Builder Optimism Could Impact Randolph County New Homes Supply

Randolph County homeowners don’t have to be planning to sell anytime soon to be curious about the market value of their property. A home is such a major part of any family’s financial picture, it’s only natural.

One important indicator of the direction of Asheboro NC home values is how the builders of new homes gauge the future market. After all, if you build new homes for a living, your bottom line is largely dependent on being able to predict future demand.

That is why this spring’s rise in U.S. home-builder confidence in the market for single family new homes is a convincing follow-through to what we have been seeing for a while now. I find two unrelated sources that, taken together, point toward that conclusion.

The first is CNBC’s web site, which zeroes in on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. Current conditions are reported to have risen three points in just one month, while the index measuring expectations for future sales hit 53 — and that’s the highest level since February 2007.

The second, CoreLogic’s Case-Shiller Indexes Report, confirmed the home price increases of 2012 as having grown at the strongest rate in nearly seven years. The report included a (for them) remarkably bold headline: “More to come in 2013-2017.”

The new homes optimism was doubly good news because it comes despite increasing building materials costs, which usually dampen home-builder confidence. But the impact of rising single family home prices and reported sense of urgency among potential buyers “as a result of thinning inventories of homes” more than compensated for the building cost increases. This may be good news for buyers targeting new homes in Randolph County: better builder confidence should mean more new homes.

While we’ve already seen a lot of this spring’s inventory enter the market — whether you’re looking at existing or new homes in Asheboro NC, there is a good case to be made that today’s low mortgage rates plus the remaining bargains make 2013 a fortuitous year to purchase. If that’s how it looks from your vantage point, contact me today to begin pre-qualifying!

Keeping an Eye Out for Zombies in Randolph County

If you’ve come across the term “zombie foreclosures” in recent months, it wasn’t referring to voodoo parlors whose priests couldn’t pay the mortgage.

Not exactly dead, but not exactly alive, they are properties stuck in a kind of zombie-like limbo. They are homes that have been abandoned by their former owners at some point before foreclosure. Now they are sitting there, accumulating ongoing taxes, liens, and gradual deterioration while the bank decides what to do (or not do) about them.

According to RealtyTrac, there are probably 302,000 “zombies” nationwide, so the odds are, some are going to be here.

Whenever you search for bank owned properties in Randolph County, keep an eye out for the zombies. Because the legal owner has moved on, he or she is likely to be highly motivated to sell via a short sale. But…while Randolph County bank owned properties — those that have completed the foreclosure process — have any outstanding taxes clearly listed on court records, a zombie property may be harder to investigate. That’s one reason why knowing you are dealing with a zombie is important.

Before writing an offer for zombies or bank owned properties, inspecting is vital. If a home spent time as a zombie before being listed in foreclosure, damage could have resulted from neglect, or even vandalism (nowadays, copper piping is a frequent target). Lack of central heating during cold and wet periods can lead to mold — and zombies seldom pay utility bills.

Some areas are more affected by foreclosures than others, and a concentration of zombie properties creates its own problems. An empty neighborhood is more likely to attract squatters or looters; neither of which help property values. But in some areas, that’s a temporary situation. Realistically gauging a neighborhood’s impact on long-term value is a key part of the common sense approach that makes for good investing.

Zombie foreclosures aren’t exactly alive, not quite dead, and not really foreclosures, either (at least not yet). I’m happy to report that even as the market heats up, you can still identify bank owned properties in Randolph County that are worth investigating. Call me today!

Your Randolph County Home Sale and Kids Do Mix!

When it comes to a home sale in Randolph County, adults automatically appreciate the importance of presenting a pristine property to potential buyers.

Kids, on the other hand, would like a glass of apple juice, please.

Parents are forever juggling their other adult responsibilities with the needs of the children, so when you add home sale showings to the list, it might seem to make for a stressful situation. But a home sale doesn’t need to be disruptive — after all, it’s just one more ball in the air!

A few tried-and-true tactics make the process easier:

• If you’re blessed with grandparents who live close to Randolph County, this is the time to enlist their help. Showings are simply well disguised opportunities for extra quality time with Gram and Gramps. No family in the area? See which play date parents will step up and volunteer for an occasional last minute get-together.
• Avalanches of toys — especially when they stray far from the kids’ room —don’t do much to advance the home sale you’re trying to accomplish. Make a game out of organizing toys into attractive storage boxes, complete with a ceremony for the moment when yesterday’s are put away and today’s opened up. If your kids are old enough to roll their eyes at this idea, I bet they’re old enough to help you with emergency cleanups. That will be easy (and maybe even fun) when you sit down together to create a written Emergency Home Sale Drill, complete with who’s responsible for doing what, and in what order. And don’t forget: successful drills merit special rewards!
• If some very young ones are in the mix, sleep-deprived adult noses can sometimes become desensitized to the simple truth that dirty diapers put off even the keenest of prospects. In addition to your regular diaper disposal regimen, don’t spare good quality air fresheners. The ones that emit seasonal scents periodically are best.

I’ll help by giving at least 30 minutes’ warning for any showing (24 hours whenever possible) Our teamwork will result in a serene setting for all our Randolph County home sale showings.

Randolph County Sellers Get Early National Housing Prices News

When I update Randolph County readers about the latest news in housing prices, it’s usually not as ‘latest’ as I’d like. The reason is that there is a delay in most of the truly reliable indexes that measure housing prices. The big indexes are national (Randolph County housing prices are another matter), and they have a built-in two-month delay.

We can look at trends and directions, but if there is a change afoot, we won’t be sure of that for about 60 days.

Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal found a way to present unusually fresh numbers. Reporter Nick Timiraos ignored the S&P/Case-Shiller Index, which reported statistics from back in March, and leapfrogged into April with the first solid news about our much-anticipated spring selling season.

It shows a startling 2.7% one-month increase: the largest March-to-April gain in any of the 17 years since the series was first reported.

“The monthly gain blew away all past Aprils,” said an economist at Credit Suisse. The basis of the reports comes from last week’s release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ producer-price index, which measures prices in the whole economy (at least as seen by manufacturers and wholesalers). It’s a backdoor way to gauge housing prices when you examine prices received by real estate agents.

The numbers showed a 9.1% gain over housing prices from a year ago…and remember, big price rises were already happening by then. The takeaway, per the Journal, “Don’t be surprised to see continued increases in prices and sales in the next batch of housing reports.”

Professors Case and Shiller are certainly standing by to give us those. And in case you would like a more locally focused update on our recent Randolph County housing prices, I’m standing by, too — why not give me a call today?