Is Your House Market Ready?
By TIM McKEOUGH
Published: November 7, 2012 www.nytimes/Home&Garden
Q. The children’s playroom is always the messiest part of our house. How can we make it look better for showings?
A. “Walking into a playroom that looks as if you’re in the midst of a battle is not a good thing,” said Marc Donnenfeld, a real estate agent at Warburg Realty in New York — particularly when a home is being shown to potential buyers.
“You’re the curator of your home,” he said. “You want the image of the house to come across in the best light possible.” And a playroom that looks like a war zone “clouds the image,” sending the wrong message to buyers.
Fortunately, cleaning up doesn’t necessarily require big or expensive changes, said Mr. Donnenfeld, a former interior designer: “There are lots of creative solutions that will enhance the look of your playroom, as well as solve your storage problems.” Read More!
Why Obama and Romney Aren’t Talking About Housing
By Nick Timiraos WSJ Blogs
Few events have reshaped the nation over the last half-decade as much as the housing crisis—particularly in key battleground states such as Florida, Ohio, and Nevada. But neither the Obama nor the Romney campaign has had very much to say about it.
Housing’s absence from the campaign debate has led to lots of head-scratching among pundits, though there is an obvious explanation for why it has taken a back seat: housing is a political loser. Read article here.
Is now the time to buy a house?
This is a great article by Cullen Roche in Pragmatic Capitalism on the national real estate market and our greater Asheville market. We are in for a long “work out” period. As Cullen Roche states in Pragmatic Capitalism:
“Real estate is far more attractive than it was at any point in the last 8 years or so. Has it bottomed? That’s the wrong question in my opinion. Real estate likely won’t crater from here, but also won’t skyrocket. ”Bottoms” (as in an event bottom) are very unusual after a bubble like we’ve seen. The standard post-bubble “work out” period is the most likely scenario so prices could be flattish for years. So do you buy now, rent, invest? First, I don’t think the average retail investor should bother with investing in real estate. Real estate investing is a full-time job and requires a great deal of hands on involvement to actually turn a consistent profit above the rate of inflation over any sustained period. When you buy a house you should think of it as a roof over your head and a place where you will LIVE. Not an investment. And this is the key. If you’re planning on living in a house (as in, 10 years of actually living in a home) then you should have no great fears about buying today. Does that mean you’ll make money on it? Or that it will prove more beneficial than renting? Well, that depends on a lot of personal variables. But the base case here for national real estate is that the risk/reward of buying a home has changed substantially and is no longer skewed to the bear case.”
Click here to read entire article.
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Top 10 Turnaround Housing Markets
Finally, Florida is starting to move again! This is really good news for us in the Asheville area. One of our biggest feeder markets is Florida. Miami, Orlando, Naples, Tampa real estate markets are all increasing for the first time in a long time. See below for the numbers.
Infograph courtesy of www.kcmblog.com
Market Ready: Replacing Carpet before A Sale
Market Ready
By TIM McKEOUGH
Published: May 2, 2012 www.nytimes.com
Q. My bedroom has worn carpet. Should I replace it with a hardwood flooring before trying to sell my home?
A. “Especially in Manhattan, nobody wants a worn anything,” said Darren Sukenik, a managing director at Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. That applies almost equally to “people, places or things,” he said. So “they certainly don’t want worn carpet in a bedroom.”
What most buyers look for in a bedroom is “an austere feeling of peace and clean,” Mr. Sukenik said, and ragged carpeting only detracts from that.
But you may not need to replace it with a different type of flooring altogether. Although hardwood flooring is usually considered an asset throughout the rest of a home, in the bedroom there is a little more flexibility. Read more here.
Western North Carolina Home & Garden Show starts this week!
Western North Carolina’s premier Home Show starts March 16th and runs through the 18th. The Home & Garden Show is taking place at Asheville’s U.S. Cellular Center. The Home Lawn and Garden Show features displays of the latest home construction techniques, materials and products. Home furnishings, home builders, lawn and garden equipment, landscaping, pools and spas, home financing, appliances, home security and entertainment, decorating ideas, decks and patios, sporting goods, heating and cooling equipment home repair and renovation, and much more. Click here to go to Western North Carolina Home & Garden Show website.
How Affordable is Housing?
A great article discussing where the housing market stands and if it really is turning.
Excerpts taken directly from the blog http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-affordable-is-housing.html Objective Facts, They are for real. By jon Stewart
In determining if the median American family can afford the median house, there are at least two separate factors to consider: (1) how affordable is the typical down payment? and (2) how affordable is the mortgage? Let’s look at each of them in succession.
The down payment, of course, is a percentage of the sale price of the house. So if, for example, we want to know how affordable a 20% down payment is, all we have to know is the sales price of the typical house, because then we can just divide it by five.
Summary for those of you short on time:
So, there are at least two answers to the question “how affordable is housing?” The first answer is that, in terms of down payments, house prices are probably very slightly — as in 5% or less — above their long term norm. Since it is mainly lower priced housing that is selling, it is possible that higher priced housing will continue to decline in price and if so, there will be an overshoot to the downside (which is good for home buyers).
The second answer is, that at least in terms of mortgage payments, now really is a good time to buy a house. We are probably at or near generational lows in affordable mortgage payments, particularly after factoring in family income.
28 Blake Street Asheville, NC 28801 in Montford, MLS#: 510981
28 Blake Street (Click for Video)
Stunning Arts & Crafts home in the heart of Montford, located on level front & back yard on a quiet, non-through street. Winner of the 1998 Griffin Award and offers a remodeled kitchen w/ gas stove + stainless steel appliances. Oversized and restored windows, original re-finished heart of pine floors, 4 wood burning FP’s, large bedrooms, sleeping porch off Master, updated plumbing & electrical. Zoned heating & A/C upstairs. An easy stroll to downtown Asheville makes a perfect fit for everything Asheville has to offer!
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