Does your home give a great first impression? Company founder and CEO Michael Saunders discusses the importance of presenting your home to attract and impress prospective buyers. Learn tips and tools you need to succeed in selling your home in today’s competitive market in an exclusive video interview with the area’s most influential real estate professional:
What are some simple steps a buyer can take when selling their home?
If you have questions for Michael Saunders, email AskMichael@michaelsaunders.com.
Hard to believe, but only two months remain before the November 30th deadline for earning the First Time Home Buyers Tax Credit. While that may still seem like quite a ways off, if you’re planning to join the 1.4 million American families who have already taken advantage of this popular incentive—but have yet to zero-in on a property—you may very well find yourself in a sprint to get your purchase in under the wire. This is not the sort of last-minute shopping that can be crammed into the few waning days before the cut-off date.
Even though the term First Time Home Buyer has been broadly interpreted to empower more people to qualify for the credit, if you truly are a first-time buyer you may not be fully aware of the time it takes to complete a real estate transaction. At this late date, you will ideally want to have your home picked out by early-October in order to close on it by mid-November; with an extra cushion of time left over to deal with any last-minute details.
Once you’ve found the right home, your work has just begun. In order for mortgage funds to be available at the time of closing, you must obtain a satisfactory credit report, a competent home appraisal, a commitment for home insurance, a complete home inspection and verification of personal data. Add to this the fact that you will not be alone in trying to accomplish all these musts as the deadline begins to loom large. Realtors, lenders, title companies, home inspectors and certified appraisers will no doubt be swamped by the last minute rush; in much the same way as car dealers were bombarded with buyers and a blizzard of paperwork as the Cash for Clunkers automotive incentive program entered its final days. (more…)
Visitors from around the world choose Englewood for its unspoiled beaches and some of the richest fishing grounds found in the Gulf of Mexico. Staffed by an exceptional team of area specialists, our Englewood office is strategically located at the intersection of Highway 776 and Beach Road, along the shores of Lemon Bay.
How’s the Market in Englewood?
According to Barbara Fendley Saputo, branch manager of Michael Saunders & Company’s Englewood office, business to date in 2009 has surpassed 2008 in the same timeframe by 27 percent. Every component necessary to make this an opportune time for a buyer is in place:
Low interest rates
Reasonable prices
Favorable exchange rates for foreign buyers(more…)
There’s an interesting scenario shaping up in the under-$250,000 price tier of the real estate market in Sarasota County. Based on the current rate of closed sales of single family homes—as reported in the most recent TRENDGRAPHIX for May—the county has just a three to five month supply of similarly priced homes; its lowest level since the height of the boom in September, 2005.
Buyers, many of them first-time purchasers, are finally satisfied that the bottom of the market is here—or close enough—and are now more appropriately concerned about lowering their actual long-term carrying costs. Taking advantage of the very real prospect of saving up to $8,000 by using the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit—before it expires on December 1—is much more palatable than the uncertain prospect of saving a few more dollars on the purchase price a month or two from now. It also avoids the very real possibility that interest rates could spike upwards again in the meantime.
SARASOTA, Florida—(June, 2009)—“Its very heartening to see that the sales momentum that built so impressively during the first four months of 2009 continued to be strong even as we transitioned from the busy winter season into our customarily slow summer months,” said Michael Saunders upon examining the latest sales statistics for May, just out from TRENDGRAPHIX..“With bottoming prices, low interest rates and extraordinary, limited-time-only buying incentives—like the First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit—buyers are expressing their confidence in the market by stepping up to buy wherever they detect the best buying opportunities.”
“Sales continue to be disproportionately clustered in the under-$300,000 price range, thanks to prices that have been impacted by foreclosures and short sales; but sales are also occurring in every price range where sellers wisely list their homes in very close proximity to what comparable homes are actually selling for,” Saunders added.“The most encouraging news from this new data is that closed sales, although down slightly in most cases for May in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte Counties—as would be expected as we enter the slow summer months—largely held their own compared with April; while pending sales are way up compared with last May.Further, with most of these pending sales set to close in the next 30 to 60 days, it looks like the trend toward improved sales, established early this year, will continue throughout the summer.” (more…)
NAR’s report for May shows a nationwide uptick in the sale of existing homes and sited favorable affordability conditions and the first time buyer tax credit as the primary reasons:
Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – rose 2.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.77 million units in May from a downwardly revised level of 4.66 million units in April, but remained 3.6 percent below the 4.95 million-unit pace in May 2008.
It is encouraging to see the continued trend – the first nationwide back-to-back monthly gain since September 2005 – and Michael Saunders & Company recently posted our own area trend report for Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties. Unfortunately, month to month reports only tell a piece of the story. (more…)
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