Florida

Winter will be departing soon and the seasonal changes that are approaching always stimulate the Tallahassee housing market. If you need to sell your home, you have a great chance now, so don’t blow it!

For you to realize success in selling a home, you have to be knowledgeable on how to determine the home value range. This is so critical that I suspect that is the top reason that most people fail to sell a home in Tallahassee (and most other markets as well). So how hard is it to sell a home right now?

The current one-year trend of the home selling success rate has risen to 46%, but I fear that number will peak soon and then begin to drop. Now remember, the one-year trend is not affected by seasonality, as each point in the graph (blue field below) represents 365 days worth of home sales in Tallahassee.

A 46% sales success rate means less than 1/2 of all homes for sale in Tallahassee are selling. In the real estate graph below, you can see that number actually dipped down to 1 in 3 homes selling in the spring of last year. Do you want to be part of the 60+% that are not going to sell? I hope not …

Home Sales Success Rate Should Begin To Fall

The home sales success rate is measured by dividing the total number of listings taken over the past 365 days and dividing that by the total number of home sales during the same period. This gives us a relative snap shot of the difficulty (or ease) of selling a home.

Unfortunately for homeowners who need to sell, a really bad economy combined with a weak housing market are conspiring to make it more difficult to sell a home. Inventory is going to be emerging from the shadow inventory of homes in Tallahassee, creating more competition than most homeowners will be able to handle.

Knowing what is ahead of us is the one competitive advantage that homeowners have today that can help them be successful in selling their home. The key is to use this information and take decisive action.

New Competition Will Make The Same Old Mistakes

If you are ready to sell your home now, you can get it done in 60 days or less if you make some wise decisions. You need to work with an expert at determining real estate values and your initial market position, and you need to make sure that your home is exposed to the largest market segment that is most likely to find your home attractive.

Fortunately, your competition will not do this. They will make the same mistakes that others made last year (remember, less than 40% of homes listed last year actually sold) and spend their first few months on the market just flailing around. If you make the right decisions early, you can beat them to the seasonal buyers that are arriving daily.

We know that real estate values are dropping, so the homeowners who act wisely now will reap the benefits, while those who do not, will be forced to sell their home in a market with fewer buyers and more homes on the market.

[How To Price Your Home To Sell]

I had a comment on one of my recent posts inferring that buyers appeared to be willing to pay 20% more for a "normal" sale. That is not actually what is taking place here in Orlando. The bank owned and short sales just tend to be concentrated in lower price ranges. While half of all "normal" listings are priced above $249,000, only about 10% of all the closed sales are above $249,000. Around 7% of bank owned properties for sale exceed that number, and just under 13% of short sales are currently on the market for $250,000 and above.

List Prices Low High Median Average

"Normal" $12,000 $14,999,900 $249,000 $504,303

Short Sales $13,000 $5,900,000 $129,000 $161,508

REO $10,900 $2,400,000 $85,000 $127,779

In Orange County, there are currently 824 bank owned, 3,288 short sale and 4,243 "normal" properties for sale. That means there are 3,637 distressed properties listed under $250,000 and only about 2,100 "normal" sales listed in that price range. Conversely, there are 475 distressed properties priced higher than $250,000 with about 2,100 "normal" properties priced in that range.

How long will this economic recovery take seems to the question on everybody's mind. Many people seem to feel it will be a long recovery. "The real estate market today seems to be leveling off but it still needs help", says Brad Fletcher co-owner of Home Staging Design Pros in Orlando Florida. Home staging is just the marketing tool that will help get things moving again for those serious about selling their homes." According to Brad, , "it's clear that anger, fear, and resentment toward the Real Estate market are natural sentiments for anyone forced to sell a home in the past couple of years. Drive down any street and see the many "For Sale" signs or worse the abandoned, over grown foreclosures, or open any paper and read housing market reports." Brad goes on to say:" Even in this discouraging economic environment our staged homes sell in days not months." Brad's motto is; "small investment BIG return!" He knows becouse he has seen staging work time and time again.

Brad, as many home stagers feel, the time to act is now. "It's not rock science, home staging certainly does work. Just ask yourself the question; does a home seller do nothing, or is it time for aggressive marketing?" Brad goes on to say; "Staging should start before the home goes on the market". When you think about it, every commodity that retails successfully is marketed before and during the sales process. Just walk by any store window and you can see the effects of visual marketing. Then watch as others walk by and observe the way they respond. Its no mystery, we have all been window shopping at one time or another, inspired by a look, drawn in by the style, lingering to dream of ownership, then figuring out how we can afford it. Visual marketing is the mechanism that generates the desire, kindles the need, as well as inspires the wanting. It's a major driving force of our economic system. So why not use marketing to sell your house?

In real estate sales the savvy sellers knows the same marketing principles apply; design an effective marketing strategy and your home will sell. Homes are sold when the emotions are encouraged, when a person falls in love with a house then visualizing it as their home. Visual marketing sets the stage, turns on the lights and initiates the love affair. It's really no wonder why home staging promotes a faster sale and lays the ground work to realize maximum return on your marketing budget.

Well designed home staging forces the perspective buyers to ask the simple question; can I aspire to live here? The best staged homes invite the buyers to linger and dream of raising a family, dinner parties with friend, and enjoying a good life. Do vacant echoes and the cold shuttered sense of an empty house conjure up any emotion? Are buyers drawn in by bare room after bare room? "If a house is stripped of its appeal what's left?" asks Brad. "Most people don't buy a home based solely on the utilitarian needs." He goes on to say "There are so many vacant homes to tour in the central Florida area that buyers get weary eyed at seeing the same homogeneous spaces." Spaces without faces he calls them. Houses lacking personality, and devoid of spacial relationships. Undefined rooms just don't jump out and beg to be purchased.

Stage, market, and sel.....l or set, linger, and wait..... it's not rock science.

Home Staging Design Pros
424 E Central Bl. #196
Orlando Fl. 32801
www.HSDPros.com
Jeff@hsdpros.com
407-690-9500

The extension of the homebuyer's tax credit, as well as the expansion to include upgrade homebuyers, has a lot of people looking for their dream home. Many are looking for that dream home in the listings for Tampa foreclosures. Why?

The Law of Supply and Demand

Quick marketing lesson: every market is dependent on the law of supply and demand. When the demand for a product is higher than the supply, prices go up. When there's more product than demand, prices go down.

This is what's happening now, especially with Tampa foreclosures. Around the U.S., the supply of homes has doubled in the past two years, reaching as high as a twenty five-month supply in the Tampa area while we presently we have an eight month supply of homes. While homebuyers have been reluctant to buy a foreclosure in the past, people are starting to rethink the situation because:

• Foreclosures are usually less expensive than traditional homes for sale. In fact, some buyers have found their dream home and bought it for pennies on the dollar.
• Foreclosed properties are generally in better condition than they used to be. In the past, foreclosed homes had a higher than average amount of repairs needed compared to other homes for sale. This is no longer necessarily true. Many foreclosed homes have been lovingly taken care of by their previous owners.
• Potential buyers of foreclosures have a wider variety from which to choose. They aren’t stuck with just one type of house in one neighborhood. For the careful new homebuyer, the possibilities really are almost endless.

Most foreclosed homes aren't money pits. To protect yourself, make sure your real estate agent includes in the contract that you want to have the home inspected, and that if the home inspection finds major problems, you then have the right to walk away from the deal.

If you're looking for a great home at a great price, I can help. Call me at 813-469-3163 or email me at Jeff@MakeTampaYourHome.com for more information.

Well "Sucess Magazine" showed up again this month, just like every month and it has an article on Social Media.It does seem like the rage these days, to try to analyze the new phenomenom known as

Social Media

I haven't read the entire article, as a matter of fact I haven't even started, but they always have some highlighted areas, and this one was entitled,

Social Media Factoids

Success sites their source of the info as being Socialnomics.net

#1. Social media has overtaken porn as the No. 1 activity on the net.

Hallelujah!

#2. Years to reach 50 million users: radio (38 years). TV (13 years), Internet (four years), iPOD (three years) .... Facebook added 100 million users in less than nine months .... iPhone applications hit 1 billion in nine months.

#3 If Facebook were a country it would be the world's fourth most populous, between the United States and Indonesia.

I read these factoids and didn't know quite what to think. Many different thoughts seemed to cloud my mind all at once. Today I'm just sharing the info, you are free to

Draw your own conclusions.