About Bexar County, TX

If your an experienced agent it is in your best interest to help someone who is new to your office or new to the business. I make it a point in out office to joke around and help a new agent. One, it lightens up an already awkward situation. It's like the new kid in school. Two, somewhere down the line that person will do the same.

Today was a training day for me. I took out a new agent and learned a lot from him. He played Football for the North Carolina Tar Heels! WOW! He had a full scholarship and was injured. We talked about High School and College football. We talked about his career in the military after college. Oh, yes we did talk about real estate, but that was more of an after thought.

See when you take the new person in the office out on an appointment or training time to share what you know, you might be surprised by what they teach you!

Have a great week all!

http://www.tmartsellshomes.com

Good news for San Antonio real estate

The San Antonio Board of Realtors has announced that home sales rose by 25% in October compared with the same month in 2008, possibly due to the $8000 first-time home buyer tax credit.

More than 1,712 existing homes were sold last month and most of them sold at less than $200,000. In October, only about 9% of the sales were lender-owned properties.

The tax credit has now been extended through the spring and now includes a $6,500 tax credit for people selling a home they've owned for at least three years and purchasing another one.

SABOR says that October's home sales also got a boost because they're being compared with the gloomy economic environment in 2008. Negative events with banks and the stock market caused many people to delay buying a home during October of last year.

One of the strengths of the San Antonio housing market is that it isn't dominated by lender-owned properties.

This week was a good week. I am listing a condo and a short sale home. But that is not the great part. The best part of this week is that I got a hold of a list of foreclosures from my one of my title companies. This is great news because this is a list of what will be on the court house steps the first Tuesday of December. I have time to selectively go and see if any of these folks need any help to save their credit or home...

Going to be a busy weekend!

http://www.tmartsellshomes.com

San Antonio's jobless rate fell in October to 7%. The previous month registered 7.1%. San Antonio and the surrounding counties added about 1000 jobs last month. San Antonio according to Keith Phillips, a senior economist in San Antonio for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, thinks that Texas in general will start to flatten out and cities like San Antonio should start to see that change soon.

Government jobs showed an increase the last couple of months. Texas gained 41,700 jobs in October.

Looks like we are starting to see signs the light is around the corner. I for one have been using the extended tax credit to educate excising home owners the benefit for listing now.

Call or visit my web site for more info.

http://www.tmartsellshomes.com

Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate builds an app for everyone.

I'm a RE/MAX agent, so it might seem surprising to hear me extol the virtues of another real estate franchise, but this is one I can't ignore. The Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate App for iPhone is simply one of the best real estate apps out there. Sure, there are plenty of useful ones, but nothing that personalizes the experience quite like this.

So, you're out looking at homes and you want to remember the details of each one? As they say, "There's an app for that."

Just whip out your iPhone and click on this app and you'll be prepared to make great use of your time. You can take snapshots of the home you're viewing, make an album out of it, rate it, take notes, categorize it, and even share the photos as you take them (to Facebook or send them as email). So far it just sounds like a fancy photo organizer, right?

Location, location, location services.

By utilizing the iPhone's GPS-based location services, this app tags the photos based on your location and then allows you to view neighborhood data in reference to this particular home. Check out home values (sales activity and price trends), community information (demographics, crime, housing stability, housing inventory, and work force data), school information (broken down by elementary, middle, high, adult, private, and Catholic), and find points of interest (eating and drinking, shopping, recreation, and banks). I toyed around with my zip code and found most of the information to be excellent (sometimes sources of data for apps seem shaky at best, but not with this app).

Consumer education and resources.

The two buttons at the bottom probably weren't going to be too exciting I thought. Just some bland basic info about remodeling and a few brief bits about some real estate education topics. I actually found them to be a well written resource of information that consumers want to know.

Excellent.

Well done Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate. Best part of it all, the app is absolutely free and available to anyone with an iPhone. I'll be recommending it to all my clients to use. Anything that helps make sense of all the data you're bombarded with while searching for a home is an excellent idea and I applaud them for creating this app. My assumption is that the other brokers are scrambling to get similar branded apps out to the market place. Until then, thanks Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate.