About Oviedo's Bentley Woods

Want to know what’s selling in your neighborhood? These statistics should give you a feel for the market value of your house.

Keep in mind that many of these sales are for Short Sales or Foreclosed/Bank-Owned properties. Under these situations, the Sold Price may be considerably below the Original List Price. Sorry to say, ‘distressed’ sales drag down the values of all the other homes in the neighborhood, whether or not they’re Short Sales or Foreclosures.

Properties have been listed and sold by various MLS members.

Data drawn from the My Florida Regional Multiple Listing Service.

If you’re a homeowner who wants to sell your house, the following should give you a better understanding of the Orlando FL real estate marketplace.

Remember the old adage that ‘real estate is always local’. Your neighborhood may be different from the neighborhood just down the road.

Homes in Orlando are selling. In fact, they’re selling so well that thousands of homeowners just like you are moving out and moving on. Last year, 1,000 homes in Orange & Seminole counties sold every month on average. In 2009, monthly sales are averaging 1,600 homes. This represents a 60% increase! If the house down the street can sell in this difficult environment, so can yours.

What’s the long-term outlook for the Orlando FL real estate market? Prices have leveled off in recent months. Even so, due to rising unemployment and foreclosure/short sale saturation, it will probably take several years — perhaps as long as a decade or more — for home prices to completely recover.

What about homeowners who are having difficulty keeping up with mortgage payments but can’t sell because their house is worth less than the amount owed on their loan? There are several solutions, but the way a Realtor^® can help is by selling the house as a Short Sale.

Built by Centex in the early 90s, Bentley Woods is a popular subdivision located near downtown Oviedo and close to the 434/419 entrance ramp of the Greeneway (417) Tollway. Bentley Woods is convenient to everything, including Oviedo Marketplace, University of Central Florida, and the Cross Seminole Trail, which offers opportunities for biking, jogging/walking, hiking, and horseback.

Properties have been listed and sold by various MLS members. Data drawn from the Mid-Florida Regional Multiple Listing Service. This report is valuable for estimating current market values in the designated community or subdivision.

Realtors® have, and always will, provide the indispensable service of connecting buyers with sellers.

But since our skills and expertise are needed infrequently, we’re often thought of as interchangeable, as if one of us is just like another, as though we each have identical resources and provide the same levels of service.

This assumption wasn’t true before the Internet, when a Realtor® was just about the only source for buying and selling real estate. And it isn’t any more true these days, when technological advances have made ‘virtual house shopping’ a snap.

Yet, with all the new gadgets, fancy Web sites, and accessibility to information, buyers and sellers still need a real live person—a professional—to connect them with each other.

Choosing the Right Realtor®

The task of choosing the right Realtor® is as important, or possibly more important, than ever before.

Why?

The distinction between yesterday’s Realtor® and today’s Realtor® widens as words like ‘foreclosure’ and ‘short sale’ become commonplace; when the economic principles of supply and demand intrude on our everyday lives; as pricing structure and negotiations become increasingly complicated; and when contracts thicken in the number of forms, addendums, disclosures, and overall complexity.

Today’s Realtor® must be everything to everybody: advisor, educator, consultant, market authority, numbers whiz, and eMarketing expert. Additionally, she must be available at the speed of an e-mail or cell phone call. On top of that, she must also be an economist AND have an accurate crystal ball.

Okay, I can’t claim to be an expert on everything, especially when it comes to crystal balls, but I can and do try to have a full grasp of the important facts my clients need to successfully buy and sell real estate.

Keeping It Simple

In my estimation, the most important quality I can have as a Realtor® is this: to be one per

son communicating with other persons ... to understand where my buyers and sellers are coming from, what their most pressing needs are, and which financial concerns are uppermost in their minds.

Therefore, whenever I work with a client, it’s important for me to put on all my hats, try my very best to provide informed answers, and do my utmost to address every concern.

In the end, that’s all I can do, except to conduct myself by the Realtor® Code of Ethics, be there whenever a question or problem comes up, and listen, listen, listen.