Bob Santucci

With this great weather it is still real estate season. In a rainy year we usually see a drop off in real estate business from about Thanksgiving until the Super Bowl. This year I am seeing the best winter real estate season in years. Healdsburg Real Estate.com has positioned themselves to be your greatest ally this year.

There is a lot of optimism and it does not appear to be tied to the recent good jobs reports. It is coming from the fact that prices of un-distressed homes have been stable for almost a year. I have heard from about a half dozen people that prices are continuing to spiral down. WRONG! It is true that distressed properties are coming on the market at lower prices than non-distressed but please be clear that these are two distinctly different categories of real estate. If those good jobs reports continue until the Super Bowl we will see a real estate surge in the spring.

Every economic recovery has one thing in common. They have been bigger and faster than ANY analyst had predicted. I am seeing a lot of evidence that the same may be ahead for us. Unemployment numbers are down and the analysts did not see that coming. It is winter and those numbers should be down, not up. Interest rates are still at record lows. There are new rules in place as of December 1^st that force the banks to do more for us in regards to home loan modifications. If anything creates a sense of urgency in the market we will see an even bigger surge in spring. I believe that we are camped just outside the Promised Land!

The number one thing that I can suggest for anyone involved in real estate, either consumers or professionals is to have a success plan and to embrace it. Here are some tips that will help you.

If your home is currently on the market for ninety days or more take it off the market as soon as the rains begin. Keep it off the market for 45 to 60 days. Get a fresh start in the spring time.

While it is off the market prepare the home to sell it this time. Hire a professional home stager to help you prepare the home. I know there is a lot of resistance to doing this. I know because I felt the same way. Boy was I wrong. Stagers do a great job. Would you like your home to look like the homes in the fancy magazines? Those are staged homes.

Take a lot of pictures and do so every month. The pictures should be professional quality not just a point and shoot type of photo. A picture really is “worth a thousand words”. For fun try night photography. You absolutely have to have a minimum of twenty five pictures on the MLS at all times. I will not go into why but trust me it is the biggest mistake I see in real estate marketing.

Video is now mandatory to get good ranking results on the internet. See below. You do not even need a video camera to do this. There are free tools on the internet that produce great video from photos and Google loves video. The video has to be uploaded to You Tube and have a unique name to get results. The name should match the name of the website for your home.

Have an individual website for your home. It has to have a unique and hyper local name to it. An individual property website that uses the address of the home as the name is just about worthless. Do the research and come up with a good name. The property website has to have a lot of local information on it. School information, walk scores, weather, local links and local history have to be there. Google can see the planet but they cannot see your neighborhood. They are relying on you for that and in return they will give you priceless internet ranking.

PRINT ADVERTISING IS NOT DEAD! We still run a full page ad in the Press Democrat every Sunday and the phone does ring from it.

Do open houses and market the heck out of them. Every week I receive about a half dozen thank you emails from my fellow Realtors because of the traffic that they get at their open houses due this column. It is free and just takes a little effort but is well worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/HealdsburgRealEstate?feature=guide#p/a/u/0/T-WwItkwOfg

Country Property

Here are some things to consider when purchasing country property. One of the first things to do is to go to the County of Sonoma office and check on the history of the property. Does what is on record match with what is actually at the subject property. Is the number of buildings and size a match to what is being sold. Are all of the permits there and executed. Make copies of all the information that you can such as building permits, well information and septic system information.

Boundaries, One big difference between country property and residential is clarity of property lines. In residential it is fairly clear where the property lines are at . In country property it is much more difficult and if there are any disputes now is the time to remedy them. Some of these properties may not have been sold for decades. There may have been some good neighbor deals over the years that you do not like. You may even find that a neighbor built a barn that is right on the property line and the line needs to be adjusted.

Wells, If you are in the country you will probably rely on a well as your source of water. Have it tested for volume and purity. In Sonoma County there four types of water zones. Area one is in the valley’s and is the most abundant. Area four is the water scarce zone and can be found anywhere. Your local well company will know these areas and can tell you exactly what you need to be assured that you will not have water issues in the future. If you really love a place and it is in an area four zone now is the time to decide if you want to endure he joys of living with very little water.

Septic, If you are going to live in the then you will be on a private waste system AKA a septic tank. Part of the purchase process will be to have the septic tank pumped and inspected. The sanitation specialist will do a visual inspection of the leach field as well. The leach field is the part of the system that distributes the treated waste evenly underground. It is a great idea to have enough room adjacent to the leach field that is equal to the size of the existing leach field for expansion. This may be mandated by the County of Sonoma anyway.

Insurance, It is a great idea to check with your insurance agent early on in the process. Some country property may have greater risks than residential properties. The property may be in a high fire danger area or a flood area. There are areas that are prone to slides that need to be identified. A good insurance agent will be able to mitigate any of these issues.

Zoning, Zoning can affect your future uses for the property. If you are planning on developing a horse property now is the time to make sure that the zoning will allow it. What if there is a granny unit on the property and you want to use it as a vacation rental. Now is the time to discover what you can or cannot do with the property.

I was looking at Activerain this AM and the first thing that I saw was a post from a Realtor that has the same pet peave as I do. Out of area internet Realtors that leverage the internet to gain clients from across the country then refer them to a local agent. This is a huge business and leaves the clients exposed to a rickety transaction.

What is local? Well I think that it is dependent on what type of transaction that you are going to have. If it is residentail then an agent that is more than an hour away that does not attend local MLS meetings can perform well. It is when you get into ranches and vineyards that you better pick a Realtor that lives right in the area. Local knowledge is key.

A lot of Realtors have left the market and the ones that are left have a pretty good grip on this business. I would imagine that those of us that are still here have over the years developed some pretty good relationships with our copetitors. There is a lot of power in using a Realtor that is willing to drop their ego and go to any other Realtor for help so they get THE VERY BEST HELP for their clients.

I feel the same about lenders. Lenders can and do perform well for out of the area transactions. If you have a lender that you like and have a relationship use them for out of the area investment transactions. A perfect example is like my friend Dan Stevens at Wells Fargo Home Loans. Dan was a CPA and has been with Wells now for ages. He is as good on the east coast as the west coast but Dan always leaves his ego at the door and reaches out to his team for help.

When you are hiring a Realtor. Hire someone that is local. That commission that we EARN is spent where we live and helps support local causes.

While I am at it SHOP LOCAL. I am not one of those anti corporate nuts. It is just that by the time you drive to Costco do you really save that much, no! The same with Wal-Mart. If you do your research you can save a lot of money shopping local and feel good about it.

MARKET UPDATE

I believe that history often repeats itself and if that is true than many experts may be wrong in their opinion as to how long this market will take to recover. In each and every of our economic downturns the rebound was always quicker and stronger than anticipated. This could happen again and there are so many factors that will sway the outcome.

This past week we saw the lowest that the Treasury bond market had ever been and with it a glimpse of record low interest rates. The mortgage bond market did not have as wild of a ride and is another indicator that housing is still a good investment.

Hunt Conrad of Prospect Mortgage noted that “In December of 2008 we had an environment just like today and interest rates did climb over the next six months at a strong rate. We are probably looking at that same scenario right now.”

If interest rates do start to climb it will create some sense of urgency in the housing market by all of the people at the sidelines. It will create more traffic and get more people to make those hard decisions.

We had a jobs report come out that we have been waiting months for that reflects the magic under 400,000 job claims level. We also just saw that consumer spending is up by half a point. Not great and the bulk of that is for increased fuel and food charges but it is up and we will take what we can get at this point

We have record low interest rates with other investments falling apart at best. The housing affordability barometer is also indicating this is a great time to believe in real estate as an investment. This is all good news and at a time when we need it most.

I always feel strange when I point all of this positive stuff out. Being a Realtor and a columnist about real estate creates a tight rope for me to walk on. With that I want to thank all of my contributors that feed me my weekly information.

For the latest information on Sonoma County market trends please click here.

I do have a weekly real estate column every Friday afternnon at Patch.com. Please check it out

Hi Everyone,

It has come to my attention that I am not posting enough here to qualify as a leader in Healdsburg Real estate. In the great words of Pat Paulsen all I can say is picky, picky, picky.

I say that tongue in cheeck because this has been a very busy time in real esate for us. We have well over fifteen great listings and we are doing everything possible to provide superior custome service.

The area that I have been weak in is posting here in this great community. About a year ago I started a weekly real estate column for America On Line. I will start posting those columns here as well.

Here is a sample of last weeks column.

www.Patch.com

This morning record slow job growth reported this morning it proves that this recovery is going to be slower than ever. Nationally there were only 18,000 jobs created. California though had a positive report yesterday. Strong and better than expected jobs reports in California hopefully will keep us on this painfully slow recovery. There have been seven weeks of poor jobs reports coming in and that can be fatiguing at best. So with a good jobs report this morning at 414,000 unemployed and under 400,000 unemployed being the target we will see another dip in interest rates. This should help the stock market a bit but of course bonds will take another hit.

If you are at all getting close to locking in a home purchase loan it is time to speak with your lender NOW. Loan limits are changing to a lower limit for many types of home loans. Although the deadline for this is not for quite a while it will take up to six weeks to process some of these depending on the type. You will definitely need the lead time and if this were a stronger market you could get caught in a surge which would delay and possibly disqualify you.

Remember that USDA rural home loans are still available now but funding will dry up soon. USDA is a great loan for the Healdsburg market area and a product that is often overlooked.

BIG TIP TIME! If you are selling your home in this market ....

•1. Let your Realtor price it. It is fine to be skeptical but, you did hire a person that does this every day and it is a tough market so take their lead but ask questions.

•2. You may need to invest $10,000. to get your place ready for market. It is competitive out there and not a lot of people are getting their properties in top shape for this market.

•3. Be patient. If you do not have an offer in 60 days then it is one of three challenges. Wrong Price, Poor Marketing or Property Condition.

I post my column every Friday the research that it requires has been great at keeping me up to the moment with the latest rules and what the lenders are seeing coming down the pipeline,

www.GreatHealdsburgRealEstate.com www.FineHealdsburgRealEstate www.HealdsburgRealEstate.com

www.MillCreekRoadHomes.com www.WikiupHomes.com