Cindy "in Indy" Marchant Carmel, and Fishers Real Estate

With nearly 800 homes for sale in Fishers, it is important to have a Realtor® who understands the Fishers Real Estate market, knows how to set your home apart from others and communicates with you. Every so often I receive a call from someone who has their home listed with another real estate agent and they find me from this blog and ask me to list their Fishers home. The number one reason they switch from their current real estate agent is communication.

There are a variety of reasons to list you home with this Fishers Realtor that include:

1. A track record in 2009 for selling at 96% of list price and in 59 days.
2. The upfront work I do in staging your home and professionally photographing your home.
3. The tips and tricks I have learned in 10 years of selling real estate; for example how to set your home apart from all the others on Craig's List with ★ symbols before your listing!
4. The background I have in negotiating and conflict resolution makes for a smoother transaction.
5. Communication!

As part of my normal communication, I create a Seller's Report that shows activity, competition, marketing and recommendations.

It gives the seller a snapshot of the activity and important aspects of selling their home in a timely fashion.

I usually like to do this report at least once a month.

Do I sometimes recommend price reductions, absolutely. Typically I ask for them after 11 showings or 21 days, whichever comes first. But, if they see what I am doing in terms of marketing, I think they understand my requests.

One of the latest recommendations I am making is holding an open house during the week, maybe a Thursday night with snacks! I attend conferences and educational seminars to get different ideas that help sell my client's homes. This is one of those ideas.

When you list your Fishers home for sale, you hope it isn't with a Realtor that just puts a sign in the yard, drops it in MIBOR with a picture or two and prays it sells. You want someone who spends time with you and understands why you bought the home and why you are motivated to sell it. You want someone who will give you suggestions on what to do to increase the price or decrease the time on the market. You want someone who gives you professionals to help "sell" your home like stagers and photographers and sometimes painters and handymen. But you aslo want someone who will communicate with you too. Read my references, call me and let's get your Fishers home sold!

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Cindy "in Indy" Marchant - Fishers Real Estate Agent
Keller Williams Realty Indy Metro NE
Fishers IN Real Estate Website
317-290-7775

There are currently 731 homes for resale in Fishers that were built before 1/1/09 and another 53 on the market that were built after 1/1/09.

Of the 53 new homes in Fishers for sale, 12 are condo's and 41 are homes. The majority of the new construction in Fishers are Ryland, Pulte/Centex and Estridge with a few MI, Drees, Beazer and Custom Builders. The average price per square foot of these homes that are at least 3 bedrooms and are residential versus condo is $141.00. A custom build is usually well over $150.00 a square foot.

I have spent the last couple of weeks working with various buyers that want new construction in the Fishers or Carmel area. You might wonder why would you use a Fishers Realtor® if you are building new construction here.

Most builders have employed integrity pricing, meaning they are doing very little negotiations. This is important to you because you want to know that what you paid for your home is close to what the neighbor paid for his. You don't want the Builder to have discounted it for whatever reason; it will just bring the value of your home down. That being said, there was a buyer that I represented and was able to negotiate 6% off his purchase price by providing comparables; so sometimes we can do that for our clients.

But you do want a Fishers Real Estate agent to represent you for the following reasons:

• You will not pay any more to have buyer representation; the builder pays the commission from a marketing fee. It will not change the price you pay for the home whether you use a Real Estate Agent or not so why wouldn't you want someone to represent you.
• One of my clients was torn between two builders, so I ran comps for both neighborhoods so they would know what the price per square foot and the days on market were in each neighborhood. They could be vastly different by neighborhood and that impacts your resale and appreciation.
• The builders do offer incentives and how the incentive is structured can matter to you. For example one builder is giving 3 points. Most people assume that is to buy down the rate. It would take you 30 years to realize the full benefit of that. But what most people don't know is that you can do a 3-2-1 ARM loan or you can have the builder pay your interest for six months or until the 3 points are used up, whichever comes first. That allows you to receive the full benefit in 6 months. For example if you buy a $300,000 home; those three points equals $9,000 off your payments in the first six months!

Read the rest of the article at MyFishers Blog!

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Cindy "in Indy" Marchant - Fishers Real Estate Agent
Keller Williams Realty Indy Metro NE
Fishers IN Real Estate Website
317-290-7775

Looking at the Fishers homes for sale currently, there are 790. Of those, 45 of them were listed prior to January 1 of 2009 and another 74 were listed before March 31st! That is over 15% of the current listings. Why are they still there?

Here are 5 items to consider when selling your Fishers house:

1. Be sure the buyer is qualified. It used to be you could just breathe and be approved for a loan. This has all changed and you now need to almost give your first born! Be sure you know the difference between a pre approval and a pre qualification letter. Your Realtor® should! For my seller clients, I will typically call the buyers lender and just check in and let them know my email and phone number if they have questions and then ask if there is anything unusual or that I should know about the buyer they are representing.
2. Consider how long your property has been on the market. I love my home and the work and sweat equity I have put into it and I'm sure you love your home too! But the reality is if you have had 11 showings or have been on the market for 21 days; you should be reducing price about 3% each time. While the Realtor makes a recommendation and the seller ultimately decides what the home should be listed for, it is in fact the buyer that will decide what it will sell for.
3. Where can you compromise? If your first choice isn't price, can you give a paint allowance, pay closing costs, leave your appliances. Try to find a win-win and take every offer seriously.
4. If your home is vacant, consider staging the home. A consultation from my stagers ranges in the $120 price point. They give you a full report of what needs to be done and what their staging would cost. You cannot underestimate the value of staging! It has been shown that 94.6% of ASP staged homes sell in 35 days or less!
5. Beware of the Appraisal! Every year it seems an issue or two come into play consistently; this is the year of appraisals. I could write an entire post on appraisals, oh wait...I have! It is similar to #2; we all value our homes but once the buyer values the home, the appraiser has to validate that. Even buyers are over valuing the homes these days according to appraisers!

As a bonus this post; here are two questions you should ask the real estate agent you are considering to sell your Fishers home:

1. How long is it taking you "on average" to sell the homes you list?
2. What is the sale price you are getting compared to the list price?

If you were to ask this Fishers Realtor; the answers would be 1) 59 days and 2) 96% and those are hard to beat! If you are curious about the value of your Fishers home, ask me! I'm here to help navigate the process for you.

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Cindy "in Indy" Marchant - Fishers Real Estate Agent
Keller Williams Realty Indy Metro NE
Fishers IN Real Estate Website
317-290-7775

There are currently 846 homes for sale in Carmel Indiana and 144 additional homes that are under contract (pended). The graph below shows 122 homes sold in August compared with 130 in August 2008, so very close with the activity of a year ago.

The neighborhoods with the most sold in August were Brookshire, Plum Creek and Shelborne Greene. From the graph we can see that August actually is the closest to its counterpart in 2008; so maybe that is good news!

The highest priced home in Carmel that sold was for $1,255,000 in Bridlebourne and it was only on the market 109 days. The Indianapolis Business Journal had an article two weeks ago that said million dollar homes weren't selling; this one must have been priced well and in great condition. There was one other home that sold over a million; it was in Windsor Grove and sold for $1,100,000 and on the market for 222 days.

There were six homes that sold for less than $100,000. It is very hard to find a home in Carmel for sale that is less than $100,000. Most of these are condo's. Buyers in this price range might have more options is they searched in Fishers or Noblesville.

There were only 12 distressed properties compared with 8 a year ago; there just aren't quite as many in Carmel. I did happen to see one this weekend that is a great deal in Bellewood. If you have questions about homes for sale in Carmel or what your home might be worth, please contact your Carmel Realtor and I'll get to work for you!

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Cindy "in Indy" Marchant - Carmel Real Estate Agent
Keller Williams Realty Indy Metro NE
Carmel IN Real Estate Website
317-290-7775

There are currently 790 homes for sale in Fishers and there are 204 pended (sales contract is in place) but what a story we have on homes in Fishers that sold in August! The graph below shows the trend from January through August for sold Fishers Real Estate. I think using the graph is a great way to see a bigger picture, than just writing about the month of August.

The numbers have been consistently close through June and then we saw a 14% decline in July and we are seeing a 31% decline in August! Our hypothesis in July was that perhaps the influx of first time home buyers was beginning to decrease as most were already in the market. I think that this is more evidence to support that hypothesis. There were 139 homes that sold in Fishers versus 201 a year ago in August.

I did consider whether the number of pends was unusually high and by looking at the pends by date; this could be an explanation. Of the 204 homes for sale in Fishers that have a contract; 102 of those pended in August. I know "getting to the closing table" is much harder than it used to be; so timing may be a factor. There were new lending regulations that came out at the end of July requiring better disclosures and longer time tables.

Of course the highest price home in Fishers that sold was for $1.1 million and it was Marcus Schrenker's home in Geist. Most of the lowest priced homes that sold were the condo's at Cedar Cove that have the traffic of 96th and Allisonville to contend with. Sunblest, Sweet Briar and Woodberry had the most homes for sale in Fishers that sold.

The number of distressed homes continues to decline from the 2008 levels signifying the run on bargains may be approaching a balanced level. For the third month in a row, the number of homes for sale in Fishers that are distressed is less than the number in 2008. There were only 14 homes in August 2009 that were designated as distressed.

Our team continues to help many people understand the difference between foreclosing on a home and selling short. We have a Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) or Short Sale Realtor® on our team, her name is Susan Timmerman. It is worth talking to her or referring someone you know in a negative equity position to Susan to discuss the differences between foreclosures and selling short.

If you are thinking about having your home in Fishers for sale; you need to choose your Realtor® wisely. The best two questions to ask a Realtor are:

1. How long does it usually take you to sell a home; known as days on market?
2. What is the percentage you usually get compared to list price for a sales price?

The Marchant Team for 2009 statistics are 59 days on the market meaning we sell your homes in less than two months and our average sale price to list price is 96%. If you have a home listed at $200,000; you can expect the Marchant Team to get you $192,000 as the sales price. There are very few Realtors in Fishers that can compete with those numbers. If you want the best selling or buying experience, hire the best Realtor.

Search homes for sale in Fishers by Neighborhood

Other Northside Blogs (Carmel, Noblesville, and Geist)

Cindy "in Indy" Marchant - Fishers Real Estate Agent
Keller Williams Realty Indy Metro NE
Fishers IN Real Estate Website
317-290-7775