Dale McGeehon Short Sales, Buyer's Agent, Investor

Four Tips to Sell Your Bethesda Home Quickly

Selling your home in Bethesda can be a daunting task because you may not know what buyers want these days. The following are four tips on how to make your home look the best for – and sell the fastest to – picky buyers.

Price Your Home in Bethesda Realistically

Buyers are going to look at the price of your home before anything else. You may have renovated your kitchen and bathrooms, but most buyers are not going to spend the time to tour your house if it is over priced. Many sellers have lived in their home for 20 years or more and saw their home value hit statospheric heights a few years ago. It may be tough to realize, but those prices are no longer realistic. Trying to get a price that reflects a 2006 market instead of a 2012 market is a sure-fire way to keep your house on the market for a long time.

Listen to an Agent Who Knows Your Neighborhood

Find an agent who has helped other buyers and sellers in your neighborhood. That agent will know what buyers want and what price they will pay for your house. Listen to the suggestions the agent makes for you house. Do you need to get rid of clutter? Would landscaping increase the curb appeal? What about painting and new appliances? (see below) Having someone with experience will help you get buyers streaming to your view your house quickly and consistently, and will lead to a respectable offer faster.

Make the House as Attractive As Possible

Does the house have good curb appeal? Will buyers pull up to the house and be impressed and excited to see inside? Is it landscaped well? Once inside, buyers will like a home free of clutter, bright and cheerful.

It’s true that kitchens and bathrooms make or break a house so keep that in mind when you start to prepare the house for the market. Upgrades in those rooms are usually a good bet to increase interest in the house.

Be Willing to Offer Seller Subsidies

Buyers have the power position these days. Unless their agents know a house has multiple offers, buyers will usually offer less that what you are asking, and they will ask for closing help. Three percent is the standard in Bethesda. If you are willing to pay for some, or all, of the buyers’ costs, you’ll increase your chances of getting the house sold.

If you would like to discuss what your house is worth and hear some suggestions as to how your house can get the best price and the fastest offer, please get in touch with me for a free consultation.

Luxury Homes Available at Great Price in Potomac, Rockville, Maryland

Searching for a luxury home in Potomac or Rockville, Maryland, at a great price?

You can find a luxury home at bargain prices if you know how to buy it right. Houses like those pictured here are available in Gaithersburg, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Ellicott City, and elsewhere in Montgomery and Howard counties, Maryland.

Even owners of luxury homes fall on hard times, and their houses go to foreclosure or they have to be sold as short sales. Banks, holding the mortgages on these homes, are losing more money each month on these luxury homes than on more modest houses. Therefore, banks are much more willing to drop the prices to get them sold as quickly as possible.

This is where buyers who have the means to purchase luxury homes can find a good deal.

We have a list of potential properties that may be the luxury home you are looking for. If you want to see a list of these homes, contact me here. Just say that you want to find a luxury home in Potomac, Rockville, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Silver Spring or Gaithersburg, and I'll search for you. Please let me know, too, the number of beds and baths that you want. Please make sure that you let me know how I can reach you.

There are more short sales on the market these days than foreclosures. With short sales (when the bank will accept less money than what is owed on the mortgage), there may be a wait of three or four months before your offer is accepted by the bank. But that is not true in all cases. Sometimes banks have a good idea of what they want to accept. It just takes an offer to trigger their response. And, more interestingly, banks are showing more flexibility in price with short sales than foreclosures.

With foreclosures, the property has already gone to auction and there were no buyers, and thus ownership reverts to the bank. So when the bank puts the property back on the market, it has already done an appraisal and knows what it will accept in a price. You may get a response back on your offer much faster with foreclosures -- sometimes within a day -- but you may not get the price you want. But again you just might. It depends on the bank and how much it needs to get rid of the property.

We have the professionals in place, in either case, to give you the best chance to get the bank to accept your offer. You never know whether the bank will accept a low offer, but with luxury homes, it is certainly worth a try, and it happens more often than you might think.

You can search for luxury foreclosed and short-short homes here. Please let me know if you want me to help you with the process of buying a luxury home at a great price.

Search for Houses in Rockville, Maryland

If you are considering buying a house in Rockville, Maryland, but don't know where to start, consider going here.

Just plug in your price range and the number of beds and baths that you want, and the search will pull up all the properties currently for sale that meet those criteria.

Good tip: I recommend that before you start searching, though, know how much you can afford. A good lender will be able to tell you whether you are qualified to get a loan to buy a house and how much you can spend, how much you will need to put down and what your interest rate will be.

Getting this "pre-approval" is really the first step you need to take. Otherwise, you are wasting your time because if you can't get a loan, then you can't buy a house. Unless you can pay cash, of course.

Once your lender knows how much you can afford, then you can search by a price range. This will help you and your realtor work efficiently to find your next home.

If you don't have a lender, I can recommend one. These lenders specialize in helping people find houses in Rockville, Maryland.

If you have any further questions about how to buy a house, please contact me.

Dale McGeehon

Realtyforce, Inc.

Cash Flow Investment Opportunities in Capitol Heights, Maryland

Investors who want to get good cash flow can find some great opportunities in Capitol Heights, Maryland.

Housing prices, like in many other parts of the country, have declined there, but rents have remained high. It is very common to see rent-ready three- and four-bedroom single families there priced around $100,000. Rents are in the $1500 to $1750 range.

What would be a good strategy to buy investment properties like this?

To get a mortgage, investors need a great credit score, which is difficult to have as an investor, given the debt load they carry when they own many rentals. And even then, investors often must put 25 percent down to buy a new property.

Of course, investors could pay cash, but that is not necessary with a new seller financing program.

In ths program, cash investors will purchase the target property for the rental investor. Then the investors will provide seller financing to the rental investor. Usually, the rental investor needs to pay about 10 percent down to have the cash investor provide the financing. Interest rates are around 8 percent on a three-year term. To learn more about this program, click here.

The math on investment opportunities in Capitol Heights would work this way: if the target property's price is $100,000, the cash investor would finance $90,000 after the rental investor paid $10,000 down. At 8 percent, that is a $660/month payment.

Property taxes on these properties run high, around $3,500, but they have been assessed at more than $200,000. A service I use can reduce the tax assessment to the current value of $100,000, thereby cutting the property taxes in half, to about $145/month. Throw in insurance at, say, $80 per month and you are looking at total expenses of about $885. If you get $1600 a month in rent, you have cash flow of $715, or $8,580 per year.

If the investors had $100,000 in the bank, earning 2 percent, they would earn $2,000 per year. With this program, they could buy 10 such properties with that same amount of money and earn $85,800 per year.

Oh, and did I mention that the cash investors don't run a credit check, just a background check? So the number of properties that the rental investors could buy is determined only by how much cash they have.

If investors want to learn more about this program, please call, email or contact me at my Web site. They can also search for properties at this Web site. Any property you find there can be purchased through this program.

Buy a House in Silver Spring, Maryland, with Seller Financing

Seller financing is becoming the wave of the future for buying and investing in real estate. Because lenders are requiring almost-perfect credit scores and big down payments, many buyers are not able to get a mortgage.

However, with seller financing, these same buyers can buy a house with fewer hassles, if they have a decent down payment, roughly 10 percent or more. I have access to a program in which investors will pay cash for properties that these buyers want to own and then those investors will, in turn, provide seller financing for these buyers.

In these cases, the buyer will not have to go through the rigorous process of qualifying for a mortgage. They won't have to put 20 percent down, as is required in many cases. Instead, the buyers can work with me to find a house to their liking. Then the investors will purchase the house and set up a note so the buyer can take title under seller financing.

Usually, the interest rate is 8 percent on a three-year term. At the end of the term, or at any point during the term, the buyer should have improved his or her credit report so that he or she can refinance the note to a regular 15- or 30-year term, probably at a lower interest rate.

This program is perfect for buyers who do have good income and some savings but don't have a high enough credit score to get a house that they'd prefer to have, such as one that is large enough for their family or is in the neighborhood they want. (There's no credit check with this program, just a background/criminal check.) They wouldn't have to settle on something cheaper or smaller or not where they want to live, or rent for longer than they'd like.

Instead, they have their pick of any house on the market that they like. There's no sense in delaying getting the home buyers really want, when they can have it much easier through this program.

This program can work well for investors looking for additional rental properties, and who can't take on additional mortgages or whose credit lines are depleted.

If you are interested in learning more about this program, please get in touch with me by phone, email or you can contact me through my Web site. Also, you can search for homes just like a realtor can at this Web site.