Thomas Reid

I moved to the Westside of Binghamton, NY

About 4 years ago my wife and I decided to move from the hustle and bustle of NYC to a beautiful place in Upstate NY. I have to be honest and tell you that we did not do a lot of research on the area. We originally were going to buy student rentals and multi-family houses to help supplement our income to live in the high prices of NYC. There were two main reasons we were looking to stay in NYC... One of them was family and the second one was my job at the time. I was a NYC Police Officer. After being injured on the job and forced into retirement that left only one reason... and they could drive if they wanted to visit. Close enough for my wife and I to drive for a free meal but far enough away that they won't show up unannounced.

Now for some facts about my new neighborhood that I call home. It is the place where Rod Serling grew up. He even filmed one of his movies, "Walking Distance" in the park. He made the bandstand famous.

Not long after we moved here we started to realize what a fantastic place we have chosen to live. There is a lot of history in Binghamton and a lot of things to do. It is only a 3 hour ride from NYC and sits right near some of the most beautiful lakes in the state, The Finger Lakes.

Binghamton is also home to the Binghamton Mets. They are the AA affiliate of the NY Mets. Kind of ironic how I grew up a stones throw away from Shea Stadium and now I live by their AA ball club...

I would also like to share something I experienced my first day as a home owner in this great town. My wife and I (with some help from friends and family) packed out truck and trailer in NYC with all of our stuff. It took us over 5 hours to load the truck. Every trip down to the truck meant that we had to lock everything back up while we went to bring down more furniture. Upon arriving with our stuff to our new home we were greeted by our neighbors who were waiting for us. We have no idea how they knew we were coming but they all came out to help us load everything into the house. This was great seeing as how only one person could take the ride with me. We were completely unpacked in about 45 minutes with no damage to anything. That was when I knew we had made the right decision.

If you would like more information on the real estate in this great City that I live in please visit... EXIT with Tommy

I have been asked to do an iPhone class

I have been asked by the Greater Binghamton Association of REALTORS® to do a class on the iPhone. This is not the first class I have been asked to do. A couple of months ago I was asked to do a class on “safety”. I think I was pretty well qualified being a Retired NYC Police Officer. That actually went pretty well. I had a lot of interest and a lot of questions. I was able to give them some information that they never knew was legal in the State of New York.

Our Association has started what we call “Strengthen your Core classes”. All classes are given by volunteers on different subjects that are requested by our members. The classes are given in groups of three and each class is 30 minutes with a 15 minute break in between each class. Sometimes they are held during the day and sometimes they are held at night. All the classes are free to REALTOR® members and all of the instructors are volunteers.

Now, here is my dilemma... I am having trouble fitting everything into a 30 minute class. There is so much technology and so many apps available for the real estate industry it is hard to try and fit them all in 30 minutes. I am searching through all of the apps on my phone and putting them into categories, Personal, Business, games, etc... I am probably going to give them a printout of all of the apps that I think are relevant and then just take questions. Anybody have any other suggestions ?

www.EXITwithTommy.com

Is a good Walk Score important to you ?

With the fluctuation of gas prices recently I was wondering how important walking to different things was to people who are looking to buy a new home. I grew up in NYC where walking was a way of life. If you couldn’t walk to a certain place then there was always public transportation.


Living in the Greater Binghamton, NY area things are a lot different. There is no huge public transportation system and things are a little more spread out. There are plenty of places up here that you can’t walk to, you need to have a car in order to go grocery shopping.

When we moved here I wasn’t selling real estate. The one request my wife made to our buyers agent was that the neighborhood had to have sidewalks. He kinda looked at us like we had 12 heads. My wife wanted to be able to take a walk without having to walk in the street. That was when we found the Westside of Binghamton, NY. It truly reminds us of where we grew up. Plenty of older looking colonial houses, great neighbors & people walking their dogs after work.

I never knew how truly important it was to us to be able to do things like that. We have walked to the store on numerous occassions. We have dropped our cars off for service and walked back home. And today, after dinner we walked to the local CVS. It is truly amazing the things you take for granted when you realize they are not here... Enjoy the walking !!

Walk score for where I live

What is your Walk Score ?

Binghamton Real Estate

As I sit here on the night before another Open House on my listing which was previously a FSBO, I am contemplating releasing him from his listing contract. I know what some people are saying, "Why would you do that ?" Well, here is the story...

I visited the FSBO's Open House back in December 2009. I visited the house with the intention on previewing it for any future buyers that I might have had. Once inside the house I could tell right away that he was way over priced. In my opinion it was approximately $45,000 over priced. Now this is a huge amount of money in my market where the average sales price is $110,000 (SearchBinghamtonMLS).The seller was asking $159,000.

I did not solicit him for the listing but did offer my advice if he wanted it. He asked me what i had thought about the price and the house. I told him that I would need to do my homework and would love to make an appointment to come back and speak to him. He asked me for my marketing presentation and I, of course, told him that I would be happy to show it to him.

After doing some comps for the area I figured he should be priced somewhere between $105,000 - $109,000. We all know that we don't hold crystal balls and if we did we wouldn't be selling real estate. He was very impressed with me and my company's DigitalMarketing Strategy (Patting myself on the back) and decided to list with me.

He wanted to start the list price at $118,000 and I agreed with the understanding that we would look at the activity and adjust it accordingly. After one week I suggested he lower the price, my suggestion to him was to lower it to $109,900 knowing his situation and that he really wanted to sell it. He refused and lowered it to $114,000. After 45 days on the market we received an offer. I don't want to disclose the exact amount but after some counter-offers it was very near what I had suggested but not near the amount that he wanted. He still would have made money from the price at which he purchased it but was concerned because of the money he has layed out to help the family member cover the mortgage and other expenses. He is trying to recoup that money.

After this Open House I think I will tell him he has 2 options at this point... he can either rent it or drastically reduce the price to get it sold.