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Joe Manausa - Tallahassee Real Estate

West Point General Speaks At FSU Alumni Hall

 The West Point Society of Tallahassee was honored by the presence of Major General Bernard (Burn) Loeffke who served as the Distinguished Guest Speaker at their annual United States Military Academy Founder's Day celebration.

General Loeffke gave a very inspirational talk reminding everybody that the true soldier-scholar seeks peace. He advised the Cadets (and others) in the audience to learn a foreign language and to use this as a means to create and stengthen relationships around the world. His simple advice: "Learn to heal, learn to sing songs in their language, and make them laugh." I am certain those who heard his message will remember it for a long time.

Also in attendance were three West Point Cadets, including Tallahassee's own Zach Joanos. Zach was a star guard at Godby High School and now plays football for the Army team. Zach's brother Michael, a Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, was also visiting before heading to combat duty in his C-17 assignment.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe by Email.

Joe Manausa is the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached by clicking on the comments button below, via e-mail through his company website at www.manausa.com, or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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What Are The Best Charts And Graphs To "Show" The Market

Many of our readers like to see information, charts and graphs about the Tallahassee real estate market. We have been blogging nearly daily between our 3 blog sites.

We have decided that we will dedicate a page in our site to post daily (M-F) information about the changes in the inventory in the Tallahassee real estate market. We will update information on:

  • New homes for sale in Tallahassee

  • Homes back on the market in Tallahassee

  • Homes that have gone under contract in Tallahassee

  • Home that have failed to sell in Tallahassee

The page that will host the continually updated information on homes in Tallahassee will be located on the Tallahassee Real Estate Market Update page on www.manausa.com.

Now, here is the interesting part. We can design this page to provide just about any recurring information that readers would like to see, leaving me to ask for you to provide requests using the “comments” section below.

Question: What information, chart, graph or analysis would make Tallahassee Real Estate Market Update worth coming back to time and time again?

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe by Email.

Joe Manausa is the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached by clicking on the comments button below, via e-mail through his company website at www.manausa.com, or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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Powerful New Real Estate Website

We have had great feedback from our readers in the Tallahassee real estate market since launching our new Tallahassee Real Estate Web Site on December 19, 2007. Over the past year, we had been conducting surveys, soliciting feedback, and speaking to customers about what they wanted in real estate website in Tallahassee.

Some of the key features that we have launched include:

We hope that you will find our Tallahassee Real Estate Web Site easy to use and helpful in all of your Tallahassee real estate needs. We have designed the site to be user-friendly and highly interactive, so please give us the feedback that we need to continue to make this site your One-Stop-Shop for Tallahassee Real Estate.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe by Email.

Joe Manausa is the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached by clicking on the comments button below, via e-mail through his company website at www.manausa.com, or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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Real Estate - Price Or Interest Rate....What Matters More to You?

was asked by a reader why I felt so strongly about now being the right time to buy a home in Tallahassee. My response is a bit long-winded, but simple to understand.

Unless you are one of the fortunate few who can buy a home in Tallahassee without borrowing money, the cost of the money that you borrow is one of the greatest costs that you pay. In order to see this better, I created a simple scenario. Let’s assume that you want to buy a home in Tallahassee for $250,000. Let’s say you sell your previous home and use the proceeds of $50,000 as your down payment, thus financing $200,000 in the new home. Your monthly payment (principal and interest), would be as seen in the table below (payment changes for different interest rate):

Buy A Home In Tallahassee

In this example, we can buy a $250,000 home with a monthly payment of $1,136.

So why is now such an important time to buy? Because rates are going to go back up. In the early 1980s, we saw rates at 20%! So what does this mean to a family wanting to buy a home in Tallahassee? Let’s take a look at the purchasing power of that $1,136 per month at different rates. Today, it buys a house of $250,000. When rates go up to 9%, that same payment will only buy a $176,400 house!

So, even if you think home values might come down (even as much as 20%), your monthly cost of ownership is cheaper now than it would be. I do not believe that properties in this price range will come down 20%, but even if it were true, and you plan on living in the home for more than five years, you will save money by buying now.

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe by Email.

Joe Manausa is the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached by clicking on the comments button below, via e-mail through his company website at www.manausa.com, or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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Great Real Estate Inventory Form Format - Northeast Tallahassee Florida

In yesterday’s blog about the Tallahassee real estate market, we published our numerical report on how each area of Leon County was doing. This report is particularly useful to Tallahassee real estate agents in helping to determine the competition for somebody wanting to sell a home in Tallahassee.

One of the first bits of feedback we received was “how do I use this” and “can you make this into a graph,” so we decided to use this opportunity to do both. Today’s Tallahassee Real Estate Blog will use the Northeast Quadrant of the Tallahassee real estate market to explain how to use this report. If you would like to download the free Tallahassee Real Estate Market Report so that you can use it as we go along, just click the link and print the form.

The picture below represents the Northeast Section of Leon County. The price ranges are featured on the left, and then 9 columns with data fall to the right of each price range. Those 9 columns are actually three sets of three columns. The first set of three are homes for sale in Northeast Tallahassee (All, New Construction, Resales), the second set of three columns are homes that sold in Northeast Tallahassee in the past twelve months, and the final column displays the amount of homes for sale in Northeast Tallahassee (measured in ‘months’ of supply).

Northeast Section of Leon County Florida

So, to use this information, let us assume you want to sell a home in Northeast Tallahassee worth somewhere between $200,000 and $250,000 (see the red circles in the picture above). This report tells you that you have 205 competitors, of which 168 are resales just like yours. We can see that there is 5.9 months of supply of homes in your price range. 385 homes sold in this price range last year, so the current trend is about 32 homes per month are selling. I would make sure that this home was positioned as one of the best 32 in this price range in order to accomplish a quicker sale.

Finally, we were asked to turn our numbers into a “Picture.” The graph below makes the numbers come alive. The red bars are homes that sold in Northeast Tallahassee over the past twelve months, while the blue bars are the current homes for sale in Northeast Tallahassee. The yellow bars are months of supply. The $200,000 - $250,000 price range looks the way we like to see a healthy, balanced market. As prices go higher, the over-supply of homes becomes more apparent.

Graph of Tallahassee Real Estate

If you like this Article then please subscribe to my full RSS feed. You will be able to stay informed about the happenings in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market. You can also subscribe by Email.

Joe Manausa is the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached by clicking on the comments button below, via e-mail through his company website at www.manausa.com, or by calling (850) 386-2001.

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