Jim Lee, Knoxville Tennessee Realtor®

That could be because copper theft has reached epidemic proportions in many states including Tennessee.

I personally have been witness to two instances.

One was a house I was showing and when we walked around back, the basement door had been kicked open, the copper water pipes cut loose with the water still on. Not surprisingly water was all over the basement and flowing out the door into the yard.

In my second instance I sold a house in a somewhat remote location. It was a foreclosure so naturally it was vacant. Before the closing thieves again kicked in the door but this time they went up, into the attic and cut all the electrical wiring loose. $8,000 dollars in damages for about 50 bucks worth of scrap copper.

Thankfully my Tennessee Association of Realtors is doing something about it along with homebuilders, law enforcement, and industry representatives.

Very soon state Senate Bill 2400 and House Bill 2344 will hopefully be passed in Tennessee.

It will require:

• Registration of scrap metal dealers
• Persons selling scrap metal must provide a valid photo ID along with a thumbprint.
• Scrap metal dealers will be required to keep records of each transaction including name, license plate number, and vehicle information for each seller of scrap metal
• Require scrap metal dealers to pay with a voucher instead of cash in an effort to create a paper trail and break the link between metal thefts and the illegal drug trade.

This bill has already passed the Tennessee Senate and is heading for the House floor soon where it is expected to pass with little or no opposition.

Home Sales Report Beginning 02/01/2008, Ending 02/29/2008

The monthly, quarterly, and annual greater Knoxville area real estate sales statistics are always available on my website, www.KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com.

Home Sales Report Beginning 01/01/2008, Ending 01/31/2008

Whenever you submit an offer on behalf of a customer or buyer client, have you thought of writing a cover letter to go along with your offer to give the sellers some idea of what your buyer is about, why they want to buy the seller's house, and any other information that might cause the sellers to see the buyers as real people instead of just a couple of names on a piece of paper?

This also works if you're representing a seller and present a counter offer back to a buyer.

I've been doing that in some situations for many years now and usually with very good results.

Writing an appealing cover letter with your offer can help it be accepted especially if there's competition.

Case in point; I wrote an offer this past December for a very nice young lady in her late twenties who is a Knox County schoolteacher and was buying her first home.

I found out the seller was also a single female in the medical profession, had just gotten married, and was selling her house in order to move in with her new husband.

We submitted the following with our offer:

"Dear Mrs. Seller,

Congratulations on your recent marriage, my buyer and I offer our best wishes for you and your new husband's life together.

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to view your home at XXX XXXXXXXXXXX Street.

My buyer is very interested in it but like of a of us these days she is constrained by a budget and her amount of cash on hand.

Megan is a young, single schoolteacher who has been teaching Biology at one of our local high schools for two years now and is very excited to be able to work in a job she loves and one that makes a difference in young people's lives.

She told me when she was viewing your house that this was "the one" for her because "it just felt like I was home."

We hope you will give her offer your most careful consideration and reflection. It would be the high point of Megan's year if you accept her offer and make her dream of owning her own home a reality.

Thank you again for the opportunity to show it."

And with some other offers it's often helpful to include a little "reality check" for sellers living in LaLa land. ;-)

"Dear Sirs,

I have some qualified buyers interested in your property at 12413 XXXXXXXXX XXXXXX in Knoxville, Tennessee.

These buyers have looked at a number of homes for sale in the area but feel this one best suits their needs in terms of space, location, and schools.

However they feel (and I agree) that the property's current price is not reflective of current market conditions in that area especially considering the interior condition which is sadly in need of new carpeting throughout, a new interior and exterior (trim) paint job, and the tile flooring in the kitchen has lots of cracked tiles and needs to be replaced also.

To have a house of this size professionally painted runs around $3.00 per square X 4706 square feet or around $14,000.

Replacing all the carpet and pad with a mid range priced carpet would be in the $8,000 to $12,000 range.

Replacing the kitchen floor tile would run anywhere from $1,500-3,000

This property last sold in May of 1998 for $255,000. IF the property had been maintained and kept up since then and given the normal 3-5% appreciation factor for the area that would make it's present value somewhere in the $295,000-$325,000 range.

Similar sized homes in this neighborhood have sold recently and that gives us an idea of what the market is willing to pay for these homes.

Blah, blah, blah, yatta, yatta, yatta yatta."

An "on target" cover letter can help your buyers hit the bullseye with their offers.

These cover letters are not guaranteed to work every time but they do work a surprising amount of the time.

In the first instance the young schoolteacher got the house with our offer accepted as written and the seller remarked at the closing table that the letter was the difference maker for her to accept our offer instead of the two others she had and even though our offer was the middle priced of the three.

In the last instance the seller's made a reasonable counter offer, my buyer clients accepted it, and were able to buy the house at a greatly reduced price to reflect the deferred maintenance and work it needed.

So what about your offers...........do you include a cover letter to increase your buyer's chances of getting the property?

The long awaited 2007 Sales Report for the greater Knoxville Tennessee area is finally available.

It shows the numbers for the greater Knoxville area were't too shabby at all. Sales volume declined 10.8% overall but average sales prices increased the usual 3-5% coming in a 4.4% for 2007.

Days on market increased 9 days from 83 in 2006 to 92 in 2007.

2008 has already started out pretty strong for January so I look for 2008 to be somewhere between 2006 and 2006.

Stay tuned.