Luisa Rodriguez

I had clients not too long ago that wanted to find a home in Vienna, VA. After renting there for a year they fell in love with this little town which is right off the end of the Metro's Orange Line (Vienna/ Fairfax/GMU). They knew exactly what they wanted in a home: rambler with addition or split level, flat yard, within walking distance from Maple Ave, etc. However, one of the most important features is that the home had to be located within one of four school districts which they had also ranked. They had done their due diligence on the schools and they wanted their little girls to attend one of the following: Louis Archer, Cunningham Park, Flint Hill, and Vienna Elementary Schools.

The difficulty for a Realtor to find a school within a school district is that many listing agents do not provide that information. There is a good reason why some may not include it: they don't want to be held liable if the information is wrong or if it changes during the time period the house is listed so many times they will just write "call the school district." I knew that setting up a search within the MLS based on the fields for school information would result in incomplete data. On the other hand, setting up a search for all of Vienna or a large portion of Vienna would include too many homes that were not in one of those four school districts. I certainly wouldn't want my clients to call the district for every home that turned up in a search (and for liability purposes, we Realtors also shy away from calling the school districts ourselves). So what did I do?

I put my artskills to good use. I went to the county website and looked up the school districts map for each of my client's preferred schools. MLS allows us to do a map search and basically draw out an area with the mouse if we choose to. Carefully, I copied the school district map onto the MLS map using my mouse, purposefully making the boundaries on my map a little bigger than the county map. It was painstainkingly slow --but the work was definitely worth it (and although my clients may not have known exactly how I was able to do it, I know they appreciated it). It did make me wonder why the school districts can't be drawn out in simple squares and rectangles, instead they have so many twists and turns which made the process a little more difficult (but I am not complaining, I love this job :o)).

Once each map was successfully copied, I saved the search within each map including the other criteria. I explained to my clients that the results would not be perfect and approximately 10% of the results would not be in the desired district so I recommended that they double check with the school district by either calling or at least looking up the address on the county website. However, doing all the work on the front end, would drastically reduce the number of properties to worry about. All in all, I think we only visited about 4 houses before they found the one--because we were able to eliminate so many others beforehand. And with two small children, looking at dozens and dozens of properties was definitely not in their game plan.

Hace poco me llamo mi cliente enojadisimo porque la diseniadora escogio materiales para su casa and Alexandria, VA que mi cliente encontro increiblemente horrible. Me dijo en el telefono, "Luisa la realidad es que no creo que voy a poder vender esta casa con banios tan feos." Me pidio que fuera a la propiedad y mirara los materiales y le diera ideas to como arreglar ese error.

Como agente de bienes y raices (o realto), mi trabajo es de atraer la mayor parte de compradores. Por eso, cuando doy sugerencias de cambios que se deberian hacer en la casa antes de venderla, siempre son sugerencias que le gustaria a la mayoria de las personas. Uno tiene que tener mucho cuidado, porque lo que le guste a una persona, no le va a gustar a otra. Mayoria de los vendedores tienen sus gustos muy particulares o tienen su casa arreglada para ser practico. POr ejemplo yo tengo un mueble de juguetes que cubre la chimenea. La realidad es que ese mueble me sirve mucho mas para guardar los juguetes de mi hija y la chimenea solo la hemos usados unas 10 veces los tres anios que hemos estado alli. Pero si estaria vendiendo mi casa, el muebe lo tendria que mover, guardar, o lo que sea, pero los compradores quieren ver la chimenea.

Entonces, cuando llegue a la casa de Alexandria de mi cliente, me di cuenta que realmente los materiales que se habian escogido para el banio no eran feos. No era lo optimo para vender la casa, pero no eran feos. Mi cliente tiene sus gustos, y la diseniadora uso un disenio muy contemporario. Para atraer la mayor parte de los compradores ni puede ser muy contemporario ni muy antiguo. Las buenas noticias para mi cliente, es que solo va a tener que cambiar unas cositas para reducir la vista contemporaria.

Y la realidad es que en general muchos de los vendedores solo tienen que hacer pocos cambios para preparar la casa para la venta. Lo importante es pensar como comprador y trabajar con su agente para que le den ideas de que es lo que la mayoria de los compradores quieren ver.

Si quiere vender su casa, por favor llameme o escribame un email. Servicio al cliente es lo principal de mi equipo.

Yo soy un Realtor que trabaja con un inversionista dedicado a la compra y remodelacion de propdiedades en Virginia en areas como Woodbridge y Alexandria. El me da menos de dos semanas para obtener ofertas para sus propiedades que pone denuevo al mercado. Parte de poder obtener ofertas en poco tiempo es presentar un buen producto. Para preparar una casa para venta a veces es importante hacer cambios para atraer a la mayor cantidad de compradores. A veces esos cambios requiren un professional, pero muchas veces son cambios que se pueden hacer con un poco de imaginacion y obra de mano.

Un inversionista siempre esta tratando de reducir sus costos de la remodelacion. Su meta es remodelar un cuarto sin tener que remplasar mucho, especialmente cuando no es necesario. Mi inversionista entonces depende en mi para que le de las ideas necesarias para remodelar al minimo costo. Por ejemplo, remplasando gabinetes de cocina puede costar en los miles de dolares, pero con un poco de pintura uno puede tener un cocina increible. Mire la foto de la cocina de antes y despues de esta remodelacion. La cocina original no se miraba muy mal y mi cliente penso dejarlo asi, y solo agregar los aparatos. Yo surgeri que pintara los gabinetes negros. El resultado fue una cocina mucho mejor que la original. Las paredes se pintaron con un color neutral, un nuevo piso de vinyl se agrego--y todo a una fraccion del precio. En este mercado, estos cambios funcionaron muy bien y la cocina fue lo que mas le gusto a los compradores.

Unas de las cosas mas importantes es la jardineria de la casa. Esa es una de la primeras impresiones para los compradores y hasta las casas mas feas se pueden mejorar radicalmente con un lindo jardin. La foto de la casa abajo en Woodbridge, VA antes y despues demuestra ese cambio radical. En adicion a la jardineria limpiaron el siding, pintaron las persianas, y quitaron la puerta de vidro para enfocar la atencion en la puerta principal. Fue una transformacion tremenda y la mayoria de los cambios son cosas que pueden hacer los mismos duenios con un poco de mano de obra.

El proposito de este blog es no dar la idea que es facil ser inversionista--porque muchas veces no lo es. El proposito es de enseniarles a los duenios que para vender su casas hay cosas facil que se pueden hacer para radicalmente transformar su propiedad y atraer la mayor parte de los compradores. Invertiendo un poco de dinero lograran vender la casa rapida y por el maximo precio. Si les interesaria tener una evaluacion gratis para vender su casa, por favor llamenme o esribanme un e-mail.

I am a Realtor for an investor who flips houses in Northern Virginia in areas such as Woodbridge and Alexandria. I am under the gun to get offers for his property in less than two weeks. And thankfully, I have been able to get those offers in the required time frame (and typically we get multiple offers in days and for well beyond the list price). Sometimes the properties that my investor buys to flip require an incredible amount of work that only a licensed contractor is able to do. But many times, you can update a home with very few changes that most people can do with a little bit of sweat equity.

An investor is always trying to keep his costs down so his goal is to update a room without replacing too much, especially when it is not necessary. My investor does rely on my input for ways to update without having to gut the entire room. Replacing kitchen cabinets can run in the thousands of dollars. But with a little bit of paint and a some new hardware, you can have a spectacular new kitchen. Look at the before and after picture of the one below. The original kitchen didn't look too bad and my client initially thought of just keeping the cabinets as is and adding the appliances. I suggested he paint the kitchen cabinets black and add silver colored hardware at which he was originally very skeptical, but he took my advice. The result was a kitchen that went from being okay to a kitchen that made you say "WOW" when you walked in. The wall paper was also removed and the walls were painted with a neutral color. The new floor has an appearance of ceramic tile but it is actually a vinyl floor that costs a fraction of the price. For this particular market, it worked and it was still possible to have a beautiful kitchen at a fraction of the price.

Having great curb appeal is a must if you are trying to sell a home. And some of the most dreary homes can be greatly improved with nice landscaping. Take the before and after picture of the home below that we recently sold in Woodbridge, VA. The siding was cleaned, the shutters were re-painted along with the steps, the awful storm door was removed and most importantly the front yard was professionally landscaped. And although a professional landscaper can be very expensive, there is nothing in this front yard that can't be done by a homeowner that is willing to put a little bit of sweat equity. The difference in the two pictures below is striking and it is the difference between a home buyer calling his Realtor and saying, "I want to see this house" and just clicking onto the next property.

The purpose of this blog is not to make it seem that flipping a property is simple--because a lot of times it is not. The purpose is to show current home owners that want to sell their home that there are things that they can do to give them the "WOW" factor they need to sell their home quickly and for top dollar. The return on that small investment will be worth it. If you are interested in a free evaluation on your home's "sellability", please call or email me.

For a month now, I have been house hunting almost every other day with a lovely family of four. They are pre-approved for an FHA loan up to 140K. They are not very picky, they are looking for something within their means and the prices they are offering are reasonable for the neighborhoods. However, after about 4 or 5 offers (I lost count), we have yet to get an offer accepted. I just saw this morning that a property where we put an offer, the bank accepted a lower offer by 25K because it was a cash offer. The frustration!!!

At this point, I have put an ad on craigslist, I have searched through FSBOs, I have emailed my entire office--whatever it takes to try to find them a home. So this is my next step--I am putting their story on active rain in case there is an agent out there that has a property that they are about to put on the market, or maybe have a short sale where the buyers have walked away and need a replacement contract. Below is their self description--anything in parenthesis are my comments.

"We are first time home buyer with two young boys ages 10 and 15 months (adorable, adorable boys). We are extremely excited about buying a home because with the new addition to our family we have quite naturally out grown our two bedroom apartment. Jermaine Sr. who is the coach of Jermaine's Jr. basketball teams is really excited about the two of them spending quality time playing basketball in the backyard (and they are not looking for a big back yard--a townhome is fine with a little area to play). The youngest child who is full of energy is looking forward to more space to run around. We have promised both boys a puppy once we move for being good sports about the whole process and making a lot of sacrifices (Jermaine Jr has missed several practices in order to go view the homes)."

So this is what they are looking for. The need at least a 3bd, 1.5 bath townhome. The home needs to pass an FHA inspection and cannot have any evidence of mold. Jermaine Jr is highly allergic. The don't want anything south of Woodbridge because they work in Arlington, VA. Their preferred neighborhoods in Woodbridge are Georgetown Park, Towns of Fore, Rippon Landing, most anything off of Cardinal, most anything in Lake Ridge. They are willing to consider other areas but they will do their due diligence to make sure it is a safe area--because they have small kids.

If you have a house for them: contact me directly at 240-377-7104 or email me at luisarodriguez@mris.com