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BallenIsles, Mirasol, Old Marsh, PGA Nat Marc Blasi

How to Pick a Palm Beach Gardens Real Estate Agent - 101

OK, you and your family need a Real Estate Agent.

You certainly want to find the best person for the job.

There are many things to consider, but the most important one is to select a person that knows about the area that you're interested in.

To put it bluntly:

Does your potential Agent have a clue about the area that you want to look at?

Are you sure? -->>

Moving up in Palm Beach Gardens Luxury Real Estate-

Hello again!

I've moved up to the next level in Palm Beach Gardens luxury real estate by joining up with Waterfront Properties & Club Communities and I've been incredibly busy.

I'll still be working with Buyers in all of the area's golf / country clubs, but I am now the company's exclusive listing agent for BallenIsles.

I'll have a lot more information for you all in the next few days.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about BallenIsles homes for sale, please don't hesitate to call me at 561-282-7406

Palm Beach Gardens Luxury Real Estate - Second Quarter '09 Sales Results

Starting tomorrow morning I'll be reviewing the second quarter sales numbers for these major Palm Beach Gardens communities:

PGA National

BallenIsles

Mirasol

Mirabella

Old Marsh

Steeplechase

and San Michele.

It's been rather busy (regardless of what the newspapers say!) so I'll be going over what sold in the last 3 months and what's still available.

BTW - as so many people have already found out, if you've found a Palm Beach Gardens home that you really like, then you need to get serious about making an offer. I run into people all the time that want to wait 'just a bit longer' only to come back to see that someone has already bought 'their' home.

It doesn't even have to be a long wait - I showed a newer listing last week that was actually under-valued. In the few hours that the prospective Buyers stalled, someone else bought the house. I hate to say 'I told you so...".

Those who wait, lose.

How Much is Your Palm Beach Gardens Real Estate REALLY Worth?

You're interested in finding out the value of a particular home in the Palm Beach Gardens area.

  • Maybe you're looking to purchase and you want to find out what the home is REALLY worth OR
  • You already own a home and want to refinance OR
  • You're a serious seller and you want to price the home to sell, not to sit OR
  • You just want to find out how much your place is currently worth to see if you made a good investment.

The reason doesn't matter - you just want to know the value of Property 'A' and you need the figure to be as accurate as possible.

Without a doubt, the BEST way is to hire a Professional Appraiser

For any one Appraiser to be successful he/she needs to be as accurate as possible. Valuation is all that they do so if they don't do their very best, they won't be around the business for long. BTW, if financing is involved, using an Appraiser is your ONLY choice.

Next best would be to get a CMA from a Real Estate Agent or Broker

They will take a look at your home and compare it to the most recent sales (w/in the last 6 months) of the most comparable properties or COMPS. It's very important that you use someone that specializes in the area you're interested in because they have detailed local knowledge.
Finally, we've arrived at the WORST possible choice - automated on-line property valuations.

People like to use them because they are anonymous, free and quick. However they are incredibly inaccurate! I'm not going to mention a specific company because they are all bad.

As an example, let's specifically look at Palm Beach County. By one site's own admission, only 54% of the homes sold in the County come in within 20% of the site's estimated value. In other words, their values are off by more than 20% in 46% of the cases! Granted, garbage in, garbage out - if the site hasn't collected enough accurate data they can't be expected to be too accurate.
The problem crops up when the general public runs a search on one of the sites and takes the value as the end-all-be-all.
If you want to see just how inaccurate the values are, try several of the sites the spread of values on the same piece of property will make you laugh (or cry).

When dealing with what will probably be the biggest purchase of your life you need ACCURATE, not QUICK.

Do NOT Raise the Price on Your Palm Beach Gardens Real Estate!

Now that the word is spreading that the worst of the housing crisis is over, some homeowners are starting to do some incredibly stupid things.

(BTW, if you're offended by that you should take a very close look at what you are currently doing.)

The BIG question is "Do you REALLY want to sell it, or do you want it to sit on the market for a looooooooong time while the houses around it DO sell"?

Believe it or not, some people are starting to RAISE the prices on their homes! Folks, please, get a grip. If your home has not sold in a reasonable amount of time you should lower the price NOT increase it!

I've seen several owners in the area do this - but what really caught my eye was a listing in one of the local golf / country clubs that had been wallowing on the market for a long time.

All figures will be approximate as to not insult the people who should, well, really be insulted! But keep in mind that I am trying to help here.

This particular home sold in 3/08 for 435,000 and a few months later it was re-listed for more then DOUBLE. This happened when values were still headed down.

What were they thinking?

The price comes down a bit over the next few months and it winds up in the high $700's - still way too high. Can you guess what the next step was? I hope you're sitting down - not only do they raise the price, they take it up to nearly 1 million!

Mind -boggling.

Forget 'what' are they thinking, now the question is: ARE they thinking AT ALL?

OK, today's rant is over. I need some coffee and aspirin.

Contact me if you are serious about selling your home.