About Centre County, PA

Keller Williams Advantage Realty in State College, PA. recently won an award for the launch of their new office. They were awarded the #1 most profitable launch in the Mid Atlantic region during the launch phase of their new office.

Keller Williams Realty headquartered in Austin, Texas is the fastest growing real estate company in America with 800 offices and more than 78,000 Realtors. The Keller Williams business model has received numerous national awards and has been added to the core curriculum for MBA students at Yale and Stanford.

To learn more about the local Keller Williams office or to make an inquiry about employment with the fastest growing real estate office in the Centre Region give me a call at 814-280-0054.

Keller Williams Advantage Realty in State College, Pa. launched their new commercial division this week as a featured exhibitor at the CBICC meeting on Thursday. The commercial division will focus on buying, selling and leasing commercial property in the Centre Region. The commercial team can also assist small business owners in buying and selling businesses without real estate.

The commercial division will be guided by Annette Traband who recently was awarded the CCIM designation after completing the required program of study. Tim Rogers and Ben Norman will also be working in the commercial division at Keller Williams Realty.

REO's are a piece of work

For those unitiated REO is an arconym for "real estate owned" and it refers to real property foreclosed on and taken back by the bank or mortgage company that made a loan to a buyer that defaulted on the loan.

I'm currently involved in several transactions involving REO properties and they cover the easy to the very difficult depending on the individual banks that own the properies. I have one deal that has had three buyers walk away because the bank won't acknowledge or respond to our offers. Not for days or weeks but for months at a time. Imagine submitting an offer in December and not getting an answer until February. In one case the bank gave us a verbal and then never provided written documentation to accept the deal. For 77 days this went on and finally they provided us with a letter detailing the closing. We then completed all of the work in hopes of a March 17 closing only to never hear from this bank again. One Monday morning I recently opened the front page of USA TODAY and this particular bank was featured in an artilce describing the current mortgage market and the fact that this bank had 27% of its mortgages in foreclosure. Apparently the bank has made a decision to not deal with the properties since they are ignoring serious buyers.

On the other hand is a California bank that responded to our offer within hours and provided us with all of the documentation to get to closing in five weeks. This is a bank that understands how to plug the holes in its leaking cash flow ship.

In between are several bank owned properties that are unwilling to acknowledge the current state of the real estate market and are unwilling to discuss reasonable offers based on the condition of the home after foreclosure. Generally, the condition of foreclosed or repossessed homes is not good and wil impact the marketability and sales price of the home. Some banks understand this and sell the homes and other banks ignore the reality and hold homes for more than a year.

I'm also dealing with several short sales and will discuss them in another post.

So the competition is heading out of town for incremental sales growth. The Keller Williams office launched with an official grand opening two weeks ago and a local competitior (KBB) unofficially announced at a cocktail party last Friday evening their intent to purchase Fish GMAC Realty in Lock Haven in hopes of generating additional revenues to the company.

It appears to be a good move since Fish GMAC is populated with a number of very good Realtors that should add to the value of KBB. It provides KBB with the ability to add sales revenues in the face of stiff competition from the new Keller Williams office in State College.

This is certainly a fluid real estate market marked by unending change. That is what keeps it interesting.

For a detailed overview of the current State College and Centre county market feel free to give me a call at 814-280-0054.

I can't believe how long it has been since I've posted to Localism. I will start adding all of the new featured listings that I have been hired to market on behalf of a loyal base of clients.

I have also partnered with a log home construction company to build your dream log home on your site or we can help you find the perfect location to build your dream home.

As always, feel free to give me a call any time to discuss your real estate needs.