Virginia Beach Real Estate

IF you are thinking about Selling a home in Virginia Beach then you have come to the right place. Selling homes in Chesapeake, Norfolk and Virginia Beach is my specialty. Following is some very important information that every seller of Virginia Beach properties should be very aware of.

We all hope when it comes time to sell our home, that the transaction can be completed in short order. However in only rare instances will a quick sale will actually occur. In most cases, and especially with this terrible economy, the sale will be a long drawn out procedure full of pitfalls and disappointment.

However in Virginia Beach and with the right realtor on your side, much of the aggravation can be lessened and in some cases completely eliminated from the process. This may then allow a sale can be made in a more reasonable period of time even if it is not a quick sale that is hoped for. For this reason, be sure to choose your realtor carefully and ask a lot of questions to make sure that he will be looking out for your interest over his. Believe it or not, some realtors actually do put the buyer first and that is as it should be.

In addition to making sure that the home owner stays out of trouble, its very important that the one of your agents main goals, is to accomplish whatever it requires to attract as many customers to your home in the shortest amount of time.

Be careful with this as attracting tons of customers does not simply mean parading a long line of folks thru you home day after day. It is crucial that these customers be qualified to buy your home. Generally a realtor will not waste time bringing a client to your home if the client is not qualified to purchase since that would simply be a waste of both the agent and his clients time. If the buyer is not qualified, he certaninly cannot buy the home.

In my opinion, one of the most effective ways to get qualified buyers into home with OOOh’s and Ahhh’s is to make sure you stage the home as beautifully as possible. The home must be presented in such a way that it is so very pleasing to any potential buyers that are visiting your home. Without very careful staging, the home will be slow to sell or may not sell at all.

It is imperative that any required maintenance be done before the home is placed on the market. The more attractive and carefully maintained the home, the faster it will sell. The house must be cleaned to a tee and must be organized so that it attracts even the casual buyer. IF the home has a crowded look due to excessive furniture and boxes, its very important to move some of the items to storage. A home that has too much furniture will give a cluttered look and makes it actually appear smaller than it truly is.

When we spruce up a home it take on a clean and orderly look and in the real estate world we refer to this as staging the home. Careful staging will be very effective in drawing attention to the finer points of the home, and making the unattractive and poor features less noticable to the visitors.

I cannot over emphasize the importance of a thoroughly clean home with a pine sol oder with soft music playing in the background. Additionally make sure that shades and lights are positioned to make sure the home is very well lit and no dark corners are left anywhere in the home.

When staging is done properly, it automatically attracts even casual buyers eyes at every turn and in almost every case ensures a higher sale price for the property.

This staging process is done especially in vacant homes as it is easier to accomplish than with a lived in home. However when the home is vacant it is important that all the furniture is not removed form the premisis, as the empty look will hurt the sale. It makes it harder for the new home owner to imagine it as their home. The have more difficulty placing the furniture in their mind and they will not feel as good about the home as when it looks all cozy with nice furnishings through the home.

It has been proven by experiment that when a vacant home has nice furnishing placed in the home it sells faster than other homes that are completely empty of any furniture.

In many cases, real estate agents have rented furniture and set the home up to look comfortable and homey, giving it a more orderly look. Additionally when a home has been over crowded with too much furniture the home has in most cases sold quicker when some of the furniture has been removed to storage.

Bringing in furniture to a vacant house, at one time was viewed as an extra and unnecessary expense, but has since been embraced as a great way to go and an effective way to spend money. Generally the higher sale price far exceeds any cost of doing the necessary staging of the home.

A recent addition to almost any interior decorating class, now includes the preparation of a home for sale.

Tom Chambers is a Top agent with a real estate company that specializes in staging homes in the best possible light to get the very highest sale price and they have been very successful with this process. IF you have an interest in selling your Virginia Beach Home, be sure to contact Tom Chambers at Resh Realty Group or stop by my website at vahud.com and sign up to receive thousands of color photos in your email on a daily basis.

Warning its almost too late to use the $8,000 TAX CREDIT ABOUT TO EXPIRE!

As we flipped the page on the calendar this morning to October 2009, the reality of the expiration of the $8,000 first-time homebuyer credit looms large.

Hey! Early this morning my Outlook reminder popped up a note telling me that the First time homebuyer $8,000 tax break is about to expire. I grabbed my cellular and called all of my first time buyers and got them all in a tizzy. But time is rapidly running out and it does take time to close as we all know. At this point its all but impossible to get a new contract closed at this late date. Hope you are in bed with your lender or it just won’t happen at all.

November 30 is looming in front of us.. We can all pray that the extension will come into effect soon.
As we know Congress is considering several option for our legendary first-time homebuyers out there who are all depending on some sort of tax credit.

Be sure to remind your buyers not to pull and fraudlent stuff, as many have already been caught taking the tax credit when they did not deserve it. Even one 4 year old got the tax credit. Now that is ridiculous, and I hope the parents get fried as those kind of people make a bad name for us all, and could get the tax credit cancelled. Hell even 500 under 18 took the credit and we know that no one under 18 can sign a contract at all much less buy a house.

One of the options being considered is a 12 month extension for military personnel. Bless our military boys and girls heart, the deserve every break they can get. I like the option being considered to expand the credit to all buyers and increasing the credit to $15,000. Boy woundn’t that be a boon to the housing market.

While the mortgage rate is around 5%, there has never been a better time to purchase a new home. It allows so many more folks to enjoy the elusive american dream.

Some of the rules for the $8,000 Tax Credit is as follows:

Buyer may not have owned a primary home in the past 3 years.
This may not be a home purchased from a parent, spouse, or child.
AGI (Adjusted gross income) for the family must be less than $95,000 for single and less than $170,000 if joint.

Most first time home buyers, but not all will be qualified will get the full $8,000.

If you need any assistance in finding your new home, call Tom at a757-587-9856 or stop by my website at MLS HOMES

Are there any Virginia Beach Foreclosure Bargains out there? – Fact or Fiction?

The most common “I want a killer deal” inquiry that I get are from those looking for foreclosure property in Virginia Beach – most are expecting to buy at 50 cents on the dollar.

Today too many folk are looking for the “killer deals” when buying a foreclosure.  Most expect to find the properties in the 50 cents on the dollar range, and those  are few and far between in today’s world..  dream on… however there are still some very good deals out there, but 50 cents on the dollar is not one of them.  That is unless the property is totally junked out.

Actually it is a buyer’s market right now and sellers are willing to take some deep losses to get out from under a payment that they cannnot afford.  However when we try to help a seller out, we still find that the average seller thinks the public and real estate agents in general are trying to steal his property.  I have seen some sellers turn down a low ball offer, and walk the property all the way thru foreclosure, and get absolutley zero for the property and end up owing the bank thousands of dollars in debt.  Our off that appeared to be a low ball offer, would have allowed the seller to walk away with a few bucks in his pocket and a totally clear credit report and zero debt owed to the bank.  So it turns out our low offer could have been a  god send to this seller if he could have looked at the deal with a clear head.  I suppose a clear head is not one of the things that come when you are deep in foreclosure and on the verg of losing your beautiful home and along with that sometimes your entire family as the stress of foreclosure sometimes breaks up complete families.

So bottom line, maybe our offer was a low ball but far from trying to steal the property as it did allow the seller to walk away without debt.  Some sellers are just hard headed and have convinced themselves that anyone not offering full market price is trying to rip them off and and based on those assumptions will go all the way to the  foreclosure and end up deep in debt and at that point its just too late to help then in any way.

In regard to some of the properties that are plentiful in the Virginia Beach area, heading up the list is a ton of condo inventory around the entire Hampon Roads and an over abundance in the Virginia Beach Area.

Many of the condos that are in foreclosure are what we call kiddie condos.  This is a property that mom and pop purchase a condo for Johnny to go to school here in the Virginia Beach area and Johnny adds a roommate or two to help with the expenses and the properties easily makes the mortgage payment until Johnny graduates.

Once Johnny is gone, the property remains vacant and at some point goes into foreclosure.  And here we go again… over and over.

When prices stopped going up, the inventory grew rapidly and of course this drove the prices down to levels never before seen in the Virginia Beach area. Everyone was used to buying the property at any price and due to inflation they could sell it for a profit in as little as 2 years.  Those days are gone, if you do not buy for a low price and keep the property for a minimum of 5 years you will probably end up  with a loss overall.

Many folks try to rent the homes out, to make the mortgage payment but if you are an absentee landlord many times you have damaged property and expensive repairs each time a tenant moves out. The absentee landlord has much more expenses as they must either come into town frequently or hire someone to manage the property. Management fees average about 10% of the going rent and that makes the profit much less.

To find the very best deals in the Virginia Beach area, do not hesitate to contact Tom Chambers of Resh Realty Group, as he is an absolute genius in massaging the foreclosure market and can invariably come up with a “killer Deal” for your and your friends. Tom can be reached at 757-587-9856