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

Interested in getting Home Buyer Grants exceeding  $15,000 in one year.

Many of these grants apply to the purchase of your new home.  Each year more than  5 million American families receive free money from government grants.  Did you know that millions of Americans get free government money in the form of grants every single year?  Numerous grant programs are available to you, thru FHA, Va and Hud programs. You may apply for as many different grants as you qualify for.  Each grant has some very specific requirements and you must fully quailify to use them.

Some of the more important requirements are that you must be hold legal citizenship of the United States at least for now, but as our President adds the world to all our benefits, citizenship may soon not be required.  Most of the grants are to purchase real estate, and for many grants there will be no credit checks, and you may be qualified for much of the trillion dollar grants being given out every year.

You are not restricted to only one grant, as you may receive money for a down payment on a new home, and at the very same time you may qualify for money to set up your own business. It is possible to easily receive up to $500.000 to set up a new company and it may be absolutely free. By free, I mean that it may not be required to be paid back.

This buisness grant means that you do not have to pay high interest rates to banks since the money comes from the government with the no pay back agreement.  IF you need additional information on grants or other programs that could help you buy your new home, do not hesitate to contact Tom Chambers at 757-587-9856.

Welcome Home, let’s Rehab a Virginia Beach Home 203(k) HUD.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development known as (HUD) also known as Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is responsible for managing the single family insurance and mortgage programs in the Virginia Beach area.

These FHA approved mortgage institutions will submit the applications for the loan to HUD and they also are responsible for collecting all the paper work and getting the appraisal done and making sure the buyer is credit worthy.

All the loans generated by the FHA 203k lenders actually issue the mortgage to the buyer, and the lender is protected in that the HUD Housing and Urban Development via the federal government and the lender is insured by HUD meaning if the buyer fails to pay for the home, it diverts to the federal government and the lender gets their money back.

So as you can see HUD does not actually lend the money direct to the buyer, but instead the lender provides the money to the borrower and HUD simply guarantees the loan.. sorta like a co-signer.

This program is a very important process for the neighborhood and the community, in that it allows many folks to purchase a home that they could not otherwise afford. The reason this works, is the the lender would not be willing to lend the money to the buyer without a minimum of 20 per cent down. In most cases the buyer cannot come up with 20% of the price of the home therefore the buyer could not buy the home.  With HUD guaranteeing the loan, the lender is then willing to loan the money to the buyer with as little as 3% down payment. This lower acquisition cost to the home owner allows for much greater expanding of homeownership.

HUD can see the results of the program and considers it an important program and we expect it will contine for a long time to come.  Many lenders have partnershiped with local and state housing agencies and other non profit organizations to rehab many properties that in many cases have removed blights from the neighborhood.

Many organizations have combine programs such as HOPE, HOME, and HUD community  development grant programs to allow a large number of low income families to become home owners for the very first time ever. Another very important part of the 203k loan, is that buyers can buy a property that is not in livable condition. This loan allows a buyer to borrow additional funds to make major repairs on the home prior to moving in and the lender will still approve the loan. As you know, most lenders will not provide funds to finace a home that is not in livable condition on the day of closing.
In addition to typical home rehabilitation projects, this program can be used to convert a one-family dwelling to a two, three-, or four-family dwelling. An existing multi-unit dwelling could be decreased to a one- to four-family unit.  In addition, the 203k loan can even be used to convert a single family dwelling to a two, three, or even four family dwelling.  This can allow the buyer to live in one unit, and rent the other units to pay the entire rent. This can allow a home owner live totally free.  Ok so let’s get on board and find a beautiful Virginia Beach home that we can rehab and be proud of.

You will learn a lot here if you read my Great Virginia Beach Home Buying Tips and Traps.

Are you one of the thousands that have been putting off the promise to buy a new home?  Well you could not find a better time to buy with the interest rate gettting ready to start to rise and the thousands of foreclosure Virginia Beach homes on the market.

I will now list a lot of traps that you might be exposed to as you travel thru the treacherous home buying process.

Watch close now, here we go:

One of the most common traps we fall into, is the fact that we are sometimes told that now is your last chance to buy.
No question about it, now is a good time to buy but if you don’t find your Virginia Beach dream home right away, there will be many other chances. So never fear Tom Chambers                     is here to save the day.  You definitely should not let a fear that this is your last chance to buy to muddy up the water.  However if you decide to move now, move as quickly as you feel comfortable, since as we know the higher the interest rate travels, the less amount of house you may qualify to purchase.  But if you have cash, as the interest goes higher, it slows down the other buyers and makes a much better deal for the cash buyer. So higher interest is good for some and bad for others.
Another trap we sometimes fall into is waiting too long. Let’s say we keep waiting around to see what the market is going to do and years later we are still waiting… waiting… waiting…  you tell yourself that self.. if I buy now I may pay too much so you keep coming up with reasons to wait and never really get around to buying at all.

 So bottom line is not possible to time  the Virginia Beach real estate market in regard to ups and downs, so its best to make a buying decision based on whether or not you can afford to buy or whether you can afford not to buy. If you keep saving your money, to get a better downpayment, may give the prices time to rise more than the amount you have saved for downpayment. So sometimes its best to bite the bullet and make the purchase now and gain the appreciation that will occur in upcoming years.
Keep in mind that owning a home is not a picnic, no longer can you call the landlord when the heat pump malfunctions and the taxes and insurance can no longer come out of the monthly payment.  Do you have the time to do the upkeep on a home, as no longer does that mean just cutting the grass, now it includes replacing the roof and other expensive items.  Be careful and do not get pulled into the interest only loan, just to be able to buy more home. Many folks have been caught with their pants down when home sales drop and you have no eqity in the property to cushion the sale.. Since with a intrest only loan you have absolutely zero equity unless the market value goes up during the time of home ownership.  when homes are selling slowly, its almost impossible to refinance a interest only loan as the value may not be there. Contact Tom Chambers         for additional information on any Virginia Beach real estate that you might be interested in purchasing.