Real Estate in Review

 Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty and today we're going to talk about for-sale-by-owners versus hiring a real estate agent. 

So, a lot of for-sale-by-owners think that they're going to put their house on the market. This is going to be great, they're going to save all of this real estate commission. I'm not really sure for-sale-by-owners fully understand how much work goes into marketing their home. A for-sale-by-owner has to be available when there are showings. They have to be at the house to let the people in, they have to tour the house with the potential buyer, and if your house is a very desirable home, you could have many showings in a day or a showing in the middle of the workday that you would need to run home for. So that gets to be pretty inconvenient for a for-sale-by-owner.

When we're talking about pricing, we talk about how for-sale-by-owners don't have access to the information to help them properly price their home and that can go either way. Sometimes a for-sale-by-owner can leave money on the table. A lot of times a for-sale-by-owner, due to an emotional attachment to the house and/or the amount of money that's put into upgrades in a home, will overprice the home which then creates what we call chasing the market, which is never a good place to be. We want to make sure that the price is right when we first go out because the most amount of traffic is during the first two weeks and we want to make sure that we get it out there at the right price so we can get an offer and as soon as possible.

So the National Association of Realtors States that a home sold by a real estate agent on average will net more than 33% more than a home sold by a for-sale-by-owner. This is usually because a real estate agent is doing full time marketing of the home. We know how to market the homes, we know where to market the homes. That's our job. That's what we're trained to do. That's what we learn how to do, and so we get it exposed to a lot more people. In addition to that, we also know other agents and we know how to network with other agents to get that sold. We also get it into the MLS, which is where a lot of clients find their homes. Because even if the agent does not provide them the home, when a property is put in the MLS, it feeds across 42 different websites and that is how a lot of people today find their home, they find it on a website and then they will contact an agent to go in and, and see that home. 

In addition, there are many documents that need to be provided, such as a seller's disclosure. A lot of times a for-sale-by-owner is not aware of that, by state, even if there's selling their own home, they're required to provide a seller's disclosure. There are other documents as well that need to be provided. Some of those are to protect you, the seller. Some of those are for the transaction to go through as a smooth transaction. So we want to make sure that they're filled out properly. I hear more often than not, with people who have not used real estate agents before, that it's just filling in the blanks that real estate agents just fill in the blanks on a contract. If those blanks are not filled in properly, that could mean disaster for a seller or even disaster for a buyer. So a for-sale-by-owner opens himself up to a lot of liability without knowing how those documents need to be filled out and a real estate agent really has all the tools that you will need to properly market your home, properly price your home, and get it sold as soon as possible. 

There are a lot of websites out there that will provide you information regarding the real estate in the area. One of the most important things to know is that Texas is a non-disclosure state, meaning that when a property sells, it is not disclosed to the general public or to companies who are seeking that information. So a lot of times the Internet platforms are guesstimating what a house sold for. A lot of times you can get your hands on the mortgage information, but, a lot of these internet sites work on the 80/20 principle. That 20% was put down and the mortgage is for 80% of the sales price of the home, and that is not always the case, especially not here in Texas and in today's current market. 

We're seeing more buyers putting down significant amounts, which then make the loan amount much less than the 80% that we see a lot of times. This then creates a disparity of information as you go on the Internet and you see what homes sold for, that may not be anywhere near what a home has sold for. In addition to that, the status of a home could also be wildly inaccurate. For instance, in the state of Texas, we have statuses that are active, active kickout, active contingent. All these will register on these internet platforms as active, which indicates to a buyer looking on the Internet that these properties are available. However, active and active kickout, yes, those are available. But active contingent or active option contract, those homes are not currently available. So one of the best things that you can do is get set up on a search with a real estate agent who will provide you information from the MLS so that you know as soon as the property goes on the market and under contract.

We also have to remember that a lot of these internet platforms are providing new information based on the general rule of thumb in the entire country. However, mortgages,  property values, and taxation rates differ greatly across the country and we need to make sure that when we are looking at Internet information, that it is not just general information and the best way to find that out as to contact a real estate agent. 

Real estate agents also have access to houses that are not even on the market yet. There's a lot of networking that goes on with agents. And so we know a lot of times about house that's coming on the market even before it goes on the market.

Although I love the Internet, when it comes to one of the largest financial purchases that you will ever make in your life, you really need to seek out a professional to help you do so. A professional will be able to provide you all that information so that you can make the best decision possible for yourself and your family. 

This is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty, today we're going to talk about the appraisal process. 

So when you go to buy a home and you are getting financing on that home, your lender is going to require an appraisal on the property. We are having a difficult time sometimes with our luxury new construction in some of the areas in and around the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. A lot of areas that were at one time mostly rural with small one story, three bedroom, two bath ranchettes now are being purchased and we are having large luxury homes that are being built on them. When it comes time for the appraisal, it gets to be a little difficult comping out those properties. And so the appraiser a lot of times has a very difficult time finding the comps that are needed in order to be able to come back with an appraisal that will be anywhere near what you're asking to be loaned from the bank.

One of the jobs of a real estate agent is I will call the appraiser, or have the appraiser call, me and I will walk them through some of the comps in the area so that they have properties that they can work with that will get them to the appraisal that the buyer needs them to be. We have a lot of off MLS transactions that happen with luxury new construction. When you do an interim home construction loan, it is usually not in the MLS. The land sale is usually in the MLS, but the actual build job is not, so the appraiser doesn't have access to those. So a lot of times what we can do is we can go to a builder and we can ask the builder to provide other homes that they have built in the area and what the sales price of those homes where. These can then be provided to the appraiser so that the appraiser can come up with actual comps that are similar to the type of home our clients or building so that they can then secure the financing that they need to build the house.

These comps, however, need to be gotten from people that are working in the industry in the area, and a lot of times your average person just does not have access to those builders or those people who would be able to provide the information needed to the appraiser in order for him to be able to comp it out as best possible. When I am talking a significant difference, we may have someone who is building a $2 million home, but the appraiser can only get it to $500,000 because based on the homes that had sold in the last 180 days, they may have all been older ranchette homes built in the 1970s that were small on a smaller piece of land, but there may be other homes in area, again, that were built, they're just not in the MLS for the appraiser to pull. So a real estate agent can really assist with the appraisal process and make sure that the appraiser has all the information that is needed in order to appraise your home properly so that you can get the funds you need to build your dream home. 

This is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty. Thank You. 

I think that there are some people out there that believe that real estate agents just fill in the blanks, that there's not a whole lot to it. There's these blanks that need to be filled in, and it's pretty self-explanatory what needs to be done and they just fill in the blanks and that we are just relieving the sellers or the buyers of having to do that menial data entry type work themselves. There's a lot more to a contract then just filling in the blanks. There are many ways for a buyer to terminate a contract and unless that's something that you're keeping up with on a regular basis, you're not going to know what those are.

We have a lot of instances where people are contracted on a property and something has happened. Maybe someone in the family has gotten sick, maybe someone has lost their job, maybe all of a sudden there's a relocation and they don't want to buy the house anymore that their contracted on and they need to get out of it and they need to get their earnest money back, which can be three thousand ten thousand fifteen thousand dollars and they don't want to leave that behind and give that to the seller. So they want to be able to terminate and get it back. Well just because you've been told that you need to relocate does not mean that you're going to get your earnest money back. So a real estate agent, when they're writing a contract, is keeping this in mind that there are certain things that are written certain ways so that if you do need to terminate the contract, you can do so and get your earnest money back. And if those blanks aren't filled in a certain way, then that could really come back to bite you.

In addition to that, a seller is bound to a contract from the get-go and a seller really cannot get out of contract in Texas once it has been executed. So we really need to make sure that there are things in the contract to protect the seller. Even though once we’re executed, they're bound to the contract, but we can do things such as make the option period short, make the third party financing addendum time period short, make the HOA document delivery short so that the buyer is then bound to the contract shorter in the process than if they take it almost all the way to closing. There's a period of time right before closing where the seller tends to be a little safer. The buyer can't terminate usually for, usually you want a 30 day closing, about 11 days before closing the buyer can't usually terminate depending on how the contracts written without losing their earnest money. But the caveat to that is, it's how the contract is written. So there are certain ways we want to contract a read for a seller. There are certain ways we want a contract read for a buyer.

In addition to that, we have a lot of buyers who make the assumption that because they have large sums of money in the bank and large amount of investments and they bring in a large income as well, that they know that they will qualify for a mortgage and they know how much they will qualify for. And that's not always the case. So if you are a business owner, own multiple businesses, that business income is treated differently than if you're an employee receiving a paycheck weekly. And so that's one of the reasons why we want to get you qualified early on and as seller wants to see that qualification letter come in with a contract. It's not so much what the contract says as it does reading between the lines, if you will. That comes down to what the buyers willing to pay, if the buyer is willing to put down more earnest money, if they're willing to pay some of the closing costs, if they're putting down a large sum of money on the house. These are all things that indicate to a seller that they're a serious buyer.

USE AN AGENT. That's what we're trained to do. We're trained to fill them out so that you are getting the best transaction that you can get out of selling or buying a home. 

Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty, answering questions that you have about real estate. Today we're going to be talking about “how do we get our house ready to sell?”

So we always have a staging appointment with our clients where our team comes in. A staging appointment used to be where you decorated the home, maybe brought in some furnishings. That has changed somewhat. Now with the new trend that we have, we try and use what the client has in their home, but we also try to make the home as streamlined as possible. One of the first things we do is we remove all personal photographs. This is for privacy reasons as well, but we also want someone to come in and not feel like they're in someone else's home. We want them to be able to picture themselves in your home, which is one of the reasons we remove a lot of the decor. A lot of our clients say that their homes look empty by the time we get done with our staging appointment, and that is the way that we want it. We like for someone to be able to see their own decor items in the house. Even though a buyer may not understand that the reason they don't like a house is because of the way it is decorated, it does subconsciously affect their feelings on a home. The more that we can clear out decor items from a house and make it more of that clean, streamline look, then a buyer can come in and see their own items in the house.

The second would be curb appeal. We like to have as much curb appeal as possible. People will drive by your home and see the for sale sign in the yard. We like to get all the flowerbeds cleaned out, fresh new mulch, and we like seasonal color to be put especially up by the front door. Any trees that need to be trimmed, pots with flowers in them by the front door, and also some exterior maintenance as well to make sure that everything is cleaned up, that we have leaves that are cleaned up. The lawn should be freshly mowed and edged so that it gives a really well maintained feel when somebody is looking at your house.

The next is maintenance in the house. We don't want you to go ahead and, you know, do large maintenance projects, but anything that might need to be fixed in the home will be caught at an inspection anyway. So now's a really good time for you to be able to attack those things that maybe aren't working the way that they should. If you've got a faucet that dripping or a toilet that's running, things of that nature, that can easily be done by a handyman, those items should be taken care of before we put the house on the market. If you have windows that are cracked, if the windows are under warranty, then we should go ahead and request for them to be replaced or repaired under the warranty. If you have an insurance claim that needs to be done, whether it was for a leak or maybe it's a roof, then let's go ahead and get that insurance claim initiated it and get that done before we put it on the market. It looks really good when we have on a seller's disclosure that a roof is only nine months old or four months old. People really like moving into a home where some of the bigger ticket items have been taken care of and they know that they won't have to worry about them for awhile.

Consider some updating. I know this is a scary thought and that's probably why a lot of our sellers are moving is that they want to update, but we're noticing that more and more buyers are not really interested in coming in and doing any updating to a home. Used to be that the standard thought process was if a home just needed to be painted, then we could go in and paint it any color we want. But what we're finding is that buyers of all budgets are not wanting to come into a home and be bothered with having to even paint the home. The number one thing that you can do to a home to give it a fresh updated look and to make the largest impact is to paint. Paint the walls, paint the trim (which is the base boards, th

Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty, answering questions that you have about real estate. Today we're going to be talking about “how do we get our house ready to sell?”

So we always have a staging appointment with our clients where our team comes in. A staging appointment used to be where you decorated the home, maybe brought in some furnishings. That has changed somewhat. Now with the new trend that we have, we try and use what the client has in their home, but we also try to make the home as streamlined as possible. One of the first things we do is we remove all personal photographs. This is for privacy reasons as well, but we also want someone to come in and not feel like they're in someone else's home. We want them to be able to picture themselves in your home, which is one of the reasons we remove a lot of the decor. A lot of our clients say that their homes look empty by the time we get done with our staging appointment, and that is the way that we want it. We like for someone to be able to see their own decor items in the house. Even though a buyer may not understand that the reason they don't like a house is because of the way it is decorated, it does subconsciously affect their feelings on a home. The more that we can clear out decor items from a house and make it more of that clean, streamline look, then a buyer can come in and see their own items in the house.

The second would be curb appeal. We like to have as much curb appeal as possible. People will drive by your home and see the for sale sign in the yard. We like to get all the flowerbeds cleaned out, fresh new mulch, and we like seasonal color to be put especially up by the front door. Any trees that need to be trimmed, pots with flowers in them by the front door, and also some exterior maintenance as well to make sure that everything is cleaned up, that we have leaves that are cleaned up. The lawn should be freshly mowed and edged so that it gives a really well maintained feel when somebody is looking at your house.

The next is maintenance in the house. We don't want you to go ahead and, you know, do large maintenance projects, but anything that might need to be fixed in the home will be caught at an inspection anyway. So now's a really good time for you to be able to attack those things that maybe aren't working the way that they should. If you've got a faucet that dripping or a toilet that's running, things of that nature, that can easily be done by a handyman, those items should be taken care of before we put the house on the market. If you have windows that are cracked, if the windows are under warranty, then we should go ahead and request for them to be replaced or repaired under the warranty. If you have an insurance claim that needs to be done, whether it was for a leak or maybe it's a roof, then let's go ahead and get that insurance claim initiated it and get that done before we put it on the market. It looks really good when we have on a seller's disclosure that a roof is only nine months old or four months old. People really like moving into a home where some of the bigger ticket items have been taken care of and they know that they won't have to worry about them for awhile.

Consider some updating. I know this is a scary thought and that's probably why a lot of our sellers are moving is that they want to update, but we're noticing that more and more buyers are not really interested in coming in and doing any updating to a home. Used to be that the standard thought process was if a home just needed to be painted, then we could go in and paint it any color we want. But what we're finding is that buyers of all budgets are not wanting to come into a home and be bothered with having to even paint the home. The number one thing that you can do to a home to give it a fresh updated look and to make the largest impact is to paint. Paint the walls, paint the trim (which is the base boards, th

Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty and today we are going to talk about what buyers want, which also affects sellers as well.

When we look at listing a home and the seller asks, “well what should we do to our home?” Well we definitely should only do updates that are going to make an impact and updates that will appeal to what people are looking for today. We want to put it in the right spots, where nobody wants to break the bank before they put the house on the market, but we do want to make an impact so that buyers can get a vision for what the house can look like when they're in there.

So what are buyers looking for? Buyers are currently looking floor a flooring that is the same all throughout the first floor common areas, whether that be hardwood floors, whether that be an engineered floor or a tile that looks like wood. Those are the types of flooring that people are expecting to see right now in homes that have been updated, or if they're going to update the homes themselves.

People are looking for painted cabinets in the kitchen. I have a lot of sellers who tell me that it's a crime to paint the kitchen cabinet since they were real wood, and I can completely understand that. However, buyers today are wanting painted cabinets in the kitchen as well as in the bathrooms. So while we may see white cabinets in the kitchen, we are starting to see a little bit of color in the secondary bathrooms. We see gray, we're seeing some navy blue, we're seeing some colors peak in into those secondary bathrooms. The master bathrooms usually seem to be gray or white. The kitchens also can be gray as well and maybe we have an accent color on the island, such as navy blue or something along those lines.

We're looking for gray on the walls. I know that a lot of people are not a fan of gray on the walls, but that is what most of the buyers today are looking for. So when a seller paints their home, they really should consider painting it gray, especially gray with a brown undertone because that will go with all the things that are currently in their home that were installed when cream was, you know, the big trend on the walls. It's as much of a neutral as cream, gray with brown undertone. They're also looking for white trim, so maybe not stark white but not cream either. Sherwin Williams “Snowbound” is a great color to use on your trim. It is a white that is a little bit of an off white, not quite stark white and people really seem to like using that color on their trim.

Windows. We like to see windows open, no draperies, no cornice boards, no sheers. Plantation shutters, yes, blinds yes, but we liked the windows open and clear.

We have buyers, most of them, who want to see the secondary bathrooms be updated. So that would mean the countertop. It doesn't necessarily have to be granite. We're seeing quartz and quartzite and other solid surfaces entering into countertops in houses and people really seem to respond to them well. Especially if it gives that clean, streamlined look that they're looking for. The counters seem to be taking more of a solid appearance, more so than a lot of the modeling and movement we used to see in the granite. The sinks even in the secondary bathrooms if they're built into the solid surface, if they are a standard rectangle, that seems to be what the buyers are looking for the most.

Buyers like to see that the house has been taken care of well. So we want to make sure that our air conditioners have been serviced and we can provide receipts for that as well as any other maintenance issues on the house. The biggest questions we get from buyers is “How old is the roof?” “How old is the air conditioning?” and “How old is the hot water heater?” If any of those are needing to be replaced, now would be a great time to do that because more than likely that we'll be caught at inspection time.

Buyers are not really keen on carpets

Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty and today we are going to talk about what buyers want, which also affects sellers as well.

When we look at listing a home and the seller asks, “well what should we do to our home?” Well we definitely should only do updates that are going to make an impact and updates that will appeal to what people are looking for today. We want to put it in the right spots, where nobody wants to break the bank before they put the house on the market, but we do want to make an impact so that buyers can get a vision for what the house can look like when they're in there.

So what are buyers looking for? Buyers are currently looking floor a flooring that is the same all throughout the first floor common areas, whether that be hardwood floors, whether that be an engineered floor or a tile that looks like wood. Those are the types of flooring that people are expecting to see right now in homes that have been updated, or if they're going to update the homes themselves.

People are looking for painted cabinets in the kitchen. I have a lot of sellers who tell me that it's a crime to paint the kitchen cabinet since they were real wood, and I can completely understand that. However, buyers today are wanting painted cabinets in the kitchen as well as in the bathrooms. So while we may see white cabinets in the kitchen, we are starting to see a little bit of color in the secondary bathrooms. We see gray, we're seeing some navy blue, we're seeing some colors peak in into those secondary bathrooms. The master bathrooms usually seem to be gray or white. The kitchens also can be gray as well and maybe we have an accent color on the island, such as navy blue or something along those lines.

We're looking for gray on the walls. I know that a lot of people are not a fan of gray on the walls, but that is what most of the buyers today are looking for. So when a seller paints their home, they really should consider painting it gray, especially gray with a brown undertone because that will go with all the things that are currently in their home that were installed when cream was, you know, the big trend on the walls. It's as much of a neutral as cream, gray with brown undertone. They're also looking for white trim, so maybe not stark white but not cream either. Sherwin Williams “Snowbound” is a great color to use on your trim. It is a white that is a little bit of an off white, not quite stark white and people really seem to like using that color on their trim.

Windows. We like to see windows open, no draperies, no cornice boards, no sheers. Plantation shutters, yes, blinds yes, but we liked the windows open and clear.

We have buyers, most of them, who want to see the secondary bathrooms be updated. So that would mean the countertop. It doesn't necessarily have to be granite. We're seeing quartz and quartzite and other solid surfaces entering into countertops in houses and people really seem to respond to them well. Especially if it gives that clean, streamlined look that they're looking for. The counters seem to be taking more of a solid appearance, more so than a lot of the modeling and movement we used to see in the granite. The sinks even in the secondary bathrooms if they're built into the solid surface, if they are a standard rectangle, that seems to be what the buyers are looking for the most.

Buyers like to see that the house has been taken care of well. So we want to make sure that our air conditioners have been serviced and we can provide receipts for that as well as any other maintenance issues on the house. The biggest questions we get from buyers is “How old is the roof?” “How old is the air conditioning?” and “How old is the hot water heater?” If any of those are needing to be replaced, now would be a great time to do that because more than likely that we'll be caught at inspection time.

Buyers are not really keen on carpets

  This is Gina Mullen, with Gina Mullen Realty, answering your questions about real estate. Today we're going to talk about should I stay or should I go?

We talk all the time with clients about, “well I think I want to see if more money before I move” or “I think I want to see what the market does.” So right now what we're seeing is interest rates have increased from last year. However, they have not increased significantly. They did increase some and then they kind of backed off a little bit. So we're seeing a really good percentage rate right now. If you continue to wait, market values will increase. The DFW area is showing that there's such a high demand for housing that regardless of what happens in the rest of the market, the DFW market will remain strong. So we will continue to see, more than likely, market values raise in the DFW area.

So as you are saving money for your next home that you want to go into, the market value of that home is increasing and the interest rate is increasing, which can possibly negate the amount of money that you have saved. So if you're looking to move, now might be a great time to do so as interest rates are still low. Market values, yes, are high but they will more than likely get higher.

So consider that when you're trying to determine whether you want to stay in your current home or whether you want to move into a new one, that taking the time to save that extra money may not necessarily get you the advantage that you think it might give. 

Have a great day!

 Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty and today we are going to talk about a 203K Loan, which people refer to as, you know, “That loan that I'm going to get that is going to help me renovate my house.”

So most people think that when you do a 203K Loan, that you're going to take out a mortgage that's going to be over the cost of what you paid for the house and that the mortgage company is going to hand you the lump sum of money so that you can go ahead and make the updates and renovations to the house that would increase its value. But that is not the way that it works. 

Yes, you do get a mortgage and it is for more than what you paid for the house, but you have to hire contractors to do the work. You cannot do the work yourself and you will have to provide the mortgage company with the progress all along the way. So this requires you to find a contractor that is insured and bonded. They need to submit an estimate to the mortgage company. You're real estate agent would need to send in comps to the mortgage company to show that the market will allow for the renovations to be done and it still not be underwater. You have to provide progress along the way. You will have an inspector that comes to the house to make sure the work is being done, that it's been done properly, that all permits have been pulled, and that the people that are doing the work on the house are people who are professionals in doing that. So a little bit of a different scenario than what most people think with a 203K Loan. So if you're thinking of buying a home and flipping it, keep that in mind that yes, you can get a mortgage for more than what you pay for the house. However, you will have some oversight by the mortgage company on who does the work and how the money is spent. If you have any questions, please give us a call at Gina Mullen Realty. Thanks.