STEVE: Hi, this is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty. Thanks so much for watching my video blog today. I brought David Knox in today to talk about his consumer video on short sales. Short sales are a thing that have happened very much in our marketplace and in fact are about 15% of our sellers. David, what will a person learn from watching your short sale option?
DAVID: Well, we recorded this video for the very unfortunate situation of someone who is upside down in their equity and behind in their payments, and many people assume that foreclosure is the only way out. And for some, that is very much true. But to the sellers who are facing foreclosure, they may have a better option. And that is the short sale. And at the end of this video, you’ll have a better understanding as to whether the short sale option is right for you.
STEVE: Thanks so much for watching this video blog today and be sure to go to my website and watch this video. It’ll be great; you’ll enjoy it.
STEVE: Hi, this is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty. Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week. Lake area has joined the RMLS of the Twin Cities. Along with that, they asked for certain things to be added to the multiple listings searches that people can do, and it changes Lake Shore significantly.
So let me let you know what I can do for you in searching for your lakeshore as a Lake Shore buyer. Number one, many times people know the amount of frontage they want. Maybe they know that they need a least 100 foot of frontage to be happy or 50 foot of frontage to be happy. We put that into that. We also know what the DNR lake number is so that when you go on the MLS you can click and go in and find all the statistics from the Minnesota DNR on your lake.
We also have a place for elevation to find out what the elevation is from the back of the house down to the lakeshore. So if you’re looking for a very level elevation, you can ask for that. And so if you want zero to 4 foot or 10 to 15 foot, you can put that type of thing. If you like the views and sitting higher and having more of an expanse over the lake, you may want to ask for a 25-foot elevation or something on that order where you have a greater view.
It’ll have a few steps down to the lake, but you’ll have a much greater view. We also have to ask and put in the type of lake bottom. Well, everybody wants—well, I can’t say that everybody wants sand—but I like sand. But you can put in sand or gravel or hard or rocky or soft or undeveloped, all those types of things. Sometimes people like wilderness lakeshore where it’s weedy and really just charming.
Other things that you can put in is like waterfront views, and we can ask specific questions about the waterfront views you want and we can put those in. I’m excited that I’ve changed all of my listings and put all those types of statistics in for my lakeshore homes, and these are going to become better and better as the months continue and agents begin to learn how to use this. Give me a call if you want to have a better search for your lakeshore. Make it a great day. Bye.
STEVE: Hi, this is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty. Thanks so much for watching my video blog today. I brought David Knox in today who does consumer videos, which I have on my website. And the video that I’m going to have him talk about and why you should watch is selecting a real estate agent. Give us some reasons. What goes on in your video on selecting a real estate agent?
DAVID: One of the challenges of selecting a real estate agent is we often don’t have objective criteria. When you buy a car, you can take a look at things like horse power, torque, mileage, warranty, cubic feet of storage so you can compare one car to another. In this video, it’ll help you establish the objective standards to evaluate the competencies of a real estate agent.
STEVE: Well, thanks David. And be sure you watch this video. It’ll really help you in understanding how you select a good agent to help you in your real estate process. Thanks for watching today. Have a great day!
Hi, this is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty. Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week. This week, I want to talk a little bit about metrics and what metrics has to do with the sale of your property. We receive reports, and of course when we go to do an analysis on your own specific home, we get down to very specific metrics for your own neighborhood. But I want to show you some of the charts that we receive that shows what’s going on in the different price ranges.
So the first one is showing you the metrics of what’s going on in pending sales. For instance, in the pending sales, you’ll see here that under the $120,000 price range there’s been a 43% increase in that area. In the $120,000 to $150,000 range, a 17%. But if you go up to the $1 million price range, there’s only been about a 4.5% increase. And you need to know those types of things when you’re looking at positioning your property in the market.
Where are the sales happening and where do you see more of the properties going off the market? The next metric I want to show you is where we look at supply of the inventory that’s out there. Interesting, before I was showing you how there was this huge increase in the sales that had happened under $120,000. But you’ll note now that instead of there being a year ago 7.7 months’ supply, there is now only a 3.2 months’ supply.
That kind of means that in three months, if no more houses came on the market under $120,000, we’d be out of inventory. To the other side of the metrics, it shows that at a $1 million houses or more a year ago, we had a 22-month supply, and yes, it’s dropped slightly. But we’re still at a 19-month supply, which is almost two years. That’s another metrics thing that we look at, and we get very specific to your marketplace when we’re looking and doing an analysis for you.
The next metric that I want to talk to you about is a metric of looking at traditional sales versus bank owned versus short sales. Many, many months ago or years past, for the last three years, about 40% of sales were traditional sales and then the other mixes were the bank owned and traditional sale. You will now see from this that we have moved up to, in the traditional sale area, 50% of the sales that are happening are in the traditional market versus you’ll see quite a drop in the lender owned from 45% to 36% and the short sales remaining right about 12%.
The last metric I want to show you is a great and positive thing that’s going on in the market. That even though the inventory of homes that are dropping, the thing that we’re looking specifically to is when are the bank owned going to be less and less in our marketplace? And you can see back in March of 2010 we had 4,000 properties for sale that were lender owned. In 2011, we had 4,600. And right now, we have 2,500. That’s a 45% decline in lender-owned properties on the market.
This will help our traditional sellers going into this year and future years as we continue to see the metrics change in the foreclosed area of properties. Thanks so much for watching this week. Make it a great day. Bye!
Steve reviews what is currently happening in the real estate market. He'll talk about inventory, closed sales, price per square foot, and other positive signs in the real estate market!
Click here to watch video on Pricing Your Home to Sell!
STEVE: I’m bringing David Knox in, a very well-known consumer video person, who is on my website in fact. And today, we’re going to talk about one of the videos that he does for me and it’s called “Pricing Your Home to Sell.” David, what are the reasons why people should watch this video?
DAVID: Right now, the market has gone through significant changes, as I think everyone knows, and it’s become very price sensitive. So this video will address those critical issues and it’ll show you the silver lining of buying up in this down market.
STEVE: Thanks so much for watching this video blog today and be sure to go to my website and watch this video. It’ll be great; you’ll enjoy it.
Click here to go directly to Steve's Consumer Video Library
Hi, this is Steve Westmark, Counselor Realty. Thanks so much for watching my video blog today. I brought David Knox in today to talk about his consumer video on preparing your home to sell. David, why should a person watch this video and learn how to prepare their home?
DAVID: Well, in the markets that we’ve been facing lately, inventories vary. But there’s one critical thing that a homeowner can do to stand out from the rest. And that is to improve the condition of the property. It’s the one thing you as the homeowner controls. And this video will show you how to appeal to sights, sound, taste, touch, and smell to make your home stand out.
STEVE: Well, thanks David for coming in today and I appreciate it. And be sure you go to my website and watch this great video on how to prepare your home for sale. You know it’s a price war and a beauty contest. Make sure you make yours a beauty.
Click here to go directly to Steve's Consumer Video Library
STEVE: Hi, this is Steve Westmark of Counselor Realty. Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week. David Knox, a very well-known person on consumer videos, which is on my website, has a video, “8 Steps to Buying a Home.” What will a person learn by watching the video on eight steps?
DAVID: Well, if you’re a first- or second-time buyer or someone who hasn’t purchased in a while, this video will lay out a complete and accurate plan on how you can go through the steps of purchasing a home, everything from house hunting to financing to closing. So I think it’s a great way to plan your house-hunting process.
STEVE: So take an opportunity to watch this video at the bottom of this blog. Click on it and go and watch the “8 Steps to Buying a Home.” Thanks for coming in, David.
STEVE: Hi. This is Steve Westmark, Counselor Realty. Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week. Many times, we have people in the marketplace that are struggling to be able to purchase. It may be that they went through a short sale, they went through a foreclosure, or maybe they’re only going to be in the Twin Cities for a year or two. Or maybe they don’t have the down payment yet to purchase.
Recently, within the last 12 months, are Northstar MLS system has now began to put online properties or rent. So if you have a property that you own and you would like myself or a realtor to market that property online, it could be put out on the multiple listings system as a rental, by price, with pictures, and all the information that you can get also that you see from homes that are on sales.
But the positive thing also for the renters that are out there is that we have one of these instant systems that allow us to send out to you as a new rental comes on the market in your rental range and according to the statistics that you want, if you want at least a three bedroom or if you only need a one bedroom or you have a minimum/maximum rent that you want to pay. We can set you into a system like that to let you know what’s going on in the marketplace.
It’s a new and creative way that we’ve looked as realtors to try to help our clients in this changing industry that we’ve had over the last several years. So if you’re interested in finding out more about putting your property on the market for rent if you’re a landlord or if you’re a person that has had certain things going on in yoru life and you can’t purchase right now, give me a call and we’ll show you how we can find rentals for you. Make it a great day!
