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buyers: A Cautionary Tale for Real Estate Buyers and Agents - 03/03/12 07:34 PM
My view of the real estate world comes both from having been an active agent until December 2011 and from being the current seller of a home.  My wife and I also bought a new vacation home in the summer of 2006.
A little over a year and a half ago we decided to put the home where we raised our children on the market.  It is a home that we have taken great pride in owning for the last twenty three years since we moved in as the first owners in 1989.  Before a "for sale" sign went up in … (2 comments)

buyers: Year End Thoughts for Agents, Buyers, and Sellers - 12/11/10 10:01 PM
While my four years in real estate does not qualify me as an old timer, I have been through enough reinventions to smell change.  My favorite quotation comes from the motivational speaker, Dennis Waitley.  It goes something like this.
"Crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind."
To me that comes close to describing today's real estate world from a number perspectives.
First and foremost, if you are buyer in today's market, you have almost limitless opportunies to find a wonderful property at a great price, but there are still plenty of dangers where you need to tread carefully.
Second, if … (1 comments)

buyers: A basic law of the Internet that is important to buyers, sellers, and agents - 11/22/10 10:23 PM
The Internet has a tremendous amount of information.  It does not take long to figure out that some of it is helpful and some of it is worthless.
I have always found this to be a basic law of the Internet. It is something that people looking for homes, selling homes, and those helping them should keep in the forefront of their minds.
The first thing that is important to me when I look at Internet information is the site itself.  Why is the site there?  How to they make their money.  Are they trying to get something from me without … (2 comments)

buyers: Feeling like the "valley of humility between two mountains of conceit" - 09/05/09 03:19 PM
If you are from North Carolina like my wife and I are, you have likely heard the old description of North Carolina as "the valley of humility between two mountains of conceit."  The two mountains of conceit are Virginia and South Carolina.  North Carolina developed a little later because its well-protected coast line was harder for ships to penetrate. Until the last century North Carolina was considered a backwoods area by its neighbors.
Sometimes  dealing with buyers and sellers, I often see people who think they really know the real estate market.  Their only reason for using a real estate agent … (0 comments)

buyers: A good customer even without a computer - 07/24/09 08:59 AM
I came to the real estate world long after computers had infested society.  In fact with my twenty years at Apple, I could rightly be accused of helping spread those computers.
So almost all of my real estate clients have been computer users to some degree.  I had a buyer last summer who did not use a computer.  I ended up printing pictures and sending them to him.
The convenience of email is really hard to argue.  It is immediate and more often than not you can accomplish a lot of business using email.
Recently I had another computerless buyer come … (3 comments)

buyers: The changing needs of retirees coming to the Carolina coast - 08/17/08 08:36 PM
While it is probably a little early to make a complete judgment, I think the great wave of retiring baby boomers might be re-evaluating their needs.
I am working with an average of about three couples a month planning to either move to the coast or retire to the Carolina coast.
Some things that I am seeing are not surprising if you are a baby boomer yourself.
First and foremost these people are looking for value.  They have no intention of spending all their retirement dollars on housing.  They want to be able to travel.
Generally they are looking for smaller … (1 comments)

buyers: Your home is not a bank certificate of deposit - 04/21/08 08:36 PM
We live in an absolutely gorgeous area.  I feel wonderfully blessed to be in this part of the Southern Outer Banks.
Unfortunately even the pristine waters, fantastic climate, low taxes, wonderful places to visit, and friendly people cannot protect your home from a real estate slump.
Like many areas we have been struggling with homes that cannot find buyers or buyers that will not pay as much as the owners want for their properties.
I have spent a lot of time studying figures and providing information to people about the properties which are actually selling.  Those properties are the ones which are establishing market … (1 comments)

buyers: Just what we don't need - 11/03/07 10:17 AM
It has been a very busy week here on the NC coast.  The weather through Thursday was fantastic.
It even got up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit over on beach on November 1.
That with a combination of Hurricane Noel about three hundred miles off shore brought some great waves to the beach and lots of surfers. 
We have also had a mini-burst of people interested in coastal property.  With weather like this, if you happen to be in the area, it is hard not to fall in love with our beaches.
While the weather has been good, the real estate challenges still seem to keep … (2 comments)

buyers: The drought before the flood - 08/19/07 05:08 PM
This summer on the Carolina coast, we have a good balance of sun and moisture.  Other places like Roanoke, Virginia where the picture to the right was taken have not been so fortunate.
It is drier than we have ever seen it in our nineteen years in Roanoke.
I have a feeling that the real estate market is in a similar dry spell.  We have had more showers than we had last spring, but we still have not seen that soaking rain of buyers that we need to keep the Realtors® in our area going.
Yet I have a feeling that just as we … (0 comments)

buyers: Pay for performance - 07/24/07 09:23 AM
This is an interesting shot that I snapped yesterday from our deck in Roanoke, Virginia.  I have snapped many pictures from the same deck.
The moods that I see in the sky change almost as much as those of the beach. 
I have said before that I think the real estate industry is changing.  I think it is good that our industry has a relatively flexible compensation model.
That makes it pretty easy to compensate for changes in the marketplace.
Yet I wonder in this world of few buyers and many sellers, how long it will before those with buyers will be rewarded even more.
 We … (2 comments)

buyers: Spec houses, FSBOs, and selling free stuff - 06/10/07 04:05 PM
Yesterday was the the hottest day of the year here on the Crystal Coast.  We had a booth at the Swansboro Arts Festival.  As hard and hot as it is sometimes, standing out and talking to the public is a good way to gauge what is on people's minds.
That works if you can get them to stop and have a conversation. We were giving away sun screen, ink pins, postcards, and maps.
If we had known the heat was coming, a tanker truck full of lemonade, some wading pools and a watering station for the dogs might have gotten more people to … (4 comments)

buyers: What is going to take to get people off the fence? - 05/16/07 11:45 AM
It does not take long for the question of "Where are the buyers?" to come up when Realtors® gather.
I think buyers now feel so empowered by the Internet that a real estate agent is an afterthought.As agents I think we have done a really poor job of selling what we do.  Good real estate agents make a transaction see almost effortless.  Yet they often move mountains to make it seem that way for their customers. 
Granted that will bring repeat customers back, but other than getting a referral, it probably will not do much for attacting  many of these new Internet … (1 comments)

buyers: The market psychology - 03/29/07 09:49 PM
The newspapers continue to prove that they are more interested in selling more newspapers than providing balanced reporting.  I guess we just have to understand that newspapers are really businesses dedicated to selling papers.
The best example I have seen recently was a report in the Jacksonville, NC newspaper about problems in the real estate market.  It was an AP report used as a filler on the bottom corner of the back page of the front section.  That is all significant in that it likely means that the article might have little to do with relevant news for Jacksonville and surrounding areas.
It … (0 comments)