This Hickory NC Area Real Estate Market Report covers the entire county of Catawba and includes only single-family homes (stick-built, condos and townhouses).  All types of mobile and modular housing has been excluded as well as all raw land and commercial properties.  All data comes from the Catawba Valley MLS.

In January 2010, there was 167 properties listed and 43 properties sold in Hickory, NC.

The average list price of the homes that sold was $146,710.

The average sold price of the homes was $139,525 with an average days on market (DOM) of 160.

In January 2009, there was 154 properties listed and 45 properties sold in Hickory, NC

The average list price of the homes that sold was $133,815.

The average sold price of the homes was $122,980 with an average days on market (DOM) of 143.

If you're looking to buy or sell real estate in the Hickory, NC or surrounding areas,
contact Roger Johnson today for your confidential interview to discuss your buying or selling needs.

When you want it SOLD, not just listed

Cell 828-381-9245  Office 828-568-2121 ext 310

*Data deemed reliable but not guaranteed

With the market what it is today , foreclosures and REO properties are the talk of the town.  I talk with several buyers through the week that are interested in buying a foreclosure in the Hickory, NC area because they've heard it's the best way to "get a deal."  That may be true, but before you think about looking at foreclosures, here's some tips to help you decide if a foreclosure is really the way you need to go.

First, let's define what we mean by 'foreclosure' and REO properties.  The term 'foreclosure' is used in a lot of different situations, but here we're referring to when the bank as actually taken possession of the property, become the owner, and has listed it for sale.  "REO" stands for Real Estate Owned Property; a term that banks use once they have foreclosed and become the owners.

Okay, on we go!

1. Get qualified for a loan before you begin your search.  This is PRIMARY.  And I mean fully qualified.  REO's generally want a fast sale and they expect to have a good prequal letter or proof of funds (if you're paying cash).  At least in the Hickory, NC area (and I'd presume elsewhere as well), you don't have a financing contingency on foreclosure properties.  Get Pre-Qualifed Now
2. Understand that REO's will usually need work.  Sometimes lot's of work!  I say this because I've shown buyers that said that they don't mind some TLC, but then balk at the smallest problems.  If you're not handy, or don't have a plan to fix up the home, buying a foreclosure may not be the best bet for you.
3. Foreclosures are rarely in 'show' condition.  Similar to above, even if the home needs very little actual repairs, it may be completely trashed.  You have to be able to look past the mess and see the possibilities of the home.
4. Foreclosures are truly sold "As Is."  Most homes are sold as-is in NC, but in a standard contract, you have a 'condition contingency.'  Like the loan contingency, in the Hickory, NC area at least, many REO's have removed ALL contingencies from the offer.  In a nutshell, that means that finding damage during an inspection you may have missed will not be a contract contingency to help you get out of the contract and retrieve your earnest money.
5. Be prepared for a Bid War. Especially if the home is already priced right for the condition.  There will be a lot of people interested in the property, especially investors, and they will bid higher if it meets their numbers.
6. Don't wait to make an offer.  Many people that are interested in a foreclosed home as their primary residence will often wait on making an offer on it.  Sometimes, it's because of the condition, but in a lot of cases, it's because they want to wait to see "how low it'll go."  If it hits the market over-priced, that may work, to a point, but usually what happens, is that they miss the opportunity to make a bid at all because someone else didn't wait.  See #5.
7. Don't get discouraged. You may miss out on a few foreclosures, even if you do get your offer in.  That's just part of dealing with foreclosures.  Still, if you think a particular house was the "IT" house for you, you may still have a shot.  This is still a tough market, especially concerning financing.  Many times with foreclosures, something happens in the deal that prevents it from closing and it goes back on the market.  So keep checking until it says "SOLD."

If you're interested in buying foreclosures in the Hickory NC area, sign up for my Foreclosure Hunter Program today or give me a call.

photo courtesy of Andrew Bains flickr photostream

Yes, you heard me right.  If you're a first time home buyer and you're interested in buying a home in the Catawba county, NC area, I can get you an additional $14900 of funding if you purchase a local foreclosed property.

A little details then. 
This is NOT a tax credit (like the $8000 tax credit) and it's not extra money in your pocket.  What it is, is an essentially free loan of up to $14900 to help purchase a foreclosed property.  That's like getting a $100,000 home for $85,100 without even negotiating!

So how does it work?
I did say "essentially" didn't I?  There are conditions.  The $14,900 will be a zero percent interest 2nd mortgage on the home that will be forgiven 20% for each full year of ownership.  So, if you own and live in the property for at least 5 years, the money is free.

As you might expect, there are a few conditions that must be met, too.  Here's the main points.

1. The property must be in Catawba county and be a single-family detached, condo or townhouse (manufactured housing is not eligible).
2. The can't be any structural repairs or deferred maintenance issues (per NC licensed home inspector)
3. All properties must be purchased at or below 99% of the appraised value and the price cannot exceed $210,000
4. All necessary repairs must be completed prior to closing.
5. Eligible borrowers must meet the mortgage financing requirements (you have to qualify for a loan)
6. There is an income limit of approximately $46000 annually (this may be different, but close)
7. Borrowers must contribute $1000 of their own funds into the transaction.
8. Borrowers must complete 8 hours of classroom or one-on-one home buyer counseling from a HUD approved housing counseling agency prior to loan closing (we'll help you find one)

There's a few more particulars, but that covers the big ones.

So, if you're a first time home buyer in the market for a Hickory NC area home for sale, it may be worthwhile to check out some area foreclosures and see if you qualify for an extra $14900 in funding. 

Need more information or ready to go look at some homes, just give me a call or visit my website at www.HickoryNCHomes.com

There has been article after article and blog post after blog post on the subject of strategic defaults and the 'moral dilemma' of it (or lack there of, if that's your position).  Many believe that it is immoral for a person to decide to strategically default on their mortgage.

Let's stop there for a minute and define strategic default.  In a nutshell, strategic default is when a borrower who is financially capable of making the monthly mortgage payment, decides to stop paying and let the bank foreclose on the property.

People who think that it's immoral to make the decision to default strategically have pretty much called those that do every name in the book.  The best: if you can pay, but choose not to, you're a low-life, greedy SOB.  My response to this is pretty simple: umm...so were the banks that chose to lend the money.

So, why am I bringing this up again, when it has been knocked around til it's already battered and bruised?

Because recently, the largest ever residential property purchase in the nation just ended in a strategic default.

In 2006, Tishman Speyer Properties bought the 56-building, 11,232 unit Peter Cooper Village & Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in New York City for 5.4 BILLION dollars.  Last week, they decided to "hand over the keys" (ie, strategic default/walked away) to their lenders on a 4.4 BILLION dollar debt on the property, which is now estimated to be worth 1.8 Billion.

Where are all the outcries of "that's immoral!" "those greedy SOBs!"

They were replaced with "they made a sound business decision."  After all, this is a commercial company and that was a commercial loan.  It's only business, and business understands that sometimes you default.  Since it's "just business," it's hardly made a splash on the strategic default radar.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not advocating strategic defaults.  If you default on your loan, there are repercussions to doing so, and if you're considering it, I'd strongly advise you to talk to your legal counsel as well as your financial adviser and tax professional, so that you will fully understand the position BEFORE you choose that option.

Still, I think it's an option that must be considered from a business standpoint and not a moral obligation.  I'll say what I normally say about it here: "please show me where, in the loan documents, that the borrower is morally obligated to make payments."  Otherwise, I'll stick with if it's good enough for big businesses, then it's good enough for little home owner as well.

For further reading, try: Strategic Defaults and the Moral Imperative and The 'walkaway' double standard

I read this morning the Inman News report, Lag in Digital Marketing, and then logged in to Active Rain and read Wayne Golliday's, summary of the same data, Digital Marketing falls behind for most Real Estate Firms!

At first glance, these numbers seem alarming for most of the real estate world (those of us that are "in" the digital world loved them!).  But then I began to really look at the numbers AND the details of the data.  With that, and a few thoughtful comments from Wayne's post, I began to wonder if this is just another "fear article" whose sole purpose is to get a knee-jerk response from the reader.

Only 300 companies were interviewed, and of those, they were split between investment, commercial and residential real estate firms, though they do not give out exactly how many of each were interviewed.  Now, the numbers: 58% of those interviewed did not do search engine marketing and of those that did, only 33% invested in search engine optimization.

Here's the problem with that
 
Although it's not given exactly "who" they interviewed, it's a safe bet that the companies were fairly large to huge real estate firms and not 1 to 10 person offices.  Why?  Most people doing surveys don't mess with the "same fries."  Forget that they account for the majority of firms, they only interview the big boys.  Also, they include investment and commercial firms in the mix.

Why is that important?
 
Large residential real estate firms usually do not seek out customers directly, but rather, they seek out real estate agents.  It's the agents that primarily do the online marketing to attract clients, not the company.  Even if a firm invested marketing online, it would be at a smaller targeted market (agents) and wouldn't require the same outlay of resources.

How about those commercial and investment real estate firms?  Since I'm not part of one, I'm only guessing here, but I'd say that it's quite possible that the Internet is still not they're primary source of leads.  Sure, 90% of home buyers start their search on the Internet, but what is the comparable on investors looking for commercial or investment deals?  I'd doubt that it's anywhere near as high.  Investors generally are a much closer knit group, and work a lot more on referrals and word of mouth.  It may be possible that "traditional" marketing simply works better for them.

Dollar for dollar comparison doesn't work

Making the assumption that if a company is putting 50% of their advertising budget into "traditional" forms of advertising and only allotting 20% to online marketing, that they're not embracing the Internet isn't an accurate assessment.  Why?  As most of that do get the online thing, you can do a whole lot more with a whole lot less money.

For example, here it costs about $500 a month to run a full page ad in a traditional real estate magazine.  With it, you get between 15 and 25 photos of homes, each with a little blurb of space for details, and a header to advertise yourself.  For $200 a month online, I can get one or two good websites, good SEO support, and run one or two search engine marketing campaigns.  Which do you think is more effective?  Traditional media simply costs more.  If you're doing it at all, it's likely to eat up the majority of your advertising budget.

Finally, I think that the interviews assumes search engine optimization is an outside expense.  If these are large companies, then it may be that they've directly hired someone to manage their online presence, including SEO.  If so, they are more likely to view that as employee expense and not as an advertising expense.

Are the numbers surprising?  In a way, yes.  Not having a strong online presence seems crazy in this day and age, and especially to those who have (or trying to have) a good online presence.  But in this case, I simply don't think that they supplied enough data to accurately gauge what the real truth may be.

C Tann-Starr wrote this article on Foreclosure Avoidance Counseling.  Don't pay for counseling if it's provided for free!  Here is the link for HUD counseling in North Carolina.  If you're in or around the Hickory, NC area, you can check out the Family Guidance Center.  They are also on HUD's foreclosure avoidance counseling list.

The article below was written by Adam Davis of Ultimate Private Money and is being republished with permission.

If you are a real estate investor, especially in this market, it pays to know how to raise private money for your real estate investing deals.  Not only does private money solve a key problem in today's market of obtaining bank loans, it gives you the power to confidently make 'all cash' offers and know that you can indeed close in 10 days or less.  Both are strong motivators to sellers to accept lower than "normal" offers on their properties.

If you're a real estate investor looking for properties in the Hickory NC real estate market area, be sure to contact Roger Johnson today.  I'm an knowledgeable REALTOR® with experience both dealing with, and as an, investor, so you can count on me for solid, professional service.

There are easy ways and there are hard ways to raise private money. One of the easiest of the easy ways to raise private money is to incorporate self-directed IRAs each time you talk to a prospective private investor. 

Self-directed IRAs are still relatively unknown outside of the niche real estate investor world, which means you have some huge advantages - you're not just a face in a crowd saying the same thing everyone else is saying. Lest you forget that there are a lot of other forces out there competing for your private investors capital (financial planners, stock brokers, banks) it is critical that you have a unique proposition for them.

As soon as I began showing potential private investors self-directed IRAs - which meant

educating some of them on what they were and the benefits - the floodgates really opened up. Soon, some of my biggest investors began developing in the process of converting their old 401(k)s and SEP/SIMPLE IRAs into self-directed accounts and then placing those funds into my real estate investment projects.

At their core, self-directed IRAs are simply Individual Retirement Accounts that allow the account owner to make decisions about where the funds go. The funds can be invested in real estate, promissory notes, private placements and more.  The accounts we're talking about aren't offered by most financial service companies (like Fidelity or T. Rowe Price). There are special custodian companies that handle these accounts. Per IRS rules, a custodian or trustee must be involved and all the same tax rules apply for early withdrawals, roll-overs and treatment of distributions/RMDs (required minimum distribution).

Here are 5 Reasons that Self-Directed IRAs should be your best friend when raising private money for real estate investments:

1. Tax-deferred growth - The basic benefits of a traditional IRA apply to self-directed IRAs: investors can contribute money to an account on a "pre-tax" basis and defer income taxes on those gains until the funds are withdrawn, at which point distributions are taxed at ordinary income tax rates. This is great because it allows the private investor to compound larger sums using what would be tax money owed to the government. Deferring income taxes alone can lead to huge percentage difference in investment value after just a few years.
   
2. Tax free growth - Self-directed ROTH IRA's can be used to place funds into your real estate investments as well, whether for private placement of equity capital or a promissory note. With a ROTH IRA, the investor contributes after-tax dollars and does not pay any taxes on the gains after a 5 year minimum holding period if over 59.5 years old. Principal funds can be withdrawn without tax consequence if the account has been open for at least 5 years. ROTH benefits may be even bigger for your private investors, because they have the potential of big gains long term without yielding anything to Uncle Sam.
3. The 'wow' factor - Since most people, accredited and non-accredited investors alike, are unaware of the fact that they can invest in real estate with their IRA, you have what I call the 'wow' factor going for you. You can take on the role of educator and provide valuable information to investors who never knew this option existing for their money. Most private investors are quite receptive to learning about new ways to make money and grow their retirement accounts.  Who better than you to tell them.
   
4. Ease of use - Self-directed IRAs are quite easy to work with. The paperwork process is really no different than opening up an account with a large financial institution or bank. The private investors mind is put at ease because their custodian will handle all of the tax reporting requirements and account maintenance.
   
5. Access to more capital - Your investment pool widens significantly with self-directed IRAs. Private investors can roll over or transfer funds from an existing IRA/SEP/SIMPLE/401(k) or they can contribute funds from another source. In many cases, private investors have investments that are under performing or languishing and will happily move them to a new account for a few percentage points more in return.

There are many more reasons why Self-directed IRAs should be your best friend when raising private money, but the preceding 5 reasons should suffice in lighting a fire under you to incorporate these awesome tools in your business right away. Creating information sheets, brochures or other materials to show private investors these benefits and how they can take advantage of them by investing with you is a great start. Uncle Sam doesn't usually hand out a lot of breaks, so when he does (and it can actually result in a truckload more private money) you should take full advantage.

If you use Gmail as your email program, you already know it's pretty awesome at the job.  Still, it lacks one thing that many people want...the ability to easily add a tagline or signature to your emails that includes things like photos and/or links to websites (and if you don't have one, you can always add Hickory NC Home Search to yours ).

Awhile back I wrote a post on how to easily add a HTML tagline to your Gmail emails.  It's still a good option, but the problem with it is that you have to remember actually go back to the signature template that you created every time you want to add a signature line.  So you either do that before you write an email, or you have to save to draft your current, flip to the signature, copy and then paste into the current.  Again, it works better than before, but still gets old if you (like me) forget to start with the tagline added.

So, I searched around for a better option...and I found it!
The first thing you need is to be running Firefox browser.  Firefox offers faster web surfing and a whole host of add-on's to make your surfing better anyway.  I think that they have a version of this for newer versions of Google Chrome now, too, which is another great browser.

Second, go to WiseStamp.com and download their email signature software and install it.  From there, just follow the prompts to setup your brand-spanking new signature and then you'll have it anytime you need it at a touch of a button!  That's pretty much it.  Simple, huh?

Here's mine.  It's pretty basic, but I like simple:

__________

Roger Johnson, REALTOR®  CENTURY 21 American Homes 
2258 Hwy 70 SE  Suite 201  Hickory, NC 28602
Office: 828-568-2121 ext 310  Cell: 828-381-9245  TollFree: 888-596-7367 ext 310
www.RogerAJohnson.com

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Hickory NC Real Estate Blog Todays Announcements

P.S.  Did you notice the link there from 'Hickory NC Real Estate Blog?'  That's the RSS feed from this activerain blog and it's automatically updated with this program, so your most recent blog post is shown.  Cool!  Enjoy!

FHA Commissioner David Stevens explains the need for a few changes to FHA.  These are some very important changes affecting FHA lending.  Since FHA loans are a primary source for buyers' funding in and around the Hickory NC area, it's good for home sellers to be aware of the changes, too.

Here's some solid tips getting your house in shape to sell from Kate Case of Kates Home Staging and Redesign.

Do them all, and for around $500 dollars or so, you'll make a big change in your home's appearance.

Thanks, Kate.