Tuesday is our Broker's Open tour day, here on the Main Line, where as a Realtor you can get to see recently listed homes or those homes that have been on the market for a while and the agent is hoping to re-energise and remind you about. Each area has certain times when homes are open so you can plan your route and catch as many homes as possible. Over the summer these times are not always held to by the agents as there are less Realtors out working or so it seems as I see less agents out and about.
I try to view every home in the Tredyffrin and Easttown townships that comes on the market, whether I have a client for it or not. I try to do the same for Radnor as well so that if a client calls on one of these homes I have seen it. Obviously, having your own listings makes this hard to do on Broker's Open and then I make appointments for myself and my wife to go visit so we have seen the homes.
This week I was surprised by how few homes were on tour, plus how many of those on tour I had already seen before. I ended up going to see 6 homes, from town homes to multi million dollar homes.
The town home was of particular interest as it was in a development where I recently sold a home in Chesterbrook, priced at $374,900 I thought it seemed a little high, and these thoughts were confirmed when I visited. The home was much smaller than the unit I sold and although it shows very well, it is described as a 3 bedroom unit, which it is not, it has two bedrooms plus an open loft area which can be enclosed to make a third bedroom. The unit I sold had a walk out lower level backing to open space, this had a very small yard, backing up to another unit, mine also had a wonderful large deck that wrapped around the unit as it was also an end unit. So it will be interesting to see what develops with this unit over a slow summer season.
I visited two other homes in Berwyn, one on Potter Ave. which was recently re-listed and has a lot of potential but the location leaves a little to be desired, but some work on re-habbing and curb appeal will go a long way, a low offer on the $349,900 asking price may also be needed. The other home on Midland was a new listing by a friend Linda Theuer from Prudential Fox and Roach, nice street, filled with split levels, priced well at $399,900 for a roomy home but with the summer season the timing may be against it, so price may end up dropping to get it sold.
I moved from here to Wayne visiting an old colleague Linda Lee who had just listed a very nice home on Maple Glen Road for $1,250,000, five bedrooms three and a half baths with a very open floor plan which is the result of remodelling and additions. It felt a little choppy where the dining room has been placed, but overall the home felt well looked after. The bathrooms were still a little tired and probably needed some more work on them as well. However, the home lacked a formal sitting room, which I read more and more is a wasted space as less people want it, but there was a member of the public looking at the home whilst I was there who seemed to feel this was important. I always wonder how often people use their formal living room and how much a great or family room attached to a kitchen.
From Maple Glen I went to visit some new construction town-homes on Exeter, the model was lovely but these homes were priced the same as Maple Glen and had only two bedrooms, possibly three if you used a room on the ground floor as a third bedroom. It felt a lot of money for what it was.
My final home of the day was over on the other end of Tredyffrin on Weadley, the home came on the market at the end of last week and was already under offer. This gives me a moment to discuss the new way our MLS lists homes that are under contract. We have removed the Active with Contract designation and homes are either active or pending. Lots of people are still confused by these different designations but simply put if the home can still be shown it is active, if not it is pending. What is declared is that if it is active but has an offer subject to a contingency this is shown more clearly. So a home is active if the listing has received an offer but it has a home for sale contingency attached, or a home inspection or mortgage contingency. The home showed well in the photos, in reality it seemed a little tired, with bathrooms and kitchen needing some freshening up, but was well priced at $619,000.
Comments(0)