The most important step of the home buying process, other than picking a skilled agent to represent you, is the pre-purchase home inspection. An inspection gives you a chance to check out the condition of the house before you’re obligated to go through with the purchase. It gives you a chance to uncover hidden or previously unknown defects. In short, …
Radon. It’s colorless, odorless, deadly … and easily addressed. What Is Radon? It’s a naturally occurring gas. It’s given off by the decay of trace amounts of radioactive materials in almost all soils. You can’t see it, taste it or smell it. Is Radon a Health Hazard? Yes and no. In outdoor spaces, the gas dissipates just as fast as it is …
Escalation Clauses … Just One Tactic in the Multiple Offer Battle An escalation clause is a contract provision where you as a buyer promise to pay a certain amount over the highest purchase price offered by any competing buyer. While escalation clauses are common these days and sometimes necessary, they can have negative side effects. This is true for several …
Think for a moment about car dealers and accountants. Doing so you will help you understand why selecting a real estate agent has to go way beyond knowing how much the agent is going to charge you. Let’s start with cars and car dealers. Cars are commodities. A given make and model rolls out of a centralized factory and every copy …
A real estate deal is a bit like the 100-meter high hurdles at a track meet. Once you go under contract, you’ve got a few barriers to get over before you can cross the finish line and finalize the transaction. The typical home sale contract has contingencies that allow the buyer to do inspections, check out the HOA, make sure the …
Situation: You’re not relocating out of metro Denver (Yea!) but you need to make a move. You may be a growing family that needs more space. You may be an empty nester that wants to downsize. You may need to change your geographic location due to jobs or schools. The elephant in the room, however, is the fear of being homeless. …
Wait a minute!! We’ve got the hottest seller’s market anywhere in the country right now – truly epic proportions – and sellers are getting hurt? Can’t be! Actually … it could be. A recent Denver Post article has us thinking that up to 20% of metro Denver home sellers may be leaving money on the table when they sell their houses. Why? The …
No. That’s not a typo. Everyone knows that LEAD is bad for the environment, which is why we got it out of gasoline. Did you know, however, that an LED (lightbulb) is good for both the environment and your pocket book? You want to get LEDs out of the store and into your light fixtures. LED stands for “light emitting diode”. LED technology has …
Everyone knows to winterize sprinkler systems when cold temperatures arrive. However, did you know that your landscaping could benefit also from some winterization and tender loving care during the winter? It is worth spending some time and effort on your landscaping. We did a recent blog post about the fact that landscaping can contribute greatly to your property value – …
“Inman Connect” is a semi-annual national conference for real estate agents. At the most recent gathering in June of this year, held in the beautiful city by the bay (San Francisco), we heard a lot of discussion about the luxury home market. What is a luxury home? Are different strategies required when you are buying and selling in this market segment? Is …
What Does a Good Agent Do For You? You’ve probably never heard of “disintermediation” unless (1) You’re an economist, (2) A complete nerd or (3) You attended the big Inman real estate agent convention in San Francisco earlier this year. We learned about it through option 3 with maybe a dash of option 2 thrown in. Disintermediation is when intermediaries are cut out of …
One of our agents got an interesting email from a client a couple weeks after closing on a home: “Thanks for all your work on our house purchase – much appreciated! We are particularly grateful in this case that you kept after us to see the drawbacks of the property on [particular street name] even after we were under contract …