Date Archives August 2007

How to differentiate your home from the competition

So the question sellers are asking is, “how do we make our home stand out from the competition?”Between 1 June and 1 August 2004, 117 homes (no condos) were listed in the City of Charlottesville….  I do not really care what you do to our house, as long as it sells, but wonder what the plan is to get it remembered favorably.1) Make your house stand out because of the price (make it more competitive than the rest).2) Make your house spotless….  Do any and all reasonable (and some not-so-reasonable) repairs before it hits the market.5) Remove any and all objections that you can before the house goes on the market….  Buyers are asking for the moon right now; our job as listing agents and sellers is to get them to ask.Update 31 August 2007: Greg writes a similarly-themed article today.

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Green Links for Thursday 30 August

The complexities of building greenA new study shows that the environmental impact of shopping for stuff, from from food and clothing to CDs and electrical appliances – far outweighs any efforts to save water and power in the home.Building green doesn’t cost more greensWill going green help you beat the slow housing market?  It certainly can’t hurt.

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Secret Agent Ken Boyd

You’ve gotta love the creativity in this satirical piece….  My previous call for transparency in local government.  All politics are local.  Unfortunately, there is probably some truth in there.”Motion to approve whatever Mr. Wood wants to do?”We need more satire.”Sponsored by the Virginia real estate developers lobby in conjunction with republicans everywhere, Inc.”hat tip: Cvillenews.

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Transparency in government and real estate

Transparency is a good thing.I’ve noted before how my company’s commissions are broken down.  As a buyer and a seller, the expectation is that all money being moved around between the buyer and seller be shown on the HUD-1 form (PDF).  Granted, the HUD can be confusing, but at least it’s all there in plain sight.  Why are there only three candidates in the presidential campaign who have embraced transparency and accountability in government?

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Charlottesville gets ranked highly again

Courtesy of Travel + Leisure magazine:Jefferson’s spirit—forward-looking, yet rooted in the land and mindful of the past—lives on in the new Charlottesville.  Like other Southern university towns, such as Asheville, North Carolina, or Athens, Georgia, this is a place where people drive hybrid cars and tend to care deeply about what they eat and drink, and where it comes from….  and the Cocteau Twins jangling through the revelry—we ordered glasses of Stone Mountain Vineyards rosé, listened to trains whistle by, and watched a table of professors and students arguing over the wine list as though it were a political treatise.Ah, the romantic depictions of the Charlottesville area!…  One, even more people will come here (not necessarily a negative, depending on one’s point of view) and two – the City and County get complacent and rest on their laurels.Hat tip to the incomparable cVillain.

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Condo conversions in the Charlottesville area

However, to a lesser degree, we may have some “growing pains.”From Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (temp free link):For the nation’s real-estate lenders, the other shoe may be about to drop: condominiums.Already plagued by rising home-loan defaults and foreclosures among overstretched consumers, major markets across the country — including parts of Florida, California and Washington, D.C. — are seeing rising foreclosures and bankruptcies of entire condo projects….The condo market, while tied to the housing market overall, behaves differently under stress….  So while the speculative overhang of newly constructed single-family homes may have peaked in many markets across the country, the full force of the condo glut is starting to hit now.With single-family homes, “you put up a couple of model homes and build the rest as you get sales contracts.”…  (when was it registered with the Commonwealth?)- How many of the sold units have been sold to owner-occupants?To give a very high-level (and admittedly somewhat inaccurate due to GIGO) overview of the Charlottesville condo market, here are the results of a quick MLS search with no status attached:Condos in Charlottesville/Albemarle marked as new construction: 313Not marked as new construction: 3,333Conclusion – there have been far fewer new condo developments built than have been converted to condos….  we have the mostly unrelated condo conversion issue, which was nothing more than an arb of the overheated housing market vs. relatively low rents.But too many of these “conversions” were nothing more $1000 of new paint and countertops slapped into formerly rental units and that was supposed to support valuations 20, 30 even 50% over the income property valuation (even at today’s crazy cap rates).

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Monday links 26 August 2007

I’ve been looking for this for some time – a way to capture the water from an air condition’s condensate drainNow, if only I could install a revolving door on my house.Why do kids feel so entitled?The “Right to Dry” (clothes in your backyard)Where is Albemarle growing as of 2nd Quarter 2007?  Building permits seem to be returning to more stable numbers (look at 2002 and 2003).I love this analogy – a blog handshake.Three simple ways to use solar power at homeProperazzi – what will the MLS landscape look like when they come to the States?

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