Jacksonville Florida Real Estate Podcast with Brad Officer Brad Officer

When prospective buyers walk through a home, there are certain features they absolutely don’t want to see. But what are they? Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale When it comes to impressing buyers with certain features in a home, there are a few things that they absolutely do not want to see. The following six items may be considered beneficial to the homeowner but not to buyers. Here are some projects and home features to avoid: 1. Wallpaper. We are seeing a lot of old wallpaper in homes with yesterday’s colors and designs. Buyers just see wallpaper as another expense that they have to maintain. Most will remove it because no one wants to paint over it. 2. Lavish lighting. Buyers don’t really care for fancy light fixtures. Large, ornate fixtures are also viewed as an expense because the buyer will have to get them removed and changed. 3. Textured walls. This used to be a hot trend, but that’s not longer the case. Most buyers want smooth walls and ceilings these days. 4. Mismatched flooring. Buyers like cohesiveness. A home that has carpet in one room, hardwood in another, and tile in a third is not cohesive. Buyers want the flooring in a home to be consistent and high-quality. They can spot cheap, laminate wood flooring a mile away. 5. Bad paint colors. For a while, buyers were into very rich colors like gold, green, and red. Those colors are not desirable anymore. Buyers want bright, airy, and neutral colors. 6. Hot tubs. Hot tubs are great for homeowners who have them, but no matter how nice the tub is, buyers usually don’t want to take on that expense themselves. They are expensive to get removed. These are the home improvements to avoid. These are just a few of the things that will turn buyers off about a home that is for sale. If you have any questions for us or if you’re looking to buy or sell a home, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you.

Open houses, if done correctly, represent your best chance of getting top dollar for your home. Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale Do open houses actually work or is it just something Realtors use to get more business? The answer to both questions is yes. Open houses are mutually beneficial, but it’s more beneficial for you. However, they must be done correctly. Most open houses I see are very small and unimpressive. There are usually only a couple signs outside and maybe a flat balloon laid out in the grass that nobody can see anymore. It’s no small wonder that when you show up to one of these open houses there’s nobody there. The open houses that we do, on the other hand, are much larger. We facilitate a lot of social marketing and produce a lot of signage for each one. In most instances, we have as many as 20, 30, or even 40 people show up in a concentrated period of time. This allows us to get an immediate litmus test for how the market is reacting to your home and whether the opinion is that it’s underpriced, overpriced, too dirty, outdated, etc. Open houses, when done right, generate legitimate interest. We hear the negatives, but we also hear the positives, such as how many other people are there at the same time. We refer to this as social proof. If you’re a home buyer at an open house and you’re surrounded by a lot of other home buyers, that’s social proof that other people are interested in that house. If done correctly, open houses represent the best chance of getting the highest price for your home. The concentration of people will result in any interested parties making an offer that’s going to be real, as opposed to lowballing you. We’ve been reaping the benefits of this effect a lot this year. In many open houses, we’ve gotten multiple offers on the very same day. If you have any questions about open houses or are thinking about selling your home, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by phone or email. I look forward to hearing from you!

How do you time the market to get the most money from your home sale? Most people think you should list in the spring because there are more buyers on the market. However, I want to challenge that line of thinking. Instead of planning your home sale based on the time of year, you should time the market based on the amount of inventory available. After all, real estate is all about supply and demand. Right now, supply is super low in our area. If there are six to seven months of inventory available, that would be considered a balanced market. Anything under that is considered a seller’s market, while anything over seven months is considered a buyer’s market. Now would be a great time to sell because supply is low in many price points. With that in mind, I’m going to break down the supply by price point so you have an idea on how your home will stack up against the competition: Under $150,000 - 2.5 months of inventory available $200,000 to $300,000 -  2.9 months of inventory available $300,000 to $500,000 - 5.6 months of inventory available $500,000 to $1 million - 11 months of inventory available Over $1 million - 24 months of inventory available As you can see, any single-family homes priced under $500,000 are in a seller’s market. Homes below $300,000 are in extremely competitive seller’s markets. Once you cross that $500,000 mark, though, you are in a buyer’s market. This gives you a unique opportunity to sell your home for top dollar and move up into a higher price bracket. If you are moving up into a buyer’s market, you can get a great deal. If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how the upcoming election is affecting our current real estate market. Many agents are saying that the election prevents some buyers and sellers from entering the market because they are waiting to see who will be in the White House this fall. Here in our local market, though, the election is not affecting anything. All that talk about the election might just be an excuse some agents have for why a home hasn’t sold yet because if you look at the market numbers, things have not slowed down yet. The election certainly isn’t holding home sales back; in fact, they have gone up. So far this year, 13,700 homes have sold. That number is up almost 5% from the same period last year. The median sales price has also gone up 7% year over year. On a local level, I don’t see any impact from the election. If anything, the market has actually gotten stronger. I don’t see anything holding us back as we get closer and closer to this election. Home sales and home prices are both up year over year! If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale There are two markets that exist right now here in the Jacksonville area. The first is the market for houses below $500,000. This is definitely a seller’s market, meaning there is not a lot of inventory but it’s selling very quickly. A lot of our buyers are taking the opportunity in relation to this by selling their houses below the $500,000 mark. Then, they're taking advantage of low interest rates and their new buying power to move up over the $500,000 mark in their next purchase. The market for houses between $500,000 and one million, then, represents the buyer’s market. So, you see people selling in the seller’s market - which they’re doing quickly for top dollar and without many contingencies - and then moving up to buy in the buyer’s market where there are more choices and more room to negotiate. For the select few of us who are able to get into that higher end luxury market above $1 million, we’re seeing more than a 24-month supply. That’s an extreme buyer’s market, so if you have the means and the ability to get into that price point, you have a lot of choices and a lot of opportunities to get the right house at the right terms that are best for you and your family. If you’d like to talk about positioning your home for sale or you’d like to discuss getting yourself in position to get out and buy the right home, reach out by emailing me directly or visiting our website and contacting me from there. Also, make sure you listen to our radio show, Real Estate 911, every Wednesday on WBOB AM 600 from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm. I’ll talk to you soon.

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale There's a new technology upgrade we've invested in for our business, and I'm excited about the benefits that it allows us to provide to our clients. We're constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve in the real estate market. We've been paperless for a long time now, using iPads for our listing presentations and our contracts. Our recent upgrade was to the iPad Pro, which is much bigger - it's the size of a full piece of paper. I'll admit I questioned at the beginning how useful it would be, since it just appeared to be a huge iPad. But after using it and seeing how much easier it is to see entire documents like contracts, I've been seeing that our customers absolutely love it. We don't have to zoom in and zoom out, scrolling through a number of different pages that we were limited to by the smaller iPads. To boot, it also comes with the Apple Pencil, so you can sign contracts right on it. Our team members have been able to win more bids, because it allows us to sign documents on the spot after home showings. It makes things so much easier for listing agents, giving us and our customers a big advantage. It has helped us help our customers win the houses they want, and even a lot of times, get better deals because the negotiation activity is so fast when using the iPad. If you're interested in buying a home or selling a home in Jacksonville, we'd love to talk with you and provide some more details about all the advantages we can provide in this great market we're in. Send us an email or give us a call, and let's talk soon!