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We are beginning the final two months of the year.  As many Realtors will confirm, we are headed into a slow part of the year.  With important holidays occurring in November and December, our focus tends to move towards staying put until the weather warms up.  The result is that for many, the task of selling a home is placed on the back burner.

However, investors should take careful attention of this trend.  What it means is that often, the same house that was priced at (for instance) $200,000 in September, when the flowers were still blooming and the trees were fully leafed out, might be snagged for $180,000 in late December or January.  (Oh, and by the way, that same house may be re-advertised in March — when the flowers start blooming again — for $205,000).  Investors should also note that there may be tax advantages for completing a purchase in 2013.  Finally, investors should also be fully aware that mortgage rates are still low, low, low.

If you’re in this investor camp and you can offer cash for a home or condo, you are in luck.  Today is November 1, but there’s still time to get everything completed before year’s end with a cash deal.  In fact, if you are a 100% cash buyer, you have nearly a month to go before the sand is out of the Purchase Complete in 2013 hourglass.  Here’s a great game plan: purchase now, use January and the first couple of weeks in February to get that home upgraded with new lighting or new bathroom fixtures as needed, and then put it on the market in mid-February — completely new, sparkling, and ready for new renters (or owners) by the first of March 2014.

Finally, the best news is that there are some excellent homes and condos on the market right now.  There are several in the greater Clarksville area that are simply begging for a new owner, and greater Nashville — especially around the burgeoning Charlotte Pike area — still has a number of good selections.

Give either Becky or me a call if this is the right time for you to invest.  Becky’s cell is 615 948 8218, and my cell is 615 870 4094.  As you know, we are with Parks in Green Hills (whose phone number is 615 383 6600).  Thank you!

 

Families often wonder whether they would be better off renting or buying, especially in their younger days when they may not have saved up very much for a down payment.

Trulia has introduced an excellent new widget that allows you to enter personalized information (including sale price of home, typical rental rate paid, your tax rate, your interest rate, etc).   This widget will show you in no uncertain terms whether you will be better off renting or buying.

Try it out — you may be surprised!  You can find it at http://www.trulia.com/rent_vs_buy/

And if it turns out that you can purchase a home for an amount close to what you would be paying out in rent, then give us a call.  We will be pleased to help you find the right house for you, and we’ll even sign you up for a little spending money at Lowe’s.  Prediction: Lowe’s and Home Depot will become your favorite places to shop once you become a homeowner!

The American Dream — by Becky Wynne

Sharon keeps after me to write a blog post. I’m not a writer. What do you write about? I’m told you should write about things you know – well, I do know a little about real estate. Not really sure how to turn that into something interesting for readers. So, I’ll write about my dad instead.

Ray Felts – that’s my dad.  We all just helped him celebrate his 80^th birthday in August. Wow – can you even imagine all that has happened over the past 80 years? I was curious so I “Googled it” and found a few interesting facts: In 1933 the unemployment rate was at 25.2%! Boy – and we think we have it bad! The Great Depression was still going strong in our country and 1 in 4 people were unemployed. Not really sure why they called it the “Great Depression” because from what I understand – it really wasn’t great at all. If you did have a job – your average annual income was $1,550. And this is my favorite part…average cost of a new home was $5,750 – 80 years later it’s $186,300! A few more fun facts – gas was .10 per gal, bread was .7 a loaf, and a can of Campbells soup was .10. The latest movie to hit the silver screen was King Kong (the original) and some funny looking little dude named Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany – not sure anyone really cared about that at the time. Construction had just begun on the Golden Gate Bridge and in real estate news – FDR had just gotten Congress to pass the Home Owner Refinancing Act as part of “The New Deal”.  This is fun, isn’t it?

But seriously, do you think any of our generation or younger could even imagine what life was like for our parents or grandparents?  MOST people during that time really knew poverty and hardship. But before you start feeling sorry for them – listen, what they went through made them strong and self-sufficient. My dad’s generation is the backbone of our country. They are the reason why generations since have NOT had to suffer the way they did. When things were tough, they rolled up their sleeves and did WHAT EVER IT TOOK to feed their families and pay their bills. My dad was very poor as a child but he was smart and a hard worker. He did what all young men of the time did; he signed up and fought for his country. Then he came home and raised a family in the post-war booming economy. I never remember him sitting around complaining about life – he was always working.   80 years have gone by—and now his home is paid for, he raised 3 great kids, he spent 51 years with his loving wife, he can enjoy his “toys” (motorcycle, boat, motorhome, etc.) and his security. Despite everything he survived to live out the American Dream.

Now the question is…does the American Dream still exist? Well, that might have to be another blog subject.

Side note: Ray had knee replacement surgery in September.  We wish him well!

 

As you know, buying a home means you’re going to need to get a mortgage.  (Unless, of course, you recently won a major lottery and you’re planning to pay cash for  your new home.  If that’s the case, please call!).

Getting a mortgage means a possibly painful scrutiny of your finances, your credit history, your monthly debt, your income, etc.  If you have already owned a home for some time, we hope you’ve been able to keep up with the mortgage payment every month.  If so, you’re building your credit up nicely: good for you.

But because many of our clients are first-time homeowners, one of the most common questions we get is something like this.  Hey, I haven’t had a chance to develop much credit yet.  I’ve been in school, I’ve graduated, and I have found my first job.  But I do not yet have a credit history.  Can I still qualify for a mortgage?  The answer is yes, in a few months–with some steps you must take.

Your objective should be to increase your credit worthiness over the next six to nine months.  After all, your “credit score” is simply a way to rate your credit worthiness.  How do you increase your credit score, especially if you don’t have much credit extended to you at this point?

Go obtain a couple of credit cards with modest balances.  For instance, apply for a gasoline credit card.  (You will see them advertised at many pumps, often with the incentive of knocking a few cents off the price at the pump for some months).  Apply for a credit card at a home improvement store (like Home Depot or Lowes, or even Sears).  It probably won’t be a large amount of credit, but it will still help to demonstrate that you pay your bills on time.  A third option might be to get a credit card from a small, local clothing store.

Don’t apply for all three cards at once.  First get the gasoline card, and when you fill up your tank, use the card.  (Be sure to pay it off when the bill comes in).  A few months later, apply for the home improvement store card.  Buy an item that costs somewhere between $200 and $400 that you actually need (maybe a lawn mower, a microwave, or a drill set).  Plan ahead, and pay it off completely when the bill comes in: do NOT pay merely the minimum payment.  And then a few months later, get a local clothing store card and charge up maybe a couple of hundred dollars of clothes (Christmas presents for your favorite people, maybe?).  You know the next bit of advice already: pay it off completely when the bill comes in…

If you’re following these instructions to the letter, your credit score will have improved in the six or nine months that have elapsed.  Don’t go all nutty and buy up half the clothing store, including new $200 sneakers.  Take it slowly.  You can also demonstrate evidence of your credit worthiness by showing regularly-paid electric or cable bills, regular payments on your student loans, etc.  After your credit score reaches the high 600s or the 700s, it’s likely you will be able to obtain a mortgage.  If you’ve got questions, just let me know.  Your future’s so bright, you gotta wear shades!

 

Well, the season is here: it’s football time.  While it’s pretty clear that the Titans are the team for whom most everyone in middle Tennessee watches (and roots for), there are a number of people who just can’t get enough of UT college football.  And, for those folks in Nashville, Vanderbilt remains a favorite team to watch (despite some recent unsavory occurrences outside of the football arena).

With these teams in mind, do you need a little help keeping track of their playing schedules?  If so, we still have about a dozen handy football schedule magnets left over from our recent campaign.   The magnet includes schedules for all “favorites”: Titans, UT Knoxville, and Vanderbilt.

If you’ll just drop us an email with your regular mailing address, we’ll be happy to send you one (or at least the next twelve people who respond).  We are keeping up with the events that our customers care about.  And, by the way, we care about you.

I can hardly believe it’s almost the eighth day of the eighth month — and this is the first blog posting for August.  I would hang my head sheepishly about now, but no; I have been busy.  Had a closing in Clarksville today and that’s always a good thing.  Yes, the path up to closing day is often fraught with unexpected challenges, fixes, paperwork, resubmission of paperwork, checking and double-checking, arranging, organizing, and other such fun activities.  But when closing day arrives, it’s a good day.

You might recognize the face of this gentleman.  You’ve probably seen him on Nashville tv, singing.  Despite the fact that he has some obvious challenges — blindness, a faded and well-worn shirt — this man sings a song that goes like this:  “It’s a good day today; it’s a good day today; it’s a good day today, I’m sure.”  What this man lacks in one area of his life, he more than makes up for in his spiritual strength.  He is an inspiration, to be sure.

Let’s have a few more “good days” this Fall by getting a few more “closing days” arranged.  Let us know how we could assist you in the process of either buying a home (still time to get one before the holidays) or of selling a home (inventory is low, and more homes are needed on the market).  Have a very good day, y’all.

I found a really neat widget today from Money Living online magazine.  It allows you to compare, by plugging in your own numbers, how much money getting a 15-year mortgage would save you over getting a 30-year mortgage: you’ll save an enormous amount of interest money.  It also shows how much more that means you’ll be paying per month with the 15-year note (a small amount more per month, but resulting in huge savings long-term).  Here is the website:

http://moneyliving.com/financial-calculators/mortgage-compare/

As you can see, first put in the amount of your mortgage and also your tax rate. There’s also a handy guide near the bottom of the page if you don’t recall what your tax rate is.

Then slide the bars to reflect that the 15-year plan and the 30-year plan generally have different interest rates.  Hit Calculate and let the widget work its magic.  You will almost certainly find that taking on a small amount more per month will pay off huge results.  If you’re ready to start looking at properties, please contact us at bwynne@realtracs.com (Becky) or  sfelton@realtracs.com (Sharon).  We’ll get started to help you find the ideal home for you!

My husband and I took a short vacation this last week to visit his parents.  It’s always a joy to visit because we see them so rarely (usually just a couple of times per year).  Whenever we visit, we get to start tackling what I call the “honeydew” list:

• “Honey, do you know what’s wrong with this webcam?”
• “Honey, do you know what we can do about this refrigerator door that doesn’t close properly?”
• “Honey, do you think we can get the printer to work from our wireless connection?”

Most of the tasks are fairly easy to fix — fifteen minutes here, maybe an hour there to clean up files, fix broken links, and reinstall printer drivers.  It’s typically very fulfilling to complete these tasks because they are so appreciative of our help, and we get a substantial sense of accomplishment, of the “paying it forward” kind.  We get to catch up on the medical issues that have occurred since last visit; we get the chance to share funny stories with some of their friends, and we always enjoy both the complex’s salt water pool and Pasta Night at the golf clubhouse (do be sure to bring your appetite!).

But getting back home is a great joy, too.  We can reassemble our “family” and return to what’s normal for us.  Our separation-anxiety-laden dog won’t let us out of his sight for the next few days.  Our cat gives us a look that says “what did I do to make you decide to leave me at home?”

The getting back home part of this vacation was more troubling than usual.  We caught a 4:15 am shuttle bus to arrive at the airport by 4:30 am, which we knew would be suitable time to get through all the bells and whistles (including customs) for a 6:30 am flight.  But the “oops” started early: the 6:30 am flight to LaGuardia was cancelled.  A trip to the Delta ticket counter for rescheduling presented some very frustrating results: the first flight we could obtain would be 5:35 pm to Atlanta, followed by a three-hour layover, with the second flight to Nashville at 11:00 pm, putting us in Nashville after midnight.  Our 22-hours-awake day consisted of

• playing games on the Ipad (Solitaire, chess, jigsaw puzzles, and I downloaded a new bowling game),
• lots of people watching and secret speculation (“What profession do you think she has?”  “I think she’s a pole dancing instructor”), and
• trying to figure out what we might get from the airport restaurants that would be tasty and affordable.  (In case you haven’t recently priced airport restaurant food: a four-bite grilled chicken sandwich with cheese and lettuce sells for $11.95: yikes!).

It just brings to mind this reality: home is very personal.  In fact, it’s so personal that sometimes you can’t even explain what it is that’s so comforting about home.  It’s love.  It’s the sense of belonging.  It’s the fact that you know exactly where to find the coffee filters (maybe you can’t find them at somebody else’s home).  It’s the comfort of your own bed and your own pillow and your own shampoo and the shower spray that you like so much.

As realtors, we understand this very personal connection, and we will do our best to help you locate the home that speaks to you.  Yes, it’s great to vacation somewhere.  But there is nothing more wonderful than coming home.  Even if you don’t get home until well after midnight.

 

You may not recognize July 1 as Canada Day — but I do.  (Yes, it’s also Becky’s birthday and it’s also her anniversary, but this post focuses on our neighbors to the north).  First of all, I met (and married) a Canadian citizen while attending graduate school.  Bill has actually lived all over the world: not only Canada, but Switzerland, India, Australia, England, and then to the USA (and Indiana in particular).  A couple of years after we married, Bill’s position at IBM was slated to be “downsized,” so he located a tremendous position with the National Research Council.  Of Canada.  Which meant that we were going to move to Ottawa, the capital city.

While I grumbled a great deal about moving to Canada — we moved in January, and the day we arrived, the temperature was minus 35 degrees — the long-term experience was indeed a treasure.  Canada does a lot of things even better than the USA does.  I won’t go into the whole national health issue here.  Instead, I’ll give you a couple of other examples.

First, recycling.  We lived in Canada from 1992 to 1995, and Canada already had wonderful curb-side recycling service for all sorts of products: glass, plastic, cardboard, metals and aluminum.  Curb-side is important; you simply placed your recyclables in the green bin and put it near the street.  Now that we’re in Tennessee, we remain dedicated recyclers, but we have to load up and drive to the nearest recycling station.  Curb-side is a lot more convenient.  Extending the idea of recycling, Canada also gives away garden bins for composting and rain barrels for garden water collection.  We have to purchase those elements here (and we have).  I noticed a lot more items at Canadian grocery stores that were packaged more efficiently: for example, many cleaning and laundry products, even back in the 1990s, were packaged in concentrate form so that you added your own water at home, and milk comes in small plastic bags (which also improves freshness).

But perhaps the biggest difference was in the home buying process.  We purchased a home within walking distance to my husband’s workplace (Plumber Avenue).  The whole experience couldn’t have been easier.  Once we selected the home we wanted — with the assistance of a great realtor! — we all went to our bank together.  We showed the loan officer a copy of my husband’s paycheck stub, the realtor gave the officer the details on the home we had selected (after a few negotiations), and within 45 minutes, the home was ours — easy breezy!  I guess it’s no surprise that we always remember our first home with fondness: we had a fenced-in backyard, complete with a terraced garden, peonies, raspberries, and grapes that grew through the pergola.  Good times indeed.  Today, Canada Day, makes me a little wistful for those days.  (But not, however, for the cold ice and snow!).

You really should visit Canada someday, if you haven’t already.  Going to Montreal, because French is the dominant language, is very much like an European vacation.  Be sure to get fresh cheese curds while you’re there.  And by the way, don’t bother asking for iced tea — they don’t know what that is (smile).

 

Not a lot of text today, because the message is really pretty simple.  Love, in all its myriad forms, is a good thing.  Supreme Court, most of you made the right decision today.  Thank you for having a clear, expansive vision of the power of love.