Expert Advice from Amy & Kyle Bergquist at Keller Williams Legacy Partners
Hartford County real estate markets finished May with basically the same number of single-family deals as March and April. Looking at the chart below, one might think that the market has hit some sort of speed limit or something. Why haven’t we broken through the ceiling of about 750 deals per month? The only month on the chart with a higher total was April 2010, which was the deadline for collecting the Federal Home Buyer
It would seem that I like fences. Our small lot is covered with them – some that we inherited and others that we have added. We have a fenced area in the front of our house and a separate area on the side. And within the fenced areas there are even more fences. These are smaller, and mainly to keep the dog out of the gardens, but still, a fence is a fence. Fences are
A while back we talked about how appraisals can impact a deal. A new twist is that buyers have recently been making their offers more attractive by voluntarily removing the appraisal clause. They take the risk that the appraiser finds that the “value” of the home to be less than the contract price, and they have to bring more cash to the closing. Today we’re going to quantify that risk. Banks require appraisals to help
April single-family contracts came in at about the same level as Hartford County saw last month. Activity remains much higher than we observed in 2011, and the month-to-month count of negotiated contracts seems to be following the same pattern as last year. We’ve already commented on much of what we’re seeing in the market right now. Some towns are very active, and multiple offer situations are common. Inventory is on the low side, so buyers
Real estate appraisals have been a hot button issue over the past few years. First, appraisers were implicated as a contributing factor to the real estate bubble in the mid 2000s. The line of thinking was that they were focused less on the accuracy of their results than on their next deal. Next, the government responded by clamping down on the appraisal process to prevent lenders and real estate agents (who were both also implicated