Buyers: Trade Up in a Down Market

Buyer’s Week continues at the Greater Hartford Real Estate Blog, building on Monday’s look at the current opportunity and Tuesday’s suggestion to start with the mortgage. Check back each day for another post specifically for buyers. A real estate market with falling prices is actually a very good environment for trading up to a larger home – if you can overcome your fears. Consider a simplified example. Suppose home prices have fallen 10% from their

Buyers: Start with the Mortgage

It’s Buyer’s Week on the Greater Hartford Real Estate Blog. Yesterday we outlined the current opportunity for buyers, and today we’re talking mortgages. Check back each day this week for another post specifically for buyers. Unless you’re independently wealthy, the first step in buying a home is talking with a mortgage professional. They are the gatekeeper in the whole purchase process; checking credit, verifying income, and generally making sure that you are qualified to secure

Buyers: Your Time to Shine

Multiple trends in the real estate world are converging this fall to create a home buying environment that favors strategic buyers. Since the buyer pool is pretty shallow right now, we thought it might be worthwhile to devote a week’s worth of posts to buyers. Buyer Week; it’s kinda like Shark Week on The Discovery Channel. At least that’s how we imagine it in our minds… So here is the situation (not to be confused

West Hartford Center's Single-Family Homes

West Hartford is nationally recognized as an excellent place to live, receiving kudos from Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine twice this year, for being one of the 10 Best Cities for the Coming Decade and 10 Great Cities for Raising a Family. Within West Hartford, The Center is always mentioned as a primary attraction. Visitors and residents converge for the diverse mixture of work and play, with numerous restaurants, unique shops, and energy that complements the

Buyer's Agent as Personal Shopper

As a buyer’s agent, I’m on the lookout for interesting houses for my clients – their personal shopper in the real estate markets. I’m their eyes and ears on the ground, monitoring the new listings, checking out properties in person, and asking about other opportunities. There are many reasons why this can be helpful to buyers, but here are two biggies. Properties show up and disappear from the public websites differently than on the MLS