How do an agent’s services impact their commissions? Let’s discuss.
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Sellers: Why a home Warranty? Presented by Toth Team
Stacey Kraft with Home Warranty of America is with me today
to answer some questions on all things seller home warranties today.
If you’re a buyer looking at a home warranty, click here!
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Today’s topic is an exploration into home warranties for sellers and Stacey Kraft from Home Warranty of America is joining us today to lend her expertise in this area. If you missed our first conversation about buyer warranties, take a look here!
Q: First, what is a home warranty?
A: Home warranties are going to cover the mechanical systems in your home, and there’s an acronym that will make it easy to remember each of them: P.E.A.C.H., which is broken down into Plumbing, Electrical, Appliances, Cooling, and Heating.
Q: If I’m a seller, why would I want all of that to be covered?
A: Protection for home sellers is necessary because hiccups can sometimes occur without warning, whether they’re mechanical or otherwise. The last thing a seller wants to worry about when their home is for sale is shelling out money for repairs.
Q: An example of that might be your hot water tank going out. What would a new hot water tank ordinarily cost?
A: I see claim notices every day, and on average, a water heater will run you about $1,000.
Q: A warranty, then, will give a seller peace of mind?
A: Yes, the security blanket that a home warranty offers gives the seller peace of mind, and not only that, it’s a good foundation for when the buyer takes over. Since we have free seller’s coverage on the home, we have a history with it.
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Protection for home sellers is necessary.
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Q. From the point of closing and beyond, how long will that coverage last for the buyer?
A: The new-buyer plans are for 13 months or you can buy a two- or three-year plan up front if you wish to.
Q. If an issue were to arise with the home, what would the seller do from there?
A: The seller will call our 800 number and file a claim. Then, our claims representative will set up a time for a contractor to come to the home and assess the situation. If it’s determined that the repair can be accomplished in a cost-effective manner, we’ll repair it. If the issue is beyond repair, we’ll replace the item.
Stacey and Home Warranty of America have always serviced our needs in a highly competent way, and have been quick to action in getting our claims addressed. Without a doubt, Home Warranty of America is a wonderful resource for you if you’re selling your home.
If you have any questions for Stacey, go ahead and give her a call at (248) 330-1076. And if you or someone you know would like help with any real estate needs, please give us a call at 866-OWN-THIS or email us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!
4 Ways to Make Buyers Fawn Over Your Home
If you’re ready to sell your home, there are a few things you can do in order to make buyers fall in love with it.
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Are you ready to make a move? There are four ways to make buyers fall in love with your home.
First, make it move-in ready—think clean, organized, and clutter-free spaces. Second, bring in some plants, because greenery adds instant style. Third, up the “dream home” factor and highlight any unique features. Lastly, don’t forget to call your local Keller Williams agent!
If you have any questions or if you’d like to get started with the home selling process, don’t hesitate to give us a call. We’d love to help you.
Pricing Your Home Correctly in Ann Arbor
Are you ready to sell your home?
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If you would like to sell your Ann Arbor area home this spring, you are most likely already thinking about what your asking price should be. If you’ve already had your home on the market for a while with no success, perhaps you’re wondering what you might be doing wrong. There are lots of pricing misconceptions, and Toth Team Worldwide Network is here to set the record straight!
The simplest breakdown is this: Price + Exposure = Sold. The price is determined by the value of your property. The value is determined by what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to accept in today’s market. Buyers make decisions based on what other similar properties recently sold for in your area.
The value of your home is not determined by what you paid for the house when you bought it, what you feel you need to get for the house, what you want to get for the house, what your neighbors say you should get for the house, what another agent says, or what it costs to rebuild today. If you price your home based on one of these factors, it may sit on the Ann Arbor real estate market with little to no offers.
It’s important to price your home to sell right when listing because the longer the home sits on the market, the less interest it will gain from potential buyers. On average, most offers are received in the first three weeks on the market. By the fourth week, they start to fall. This is when you’ll want to reevaluate your listing price. The longer your house sits on the market, the more price reductions you may have to offer. This could result in a value loss greater than if you had priced it correctly at the beginning.
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Price + Exposure = Sold.
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On average, 60 percent of potential buyers look at properties that are priced at market value from the beginning. If you price it 10 percent above market value, 30 percent of buyers will look at it. If you price it 15 percent above, only 10 percent will look at it. Similarly, if you price it 10 percent below market value, 75 percent of buyers will look at it, and so on.
When you work with Toth Team Worldwide Network to sell your house, we’ll give you examples of the competition, both active and recently sold. We also explain the pros and cons of listing over, under and at the suggested sale price. For example, at the suggested sale price, buyers will notice your home, your home will be found easier in searches, it will bring buyers in, and you won’t have issues with an appraisal.
Whether it’s a buyer’s market, seller’s market or balanced market also makes an impact on home prices. You can find more information about all of this, along with graphs to help you understand it, in this Pricing It Right pamphlet we’ve created for you.
4 Ways to Make Buyers Fall in Love With Your Home
Don’t wait to call your local Keller Williams agent.
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Want to Sell a Home? Get a Home Value Report
Are you ready to make a move? There are four ways to make buyers fall in love with your home so you can sell it quickly and for top dollar. First, make it move-in ready—think clean, organized, and clutter-free. Second, bring in some plants—greenery adds instant style. Third, up the “dream home” factor by highlighting any unique features. Lastly, call your local Keller Williams agent!
Our Global Reach Helps Sell Luxury Homes
Our marketing has a global reach. Here’s exactly what that means.
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When you want to sell your luxury home, the goal is always to get top dollar. Utilizing our Keller Williams luxury network of buyers, we can get you top dollar for that luxury home by using our system to bring more views, more showings, and more internationally qualified buyers.
The sale of luxury property these days requires global resources and global expertise. According to the National Association of Realtors, international buyers purchased almost $70 billion of U.S. real estate last year alone.
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This is an awesome tool that we are proud to use.
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We’ve forged strategic relationships across the globe in order to maximize exposure. At your discretion, your listing can be offered to websites that are aimed at the world’s most affluent and successful buyers in 20 different languages and over 100 countries. Your home will not only appear to luxury buyers in the U.S. in English, but it will also appear to Japanese buyers in Japanese. It’s an awesome tool that we are proud to use in order to help our clients.
If you have any questions for us about our process for marketing luxury homes or you need to connect with an agent in any other market, we’d be happy to help. Just give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have!
How Do You Know How Much Equity Is in Your Home?
What is home equity and how is it calculated? Why is it important to know how much equity is in your home?
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How do you calculate a home’s equity?
Equity is the difference between the market value of your home and how much you owe on your mortgage.
Your down payment actually marks the first stake of equity in your home. As you pay down your mortgage, the equity in your home continues to increase.
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As you pay down your mortgage, the equity in your home increases.
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Other factors can increase your home equity, including improvements on your house and your local market appreciating over time.
By familiarizing yourself with the equity you have in your home and the economic conditions of our local market, you’ll gain insight into when might be the right time to make your next move.
Thanks to Sayuri for her question. Your gift card is on its way!
Remember, we are here to help you. Send us your questions. If we answer with a video, we’ll send you a gift card. If you are out of our area, we can connect you to a top agent anywhere in the world.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Cutting Down Trees With Gary Mosher
Knowing how to spot and remove a dead tree from your property can improve your home’s overall saleability.
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Landscaping is very important to the value of your home. According to this HGTV article, “Several recent nationwide surveys show that mature trees in a well-landscaped yard can increase the value of a house by 7 percent to 19 percent.” Part of landscaping sometimes involves removing dead trees.
To illustrate this point, we’re onsite at a property that is having some trees removed from its landscape. Joining us is Gary Mosher from A-1 Tree. Gary is an expert tree cutter, and he’s taking down a few pine trees that are dying. As a 45-year veteran of this business, he enjoys it because it allows him to be in a different spot every day, and it’s fun for him to be outside.
Many pine trees in Michigan are diseased, but a lot of them just need to be fed and fertilized. If you find the dead needles early enough, you can save the tree by driving a piece of pipe down around the root system of the tree and filling it with triple twelve fertilizer. Cutting down a dead tree can improve your landscaping, which in turn helps your property’s saleability.
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Cutting down a dead tree can improve your property’s saleability.
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One particularly persistent problem in our area is Blue Spruce disease, which affects Colorado Blue Spruce trees and is easily recognizable by the branch dieback that occurs. According to the MSU website, “The rapid decline of many spruce trees in Michigan and surrounding states appears to be related to an increase of canker diseases coupled with other disease and insect problems that plague the species.”
According to Gary, the technology of tree cutting has improved over the years. Upgrades in equipment such as chainsaws, chains, and stump grinders allow them to do the job faster and easier. He does not, however, recommend that you try cutting down a dead tree yourself.
If you want to take care of some dead trees or make some improvements to your property, I highly recommend that you give A-1 Tree a call at (734) 426-8809.
If you have any questions about tree removal or you have any other real estate questions, don’t hesitate to give us a call. We’d be happy to help you.
What Are the Advantages of CPO?
How can you help your home stand out in the marketplace? One of the best strategies we use is getting the home “certified pre-owned.”
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A home purchase falls apart for one of two reasons. Do you know what they are? Either the home does not appraise or it does not inspect well.
When you have a house under contract, you want to ensure it closes. What if you could bulletproof your transaction from any hiccups? You can, by making your home a certified pre-owned home.
Let me ask you this, which is worth more: a car or a house? It’s not a trick question. Yes, obviously the house is worth more, probably twenty times more. So why would you treat it with less respect? You’d get your car looked at by a mechanic before you sold it, so it only makes sense to utilize the CPO program to get your home sold faster and for more money.
Whether it’s a resale or new home, you have a competitive advantage over other homes with a CPO home. It reduces stress, gives peace of mind, and gives you the contract to close security that your transaction will actually go through to the end.
The CPO program is a triple-pronged strategy. First is the inspection, then we have the appraisal, and finally the home warranty.
The idea of having your property or asset pre-inspected is widely accepted. Statistically, it’s proven that buyers and agents love CPO homes. Agents would much rather show a CPO home than one that isn’t. A CPO home is a win-win for buyers and sellers. Buyers pay more appropriately, and sellers make more money.
There’s much less stress with a CPO home. All the negotiation is done up front because there’s nothing you are hiding about the home and nothing for the buyer to uncover. Now let’s talk about step two, the appraisal.
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Bulletproof transactions are the way to go.
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The No. 1 fear of most sellers is that they are giving their property away. Having a CPO home prevents that from happening because an appraiser is going to give their honest and fair opinion of the home’s value, which you will then share with the buyer. Typical sellers don’t have hard evidence for their home’s market value like an appraisal, so it protects you from lowball offers as well.
Most agents and sellers use what’s called a CMA, a comparative market analysis. It’s a document that compares the home to other recent sales and helps explain why a home is priced where it is. However, the fact that the home’s value is still an opinion leaves the negotiation door wide open.
Appraisals are used by courts, banks, and lawyers as legal proof. Realtor CMAs, on the other hand, are informational and not defendable in a court of law. An appraisal always trumps a CMA because it is done by a state certified appraiser. This puts you in the driver’s seat and gives you the evidential advantage.
Finally, stage three in the CPO process is the home warranty. Now that your buyer has the appraised price and the inspection report, the home warranty ties up any loose ends in a nice little bow. In the first year the buyer owns the home, they will have peace of mind with a home warranty that covers the major systems in their house from any expensive repairs.
If you’re thinking about selling your home, is this the kind of sale you want? Bulletproof marketing and bulletproof transactions are the way to go, in our humble opinion. If you have any questions for us or want our help getting your home CPO before you sell, give us a call or send us an email. We would love to hear from you.
How Can a Pre-Listing Inspection Enhance Your Home Sale?
If you’re selling your home, there are a myriad of benefits to ordering a pre-listing inspection. Today we’re joined by an expert to help explain them all.
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Why should sellers get a home inspection before selling their home? Today we’re joined by HouseMaster marketing representative Melissa Berends to give you the lowdown. Melissa will go over the benefits of a pre-listing inspection, but for more information about home inspections and questions you should as as a buyer, download our free e-book by clicking the image below.
In case you don’t know, a home inspection is an unbiased, objective evaluation of the home’s major components which notes any potential defects or areas of concern. HouseMaster refers to these as pre-listing inspections.
The first major benefit you get from a pre-listing inspection is that you know what repairs are needed and can decide to either make them or negotiate an adjustment to the selling price. Seller-made repairs can normally be made for less than the negotiated repair cost, so it’s probably in your best interest to make the repairs that are revealed during the pre-listing inspection.
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A pre-listing inspection greatly enhances your home’s marketability.
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Another benefit is that the original selling price is more often obtained when a pre-listing inspection has been performed because either the noted repairs have been made or the original selling price has been adjusted to reflect the home’s condition. Therefore, a realistic price is established based on factual data prior to the home being listed. You could also lose more money off your initial asking price if a buyer performs their own inspection and find undisclosed flaws. In fact, for every flaw a buyer finds in a home that would cost $1,000 to fix, you stand to lose $3,000- $5,000 off your asking price. In truth, the average buyer doesn’t really know what it would cost to fix a given issue, and flaws are seen as far more egregious than those disclosed beforehand.
A pre-listing inspection also greatly enhances your home’s marketability. If you have an excellent home inspection report, you can show it to potential buyers. For example, HouseMaster provides a link to their electronic pre-listing inspection report for any digital media advertising. There are many other creative ways to use the inspection report to help sell your property, as well.
Lastly, your potential liability will be reduced with an independent report of the home’s condition from a professional home inspection company. You may not know the true condition or any possible defects when completing the seller’s disclosure statement, which can cause legal and goodwill issues. If both you and the buyer are aware of the home’s conditions, you can proceed forward with a good-faith negotiation.
For a more in-depth look at the scope and purpose of a home inspection, click here to see one of HouseMaster’s own reports.
If you would like more information from Melissa about home inspections, you can call her at (888) 848-0202.
A special thanks to Brandy from Toronto for inquiring about this topic. She will receive a $25 gift card for her question being chosen. If you have any questions or are interested in buying or selling a house, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We’d be glad to assist you.
We’re on-site at the old Inca Ruins in Peru, so we thought we’d spice up today’s message on commissions by adding some footage of Peru’s breathtaking scenery.
To start, let’s define commissions. Commissions are a fee for service paid by the home seller and are based on a percentage of the total sale price. Different agents offer different services, which can include, but are not limited to:
If you’re curious about the range of services we offer, you’d like to see our commissions menu, or you have any other questions related to real estate, give us a call at (734) 669-0337 or send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to helping you!