May. 9, 2009 - Price Reduction for Contemporary on 9 acres
For those of you looking for a great deal on peace and privacy , you've come to the right place! This 2 bedroom Contemporary getaway is located at the end of a winding driveway in a wooded setting in Groton. Nice artist retreat, first time home buyer investment, or second home! Only $179,900! Come to the open house on May 16 from 2 to 4 pm and see for yourself!
Feb. 20, 2009 - Ithaca NY Real Estate Market Statics for January 2009
Get your copy of the January Ithaca Area Real Estate Statistics by following the link from my homepage at www.IthacaAreaHomes.com. Although the market experienced a downturn last month, we are finding that February sales seem to be rising and with the new $8,000 tax credit available for first time home buyers, the spring market in Ithaca will be a busy one! If you have any questions feel free to contact me. And for the latest news in the Ithaca real estate market, follow me on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/IthacaAreaHomes.
Dec. 26, 2008 - Podcast for First Time Home Buyers - High Level Overview
Buying a home for the first time (or first time in a long time) can be daunting. I've prepared this podcast for home buyers so they can get a high level overview of the process and will feel more comfortable knowing what the progression of events are in buying a home. This may seem like an overwhelming amount of information, but remember your Realtor will guide you each step of the way and keep you on track.
Dec. 10, 2008 - Maple Ridge - A New Community in Dryden NY
Maple Ridge in Dryden is a Community within a Community allowing its residents to choose from a 2 to 4 bedroom townhome or single family home. The building is in Phase One and will include sidewalks and streetlights. You can have your home built to fit your lifestyle, tastes and desires. Contact me for sample house and floor plans, or to set up an appointment to meet our builder and developer. The following video will give you a flavor of the community.
Feb. 27, 2008 - Changes in Tompkins County Valuations and Assessments
If I haven't communicated this to you yet via snail mail, I'm blogging to help you understand the recent change in home valuations and assessments in Tompkins County. For the past year tax assessments have been based on an eighty five percent valuation of market value for tax assessment purposes. As of July 1, 2008 when the assessment database goes into effect homes assessed valuation will be one hundred percent of the full market valuation.
If a home's full market value in 2007 was $200,000, it would have been taxed at 85% of that times the tax rate. For example, in the Village of Cayuga Heights (including county and school) the taxes were calculated as:
$200,000 x 0.85 x (32.991367 divided by $1,000) so your taxes were $5608.58 minus the Star Exemption.
Now in 2008 your tax assessment will be full market value or 100 percent.
$200,000 x (32.991367 divided by $1,000) so your taxes will be $6598.2734 minus the Star Exemption if tax rates stay the same. The tax rates for town, county and school will not be determined until July 1st.
It appears that some of the full market valuations increased and some of them decreased. Even if your full market valuation decreased in many instances the taxes may go up as the assessed value increased by fifteen percent (from 85% to percent of market value).
With current low interest rates for mortgages and many price reductions on existing inventory of homes in the Ithaca area, now is the perfect time for the savvy buyer to look seriously into making that real estate investment.
For a bit of entertainment and enlightenment, click on this video of the U.S. Home prices, adjusted for inflation, mapped out as a Roller Coaster ride beginning in the year 1890 to present. Make sure to scroll down to view the graph a History of Home Values. Enjoy!
The Ithaca area residential real estate statistics are out for November 2007.
The average selling price in November was $157,352 as opposed to $183,184 in November 2006 (down 14%). 166 listings went under contract in November 2007, up 3% over November 2006. Average days on the market went up slightly to 134 from 130. New listings on the market are down 7% from 87 to 81. The average selling to list price was 92.560%, down 3% from last November.
If you would like more information about specific data by school district, or what impact current market statistics have on the value of your home, feel free to contact me. Knowing the value of your home is important information if you are planning to move, if you are considering refinancing, or for estate planning.
I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. I was emailing a client back and forth today, and I mentioned to her (as I often tell my business partner, Beth Ganem) that I have the best clients in the world. They are a pleasure to do business with and I enjoy each and every one of them (you).
Often when a transaction is completed and I have either sold a client's house or closed on their new home, it's a bit of an empty feeling not corresponding with them regularly. If you're a former client, stay in touch and let me know how you are doing!
Blessings to you all, and have a very Happy Thanksgiving.
Today's post is about
the Dryden area real estate market and the Dryden community in
general. The following video focuses on a new Dryden listing on
Livermore Road, as well as a few area photos so you
can get the flavor of the community. I'll be
spotlighting different markets in subsequent blog
articles.
In the past week, there is one new Dryden property on the market
listed at $189,000 and five homes were sold. To see what sold,
paste this link into your browser - clicking on it will not
work!
Interested in the demographics of the
community? ZipSkinny is new site I found and cannot
vouch for the accuracy, but it's interesting never the less. A
great resource for information about Dryden on an almost daily
basis is the blog Living In
Dryden by Simon St. Laurent, an editor with O'Reilly and
Associates. At the bottom of the page are a gazillion (yes, I
counted) links to his posts about Dryden about politics, emergency
services, Dryden Schools and more. The Village of Dryden has its own site
as does the Town of Dryden.
Dryden has been one of the most active real estate markets in the
past few years, and having lived there for several years I can
vouch for the fact that it is a great place to live!
Green Building and Green Houses (not the garden variety) are
terms that we are hearing more and more about these days. Green
houses are basically designed to be eco-friendly from the
insulation, flooring and paint materials to appliances and
landscaping.
Washers and dryers are energy saving (or hang your wet clothes
on the line to dry) and faucets are low flow. In flooring, I was
surprised to find that bamboo is the environmental hardwood of
choice as it is technically not a wood, but a grass yet is a very
hard surface and easily replenished. Linoleum is actually made from
linen and other natural fibers.
Manufacturers are checking into the viability of milk-based
paints as opposed to the paints with carcinogenic
chemicals. Kitchen and bath tiles are being made with recycled
glass.
And although solar energy conversion is a large initial
investment, you will realize the savings each month in lower energy
bills.
According to Wikipedia.com, Xeriscaping refers to refers
to landscaping in ways that do not require supplemental
irrigation and using plants that are appropriate to the area.
The word Xeriscaping was coined by combining
xeros (Greek for "dry") with landscape.
I have not come across many truly green houses in the Ithaca
area, but do know of a few that have been remodeled as such. I'm
sure we'll hear more about this concept in the future.
It looks like the sold properties will only work in an email. If
you would like the link of sold properties emailed to you, send me
an email and I will email it back!
Sep. 10, 2007 - What Ithaca Real Estate Sold Last Week?
I thought I'd start your Monday with a few interesting tidbits
regarding real estate and home decorating.
Interested in seeing
what residential properties sold in Ithaca and surrrounding
areas last week, where they were, and for how much they sold?
Ever have trouble visualizing what an interior room in your home
would look painted a different color? My daughter found the
color visualizer page at glidden.com to be a great help. You
choose the room and furniture that best matches your own, click on
your paint color of choice, and you instantly see how well (or not)
it will look.
If someone were to ask you, in relation to selling, buying or even redecorating you home, if you know Feng Shui, and your response is, "Who?" this article may be for you! Here is a dictionary definition:
feng shui (fŭng' shwâ') n. The Chinese art or practice of positioning objects based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi that have positive and negative effects.
The purpose of the art in home decoration is to create a harmonious environment and enhance the flow of positive spiritual energy, or chi. Whether or not you subscribe to these beliefs, some of the ideas behind feng shui just make good decorating sense.
As mentioned in my last blog article, Ithaca area residents are fortunate to have a variety of services available to us so we can make informed and educated decisions when buying a home and then maintaining it.
If you're thinking of purchasing a home that may need some fixing up, or live in one that could use a bit of repair, Better Housing for Tompkins County is offering a series of maintenance classes that are hands-on. They suggest you come prepared to get dirty! The cost for each class is $5 and the facility is located at 950 Danby Road. All classes begin at 6:30 p.m. Here are their offerings:
Electrical
August 30, 2007
Window Replacement
September 20, 2007
Drywall Repair
October 28, 2007
Plumbing
November 13, 2007
Tools
December 13, 2007
These sound like extremely useful classes to me! My father alway said to have a healthy respect for electricity. Maybe I should attend that class to learn what I should NOT do. And who hasn't pounded a big nail in the wall to hang a picture, tried to spackle it in preparation for repainting, only to make it look worse? And have you ever stumbled across a tool made for a specific task that you sure wish you'd known about last spring when you were trying to make that repair?
Call 273-2187 to reserve your spot. Also, visit their website for additional information on buying and maintaining your home and to find out about the other services provided by Better Housing for Tompkins County.
Aug. 3, 2007 - Ithaca NY Real Estate is Alive and Well
I haven't posted to my blog in a while for a variety of reasons; one being that I have been extremely busy because the real estate market in Ithaca is not suffering the same downward turn as in other areas of the country, and generally doesn't.
A recent article in the Ithaca Journal dated July 18 espoused the discouraging news about the difficulty that first time homebuyers have. As pointed out in a letter to the editor by my esteemed colleague and good friend, Peggy Haine, even first-time homebuyers have the great good fortune to be able to avail themselves of services provided by Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services for Tompkins County and also the SONYMA program that allows first time homebuyers, that qualify, to take advantage of, among other perks, a lower interest rate.
So the sky isn't falling. The real estate market always experiences fluctuations, By and large, real estate prices are reflective of the uniqueness of a property competing against other properties at a given time. If there are several similar homes on the market at one time, prices tend to go down. Because of the transient nature of the Ithaca population, we have more buyers than other areas (particularly in the spring) to absorb the excess housing and competition for the declining number of homes will cause the selling prices to escalate.
Buying real estate is not risky and is a great way to build wealth over the long run. Don't buy into all of the doom and gloom about the poor state of the real estate market. We're doing just fine in the Ithaca area.
Well I just finished watching the virtues of listing your home on redfin.com versus using a Realtor. I bill myself as providing state-of-the-art representation and using technologically advanced marketing, so my mind was open when I began watching. I'll be the first Realtor to sign on with redfin.com if they truly provided superior service for buyers and sellers. From what I saw, they're not there yet. They showed a testimonial from only one satisfied client who was able to afford to feed the guests at her reception because she chose to use redfin over a traditional real estate agent.
The segment on 60 minutes would have you believe that many Realtors are money-grubbing salespeople with no regard for their clients' best interests. Guess what, some Realtors really are money grubbing, unethical salespeople. So are some doctors, tax preparers, lawyers, etc. etc. On the other hand, I know many honest, diligent, hard-working Realtors that put the interests of the client above the money. I truly feel that no matter what profession you are in, if you treat the client well and put their interests above all else, the money will follow.
Just to be sure I got the full picture before I made my mind up about the redfin services, I immediately visited their website. Uh oh. Their server was down. They did offer a few documents for viewing that gave a synopsis of their services. Again, I wasn't impressed. You truly can save money by using their services, but this means you do a large part of the work on your own. You hold your own open houses and arrange for private viewings on your own. (And I hope you don't have a full time job that makes it impossible for buyers to view your house while you are working). It appears your listing will show up on a few Internet sites with redfin. Their flyer states that the traditional agent does not do Internet marketing. With the marketing that Beth Ganem, my colleague, and I do, our listings show up on well over 50 Internet sites.
I think consumers were well served when we could book our own hotels and flights on the Internet and bypass, for the most part, the traditional travel agent. Real estate is a huge investment for most consumers. Flying to Disney isn't. For now, I think consumers are best served by the hands-on care given to our buyers and sellers. When that is no longer the case, I'll join redfin.
Apr. 17, 2007 - A Good Credit Rating for Purchasing Real Estate
I recently read a great article by Eric Bramlett, an Austin, TX Realtor in which he takes a look at the spending habits of people with great credit scores. It seems they all had 7 habits in common.
1. Never Pay Cash - The only way to make your purchases (and payments) known to the big three bureaus is to pay with a credit card. I'm dating myself here, but I remember standing in line at a grocery store behind someone purchasing an item under $10 with a credit card and thinking that they probably couldn't afford to pay cash. This is no longer the case! These purchases are known to credit card companies as "micro-purchases" and can boost your score. Use it for movie tickets, soft drinks, and gum.
2. Never Use a Debit Card - Debit cards will not build your credit score. In addition, if you lose your debit card, you aren't protected against fraudulent purchases as you are with a credit card.
3. Pay Off Your Balance(s) - Try not to carry ANY balance. Pay them off every month.
4. Put Yourself on a Bill Payment Schedule - Make sure you are consistent. Schedule one day each month to pay your bills.
5. Consistently Request Higher Credit Card Limits - If you consistently borrow money and pay it off, credit card companies will easily raise your credit limit. It is best to have the balances of your cards below 35% of the cards limit. Higher limits make you eligible for special promotions on occasion.
6. Never Close a Credit Card Account - The age of your credit card matters to credit bureaus. If you over spend and have difficulty paying off a card, but eventually do get it paid, you lose the history of paying off on that card if you close the account.
7. Never Rent - The biggest impact on your credit score is the purchase of a home. A first-time home buyer after they close on their new home will see their credit score jump around 50 or more points within a few months.
Apr. 5, 2007 - 2006 Ithaca Area Real Estate Statistics
The Ithaca Board of Realtors has just released the Annual Statistics Report for Residential Properties to its members. There were no big surprises. The real estate market in Ithaca has remained fairly steady over the past 12 months as the statistics bear out. Traditionally, the market value of homes in Ithaca continues to increase, albeit only slightly some years. This is possibly because of the transient nature of our residents due to the college population.
Tompkins County saw 1,041 closed sales in 2006 (there were 1,040 closed sales in 2005). The average selling price was $193,506 in 2006 and $184,026 in 2005. The average selling price to list price was 96.8% last year, and 96.6% in 2005, and the average days on the market was 61 in 2006 and 55 in 2005.
The Belle Sherman School District saw the most closed sales, followed by the Dryden Central School District and then Caroline. By dollar volume, Cayuga Heights came in first, followed by Belle Sherman and then Lansing Central.
If you have any questions about sales of properties in areas of interest to you, I'd be happy to talk to you!
Homeowners often find themselves in a position of wanting to purchase a new home and sell their present one at the same time. Where should they begin? They should start by keeping their goal in mind and with the help of a good Realtor, this process shouldn't be difficult providing they remain open to their agent's suggestions as to how best accomplish the goal.
First, get your current home in showing condition to prepare for listing it. Your Realtor will be able to go through your house with you and provide suggestions as to what changes to make to show your house in the best possible light. Do everything possible to follow their suggestions so that your house will sell quickly and at the highest possible price.
Second, have your Realtor start showing you houses. If the inventory of homes for sale is in your price range and style, have your Realtor list your home prior to making an offer on the home of your choice. This can be done in quickly since your home is already in showing condition.
You should not have to resort to temporary housing unless your home is extremely unique making it more difficult to sell, or if there are other conditions that make your house less saleable. And your Realtor should provide you with weekly feedback on showings and advise you if market conditions have changed making a price adjustment necessary. And be sure to make it convenient for buyer's to view your home by not restricting the showing times unnecessarily.
Normally, this strategy will help you to meet your goal without needless stress!
The Ithaca Area is a great place to live! This blog is designed to be a resource for buyers, sellers, homeowners, and those relocating to and from Ithaca and surrounding areas. Your comments are welcome! I would be delighted to help you with your real estate needs. Just contact me by phone (607 220-5416) or email (msnow@IthacaAreaHomes.com). And don�t forget to visit my website at www.IthacaAreaHomes.com.
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