Colorado Springs Real Estate Podcast with Donny Coram

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } As you go through the home buying process, it's important to determine your housing needs. This goes far beyond the number of bedrooms and bathrooms that you want. Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected]. When you're buying a home, determining your housing needs is incredibly important. The key is to plan ahead. If you're moving from a smaller property into a larger one, you'll want to plan for the next three to five years. You should have a list of absolutely non-negotiable things like which area you're going to be in, which school district, as well as bedroom and bathroom counts, but it's also important to be realistic about your budget and needs so that you can find the best house to fill them. You should have a list of non-negotiables. While you're considering which home to buy, you also need to consider location and the amenities you need to be nearby. For example, if you're commuting a lot, you may want proximity to I-25 so you can get north and south easily. If you're at one of our many military installations, it might also be important to be close to the Powers Corridor. Location is important, but you also have to consider your distance to work. How long do you want to commute every day? How far away do the kids have to go to get to school? A lot of factors can determine where your new home will be, and a real estate professional can help you make the best decision to find the right home for you and your family. If you have any questions for me about determining your home needs, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help!

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } Are Zestimates accurate? Sellers like to think that they should price their homes according to this number, but these valuations are usually not exact. Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected]. I’m often asked whether Zillow’s Zestimates are an accurate way to determine the value of your home. Here’s the thing: Zestimates are a software that takes square footage and recent comparable sales into account in order to arrive at a value. As a former appraiser, I’m here to tell you that pricing your home just isn’t that simple. Zillow’s Zestimate does not factor in specific features of your home, your home’s view, or any other renovations you may have made to the home to improve its value. Zestimates are not the final word on your home’s value. The best way to determine your home’s value is to talk to a licensed professional agent to give you a free equity evaluation. Zillow is a great tool to get a base price on your home to begin with, but is not the end of the conversation. An experienced agent will do the research, find comparable sales, physically assess the property, and then analyze the data in order to properly price your home in today’s rapidly changing market. There is no way for Zillow to account for all of the factors that give a property its value. If you have any other questions about pricing your home properly for the market or would like a free equity evaluation, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } With our open houses, we don't just put out a few signs and open the property to see for a couple hours. Our extensive system actually starts the night before and includes online promotion. Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected]. We certainly recommend that you do an open house on your property when selling. My open house system is a little bit different than the standard open house, though. The standard open house is usually a one or two-hour event with a directional sign at a major intersection. My open houses start the Friday evening before the open house. We put out more than 100 directional signs all around the neighborhood directing traffic to your home. From there, we really hit the Facebook marketing hard, broadcasting that we'll have the house open both Saturday and Sunday. This allows for a 16-hour open house and allows us to maximize foot traffic. At our best attempts, we’ll see 30 to 40 buyers come through your property during the open house. Preparing for the open house is going to be important when there is that many people. We want to make sure all your valuables are locked up and out of sight since we're going to have a lot of strangers coming through your property in a short period of time. We work with you to prepare the open house and get your home in showable condition, but most importantly, secure your valuables to avoid any problems. Our open houses system is guaranteed to get results. The best thing you can do for the open house process is to get yourself out of the property. Since our open houses are longer than normal, you want to have your kids and pets at a different location for up to two days while we perform the open house. The great news is that the open house has been so effective for us that we can get an offer from our first day. This helps you get the most amount of money in the least amount of time by getting foot traffic in an open house system that's guaranteed to get results. If you have any questions about our open house system or any questions about the Colorado Springs real estate market in general, give me a call or send me an email. Let's talk soon!

It's a common misconception that price is the only thing in a real estate deal that is subject to negotiation. Every contract has many conditional items that can be negotiated in your favor. Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected]. As a real estate professional, my job is negotiating. One common misconception is that the only thing negotiated in a home sale is the price. While price is very important, there are more things to negotiate besides price. For example, one other negotiation is the inspection items. When the inspection objection comes back, there will be a list of items we have to determine and negotiate in terms of which items are important to fix and which are a necessary expense for you as the seller. Move out date is another important negotiation item. In certain markets, it's important to have some transition time to move from your previous home to the new one. By negotiating move out dates, we can allow you to lease back your current property from the new owner, which allows you to transition to your new home without the stress of needing to do a very instantaneous move. Price isn't the only item that's negotiated. While it's common to move out the same day as closing, lately, we've negotiated a lot of deals that allow the sellers to stay in the home for a couple weeks or even months to allow for a smoother transition. There are other conditional items in a contract that need to be negotiated as well, like closing costs. In most markets, it's standard for the seller to pay closing costs, but in other markets, as they heat up, we may find that closing costs are something we can negotiate out by increasing the purchase price of the home. If you have any questions about negotiations during the home buying and selling process, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help.

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } When you sell your house, pricing too high or too low can be costly. You need to be aware of timely market trends when you assign a price to your house if you want to maximize your sale. Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at [email protected]. As a real estate professional, I'm often asked what the pitfalls of pricing your home too high or too low are. Pricing your house is not an exact science. To determine the value of a home, you need to really know what's going on in the marketplace at that time. If the market is on an upward tear, you want to price your home just above what you expect to get for it. This allows you to adapt to the current market conditions and avoid leaving any money on the table. On the other hand, if the market is heading downward, you want to price your home just below what you expect to get. Market data will tell us what the trend of the neighborhood is. To determine these values, we look at comparable home sales in your neighborhood. What did your neighbor's house sell for? What have homes in your neighborhood with similar square footage sold for in the last six to 12 months? Analyzing this data will tell us what the trend of the market is, which allows us to price your home within that data. As a former registered appraiser, my job is to find the right value for your home and price it within the market constraints. Pricing too high will lead to your home sitting on the market for a long time and receiving multiple lowball offers and not getting the most money possible. Pricing too low may leave money on the table. If you're thinking about selling your home, I'd love to sit down and talk with you about maximizing your sale based on today's market conditions in Colorado Springs. Give me a call or send me an email and let's keep this conversation going.