What sets apart the best real estate agents in Jacksonville?

The best real estate agents in Jacksonville know selling a home is an art form just like a great painter it involves many skills that only come with experience and constant training. The fundamentals are easy, sign listing, place yard sign, enter data in multiple listing service, but how these things are done is the difference between 90+ days on the market with a low ball offer or solid offers in the first couple of weeks.

Think of selling a home like a grand opening to a new restaurant…anyone who knows how to cook can start a restaurant but as anyone familiar with business knows this industry has the highest failure rate. To succeed takes months of preparation before the doors are even open, and you have one chance to wow you customers and critics. Consider walking into a new restaurant and there are no chairs, that’s kind of like listing a home with no photos or proper staging. The people who have been waiting for you to open are going to walk right back out and move on to their new favorite spot down the road.

Enough with the restaurant analogies, I think you get the point. After selling homes for over a decade I have put together a step by step program that gets the best results and most of the best real estate agents in Jacksonville have their own marketing plans and that’s what makes them the best. In my opinion the home is sold before the listing ever hits the market, my average prelisting time period is one and half weeks. During this time a strategy is put into place to prepare the home for its “grand opening”. Often a home stager is utilized to best place furniture and make color recommendations, minor repairs are address and professional photography is done. Social media is a buzz with an impending new home listing. Blog posts are written, virtual tours are created and inviting descriptions are brought to life. During the first 2 weeks of the home hitting the market the element of surprise is on the sellers side, buyers are wowed by the impressive performance during their first “online showing” they are compelled to make an appointment for their actual second home tour, please note I said their first showing was online…home buyers eliminate hundreds of home by their online appearance and never come to view the actual property making it a case in point that the actual first “showing” is online. Once the flood of buyers rush in the excitement of this new prospect overwhelms them and they are unsure of how the competition will react prompting them to make larger than usual offers, often leading to multiple offer situations. After the first two weeks the buyers start to realize this property may not be worth the asking price or question why it hasn’t sold and are under much less pressure to outbid other buyers.

In closing I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to make that first impression absolutely perfect because once the home is on the market your clock has started and buyers buy or move on. If you are looking for the best real estate agents in Jacksonville be sure to see if they have a step by step plan to market your home, and don’t be in a hurry to get the home on the market before it is 100% ready for buyers, it will sell soon enough and for more money!

Searching For A Home For Sale During The Holidays

“I’m going to wait until after the holidays to look at homes” seems to be the standard response I’m getting from my buyer clients this time of year. We each have our own reasons not to shop for a home during the holidays and for some it may not be practical but for those bargain hunters this is the best time of year.
It is understandable to put house hunting on the back burner with all of the chaos of gift shopping and event planning not to mention the holiday parties but the fact is motivated and distressed sellers still want to sell and during the holiday months it is a daily reminder that their funds may be low. The scarcity of other home buyers and lack of showings may be enough to motivate them to accept a lower offer than they normally would.
Homes for sale in Jacksonville Beach are already a terrific bargain and our interest rates are still near all-time lows, couple that with motivated sellers and banks who are coming up on yearend audits makes for a perfect storm of real estate deals.
Making an offer on a property this time of year does not obligate you to close before the holidays, especially with short sale homes your offer may not be accepted until the new year but you can still reap the benefits of the psychological mindset of the seller during this season.  If you have been considering a new home in Jacksonville Beach or the surrounding area hopefully this is food for thought.
Happy Holidays and Home Shopping!!

Real Estate and an investment strategy for the average home buyer.

Historically real estate has always been viewed as an investment and in most cases someone’s largest asset. This has been a fairly true statement with an average of 3-5% appreciation in value up until the early 2000’s. When real estate started to skyrocket in 2004 almost everyone jumped on the investment band wagon and many people made a lot of money during that time period.
Personally as an investor I bought properties and advised my clients to buy cash flowing properties, with the occasional short term flip mixed in.  By buying cash flow properties even if the property value dropped the rental income should be stable and in our current market it is actually on the rise.  Many of my clients used my cash flow investment system to purchase their primary property. We would evaluate what the monthly payment would be on their dream home and adjusted our investment stragety to cover the entire monthly cost with cash flowing assets. I would buy enough cash flowing properties to cover the cost of a liability such as a primary residence or automobile. A primary residence is a liability you ask? Yes, as author Robert Kiyosaki writes in his “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series anything that requires your constant cash input to sustain it is considered a liability. If you lose your job tomorrow who will pay your mortgage? If you lose your job and you own a rental property the tenant will continue covering the cost of ownership on your “Asset” and hopefully provide you with additional income on a monthly basis. I am still a firm believer that real estate is a true path to wealth but it must be viewed as a long term investment with a clear business plan in place to reap the rewards in any market.
“When I met Rob I was coming out of a divorce and looking for a new home for me and my 3 children. I was looking for a large single family home and had a sizable down payment to offset my payments. After some discussing, Rob showed me how I could leverage my cash by buying 3 cash flowing rental properties which produced enough monthly income to pay for each property and cover my monthly mortgage on my new farmhouse!!! Needless to say without Robs business savvy I would have settled for a basic home and would have been stuck with a huge monthly payment but now not only do I livein my home for FREE but I have a passive income for many years to come. I can’t thank Rob enough for his insight and the time he took to help me and my family.”
Catherine
Homeownership is a powerful thing and even if an investment strategy like the one above does not work for you, I advise anyone with stable income to consider the possibility of homeownership just be careful to stay in your comfort zone and don’t bite off more than you can chew.
-Rob Burns, Realtor
http://www.jaxhomeseller.com

Why Are People investing In Jacksonville Beach Homes?

It is no secret that Florida was hit hard by the housing downturn, but there are a few exceptions. Much of Florida caters to tourism and vacation homes, when the economy went south, no pun intended… the first expense people cut where the luxuries such as vacations. This affected the tourism industry and the people who depend on it for their livelihoods’. People stopped making payments on their vacation homes and allowing them to go into foreclosure which also brought down neighboring homes.

The difference between Jacksonville and Daytona as an example is that Daytona makes most of its money from tourism and Jacksonville as a whole is a military and corporate city. Many of the people that live in or around the Jacksonville Beaches area work in the area or have retired from the military and choose to purchase their home here. As a result our home prices did not decline as sharply as some areas in the state and now we are seeing an influx of people investing in Jacksonville Beach homes. The area has a lot of employers and colleges as well as an NFL football team. The arts and leisure activities are also well represented.

Our international airport is only 30 minutes from the beaches and we are a short drive to Daytona, Orlando, World Golf Village and southeast Georgia. If you are looking to purchase a home surrounded by a wide range of activities and diverse culture, you should consider purchasing a home in Jacksonville Beach Florida.