March thru May Contracts Strong, Again, in 2019
March, April and May are always VERY busy months of buyers (and sellers) signing contracts. This year was no exception. As you may recall from last year we had a…
Monthly Housing Costs Actually Decline, A Bit
The monthly cost of a mortgage on a median priced house has actually declined a bit this year! For this analysis, I am measuring "monthly housing cost" by determining the…
Be Careful of Asking For Little Repairs When Also Asking for Big Repairs
After a home inspection, a buyer knows more about the house than when they agreed to pay $X to purchase the house. In order for them to still want to pay $X for the…
Can Parents of JMU Students Buy Any House And Put Lots of Students In It?
With great regularity, potential buyers (either investors or parents of JMU students) will ask if a single family home can be purchased and rented to a group of JMU…
Get Out Your Mixing Bowl and Bake Some Cookies When You List Your Home
When the home buyers walked into the next home, they were greeted by the pleasant, and heart-warming fragrance of freshly baked cookies. They walked into the kitchen and…
Most Home Sellers Do Not Seem To Accept Offers With Home Sale Contingencies Unless Those Houses Are Already Under Contract
Based on the analysis above, it would seem that sellers are not (in almost all cases) accepting home sale contingencies unless the home that must be sold is already under…
Settle In And Read These Reflections On the Dynamics of Our Local Housing Market
Settle in with a nice cup of coffee (or your beverage of choice) and enjoy some excellent recent articles about the state of our local housing market from The Citizen and…
Why Sell A Rental Property?
If you own a rental property, you might wonder from time to time whether you should keep or sell that property. I generally advise my clients to keep their rental…
Do We Focus On Buying Or Selling First? Which Will Be Harder?
If you are getting ready to sell your home AND buy your home, it can sometimes be difficult to determine where to start... Do you start by finding a house you want to…
The Danger Of Focusing On Just One Comparable Sale
It's easy to want to do this -- as either a buyer or a seller. Let's think about it using the mostly fictional illustration below... THE BUYER'S STATED PERSPECTIVE I know…
If You Are Buying A House With A Basement, Test It For Radon
As you can see above, Rockingham County is in Zone 1 -- which means we are in an area that is likely to have high radon levels. What is radon, and what does it mean for…
Will All 264 Currently Listed Homes Be Appealing To You?
If you are entering the market to buy a home, the number of homes you will have to choose from will vary widely based on what you are looking for in a new home. Some…