Keeping It REAL - by Bettsy Tyler

  10 Staging Secrets From the Pros  for a  Quick Home Sale at Top Dollar   According to the National Association of Realtors, staging a home prior to listing it can result in a faster and more profitable sale. 1  In fact, the Real Estate Staging Association estimates that professionally staged properties spend 73 percent less time on the market, receive more foot traffic, and typically sell for more money. 2   Following are 10 tips you can use to get your home “show ready” prior to hitting the market. These easy and cost-effective ideas will help your house look its best—and help buyers visualize themselves living there. Even if you’re not currently in the market to sell, you can use these tactics to breathe new life into your existing home decor. Who doesn't love a spring refresh?!   To get a plan customized for your particular property, give me a call to schedule a free consultation. I’d be happy to share my insider knowledge of the buyer preferences...

  What's in Store for the Real Estate Market?   While many areas of the economy have contracted, the housing market has been the bright spot and has stayed remarkably strong. When COVID-related shutdowns began in March, real estate brokers and clients scrambled to respond to the shift. Record-low interest rates caused some lenders to call a halt to new underwriting, and homeowners debated whether or not to put their houses on the market. However, those first days of uncertainty ushered in a period of unprecedented demand in the U.S. real estate market, which ended the year with increasing average home prices (up 13.4% from the previous year) and shrinking days on market (13 fewer than in 2019). 1 As the spring market approaches, you may be wondering if you’re a homeowner, should you take advantage of this opportunity? If you’re a buyer, should you jump in and risk paying too much? Below are some insights. How is today’s market different from the one that caused the 2...

I spent Tuesday morning listening to the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors give his take on where we are now, how we got here, and what we might expect in the next couple of years.   Our local market is white hot as I’m guessing many of you may have heard. It’s not the same market we had back in the early years of the century (2005-2009.) Easy loans are not the norm, the inventory of new homes is quite low (~1/3 what it was in 2009ish,) and inventory of existing homes is low. He did not see this situation as a bubble – nope – no bubble.  The job market was on a steady climb for 10 years from 2010 – 2020. Then April of 2020 hit (or actually the world wide pandemic hit) and we lost all those jobs! One year later we are half-way back to where we were in March 2020. After the pandemic, the job market is expected to surpass where it was before April 2020.  The “work-from-home” phenomenon is here to stay. Not like it has been through the pandemic, but so...