Belleville Michigan Home Buying

Solution for fogged windows, but it takes time

2008-08-28T08:20:00.003-05:00

There is now a company in the area that corrects fogged windows in-place.

They are based in Southeastern Michigan and they service Belleville as well as most of Wayne County.

The link above takes you to one of our other bloggs where the process is described.

Good to know!

Helping Home Buyers Locate, Evaluate, and Negotiate great home deals!
Jon Boyd, Broker/Manager
The Home Buyer's Agent of Ann Arbor, Inc.
http://buyersagentannarbor.com/
734-6620-6240
1908 W. Stadium Blvd. Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Ann Arbor's Most experienced Exclusive Buyer's Brokerage!

Be Careful When You Choose REALTORs & an Inspector

2008-08-18T15:02:00.002-05:00

The link in the headline takes you to a news report about an average couple buying a home.

They look at about a dozen homes with a real estate agent and end up buying the one that her husband is selling.

Then, the buyers take their recommendation for a home inspector.

The end result is the buyers have a home that needs tens of thousands of dollars of repairs and corrections that they didn't learn about until after closing.

The point here is that if you are going to buy a home and you want to minimize the conflicts-of-interest, use an Exclusive Buyer's Agent.

We won't push you at "our listings" because we don't have any! An Exclusive Buyer's Agent is a company who never has listings and never represents a home seller.

We focus our total attention on you, the home buyer

Free CLass - How Belleville Home Buyers Can Improve Their Credit Score By Over 100 Points

2008-06-20T09:09:00.001-05:00

This Monday night we are having another free class. But this time it isn't just for home buyers.

"How To Repair Your Credit & Boost Your Score By 100+ Points!" Is a class about dispelling some of the myths of credit and showing you exactly what is possible and why in terms of improving your credit file.

You know that your credit file is critical in determining what kind of home loans yu qualify for, but did you know that potential employers will check your credit? Did you know that your credit score has a dramatic impact on your insurance rates? Even renting an apartment is impacted by what is in your credit files.

Why do we know so much about credit and how to improve it? Because as we have been looking out for the best interest of home buyers for close to 20 years, and that includes helping buyers with their credit files dating back for over 15 of those 20 years.

So, come to the free class Monday night, June 23rd and find out all about what can be done to turn your credit around in the next six months.

Again the class is free, but pre-registration is required.

Call the voice mail system at 734-223-9831 and leave a message with the number of seats you would lie to reserve, your name(s), and a phone number we cal call to confirm your reservation.

And, we will see you Monday night!

Couple Home Buying Video

2008-05-28T21:31:00.003-05:00

This is a short but good video from Youtube. It illustrates a traditional real estate sales person and a young couple looking at a home. The challenge is that the wife is emotionally interested and the husband has some grave concerns....

If they would have been working with an Exclusive Buyer's Agent, the agent would have focused her attention on the problems so they both could have made a more objective decision on the home.

Remember, good schools don't make up for a home filled with unspeakable evil!

"How To Buy A Foreclosure" class well received

2008-04-29T12:52:00.002-05:00

We had another one of our free "How To Buy A Foreclosure" classes last night here in Ann Arbor. Last month we filled up but this time we had extra seats.

I could tell that a couple of the buyers who were there were gaining insights about the process. One of the buyers who had actually viewed a number of foreclosed and short-sale homes was clearly much more comfortable with the process when he left.

Belleville certainly has its share of foreclosures and short-sales right now and we are thinking much of 2008 will be the same.

If you are thinking about home buying this is a class you really should see.

Oh, and we don't sell home-study courses and this isn't about get-rich-quick. The class is focused on buying a home to live in.

Click on the link above for information about the next class if you are interested.

How to choose a buyer agent

2008-03-26T18:38:00.001-05:00

A good article from Cyberhomes on choosing a buyer's agent.

Take a look if you are thinking about home buying, particularly in the Belleville area.

Maryland Court strikes a blow AGAINST home buyer's rights

2008-03-25T14:06:00.005-05:00

I just heard the final decision of a court case in Maryland about a buyer who was actively mislead by his real estate agent/brokerage.

The short version is he hired a company to represent him as a buyer's broker. Then after the agreement expired they got him to sign a purchase agreement on one of their listings. (He thought they were his agent based on the original contract and their actions.)

Somehow it seems that the real estate company was more interested in the commission dollars. Who would have thought?

So here is the rub... the buyer, thinking the agent was working on his side, signed a purchase contract that was not contingent on the sale of his old home. (Really dangerous since he couldn't afford both mortgage payments.)

Then the buyer finds out the real estate agent is NOT his buyer agent, but working for the seller's best interest.

The buyer realized he was getting scammed and wants to pull the plug on the whole transaction.

So the court decides that even though the real estate agents violated the law and the buyer thought they were still represented, that the buyer must still be bound by the contract. (And loose his earnest money deposit.)

The real estate broker and their agents apparently got away with this without any penalty of any kind.

The poor buyer is out his original earnest money deposit plus tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees and court costs.

Baltimore Sun Article on Choosing an Agent

2008-03-04T22:06:00.003-05:00

If you are thinking about buying a home here is an article that has some good insights.

Stephen Brobeck, who I met about a year ago at our national conference, is the executive director of the Consumer Federation of America. He works to protect consumers in a lot of different areas. He is quoted here:

Baltimore Sun Article on Choosing a Real Estate Agent

Home seller's question: rent or sell??

2008-02-14T22:46:00.003-05:00

We had a negotiation if the office last fall with a home seller who had a unique situation.

The owner had his home on the market for about six months and had already moved to another area. And he needed to get out from under the mortgage payment.

Other than our buyer who was interested, he had a person who was interested in renting the home with an option to buy it at the end of the year.

I needed to convince the seller that he should sell to our buyer for less than what the rental guy wanted to pay next year, without letting him know how much our buyer wanted the home.

So I pointed out to him that:

1. The renter may not be able to get a loan in a year - which would put the seller back in the same situation.

2. The renter may break the lease and the owner would be saddled with landlord challenges.

3. The market values could drop and the buyer wouldn't want to pay as much next year.

4. The renter could damage the home or something in the home could break, and he would need to put more money in the home.

And a few more....

At least one of the scenarios must have struck a nerve for him because when he saw our offer (again that was significantly less than what the rent-to-own guy was offering) he took it.

Good deal and great house for our buyer, and we solved the seller's problem.

If you know who the rent-to-own guy was send him to our office so he doesn't get out-negotiated the next time!

Interesting Belleville market statistic

2008-02-10T11:56:00.000-05:00

One of our clients in the office is looking a luxury homes in Belleville. (We define luxury as homes with asking prices above ~$550,000)

The other real estate agents are all gushing about how wonderful their listings are, our agent Laura looks at things a little more objectively. (Remember we represent the buyer - a big difference.)

So at one of our staff meetings recently Laura mentioned that in the particular segment of the market where she was helping a buyer look there are 21 homes on the market.

And-

In the last year 3 similar properties have sold. That is a 7 year inventory!

To be fair the luxury homes normally has a longer market time (closert o a year in most areas) but seven years of inventory is amazing!

If you are a buyer this is the MOST CRITICAL PIECE OF NEGOTIATING INFORMATION for you to have.

As the Exclusive Buyer's Agent working in the Belleville market we may be the only company who will discuss this with you.

Top EBA's (Exclusive Buyer Agents) get "green" in Las Vegas

2008-02-05T10:35:00.000-05:00

Many of the top Exclusive Buyer's Agents in the country met recently in Las Vegas for their annual conference.

The professional association is called the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents (naeba.org) and since many NAEBA members are also REALTORS it made sense to host the conferences together so members could visit both.

The conference was titled "Going Green... It's No Gamble" and focused on education in the Green building area.

This post from another blog mentions some youtube.com videos taken at the conference of NAEBA members: http://annarbormichiganrealestate.com/?p=62

I believe our office (in the link above) is the only NAEBA member who serves Belleville Michigan.

New high school for Belleville?

2008-01-25T10:38:00.000-05:00

The Belleville Board of Education looks close to asking Belleville voters to approve a new high school.

As the current school approaches its 90th birthday the plan would be to demolish most of the old school and replace it with a new school in the same location.

Proposals like this always come with a tax increase for local home owners. But normally the improvement in the desirability of the school system more than makes up for the increase in costs.

Reverse offers in Belleville?

2008-01-06T20:43:00.000-05:00

In our negotiations for buyers in the Belleville Michigan market we've just started to see listing agents talk about "reverse offers".

This is only done by a few listing agents at this time, but we've now seen it enough to think it might become more popular.

A reverse-offer works like this:

When a buyer views a home if they show any interest, the listing agent sends the buyer's agent an actual purchase contract offering the home at a slightly reduced price to the buyer. This sometimes gets the buyer interested in a home they wouldn't have thought as seriously about.

Does it work? We hear it does sometimes, but with the way we coach our buyers it doesn't really impact our buyers much at all. But, for a buyer who is not given much guidance from their agent it might actually inspire some buyers to buy who wouldn't have otherwise.

Belleville school system facing major challenge

2007-12-07T10:38:00.000-05:00

Bellevilleview.com is the website for the Belleville Michigan local newspaper.

The Belleville school system has been going through some stress this fall because of concerns over gang type activity. (Link above from the Belleville View.)

This has a very real effect on the quality of life in Belleville and it shows a sincere interest in the future of Belleville for the school board and school authorities to investigate and take appropriate action.

A community's school system has a major impact on the property values and quality of living in an area, and we appreciate the Belleville system taking this issue seriously with a focus on insuring the safety of the schools.

Sellers do the nuttiest things

2007-06-24T22:34:00.000-05:00

This story is from a national survey we did, asking exclusive buyer's agents around the country what the most annoying thing was that they found sellers doing.

RESPA - and another title company that violated it

2007-04-12T18:27:00.000-05:00

RESPA is Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. It is a group of laws that were put together over 30 years ago to protect home buyers.

One of the ideas of the RESPA is that title companies are not to pay bribes to real estate agents, brokers, or builders to get business.

Well another title company has gotten busted doing exactly that.

Here is a link the the news release: http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr07-041.cfm

Urinals in homes, a new trend?

2007-03-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

Instead of always posting about Belleville homes, I am posting aboutplumbing fixtures/ special plumbing fixtures. Urinals.

Here is a post from another one of our blogs about actual urinals in homes in our area.

http://annarbormichiganrealestate.com/?p=47

Here is another link that has lots of important technical details about home urinals:
http://www.keidel.com/design/select/urinals.htm

Are new homes going to become smaller?

2007-03-13T14:50:00.000-05:00

For years I've been surprised by how large some of the new homes are. (And I show them and help people buyer them!)

It is really a start contrast when I go into a vacant larger home and see the kids bedrooms with a few toys left and I think how far that room is from the family areas. It just feels a little sad to think of a 3 year old having to walk about 100 feet and go up 10 feet of stairs to be part of the family.

But, now it is starting to sound like that trend may be reversing. Here is a post on another of our office blogs on the topic: http://ann-arbor-homes.com/big-house-trend-will-shrink/

The thing to do right before you give them the money!

2007-03-06T17:18:00.000-05:00

Quite often we hear about home buyers that close on the house and then go to the house and find that the seller has either left junk or taken things they shouldn't have taken.

I've talked to two different buyers who had everything down to the light switches taken by the seller. We basically always do walk throughs so we don't personally have any stories like that, but if you talk to enough home buyers you'll hear about it happening.

Here is a link to a good post on another blog on the topic:
http://annarbormichiganrealestate.com/?p=19

Really DUMB things home sellers do

2007-02-26T10:04:00.000-05:00

Here is a post from another blog that covers this topic well. http://annarbormichiganrealestate.com/?p=36