ChoiceA Real Estate Blog

Not everyone is in the process of buying or selling, sometimes refinancing is where you're at.  We found this article interesting and informative, so we thought we'd share it.  http://bit.ly/refinancing_basics_choicea

Every once in a while we post friendly tips that have nothing to do with FSBO real estate, or buying property.  This week we found an interesting article about how to lower summer utility bills so we thought we'd pass it on http://bit.ly/byG0bE

http://bit.ly/at9nSV  Should give you a good idea of how the FHA makes it easier to buy real estate.  This is good information for both buyers, and for FSBO to be aware of. 

A link to many of the resources available to the FSBO, from HUD.gov http://bit.ly/HUD_Homes

Click around, plenty to learn about what programs are available that will help you through the process of buying or selling a home.

 

U.S. National Home Price Index fell 3.2% in the first quarter of 2010, but remains above its year-earlier level. 

Link to Case-Shiller first quarter report: http://www.standardandpoors.com/spf/docs/case-shiller/CSHomePrice_Release_052506.pdf

Additional information and news about the housing market, and how you can list as FSBO can be found here: http://bit.ly/ChoiceA

There is some recent news that home sales are cooling a bit http://yhoo.it/bAWKK1   You could argue that it's a good time to try a FSBO listing, especially when it costs next to nothing to list with http://bit.ly/choiceaFSBO and you can still get broad exposure.  Just a few reminders of the benefits of listing with ChoiceA: 

• There is a free option
• Unlimited High Resolution Photos  (yep, as many pictures as you want)
• Syndication to the major search engines for your FSBO listing
• Printable Flyers
• Stats and Graphs (think of it as a mini-Google Analytics) for each FSBO listing
• Free Craigslist HTML code to spruce up your listing on Craigslist (yeah, we know you'll be using them too, but it looks much cooler when you use our code on top of their site
• Free downloadable FSBO legal forms at http://www.choicea.com/legalforms
• You get your own unique URL (www.choicea.com/listing/yourlistingID)
• You'll be part of one of the fastest growing FSBO sites on the web

Originally published by Mark S Nadel and since widely circulated.  The article http://bit.ly/cym7Oz was first posted on the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies website, about the flaws in the commission structure used by Realtors.  If you're considering hiring a real estate agent versus going FSBO, at least give this a read.  At a minimum it will allow you to feel empowered to negotiate the commissions that you're paying to list on the MLS.  Or, you could try listing on http://choicea.com as an FSBO first. 

Summary: While real estate brokers have long set their fee as a straight percentage of a home’s sale price, this formula is an anomaly and a primary reason why such fees may be inflated by more than $30 billion annually. Although competitive pressures ordinarily produce a fee structure reflecting costs, real estate broker commissions are strangely unrelated to either the quantity or quality of the service rendered or even to the value provided. Rather, this fee has been based solely on the price of the home. (It is as if tax preparers set their fee as a flat percentage of a client’s gross income, irrespective of how difficult the return was to prepare or how much their efforts saved the taxpayer). Oddly, not only is there no evidence that it is any more costly to sell higher-priced homes than median-priced properties, but it is possible that the opposite may be true! Furthermore, the straight percentage fee formula creates little incentive for real estate agents to provide home buyers or sellers with additional value.

A link to the complete study can be found here:

 http://realestate.cornell.edu/crer/images/uploads/article/Abridged_RateStructure_Nadel.pdf

Washington HUD Information for the FSBO: http://bit.ly/cvSgpF

Oregon HUD Information for the FSBO: http://bit.ly/csz0Fj

California HUD Information for the FSBO: http://bit.ly/cxKs4y

Arizona HUD Information for the FSBO: http://bit.ly/cqoeTV

See this link for 12 easy steps to lowering your homeowner's insurance costs.  As an FSBO who is looking to buy your next home, or as a first time homebuyer these are a few things to keep in mind: http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/housing/12ways/12ways.htm

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has a lot of free information available to home buyers and sellers.  As a FSBO company we are simply trying to provide you with as many links and resources as possible that may help educate you in the process.  Here is the HUD link with a list of things to keep in mind when buying or listing real estate http://bit.ly/cm7aXD