Buying a Home is a complex process.  Your Realtor will guide you through the negotiations and help you understand the mindset of the seller.  Buying Real Estate in Newburyport MA, Amesbury MA or even Portsmouth NH is all subject to the same guidelines.   See also:  Home Buyer Guide

Buying a House isn’t always Smooth Sailing
I’m working with a wonderful young couple who have four children and a fifth on the way! Needing to move to a larger home (duh!) they hired me to help them.
The price range is tight and the choices are few that will fit their needs. After a month a house came on the market that seemed perfect. The Seller’s Agent, a very experienced realtor, told us that the owner was in a nursing home and her children were responsible for selling it. We made an offer, negotiated it, and… suddenly it turned out the owner had a reverse mortgage and it was for more than the property was worth! So now we had a short sale that the selling agent hadn’t known about (but should have) and complications started… so we withdrew.
We found another house, this one an estate sale but we were assured that the estate was settled and there were no obstacles to the sale. One of the heirs had been in an accident and was incapacitated but his wife had been appointed guardian. We made an offer, accepted, drew up the P&S, and scheduled the closing for July 17th. No problem, the selling agent said! Well… the house was in MA and the guardianship was in NH. The Buyer’s Attorney, one I had recommended to them, immediately recognized that the NH guardianship had no validity in MA and started the Seller’s Attorney on getting it approved in MA. One month later, almost finished, the Seller’s attorney announces that there is a minor son and there needs to be a guardian appointed…
So still no closing date, I’m holding the poor Buyers’ hands, who are thankful for my sharing the frustration….
Sellers need to have their ducks in a row before they put a house on the market.

Update: The Economy and The Real Estate Market

It’s so hard to figure out what to believe and how to evaluate all the information we get. It’s usually better to put together lots of little pieces of news to get an idea of what’s really happening than to draw your conclusion from any of the big recent events that have been showing improvements in the economy.

We usually see a lot of articles about economic hardships and struggles just as our economy is about to turn around. There have recently been plenty of these. And usually the market bottoms hit quietly while this is going on. I think we are ready for a recovery. Last fall I was told that the market had hit bottom and it was a good time to buy – I didn’t go along with that and advised my clients to wait. Now I think differently.

Last week Robert Shiller, a founder of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, started a new investment fund that leverages bets on housing prices. This fund could only make sense if housing prices were showing improvement. His recommendation to invest is therefore significant.

People in my business are naturally inclined to be optimistic about the market. I have not shared that enthusiasm, but see clear changes ahead. It’s time to think positively.

Both MA and NH have now launched programs to lend the $8,000 tax credit to first time buyers at closing, thereby eliminating the need for a down payment on a house up to $220,000. The minimum requirements are $1,000 of the Buyer’s own funds, a credit score of at least 620 and appropriate documented income.

But BEWARE! This program expires on Dec. 1st! If you haven’t closed on a house by then you don’t qualify. From the time you start looking for a house to the time you close you really need to plan on three months, so if you aren’t getting started now, you’ll miss the boat.

I’ll guide you through the process and help you find a home if you contact me.

John.wells@virtualhomes.com
978-462-9733

What Motivates Your Realtor: Buying

You hire a Buyer’s Agent to find you the property that best suits your needs for the best price. While the Agent does much more for you than this, there should be no other motivation for showing you a house.
Realtors offer other realtors open house luncheons, extra commissions and other motivators to try and push their property. Why any good realtor should be influenced by that is beyond me. As a Buyer’s Agent I sign a contract with my clients agreeing to a 2.5% commission; offering me more money is no reason for me to try and convince my clients to buy a particular house.
Realtor open houses were very important before we could find out almost everything about a property on the internet, and luring realtors to it was important. Not anymore. If a selling agent wants to help me sell the listing, make sure all of the attributes are correctly described in the MLS. Give me the room measurements. Tell me if there is room for an in-law apartment. Describe the lot or the waterfront. When I am picking houses to show to my clients, I am looking for the house that will meet their needs. See how we do this at www.virtualhomes.com. If offering me a higher commission or a fancy luncheon makes a difference, shame on me.
And if you offer me a lowball commission, my clients and I will change that. You aren’t doing your seller any favors.

What Motivates Your Realtor: Listing

In the traditional real estate model, the more listings a realtor has, the more sales the realtor closes. Unilke my business, where buyers find me through my internet marketing, most realtors can only find buyers because they ask about their listings.
So for them, getting your listing is key. If you insist on overpricing your house, it won’t sell, but your listing agent will still meet buyers that they can show other houses too. A good realtor should tell you that the price is too high; unfortunately, their business model may force them not only to accept an overpriced listing but even encourage you to believe in a higher than realistic value in order to obtain your listing.
Some realtors have built large business through consistent overpricing to get listings. Their signs might be everywhere, and they may be finding a lot of buyers this way. But are they serving their sellers? Beware. I rarely bother to compete for listings because I KNOW that another realtor is going to convince the seller that their house is worth more than I can honestly justify. My listings come from people who know me and trust my integrity and judgment, and that’s all I want.

Hello, CVS? Anyone Home?

The decision to greatly expand the CVS at the expense of the surrounding businesses shows incredible insensitivity to community needs, aesthetics and common sense.
White Hen Pantry, a privately owned franchise, has been serving the town well and importantly at the location for years. CVS, too, is very useful to City residents at that location. As it now is, not as a much larger market. Who wants a CVS like the one in Salisbury Square on the Bartlett Mall in Newburyport? That would look horrible, cheap and commercial – it’s already a shame to have a strip mall in that location, let’s at least keep it to scale.
Comments by residents about CVS being “greedy” are absolutely valid. The national corporation of CVS has clearly lost touch with the community it serves. If CVS proceeds down this path, it can expect a community boycott.
Ann Lagasse, New England Development’s leasing manager, told me about CVS “if they didn’t get the space they needed, they would be gone from the property.” Where would they go? Is Newburyport so unimportant to them?
I am told White Hen is working with a broker to find a new location, and is close to a deal. But if CVS is being run by anyone with brains, they’ll take the residents of Newburyport seriously and reconsider their decision.

This is very encouraging so I posted it for further distribution.

MARKET RECAP
The signs are pointing to an economy in full-recovery mode. The leading economic indicators (LEI), which attempt to forecast the economy six months hence, posted a third consecutive monthly increase, with seven of the 10 indicators improving during June. The annualized six-month rate of change of the LEI is now up 4.1%. It’s worth noting that since 1950 there have been nine recessions, and the LEI has reliably foreseen the end of all of them. No wonder many economists are now calling for an end to the recession by the fourth quarter of 2009. Guess what? The fourth quarter is less than six weeks away.
Nowhere is a recovery more apparent than in housing. Prices increased 0.9% in May from April, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported. That might not sound like much, but two hard-hit areas – California and the South Atlantic region, which includes Florida – posted meaningful improvement, with prices in California increasing 2.7% and prices in the South Atlantic states increasing 1.4%.
Further evidence of a recovery is seen in home sales, which rose 3.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units last month, from a revised pace of 4.72 million units in May. Sales have risen for three straight months in 40 of 55 major metropolitan areas tracked by the Associated Press-Re/Max Housing Report. It appears increased sales are finally putting a dent in inventory, with the supply of homes falling to 9.4 months from 9.8 months.

Source: Blue Water Mortgage

Newburyport Nightlife

I love this city. I lived in Europe for 18 years, and when I came back to live in New England, I briefly lived in my home town of Winchester before discovering Newburyport in 1999. Newburyport has all of the great qualities of a small American seaport, combined with the walkability and atmosphere of some of the European cities I have lived in. I have lived here ever since.

OK, I like good food, and Newburyport has plenty of it. There are some great restaurants in town – I think Ten Center St. is handsdown the best. It has a cozy, pub-like atmosphere in it’s downstairs wine bar and an imaginative cuisine. I hear complaints about the service but have never had a bad experience there myself. The waterfront location of The Black Cow is its claim to fame; my personal feeling is that the food is mediocre, but that is not agreed to by all. Another famous waterfront location is Michael’s Harborside, until recently great food, but now slipping into mediocracy also. Glenn’s Bar and Grill, a great place with great food, but on a busy night it can take some time to be served. Joseph’s Winter Street Cafe has great atmosphere and Chef J.P. has turned the place around from the hit-or-miss experience it used to be.

Great night life too, and it’s not Boston, which is fine with me. The Thirsty Whale is a real local hangout, very popular with a very talkative crowd in the weekends. The Grog is the “nightclub”, very good live music Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights for a mostly younger crowd, with a blues band paying Sundays starting early in the evening for a great night of endless dancing, heavily populated by an older crowd and plenty of singles.

There a plenty of other good restaurants, clubs and bars that keep Newburyport alive all year long. I’ll talk about more of them in future blog postings.