Blog | Myrtle Beach Homes | Carolina Forest Homes

Jun 14 2017

Myrtle Beach Real Estate Market Minute- May 2017

How is the real estate market in Myrtle Beach these days? Well, I’m glad you asked. In the video below, I will give you an update of how things are doing in comparison to the month before in our local market. I tried to keep the video short and to the point so obviously that means I could not give a bunch of details in the video. Check it out.

Single Family Homes In May

Here’s the stats I shared in the video for single family homes in Myrtle Beach:

Current Active Homes June 13, 2017: 3,911
SOLD single family homes during May 2017: 823
Average SOLD price for May 2017: $251,695
Increase of 87 more homes SOLD over month prior.
Average SOLD price increased $16,125 over month prior.

Condos in May

The condo market also saw some great increases during May:

Current Active Condos June 13, 2017: 3,704
SOLD condos during May 2017: 559
Average SOLD condo price for May 2017: $147,421
Increase of 42 more condos SOLD over month prior.
Average SOLD price increased $1,003 over month prior.

Wrap Up

As you can see, the Myrtle Beach real estate market is pretty strong right now and is continuing to increase month over month. Over the past few years we have seen increases in home values of 7%-10% each per year. If you have been thinking of buying a home in the area, you might want to consider talking to a Myrtle Beach REALTOR® soon as home prices are going up as well as interest rates on mortgages. As this trend continues, your ability to purchase will continue to decrease. Contact me today for to get your search started or call me at 843-222-9402 now.

Jun 09 2017

Selling Your Myrtle Beach Home- Staging

Last week I wrote a rather lengthy article going through the importance of pricing your home properly when you are placing it on the market in Myrtle Beach. In the end of that post, I mentioned that I would be covering several other topics related to other important things to pay attention to when selling a home. Today, I want to discuss one of the most important areas that get the most amount of push back from sellers when we are discussing placing their home on the market, staging.

Now, when I mention staging, I am not talking about hiring a professional decorator to come into your home that is going to remove all your furniture and replace it with rental furniture to sell your home. Instead, what I mean when I say staging is making the necessary changes to get your home to sell for top dollar in quickest time possible. I’ll explain much more about this as we continue forward.

Declutter

When placing your home on the market, the first thing you can do to help your chances of selling for top dollar is to declutter the home. This is a simple step that doesn’t cost any money to do. It just takes some effort and time. Start by cleaning off all the furniture of papers, coins, and other items that are not vital for day to day living. We don’t need to let the tape dispenser & scissors sit out just in case you need to use them in the next few days.

By simply removing all the nick knacks from furniture surfaces, you are making your home look more organized and neat. Now, you might argue and say that you do not have a place to put those things. I would tend to argue that you do, but you just don’t want to place things into a spot that might not be as convenient to access. I share with sellers regularly that it is ok to start packing things up and placing boxes in the garage to declutter the main living area of the home. Buyers can look past boxes in the garage, but have a hard time seeing how spacious a home is when there is stuff out everywhere.

I like to walk through a home with the seller and point out things like this as well as any items that could cause injury or a bad experience to a potential buyer. Usually this includes moving small items sitting around the room that could cause a buyer to trip and sometimes it includes moving a piece of furniture to make a room look larger, or a walkway easier to navigate. If buyers have to turn sideways to go down a hallway, they will feel as though the rooms are smaller than they actually are just because of too much furniture. Sellers sometimes want to argue that those items aren’t in the way because they are used to walking around them and have even done so in the dark. Buyers that aren’t familiar with the home won’t feel the same way and it will have a negative impact on their thoughts of the home.

Depersonalize

I have to admit, this one might be the hardest for me to do if I was selling my home. When selling a home, it is crucial to remove all the personal items. I’ve seen it way too many times where a buyer enters a property and within moments sees a family photo, a trophy, or something else that distracts them from focusing on the home and whether or not they want to purchase this home.

For me, this would probably be where I’d end up spending the most amount of time if my wife & I were selling. We are super proud of our three kids and all the amazing things they accomplish throughout the year. Our refrigerator barely has 1 square inch of clean space on it as we have decorated the entire thing with layers of class projects, good grades on quizzes, and schedules for all of their extra curricular activities. The counters are littered with projects that they have done at camps and church. I’m serious when I say that I could easily fill several large bins with all their papers and achievements.

Depersonalize goes further than just my kids pictures on the walls and projects on the refrigerator. Any and all medicines need to be put away in a safe location. Bottles many times has your confidential information on them and can be a temptation to people visiting your property. While we do our best to try & qualify buyers before they enter your property, there are still some that can have ulterior motives when looking at homes. Remember, buyers are going to be opening closets, looking in your kitchen cabinets, and much more, so put away your medicines.

Another thing that I find too often are homes where sellers have left piles of mail sitting around. That mail includes all your private information that someone would need to steal your identity, and use your good credit to make purchases on your behalf. Some may include your social security number or birthday too. Take the mail and any credit cards and lock them up somewhere safe so that you do not become a victim while selling your home.

Neutralize

The biggest segment of potential buyers these days are millennial buyers who are looking in our market as well as the baby boomers who are searching for their retirement home in Myrtle Beach. The millennial buyers are looking for a property that is ready for them to move in. They cannot visualize what a home could be nor do they want to have to do work to make it look right. Buyers who are moving to Myrtle Beach to retire are also not wanting a project that they will have to handle when moving. They do not want to have to spend time painting, replacing flooring, and cleaning up landscape around the home.

I recently went on a listing appointment where the seller said they didn’t really care to do a bunch of fixing up to the property before selling and would prefer to place the home on the market “as is” instead of getting the carpets cleaned, freshening up the landscape with new mulch and painting the entire inside of the home one single color and remove all the very personal preference wallpaper throughout the home. I then went on to share with them the difference in price in their market for home in top condition versus homes being sold as is.

In their neighborhood, the difference was almost $30,000 between the two price points. To do all of the necessary fixes would cost at most $4,000. Also, the time on market went down almost two months if the fixes were done. It doesn’t take rocket science in this case to see the value in fixing things up.

In the past year I’ve had more and more sellers take this approach when selling their home. It has resulted in two of my last listings going under contract in less than two days and one selling for list price, the other selling for 98% of list price. In comparison, one of the properties I listed for sale within the last year was on the market for six months, had over 65 showings and no offers. Almost all of the feedback received on the property was similar to this: “Buyers liked the home, but found something they liked more that didn’t have as much work needed.” My seller had painted every room in the home a different color to their preference, and did not want to neutralize the property. It ultimately kept the home from selling.

Wrap Up

In closing, let me leave you with this thought. If you look at any home furnishings magazine these days you will see the things mentioned above happening. Whether it’s IKEA, Pottery Barn, or some other home furnishing catalogue, you will see simplistic designs, neutral colors, and clean designs. This is what is in front of consumers eyes every day, so when they begin to shop homes, they are going to want the same thing in the home they purchase. Spend the time making these changes and getting your home ready for sale so that it will sell as quick is possible for the most amount possible. Doing a little bit of extra work can be the difference between a buyer saying let’s see the next home and let’s write an offer. It will pay off in huge dividends when you see your bottom line at the closing table!

Call me today at 843-222-9402 if you are thinking of selling your Myrtle Beach home and would like to learn more about what we can do to get your home sold or contact me here via email.

photos by: illustir & Vitamin C9000

Jun 02 2017

Pricing Your Myrtle Beach Home To Sell

I’ve shared a lot of content over the past few months on tips for selling your Myrtle Beach home and ways that you can increase the price of your property when selling it. Today, I want to discuss in detail pricing and the importance of getting the pricing right for a quick sale and while getting you the most amount possible. I am going to actually walk you through the process I use to figure out the value for a home that I am about to list.

Pre-Meeting Work

Before taking a trip to the home to discuss what we can do to sell her home for the most amount of money in the quickest time possible, I go onto our online system and pull up some data on current homes for sale in her neighborhood as well as what has sold in the neighborhood over the past few months. I take time and study all the details of the various properties to make sure I know as much as I could to most accurately price the home for sale. I am not known for pricing my listings too high or too low.

I usually spend a good hour or two on this analyzing each of the sold and active properties to learn about the features of each property that will be current competition as well as learning what features might have helped a home sell for top dollar or for the lowest price. I also normally try to make a trip by the property the day or two before our meeting to familiarize myself even more about the subject property. When I come to visit your home and we begin the discussion on price, I am as prepared as possible.

Where Do You Rank Your Home?

One of the first questions I try to ask on every listing appointment is how do you rank your home on a scale of 1-10. A home ranked 10 is going to be like new with all the upgrades possible, freshly painted, new flooring and appliances. A 1 home is a property that probably needs to basically be torn down. I ask this question so that I can learn where the seller feels their home should be valued.

When we start discussing price on the home, it helps sellers to remember where they said their home ranks. Too many times I have someone who wants to list their home at top dollar even when they know it is an average home. When they do say that, I remind them that they said their home was only a 5-6 so it should be priced in that same range.

Upgrades vs. Maintenance

This is an area that causes some of the biggest disagreements when trying to figure out pricing of a home between a seller and a real estate agent. The seller argues that they just spent $10,000 for a new roof on the home or $5,000 for a new air conditioning system in the house, so they should be able to get that money back in the sale. Unfortunately, these type of expenses cannot be categorized as upgrades, but need to be looked at as maintenance. If you didn’t sell your home, you would still need to fix the leaky roof and cooling system in order to continue living in the home. They do not add value to the home, just help preserve the value of a home.

The other common misconception regarding upgrades is that if a seller puts top of the line upgrades into their home, they are going to get all of that money out. I remember one home I recently went on a listing appointment had upgraded all of their lighting fixtures and spent over $75,000 doing so. They thought that they would be able to recoup all of this money which isn’t accurate. While the upgraded lights might see the fixtures and love the way they look, at the end of the day they see a light and are not normally willing to spend extra just because you did. When making upgrades, think about the options you choose to make the home as appealing as possible to the largest group of buyers without spending too much on these upgrades.

Pricing in Fantasyland

When it comes to setting the listing price, it’s really important to not start too high. If you price your home too high, it is not going to sell and even if you are lucky enough to get a contract on your home while priced too high, it is not going to appraise for the proper amount. I did a video on this before sharing your options here: Once the appraisal comes in for less than the contract, what do you do? You’ve got a only a few options when this happens, you can either reduce the price to appraised value, ask the buyer to bring the difference in appraised value and contract price to the table in addition to their down payment for the loan, or the final option is for the buyer to walk away and you lose the contract.

In most situations though, the home is not going to end up selling, but instead falling apart and losing the buyer unless you are willing to take the lesser amount. One of the largest culprits of homes being listed for too much money is people looking at their competitions of other homes currently on the market. Almost every time I have a seller wanting to list their home for a much higher price than it actually should be, I hear this statement: “But my neighbor down the street just put their home on the market for $xxxxxxxx price, mine is much nicer, so I should be able to get more than that.” Unfortunately, listed prices don’t determine market value. I call the listing price of homes on the market Fantasyland.

Fantasyland prices are what people hope & wish their home will actually sell for. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t determine what a home is actually worth. We can wish & hope all day long, but at the end of the day, sold data will determine the house value.

The other common statement I hear regarding price when we list a home for sale is this: “Well, we want to try things out and then we will reduce later.” This is a REALLY bad idea. When I list your home for sale, the first 30 days is the prime time to get your home exposed out to new potential buyers who might be interested in your home. During the first 30 days, your home get sent out to over 700 different websites where buyers have registered, set up alerts & notifications when something new comes on the market that might fit their needs. If your home is worth $245,000 but you want to test the market at $260,000, that buyer never sees your home since their alert cuts off homes at $250,000.

By the time we reduce the price to the correct range, that buyer has probably already found a home or they see a home that has been on for a long time and then they want to get a deal. Ultimately, you end up losing more in the long run.

Pricing Fail Zone

The one area that no seller wants to end up in is the fail zone. These are the homes that have been on the market for a period of time but did not sell and have expired. Sometimes this is caused by listing the property with an agent that doesn’t market the home properly so it doesn’t get the exposure it deserves. Some is caused by bad images of the property, or a bad write up, or not enough information. But the main reason properties end up in the fail zone is caused by homes being listed for too much money. Just because you have an old appraisal that said the home was worth a certain amount, or when you bought the home you paid a certain amount & then added $30,000 in upgrades, it doesn’t automatically make the home worth that much more. Ultimately, the market determines the value of a home.

How Prices Are Determined

When it comes to figuring out how to price a Myrtle Beach home for sale, there is no exact science. Pricing depends on a lot of variables, but at the end of the day, I should be able to accurately give a range to my seller and be within an acceptable range of $5,000-$10,000 normally. Here’s how I go about figuring out how a home should be priced for sale which I think is somewhat similar to how professional appraisers do it.

First, thing I do is collect all data on what homes have actually sold for in a neighborhood. With the way our market is right now, I normally only need to go back 90 days to find enough properties that have sold in a specific area or subdivision. If I do not get enough properties to provide a sufficient amount of comparable properties, I will then go back another three months or as long as needed. See an example below:

On this report, it shows you several things, but the main items I pay attention to is the sold price column & the price per square foot column. At the bottom of the spreadsheet, it then also gives me an average, median, minimum, and maximum price per square foot. Then, I simply measure out the home and this should give me a base range to start with pricing on.

Of course, this doesn’t take into account all variables like an oversized garage, swimming pool, etc, those items have to get factored in separately. This is where studying all the properties comes in handy. If I see you have granite in your property where most other don’t I can then look at the other properties which sold with granite and can figure out how much would need to be added or deducted for features you might have or don’t have.

I then can tell the seller the ranges for average, median, and max for their area on properties that sold. That’s basically the extent of how pricing comes about. Usually after we finish this discussion we are ready to then discuss terms of the agreement and get the home listed on the market.

Bonus Tip

Here’s one bonus tip when it comes to pricing your home for sale that gets overlooked too often. Too many sellers and agents try to adopt a sales technique when pricing a home that ultimately hurts their search greatly. Remember when I mentioned earlier that there are over 700 websites out there with thousands of buyers who have searches set up to send them new properties when they come on the market that meet their criteria? Well, depending how you price your property can cause a huge group to miss out.

Think about when you purchased the home you currently live in. When you began speaking with your real estate agent, you gave them all the specifications for the home you wanted to purchase. When the agent asked what you wanted to spend, you more than likely gave them a range in an even number. In our market, it’s normally in $25,000 ranges. So you might say, $125,000-$150,000. Now if you list your property for sale at $124,900, you are going to miss all of the buyers out there that are willing to purchase your home for $100. The same is true for the seller that tries to be cute with the price of their home and lists it for $151,515. Think in round numbers and get more eyes on your home.

Wrap-Up

I hope that this article sheds some light on the process of how a real estate agent goes about pricing a home for sale and can give some insight to anyone who is thinking of selling their home in the near future. In the next few weeks I will go into several aspects of selling a home including how a real estate agents markets properties to get them sold, what you should do to get your home in selling condition, and what documents you will sign when selling a home.

If you are considering selling your home, do not hesitate to either call me at 843-222-9402 or simply contact me here and we can discuss how we should price your Myrtle Beach property and get it from For Sale to SOLD!

photos by: Tax Credits & aturkus, pheezy

Jun 01 2017

Last Day Of School

Today, June 1st, 2017 is the last day of school here in Horry County. Today is my last day as the father of a third grader & kindergartner. To say that the school year has flown by would be an understatement. I remember my son’s excitement as his first day of school approached. Because of where his birthday fell, he got to spend an extra year at home before actually starting his academics, so when he went to his first day of class, he was almost ready to turn six. He had already watched for the previous three years his sister get up each morning and go to school.

Every day, he would be excited to wake up early and walk his big sister to the school bus. Not knowing where she was going or what she was going to experience, he would wake up excited to say goodbye to her. Then in the afternoon, he would wait at the bus stop for her to return home again and hear all about the exciting things she did that day. It’s funny because as we came to the end of this year, little sister Miriam who is only 2 is already doing the same types of things. This morning at 5AM I heard a loud scream “MOMMY” from her bedroom as she woke up extra early ready to take her brothers & sisters to the bus. I’m sure that as mid day comes around she will be asking Mommy if it is time to go to the bus stop yet and get them back.

New Beginnings

For Jeremiah, this year has been filled with tons of new beginnings as he as started kindergarten. Finally he was able experience what my oldest has been doing for the past few years. In the beginning of the year, it was tough on him to learn to be still, to listen to the teacher and focus on the project at hand. I’m not saying he was being bad, but just as someone trying something new for the first time, school was completely foreign to him. While he has done organized dance and other activities, nothing was ever for the entire day long. Within the first few weeks though, he caught on quickly and started to become the good friend I knew he could be to others in his class.

I remember the first week in class a note coming home where he had been trying to protect someone on the playground from bullies and in the process actually bumped the kid he was protecting causing a minor injury. We had to have a talk about how he can’t be the protector of everyone, but that he needed to let those in authority know of these types of situations and let them handle it. See, Jeremiah is a gentle giant. My son who is by far the tallest in his entire class, (some kids don’t even come to his shoulders) wants to be everyone’s friend and tries to have everyone be his “buddy.” When someone is making fun of a buddy, he would try to protect. The picture to the right is from his 100th day celebration, you can see his buddy to the right doesn’t even come up to his shoulders.

Over the year, Jeremiah had bunches of fun learning to read, play music in music class, and learning to do simple addition and subtraction. He grew into being the leader I knew he could be and had many people in his class looking up to him. Literally & figuratively. At the end of the year he had plenty of great new skills and many new friends.

Living In Fast Lane

As for Isabelle, this year meant a step into the fast lane in third grade. See, towards the end of last year we received notice that after being tested, she was selected to go into the gifted & talented classes for both math and language arts. This meant that she would be joining the strongest academic kids in her grade on an advanced level of learning. As a dad, I was very proud to see this happen as she followed in my footsteps. I remember being placed in these programs at an early age and liked having the challenges they gave. By midway through the year she was working on math problems I don’t remember seeing till fifth grade and up.

Isabelle needs to have her mind challenged every day to grow and shine. As I tell people regularly, she would prefer having a book and sit in a corner reading instead of being surrounded by friends and being the center of the party. This year she continued to excel in all her classes and was placed on the Honor/Merit roll every single semester. By the time she finished third grade, she was testing at a 6th grade reading level and 4th grade math.

Extracurricular Activities

As I shared with a friend yesterday, the school year has been definitely busy for us having the kids homework done and trying to get them into be every night by 8PM, but the kids were also involved with many other things. At school, Isabelle was now old enough to start joining clubs and so in the fall she joined a music club. She also was very excited to join the Battle Of The Books club. This club was made up of mainly 4th & 5th graders and Isabelle. During the year they had to read 10 books, all around 200-300 pages in addition to their normal homework assignments to prepare for the “battle.” On the day of the actual battle, Isabelle shined through answering all her questions correctly.

In addition to the clubs, both kids also were involved in Dance. All three of my kids are involved with Silver Lining Dance Academy in Myrtle Beach. While there are several dance studios throughout Myrtle Beach, we chose to have our children be involved with Silver Lining because in addition to them learning basic dance skills, the staff at Silver Lining are more concerned with the children’s character. For Isabelle, this was her first year making the dance team which meant extra practices on Monday night. To give you and idea of what this studio is like, her practices on Monday were for an hour and fifteen minutes. The first hour was spent on dancing, the last fifteen minutes were then prayer time where each of the children shared prayer requests and testimonies for the team to lift each other up and pray for throughout the week.

Jeremiah was very excited this year to try out the hip hop class as he was finally old enough. This class is only for kids who are 6 and up because it involves greater levels of skill and discipline. This met every Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesdays, Isabelle had her intensive ballet class for an hour long. Thursdays were for Miriam who took a 30 minute ballet and 30 minute tap. This is Miriam’s first year in dance and she is the youngest in her class I believe. At her young age she is just starting to learn the basics. The reality is that at this age, we are just happy if she stays in her place on the stage. I remember when we had the winter performance of The Nutcracker, Miriam decided she would get her money’s worth stage time by running from one side to the other and back and forth during her dance number. Luckily she’s cute at that age and everyone giggled. Dance will wrap up June 10th with their final dance recital and then will break for the summer.

In addition to all of the dance classes, Isabelle & Jeremiah just finished up their soccer season. Once again, for Jeremiah this was a new experience being on a team and learning to work with others while having to listen to what the coach wanted from each player. His team this year did well losing only once in the last week of the season. Just like in school, he became buddies with all his teammates and even some of the opponents. For Isabelle, this was her third year playing soccer and I definitely began to notice growth in her play as she was able to stay more focused during the game and do a great job on defense for her team. For her, this was her first year being on a team that would win games. It only took three years, but she was finally able to experience victory. Once her team did that, they went on to win several other games in a row.

Proud Dad

I write all of this today to basically brag on my kids and acknowledge how really proud of all the accomplishments and growing I’ve seen in my kids over the past year. Jeremiah has done an awesome job learning to follow rules and deal with a structured day. He has really become good friends to the people around him and does an awesome job supporting & encouraging others. He prefers others before himself and does what he can to help those who might be in need.

Isabelle has really started to show maturity this year as she has grown up a lot. Her focus on being the best in everything she does is admirable. I’ve noticed her skill levels increase exponentially in everything she has done from her reading, dance, and even sports. Miriam has also began to grow and transition into being home alone during the day to learning her dance moves. She is a loving and caring child who will tell you “she is no longer a baby, but a little girl.”

To say I’m a proud dad would be an understatement. Also, I need to say thank you to my wife who has handled the kids and their crazy schedules during the school year. She did an amazing job keeping up with all the different schedules and handled it as if it was no big deal. She is definitely one amazing woman who without her, the kids would not be to accomplish half of the things they actually did.

Here’s to summer!

May 24 2017

I Was Hacked… Almost

Over the past several months I’ve heard of real estate agents in our area getting fake offers, bogus pre-approvals, and other types of scams that are simply trying to capture the information of real estate agents. The main thing people are trying to access is your email inbox as they know that we help buyers purchase some of the largest investments in their life. Here in Myrtle Beach, once we have seen the home and written our offer, it is not uncommon to handle almost the entire rest of the transaction through email and phone calls with many times the buyer not even coming back to the beach from closing. This is why our area is a prime target for hackers trying to fool people into giving them money.

Now, the way that this type of scheme works is different than the age old days where people sent an email saying that a rich king in a foreign country has passed away leaving them hundreds of millions of dollars. I think in this day and age, that most everyone now realize that those are fake and that nobody falls for that any more. Instead, the criminals are trying all sorts of new techniques, one of which seems to be pretty consistent in the real estate industry.

Why Do They Do It?

Knowing that real estate agents assist people in making one of the largest purchases in their life, we are prime targets to try & steal money through. Hackers in other parts of the world target real estate agents because of the large amounts of money people will spend when purchasing a home. Think about it, our company average selling price right now on a transaction is around $193,000. If someone is purchasing a home and is only putting 20% down and financing the rest, that is still over $38,000. What if the person is paying all cash? That could be a major score for a hacker at once. Once the money gets wired into their account, they are almost immediately wiring the money out of the account to another country and covering the tracks as to where the money has gone.

This makes it almost impossible to retrieve the money once it has been sent and extremely difficult to recover if it has already been moved onto another account. In other words, once they get your money, it’s pretty much gone.

How Do They Do It?

Now, unlike the bogus emails from someone in a foreign country trying to give us millions from a rich ruler, the tactics are much more advanced now. Instead, it normally starts with a simple property inquiry like I received the other day from “Sharon Stephen.” You can see the screenshot below of the email inquiry I received. This person was inquiring about one of my current listings on Dogwood Circle.

Like I do with all my online inquiries, I followed up with the person to see what additional information I could provide to them. Because I had a phone number and had not heard back from my voicemail & emails, I sent over the following text message as well to the phone number:

Approximately 90 minutes after sending this text message off, I received an email back finally from “Sharon.” But, when I received the email, I became instantly confused, because now “Sharon” had gone from being a interested buyer, to an agent representing someone and attaching an “offer (with pre-approval letter attached below)” on my listing.

Now as a sellers agent, I keep pretty close track of my listings and who has or hasn’t shown one of my properties so that I can give the highest level of safety to my sellers. I use an online program that tracks all showings on my listings so that if there is ever an issue in one of my properties, I can see who was there last and might be responsible. I first looked through that app to see that nobody by this name has shown my property ever. Next, I went into our local MLS program and searched to see if such a person even existed in our MLS to which I didn’t find anyone. In our previous market boom, it wasn’t uncommon though for someone to place an offer sight unseen on a property if it was something in a desirable area or price range, so I continued to try & track down who this person was. When both of these things brought back blank answers, I did one final step to see if this person was an actual real estate agent by doing a quick search on Google to see if I could find any information on this person by searching by name and also phone number. As a rule of thumb, most real estate agents have their name & phone number registered on several sites across the web, so even if this was a person brand new to the area and on their first week in real estate, I should be able to at least find something.

Just to make sure I wasn’t completely missing something, I decided I would at least try to look at the file that they sent as I could tell it was some sort of file attached to the email. When I clicked on what was supposed to be an offer in PDF format, it actually had a script attached to it that opened a link that looked like this:

When I saw this pop up, I knew immediately this was a phishing scheme by someone who was trying to access my email so that they could try and steal money from my clients. Instead of clicking on the download file image and try to open an offer, I instead copied the URL attached to the image and headed to Norton Safeweb to make sure it was a bad site. If I had clicked on the image, it more than likely would have sent me a Google login page that would look similar to a normal login screen. However when I would have entered my information, it would have not shown me a file, but instead sent my login credentials onto the hack. Instead, here’s what Norton said about the URL:

Just as I suspected, it was all a bogus attempt to access my email. Now, unfortunately, not all agents are as tech savvy and knowledgeable on these schemes existing, luckily for me, my brokerage tries to stay on top of all these items and make all our agents aware of these scams. In fact, the National Association of REALTORS® shared about wire fraud a year ago.

What To Expect Out Of Me As Your Agent

So, here are a few things you can expect from me as your real estate agent:

I’ll never ask you for confidential info- I have zero needs for ever having access to any of your banking information, social security number, etc. You will never get a text message or email from me asking for you to provide any of this sort of information. If any of this type of information is ever needed for a deal we are doing, you will be asked to provide this stuff directly to the lender or attorney. If you do receive an email from me, a lender, or attorney requesting this type of information or a change in wiring instructions, please contact me immediately and do not do what they request without at least speaking to a live human on the phone first.
Most lenders & attorneys now use secure email servers- I know it’s a total pain when you have to log into an email server in order to respond or speak to an attorney or lender, but it is really for your best interest. It’s just another level of security to make sure your money and information stays safe.
Always verify before sending confidential information- Before you ever wire money, or send over private/confidential information to someone, it doesn’t hurt to call them on the phone and make sure it actually came from them. I actually spoke to an attorney last week who said their company policy is to ALWAYS confirm numbers over the phone with someone before they send any funds, even if they have wired to this same account in the past. You can never be too secure when transferring large amounts of money electronically.
My email is as secure possible- I’ve taken all the necessary precautions to make sure my email is as safe as possible. This means I use an ultra secure password, change it regularly, and also have the two step verification set up as well for extra protection. Also, I’ve placed a disclaimer on the bottom of my email signature to remind everyone I email that I will never request or send any type of information regarding wiring funds.

Ultimately, you work hard for your money and I want to do as much as I can to make sure your information is safe and secure so that when you are trying to purchase a home, it gets used for just that. So, like I mentioned above, if you ever get any type of correspondence from me asking for private information, please do a few things:

First, do not automatically do what the email requests you to do. Second, forward the email to me immediately and then lastly, please pick up the phone and call me at 843-222-9402 immediately to let me know that such thing was requested by my email. Your identity and money is too important to allow it get into the wrong hands.

photo by: ivanpw