Blog | Myrtle Beach Homes | Carolina Forest Homes

Apr 18 2018

Myrtle Beach Real Estate Market Update April 2018

It’s been a busy winter for real estate here in the Myrtle Beach area! In my 17 years in the real estate business, I’ve only seen things this busy this soon a few times. Listings that are in good shape and priced competitively are going under contract normally within 7 days of being placed on the market. Multiple offer situations is not an uncommon thing to experience when trying to purchase a home.

My personal listing inventory is at the lowest it has been since getting into the business in 2001 with currently only 2 listings. I think the bad weather that the northeast is having is a driving factor to why people are moving south. While on Easter parts of the northeast saw anywhere from 8-16″ of snow, we had temperatures that day in the high 70’s. I told someone the other day that I don’t miss my snow shovel at all!

The bad weather along with the fact that people are tired of paying extremely high property taxes, are the two main reason people are moving to Myrtle Beach. I was talking with a friend who sells homes in New York yesterday that told me that one of the homes her buyers were thinking of purchasing up there had an annual tax of $42,000! When I shared with her that if that home was in Myrtle Beach that the taxes would be under $2,000, she was ready to place her home on the market and move south.

Here’s the market report designed by RE/MAX for the national level, and I have to admit, here in Myrtle Beach is very similar. Take a watch:

If you would like more information on buying or selling a home in the Myrtle Beach area, feel free to contact me here or call me directly at 843-222-9402.

Mar 28 2018

Winning In Multiple Offer Situations

Our spring real estate market in Myrtle Beach is here! That means that more and more buyers are heading to the area to look for a home to purchase. The snow has melted enough up northeast to allow the buyers to escape and head to Myrtle Beach to start the process of finding their new home in the area. With the increase in number of buyers, this also means an increase in number of offers being made on property in Myrtle Beach.

In more and more cases, these means that we are having multiple offer situations for our buyers. When I meet with a buyer for the first time I explain to them how our market is very strong at the moment and that if they see something while here in Myrtle Beach that there is a high possibility for the property they see to be in a multiple offer situation.

Today I am going to share with you some tips on how you can win in a multiple offer situation. As a Myrtle Beach real estate agent now for over 17 years, I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with these situations and have put together 5 tips that I think can help differentiate your offer from the rest when submitting and hopefully help you win in a bidding war.

The Price

Ok, so when it comes to multiple offers, the number one thing that the sellers are going to look at in most situations is the price. They are going to see who is giving the most amount of money for their property so that they can put the most amount of money in their pocket.

It is important that you put your best foot forward when doing this but not overpay for the property, especially if you are looking at doing financing. Many times, the selling agent will notify all parties with an offer on the property that the seller has called for a highest and best offer. When this happens, the seller is giving all potential buyers the ability to make one last change to their offer if they really want to win the residence. When this happens, sometimes a buyer pulls out, sometimes a buyer stays with their original offer, and sometimes a buyer will increase their amount, remove stipulations from their offer, or make other major changes to get their offer selected over the other ones.

The Closing Date

The second thing that you want to pay attention to in a multiple offer situation to give you the best opportunity to win is the date of closing. As I share a few weeks back, the closing date is a major component in an offer to buy and sell real estate.

If the seller of that property needs to move out and find a property to move to, they may want a longer time in order to find the property they need. If they own it and it is vacant and they want to get it sold quickly to reduce their expenses. Sellers who own vacant homes in Myrtle Beach have large expenses going out each month for utilities, taxes, and HOA dues. The quicker they can close and reduce their expenses, is normally better for a seller.

What I like to do from time to time is to find out that information ahead of time from the selling agent so that when I’m putting together my offer and presenting it we are setting a date that’s going to work best for both parties. I’ve even asked the selling agent before to find out from the seller what date would work best for them in situations where my buyer is flexible with closing on any date.

The Contingencies

The third thing that you want to pay attention to in a multiple offer situation is the contingencies that you add to your offer. Are you writing this offer contingent upon selling another home? Is it contingent upon a home inspection? Is it something where you are trying to get the seller to give you closing costs? Or you are trying to have them fix a bunch of things in the house?

If those things are happening, they are all contingencies that make more work for the seller. The less of those you have in your offer, the better likelihood you are to be picked over some of the other offers they receive. If the sellers have three offers on their Myrtle Beach home and two have contingencies for things to be repaired and inspections to be done while the other offer is willing to purchase the property AS IS, the AS IS offer will be much more appealing to the seller since it involves less work on the home, less questions whether the buyers will actually purchase. If all other parts of the contract are similar, 9 out of 10 times the seller will take this offer over the others.

The Qualifications To Buy

The fourth thing that you want to pay attention to is your money side of things. If you are paying cash for this property, get you a proof of funds letter ahead of time from your bank and submit it with your offer. If you are doing financing, you can still buy the property and win it when you are doing financing if you have a pre-approval ahead of time. I’ll share with you guys at the end how I recently won a multiple offer situation where we had financing over a cash offer.

It is extremely important to include this documentation when submitting your offer to the selling agent. This is the proof showing that you are actually qualified to make the purchase and have actually started the process which makes your offer MUCH more appealing over someone else who the seller does not even know if they can get the money to make the purchase.

The Earnest Money

So the fifth tip I want to talk about today is earnest money. Earnest money is the down money you are putting down with your offer to show that you have interest in this property. While someone else might put only $500 or $1,000 down, if you were to put maybe $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 down you are going to make your offer look more appealing over your competition.

Now you do run a risk of losing that money if you were to walk away from the deal, but if everything goes as planned, and you end up closing on the property, it’s going to help set you apart from someone else. The sellers will look at a deal with more money down as a major appeal over one with less. Just know if for some reason the deal goes south, you do run a risk of losing this money.

How I Win Multiple Offers

So I hope you found a lot of value in these five tips today. And as I mentioned a few minutes ago I wanted to share with you a story recently where I had a multiple offer situation and my buyers were able to win. We were in a multiple offer situation, the agent told us there were other offers on the table make sure you bring your highest and best offer in.

So I spoke with my buyers and we did what these 5 tips said. We got a pre-approval ahead of time, we got a strong earnest money that was higher than what normally people would give, we allowed the sellers to pick the date we are going to close, and we wrote it with basically no contingencies in our offer.

Our offer was picked over other ones and the agent shared with me that the items I suggested to my buyers to make as appealing as possible were the reasons we got our offer picked. Were we probably the highest number one? Maybe not. But, having those four other items in place for us was able to help us win over the others. I know for a fact, one of those other offers even was a cash offer. But our financing one was taken over it because these four other factors made is look like a better option to the sellers. We will actually be closing on this property here in the next few weeks.

Take these five tips to heart, put them into practice and you will be able to win in a multiple offer situation. If you are looking to buy a home in Myrtle Beach and want someone to help you to get the home in a bidding war, feel free to contact me here or call me directly at 843-222-9402. I’d love the opportunity to work with you in buying your next home in Myrtle Beach.

photo by:

Mar 20 2018

Things To Do Outside To Prepare Your Home For A Spring Market Sale

The spring real estate market in Myrtle Beach has finally arrived! Happy first day of Spring! Since today’s the first day, I decided that I would share with you some simple things that you can do outside to your house to get your home ready for sale in this spring market. These items are fairly inexpensive to do and will not take a ton of time either. I’ll start with this video below sharing three and then elaborate more after.

Ok so the first thing you want to do with your house make sure the grass is looking great. Get your lawnmower out and cut the grass. Use the weed eater and get nicely trimmed edges along the sidewalks around flower beds, make it look pristine. You have to think, when people are pulling up to the house the first thing they are going to see is the grass in the front yard. If need be, buy a bag of fertilizer put it on and get your lawn looking great and green. Since we live in the south, plan on repeating this process every 7-10 days moving forward and all the way up until halloween.

The second thing that I want to talk about is along those same lines and it has to do with your flower beds. Go and buy yourself some mulch. Whether you go down to the Mulch Bucket and buy by the dump truck load or you go over to a place like Lowes or Home Depot and buy it by the bag. In our neighborhood, the local Boy Scouts troop is even doing a fundraiser where you can pay them and they will go purchase the mulch, deliver it and spread it out for you for a nominal fee.

Since we have three children, my wife and I do it ourselves and employ the children to assist. These bags are maybe going to run you $2-$3 a piece and you might spend $150-$200 to get the amount that you need to cover your yard but it is going to make a huge difference and it does a lot of things. It helps slow down the amount of weeds sprouting back up through mulch and gives your yard a nice vibrant pop of color on the flowerbeds. It helps to make the appeal of the outside of your house dramatic with a very minimal cost involved. Last year around this time we did this at my grandmothers house before placing it on the market in this helped to get her homes sold in under two weeks.

While you are at the store picking up the fertilizer and mulch, I’d also recommend picking up a few inexpensive flowers that you could plant as well to give an added pop of color to the outside of your home. You don’t have to go crazy spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars here, but just a few crates will make a big difference.

And the third thing that I would do, and actually I would do this one probably before putting the mulch out is get out the pressure washer. This thing right here is your best friend. Take it entire exterior of your home. If you have a side of your house that doesn’t get very good sun, you may start to have some mold/mildew growing on the side of the house. With a little bit of hard work and time, you can get that mildew removed off the side of the home in no time. Since we have such warm humid climates in Myrtle Beach, this unfortunately can cause the mildew you to grow quicker than in other parts of the country. I have to do this to my house 2 to 3 times a year.

While you have the pressure washer out, take it to your grill, take it to your smoker, take it to your patio, clean off all the pollen from the spring time coming through and it’s going to make a huge difference. This is going to take you a little bit of time, and a little bit of labor, but once again, the end result is going to be huge. I even use an attachment for the sidewalks and driveway to get them clean. Once again, you can do this project yourself, or hire somebody for a few hundred dollars to do it for you.

So here are a few simple tips to help you get your home ready for sale in Myrtle Beach for this year’s spring market. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Or, if you have a home that you want to sell this spring in Myrtle Beach, feel free to call me directly at 843-222-9402.

photos by: Kevin Doncaster & Decorative Concrete Kingdom

Mar 06 2018

3 Important Dates To Watch When Buying A Myrtle Beach Home

When you are buying a house or selling a home in Myrtle Beach, it’s really important that you pay attention to the dates that are written into the contract at three specific points. These are checkpoints throughout the contract time that you need to pay attention to and make sure you are on track for or it could cost you a lot of money or even the house.

Expiration of Offer

So the first date that is on a contract that is really important to look at is actually on the last page of the contract. Right there it talks about the offer that has been sent out how long that is good for. It is called the expiration of offer date. When someone submits an offer on a property, this is the amount of time the buyers are giving to the seller to either accept, reject, or submit a counter-offer back. The amount of time given by the buyer can be set to any amount of time. It could be 8-24 hours, 4 days, 8 days, or however long they thing is right.

If the property is a new listing that the buyers feel will not last long on the market, they will normally place a shorter time on the expiration of offer to try and get a response from the sellers before other offers come in. On the sellers side, if they feel they are getting a lot of traffic right off the bat on their new listing, and think they may receive multiple offers, they will many times counter back on the expiration asking the buyers to give them more time to make a decision, in hopes of another offer being submitted by another buyer.

It is crucial though for both parties to pay attention to the expiration of offers segment in the contract so that they do not allow an offer to expire without responding and losing the opportunity to either sell or purchase the home they are interested in. If the offer expires without it being excepted by both sides within the time period stated in the contract, you could definitely lose out on the home or selling it.

Conveyance/Closing/Possession

The second date that is really important to look at in an offer is the closing date. This is the date that is written into the contract that states on this date or within the certain period of time for the extension we are going to close and record on this property. If you are selling a property it is important because you want to know when am I going to get my money. If you are buying a property, it’s important to you as well because you want to know when can I take ownership of this new house and make it my own.

Now there is also going to be that extension put into the contract that is A number of days after a specified date in which the contract needs to close. This extension is put into offers as a failsafe in case there is a delay with the financing, an unforeseen weather occurrence, a medical emergency etc. The number of days for the extension is counted in business days in the state of South Carolina not just calendar days. If the property has not closed and recorded by the contract date and number of days in the extension, then both parties must agree to an extension on the contract to close at a later date.

Inspections

The third date that is really important to pay attention to when you are buying or selling a house is the inspection date. In the contract there is going to be date written in there that is going to say all inspections are going to be done by this time. Some contracts specify a actual day of the month, others simply say that all inspections must be completed within a certain number of days of contract acceptance.

As a buyer, it’s important to you that you get in touch with your home inspector and get that scheduled before that date goes past. Technically, if you do not complete all inspections within the specified time and the seller does not agree to it and extension period, you Have forfeited your rights to inspections.

If you are the seller, there is also a spot in that same section of the inspection part of the contract that talks about the date that once you receive the list of request of repairs that you have to figure out whether you are going to do them or not and respond back to the buyer during that time. If you do not respond during that time you are basically saying we are going to take it as is and handle all the things for you. As I have shared in the past, there are five main sections in the contract written that every home inspector is going to check in Myrtle Beach and what is covered in a contract as needing to be repaired to be placed back into good working condition.

So these are three main dates that when you are writing a contract you want to pay attention to when buying or selling a home in Myrtle Beach. If you have any questions related to this topic or anything else regarding buying or selling a home in Myrtle Beach, do not hesitate to contact me.

Mar 05 2018

Things To Do In Myrtle Beach- South Strand Recreation Center

My wife and I try to focus on with our kids are things to do in Myrtle Beach that do not just include time spent in front of a screen. We like our children being involved in activities outdoors, sports activities, or dance activities that give the experiences that they will remember for their lifetime.

One of the places where we are able to accomplish this is at the South Strand Recreation Center located at 9560 Scipio Lane in Myrtle Beach, SC 29588. We bring our children here on a regular basis to participate in league organized sporting events in Myrtle Beach that are put together by the Horry County Parks & Recreation Department. So far, our kids have done soccer a few years, my son has done one year of T-Ball, and this was their first year of Basketball.

The leagues normally run for around 8-10 weeks and include one game and one practice each week. The cost for participating in these activities normally range from around $35-$55 per child. This is an awesome opportunity for our children to learn a new sport, participate in group activities, and learn good life lessons on how to work well with others, encourage others, all while working on a skill for the game being played.

If you have a child and are looking for a great place for them to get involved in team sports, I would highly recommend checking it out. These events are put on by the Horry County Recreation Department and are held in various locations all along the Grand Strand.

In addition to the fun events for the children, they also run adult recreaction leagues in various sports too. So, you are an adult and want to get involved in a basketball league, or some other sport, I’d check it out too.

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