Two Minute Tuesday | Myrtle Beach Homes

Jul 17 2018

Are Sellers Listening To You During The Showing?

Today is Amazon Prime Day and while I have spent most of the afternoon fighting the website to order a few items, one of the things I realized pretty quickly was that smart home technology is growing at a rapid rate. This was made evident to me by the enormous amount of smart home tech deals that were being featured in the sale this year. Everything from Amazon Alexa devices to smart outlets, thermostats, lights, doorbells, keys, and so much more. That being said, are sellers listening to you during the showing?

As I began to think about this more, it made me realize how important it is to educate my buyers better before going out to show properties to them. With the increase in these devices, it also means there’s an increased chance that sellers are going to be listening in to our conversations as we walk through the home. Devices like the Ring Doorbell, Nest Cameras, and so many other smart cameras make it super easy for you to now keep an eye and ear on your home from your smartphone while you are away from it.

These devices will alert you when motion or sounds are detected at your home and allow you the opportunity to immediately grab your phone to watch & listen in. Heck, if you wanted to, you could even talk to the people who enter your home and have a conversation with them while they are still there. (I wouldn’t recommend it if you are selling though, bad bad idea.)

In the past while we would walk through the home I would try & ask my buyer clients qualifying questions to see if this might be the right home for them to purchase and wouldn’t think twice to make comments like “this home fits perfectly in your range if you wanted to do a cash purchase” or something like “your lender said we are pre-approved for $250,000 so if we needed to go to full list price, we have the ability to do so and still be within your budget.”

Nowadays though, these types of conversations are not being held in the home with my buyers because when we do that, we could be giving away valuable negotiation power to the sellers. The client level information that we used to be able to talk about freely while viewing homes can now be easily picked up on by sellers and backfire against us in the negotiation process.

What To Do?

So, what should you do these days when viewing homes? First off, I’d keep all my comments positive about the home while inside. If the wallpaper is hideous and you don’t like the color of the bathroom, keep that information to yourself. If you talk negatively about the home you want to place an offer on, you might offend the seller to where they don’t want to sell the home to you, or they become unwilling to negotiate rationally.

Next, if there are things you like about the home, don’t show your hand on this either. If the seller sees you on video jumping up and down and hugging your spouse because you just saw the master bathroom and it has the walk in shower of your dreams, they will know that you are obsessed with the home and less likely to walk away over a little more money and it could cost you more in the long run.

Instead, try to keep your emotions in check, both the good and bad when walking through a home. Obviously, if you have questions about something in the property, make sure to always ask those to your REALTOR® while walking through the home. If you wait until later to try & do so, you might forget them. Next, try & keep any remarks towards anything related to your financial position till after you leave the home. Once you are back in the car with the agent, you can then have that open and free conversation again.

So next time you are out looking at property, keep this in mind to help your agent negotiate for you in a better manner!

May 08 2018

Hiring A Pro Photographer When Selling Your Myrtle Beach Home

Alright so in this week’s video we are going to discuss the importance of hiring a professional photographer when you are selling your Myrtle Beach home. Most of the people who are looking to buy a home here in Myrtle Beach are not here locally. What I’ve seen from my 17 years in the business is that our biggest group of people buying a home in Myrtle Beach are from the northeast. That means that most of our buyers are starting the home search from a computer several hundreds of miles away, or they know what they are looking for and are just waiting for that property to come on the market and purchase. But since they are 500 miles away, they are not actively walking through a home here, they have an agent here locally set up a search to notify them when a property comes on the market.

I’ve got several clients that are like this. They might be interested in a gated home in Myrtle Beach, and so they get notified every time a new listing comes on the market. These buyers might receive several email notices a day as there are several communities in the area that are gated, and they cannot jump in the car and come every moment a new listing hits the market. So these types of clients have to rely on the images that the listing agent takes to determine whether they want to make a trip down and view the property.

While more and more agents in the area are starting to use a photographer to get images of their listings, some of the agents here in Myrtle Beach are not going to hire someone. They are either using their own cameras or even worse, maybe a cell phone to take your pictures for your house. When you list your home for sale, if you see the agent pull out their cell phone to take your photos, you need to question them and ask why they are not going to hire someone to give you the best images of your home to attract more potential buyers.

Up until about six or seven months ago I was taking all my photography myself. I have all the professional equipment, I use it to shoot my videos, and so for me it’s not a big deal to go into a listing and take my own images. I’ve spent thousands of dollars over the years on gear and really enjoyed doing the photos. However, I recently had a unit that was a little bit higher end property and so I thought, I should probably hire this out because I don’t have all the exact equipment to get these images the way they need to be. In order to get best photos, you sometimes need better equipment like lighting, wide angle lenses and much more. The better quality gear that you normally need to take this kind of photos can cost you several thousands per piece and well, while I’ve spent a bunch on gear, I also have three kids, so I can’t always purchase the top of the line stuff.

So I decided to reach out to a photographer, hire them, have them take the pictures of my listing. The results that I got were amazing. And it helped to get the property sold within the first week of it being on the market. This listing was in a neighborhood where there were several other homes for sale, and ours was on the higher end of the price scale. The thing that gave our property the competitive advantage over the competition was that we had professional images that the other listings didn’t have. That is why at that point, I decided that I was going to from now on hire a professional photographer for these things. Yes, it’s an expense to me as an agent, but, it allows me to focus on what I like doing most, selling your property.

When I used to take the photos for my listings I was spending anywhere from 4-8 hours taking the photos, editing them and getting everything ready for use. It was a major use of my time and took entirely too much away from other items I could do instead. By hiring the photographer, it freed me up to start other parts of the listing process and now allows me to get the home on the market and get it exposed out to my personal online network of over 40,000 in quicker time, hence getting properties viewed by more people sooner.

I recently had a listing that just went under contract this past week where I hired a professional photographer, to take the photos of this oceanview condo. The unit next door to us had an agent that listed it several months ago, they took the pictures themself, looks like they did it with their cell phone, they are not very good quality. This is a unit that is right by the ocean, so you would think an important to show off would be the ocean views. Well, they took the pictures at night, never went back took pictures to show the view that this unit has. So, instead of showcasing the ocean view, it had a black image on the deck showing a closet.

I listed my unit for sale, instantly had activity on the property. I have a contract on that property right now from a buyer who saw the images online, they’re up in New York, haven’t even been yet to see the unit, but they knew they didn’t want to miss out, so they wrote an offer sight unseen on this property. The agent told me your images were so beautiful, that’s what sold this person on it. Meanwhile, that other unit is still sitting on the market, and it probably will for a little while longer.

So, when you list your Myrtle Beach home for sale, make sure you ask your agent, if they are going to hire a professional photographer to take the pictures of your property. It’s a really important thing to help give you the competitive advantage today over everything else that is on the market. If you have somebody who is not using a professional photographer versus us who are, they are going to lose out on a regular basis. If you would like to get learn more tips on selling your Myrtle Beach home, feel free to call me at 843-222-9402 or simply contact me here.

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.