myrtle beach real estate | Myrtle Beach Homes | Carolina Forest Homes

Oct 12 2018

What Type Of Lockbox Should Be On Your Myrtle Beach Home?

Yesterday afternoon I was out showing properties to a first time home buyer here in Myrtle Beach and as we approached the door of the property, she asked how we were going to get into the home since nobody was home to let us into the property. I explained to her that the key was secured in a lockbox that holds the key and gives easy access to REALTORS® to enter the property. As we got closer to the door, we noticed a combination lockbox on the door she mentioned how she would never want one of those on her home and she would feel unsafe having it hang there giving others access into her home at any time of the day.

It reminded me of a recent Two Minute Tuesday video I recently did on this exact subject. Check out the video below:

Whenever a home is occupied or holding the belongings of my seller, I am never going to install a lockbox like the one pictured above. While these combination style lockboxes have a level of security with the code, they also leave people selling their Myrtle Beach home at a great level of vulnerability.

See, most the time when a lockbox is installed on the property, the listing agent does not go back to the home again unless they are showing the home to a potential buyer, holding an open house, or to remove the lockbox from the property. That means, if a lockbox like the one above is being used, that code is not being reset from the day it is installed. While agents are supposed to be the people keeping the codes safe for homes, sometimes the buyers are nosey and see that code and could access at a later time. Unfortunately I’ve seen/heard people giving the codes to others and then they have access into your home at any time they please.

Also, when a lockbox like the one above is in use, the listing agent has no way to know when the lockbox is being opened or limiting the times it is accessed. Instead of using a combo lockbox, I feel agents should spend the extra money to get a MLS approved electronic lockbox like the one below.

The reasons I am a big fan of using these types of lockboxes is pretty obvious. First, these lockboxes are virtually indestructible and almost impossible to break into without the proper access codes. In comparison, the cheaper combo lockboxes have several videos on YouTube teaching people how to hack them open. I’ve actually used these videos to open one of my own that I had forgotten the code to in the past. It only took me about 15 minutes and I was in. MLS approved lockboxes are only accessible electronically and unless you have the application on your smart phone and have the 20+ digit alphanumeric code, you cannot access these boxes.

The second reason I prefer using these types of lockboxes on properties that are occupied is that they limit the times in which the lockbox can be accessed. Most of the time they are set from 8 AM-9PM. This means that the sellers can rest peacefully at night knowing that someone will not be coming in their front door while they are sleeping or showing up early in the morning while they are in the shower getting ready for work. With a combination lockbox, anyone with the code can access at any time of the day.

The third reason why using the digital lockboxes is that it keeps track of every time the lockbox gets opened and by whom it was opened. I went back into the system a pulled a screenshot below of activity on my listings from over 2 months ago. This way if something were to happen where my sellers had an issue in their home I could immediately check and see what agent was in their home that day and reach out to them. In the past I’ve had things get broken in a home during a showing, doors left unlocked, lights left on, an inspector accidentally leave the oven on, and much more. Since I had an activity log on the home, I could immediately check and know who was the person responsible for that happening.

After sharing these reasons, you may be asking yourself, why would any agent ever use one of the less secure lockboxes on a property? Well, there are a few reasons where I do use those type of lockboxes and they come in handy. Many times when a property I will place one of these types of lockboxes on the home. These lockboxes are usually about 1/4 the cost of the electronic loxkboxes.

I will also use a combo lockbox on properties where we might need a contractor to access the property. Many times I am helping my my clients get their home for sale in Myrtle Beach by assisting them with getting the home painted, carpets cleaned, and other items fixed throughout the home to make it show ready. I could go meet each of these people individually each time they need to get into the home and let them in, but most of the time, they are going to want to visit several times over a time period to do the work needed and I cannot be there. Because you need to join our local REALTOR® Association in order to access the electronic lockboxes and it is an extra expense, many contractors do not have the ability to access electronic lockboxes. I can simply give them the code and they can then go do what is needed on their schedule.

So, in closing, when you are selling your home in Myrtle Beach, do you want an agent that is using the cheap combination lockboxes on your home, or do you want an agent that takes your safety seriously and will spend the extra money to keep you, your family, and all your valuables safer?

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!

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 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.

Feb 06 2018

5 Mistakes To Avoid When Selling A House

In today’s 2 minute Tuesday we are going to discuss 5 mistakes to avoid when selling a home in Myrtle Beach. As a Myrtle Beach REALTOR® for 17 years now, I have seen these 5 mistakes made by sellers on multiple occasions when trying to sell their home. While agents try to always honor the requests of their clients when selling, there are sometimes certain requests that can cause major problems in the sale process and even prevent your home from actually getting sold.

24 Hour Showing Notice Required

Ok, so the first thing I wanted to talk about is the 24 hour showing notice. So many times I run into consumers who say “Listen, we need plenty of time to get our home perfect, so we want a 24 hour notice minimum requirement for any showings on our house.” Now while in theory this sounds great to you as a seller, what you are doing is you are missing out on a ton of potential buyers because you have to think, here in Myrtle Beach they are on vacation for a limited amount of time they may have 2 or 3 days to look at homes and if they are required to do a 24 hour notice to see your property they may not see it.

If I am working as the buyers agent and they are only in town for a three day period, we cannot wait 24 hours always to view your home. In our market, that type of time period simply will not work. Whenever we have these types of restrictions on viewing the home, almost always the buyer simply says “just skip that one.” Now, I understand that there are sometimes circumstances beyond your control that you have to have that extra time. You may have an elderly person living in the home that you need that extra time to prepare and transport, you might be running your business from your house and need that time to make arrangements with work, or maybe you have a pet that you need to remove from the property. These are the exceptions, but should not be the rule.

The main reason people want that 24 hours to prepare their home for a showing is that they want to give the home a quick cleaning, they want to make sure everything is spotless and looks as best as possible for the potential buyer entering their home. I get that, but while you are forcing people to wait for you to clean, you are actually losing potential buyers. So while you think that the longer period to get your home perfect is a good idea, it could really cause you to miss out on a lot of good possible showings.

No Sign In The Yard

The second mistake I see sellers make when they are selling their house is they say “Jeremy I don’t want a yard sign in the front yard. I don’t want my neighbors to find out that I’m selling my house, I don’t want people who come up to my door pestering me because they see a sign there. Once again I know that sometimes there might be circumstances like moving away and having to leave a job that might be compromised if they find out your home is on the market, so you cannot place the sign out there. But, when you skip the sign, you give up one of the most powerful marketing tools possible to sell your home.

In Myrtle Beach, people are constantly out driving around looking for yard signs to find property for sale. When I have a property that I can place a yard sign in front of, I can normally expect a minimum of 5-7 calls from potential buyers interested in that home. Also, with our company we’re using a service called Voicepad that allows people to call or text a number and find out all the details on your home. With this service, it should keep the number of visitors to the door wanting to know details on your home. When you take that sign out of the front yard and don’t allow it to be there, you are missing a huge opportunity.

Leaving The House Show Ready

The third thing that I’m seeing happen regularly is people saying no I don’t want a showing today because the home is not clean. My suggestion to you as a REALTOR® is to try and keep your home in show ready condition or as close to it as you can whenever you place your home on the market. However, as a father of a 9, 7, & 3 year old, I know how difficult it is to keep your house spotless at all times when living in the home with children.

If you have somebody who calls you and says they we want to show your home today at 3 o’clock and it’s 10 in the morning and you have already left for work but you didn’t make the bed, it’s OK, still let them go through and see the home. They are not buying the house based on whether or not the bed is made. I have however experienced a seller missing the sale of their home because they didn’t clean up the dirty clothing on the floor before leaving in the morning. The buyers called last minute and wanted to see the home for a second time to make their final decision before boarding an airplane to head back home.

There was no time for the seller to get back home and clean things up and when they left for work in the morning they were running late, so they didn’t load the dishes into the dishwasher and their clothing from the night before were just left on the floor. The buyers feedback to me was that they changed their mind about buying the home because they had to step over the panties of the seller and they were concerned that they didn’t take the best care of the home because of this. If the sellers had simply cleaned up the dirty clothes and loaded the dishwasher, we would have sold that home that day.

The Crayon Box Effect

Number four is a huge problem I see too many times made by people trying to sell a home in Myrtle Beach. When you purchase a home you want to customize it, you want to make it your own personality inside. That may mean that you make one of bedrooms pink, another one blue, your living room might be green, your dining room might be red. I know every home I’ve ever owned we have customized the rooms to our preference and gave the house our own personal touch inside. While these are your own personal preferences of things you like, unfortunately others can have a hard time visualizing themself in the home when it painted with a bunch of custom colors.

When every room in the house is painted a different color, I call it the Crayon Box Effect. It feels like a box of crayons vomited in your home onto the walls of your property. There is no continuity throughout the house. While it’s OK to have color in your house when you live there, when you are getting ready to sell your home, you need to make sure your home is neutralized and in the best condition inside possible. That means if you have different colors everywhere, you have wallpaper hanging, take all that stuff down, neutralize back to colors that are not going to be offensive. This will help your home to sell faster, and for more money too! If you want to see more on this topic, I wrote about it here a few months back here in Tips to selling your Myrtle Beach home-Staging.

Front Yard First Impressions

And the final thing that I think needs to be done when you are selling a house in Myrtle Beach is that you need to make sure your front yard is in pristine condition. You have to think, the first thing people see when they pull up to your house is the front yard. If they pull up and they see weeds that are up to their knees, they see grass growing between the sidewalks, they immedtiately think that it’s not in good condition. Their minds begin to wander to what else might be wrong in the house, or that your home hasn’t been well kept. A messy front yard sets off warning signs to them and they are already forming an opinion about your house before ever walking in the door.

Think of it this way, when you go to a restaurant and this is what we used to say when I was in the restaurant industry, “People eat with their eyes first” make the plate look beautiful. The nice thing your front yard is that most of the time it is a very minimal cost item to make look good. Some fresh mulch, pulled weeds, $30 of flowers and a lawnmower and you are in business. Do the same thing with your front yard that restaurants do with a plate of food and you are going to be in much better shape.

Bonus Tip

Here’s a bonus tip when selling your home. When you list your home on the market, allow your agent to install a lockbox on the property. It will increase the number of showings on your home immensely. With the new types of technology, the lockboxes are now more secure than ever. They track every single time it is opened and shares that information with your listing agent. They also prohibit people from opening the lockboxes at night or early in the morning. You have very little to worry about when it comes to someone opening the lockbox and entering your home without someone knowing it.

But, if you require the agent to pick up a key from another location, most of the times they will just move on to another option. Whenever I take a listing that has a tenant in place and the rental management company will not allow us to install a lockbox, those listings take much longer to sell because agents do not want to have to drive to another location to get they key and then have to return it again after showing. Allow the agent to install a lockbox on your property get much better results.

Ok so there you have it, 5 mistakes to avoid when selling a home in Myrtle Beach. If you would like to learn more about selling a home, feel free to call me at 843-222-9402 or simply click here to contact me.