two minute tuesday | Myrtle Beach Homes

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 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.

Feb 13 2018

An Inside Look At Ripley’s Aquarium of Myrtle Beach

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, so if you haven’t made plans yet you better hurry to it. I’ve actually already discussed the most romantic places in Myrtle Beach that you can see that list here. Every year around this time, I have tried to take my oldest daughter out for a special daddy daughter date night to someplace special here in Myrtle Beach. This year we took an evening to go explore Ripley’s aquarium just the two of us.

For this weeks two minute Tuesday, I hope you enjoy our date as we explored around the aquarium together:

As you can see, we definitely had a fun time exploring the aquarium. We have purchased season passes the past two years for the aquarium because it is a great place to take the family for an outing on a less than stellar weather days. We usually end up visiting at least 1 to 2 times a month.

This trip however, was a special one because it was just me and my oldest daughter. Normally when we go, it’s the whole family together including her younger brother and sister. This time she was able to do everything on her own and not have to share the spotlight with any siblings.

As we drove to the aquarium, I asked her what were some of her favorite things to do in Ripley’s. She replied that she always enjoys seeing the sharks, the octopus, as well as the feeding shows and of course the mermaid show. However, her favorite part is always finding Gabby, the 60 year old sea turtle. She is normally hiding in one of the dark places in the tank. On this trip, Gabby decided to make an appearance and head up to the surface for a few moments which was definitely a highlight for us.

Of course, any trip to the aquarium would not be complete without touching the Horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, and also the stingrays and sharks. And as we do with just about every trip to the aquarium, we ended the night with a final walk down the noisy steps. My kids always enjoy running up and down them making as much noise as possible. Even though we have visited the aquarium many times over the past few years Including on Fourth of July the past two years, we still had a very enjoyable evening where we spent close to two hours walking around discovering things together again.

If you have children, and are planning a trip to the beach in the future, I would definitely try to add the aquarium on to your to do list. Especially if a rainy day creeps up and you need a fun activity to do indoors in Myrtle Beach.

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.