Murfreesboro Tennessee Real Estate Blogs

In this special guest edition of Tuesday Morning Coffee, Business Coach, Micheal Burt presents a message of inspiration, motivation, and what it takes to create clients that promote and advocate your business.

This week Murfreesboro real estate agent Tim Dutton takes his Taste of the Town online TV series to B. McNeel's located on North Church St. in downtown Murfreesboro. Tim speaks with Barbara Thomas, the owner, about the restaurant's history and food, as well as their delivery and catering services. This week's Taste of the Town deal? FREE dessert just for mentioning Taste of the Town.

For more Taste of the Town find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TasteoftheTown

This week John compares the current real estate market to the Murfreesboro real estate market a decade ago and discusses the changes or lack thereof in buyer and seller profile statistics with the exception of the number of homebuyers using the internet to search for homes. The number of home buyers searching online has risen from 40% in 1999 to a staggering 92% in 2009 according to statistics released in January from the National Association of Realtors.

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This week Tim sits down with the owner of City Cafe, located just off the square in downtown Murfreesboro, to discuss the restaurants homestyle cooking and the famous City Cafe election poll.

For more Taste of the Town visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/tasteofthetown

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I’ve been looking lustfully at the rumoured Apple tablet for months, wondering about the possibilities. As of Wednesday, Steve Jobs and his team have finally put to rest most of those rumours and have released to the masses the iPad, Apple’s first stab at the tablet market.

There’s much to be said about the iPad, some good and some bad. So without further hesitation here’s a take on the product from the perspective of a real estate professional (not a Realtor, not an agent, just a Marketing & Technology Consultant that deals with real estate transactions of all sorts on a daily basis).

First the good. The iPad is going to impress your clients and make other agents envious. It’s pretty. It’s light. And it will be fast. With a 9.7-inch display and a mere 0.5 inch thick, it weighs in at only 1.5 pounds. Powered by a 1 gigahertz processor, it will be available with up to 64 gigabytes of storage. You’ll be able to view your photos quickly on a large screen, browse (most) MLSs via Wi-Fi or for a modest $14.99 to $29.99 AT&T will allow you use their 3G service and supposedly there will be no contract required.

Headed to a listing appointment? Woo them with a presentation made in Apple’s iWork Apps which look simply amazing. Flip the iPad from your perspective to your clients and the screen instantaneously adjust for their viewing pleasure. Running a CMA? Cloud CMA will provide an amazingly intuitive experience and keep you completely mobile. You'll also be able to browse maps and get rid of your Garmin or TomTom with the iPads GPS functionality.

An added advantage is Apple’s latest addition to the iTunes Store. The iBook store will put all your favorite motivational books at your fingertips, and possibly allow you to publish your own within the store. I can see it now…your clients searching your city not only to find your iPhone App which works on the iPad but also your listing presentation. Books not your cup of tea. Take notes and schedule appointments on the iPad without having to carry around a pen and paper or struggle with your smartphone’s tiny screen. Email is sure to be a breeze on the iPad as well.

Now for the not-so-good. The iPad doesn’t support Flash. That means your Flash based website will look a little lackluster and all those online videos not on YouTube and Vimeo won’t be readily accessible. That’s really about it for the bad.

Many technology experts are slamming the iPad for not including a stylus for taking notes and signing contacts etc. I expect that Apple will be releasing a pressure sensitive stylus in the near future, as Steve Jobs certainly didn’t completely overlook such an important feature for a tablet. I will likely be an add-on much like the physical keyboard which is already on the Apple Store.

Lastly, while we can’t be sure of it’s compatibility at this time, it is reasonable to assume the iPad will be  able to be tethered with most DSLR cameras, allowing use as a field monitor for shooting photos and video. Alternatively, one could use an Eye-Fi card to wirelessly upload photos and video directly from any camera to the iPad. That could provide a great WOW factor for your clients as they view your photos of their listing instantly as your taking them throughout the property.

However, the best feature of the iPad is it’s amazing price. The base model is priced at $499 going up to $799 for all the bells and whistles. That puts it in your hands for less than the first release of the iPhone. The price point alone will make the iPad an instant celebrity in the world of technology. When can you get your hands on one? The Apple iPad is slated to hit the streets in April 2010.

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In the debut episode of Taste Of The Town, Murfreesboro real estate agent Tim Dutton visits Kirkenburts Smokehouse restaurant located on Cason Lane in Murfreesboro TN and spends some time with the establishment's owners talking about what sets Kirkenburts apart from the other restaurants in Murfreesoro.

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Two of the biggest things that will continue to have an ongoing affect of the market – at least during the first half of the year – are the first-time homebuyer tax credit and $6,500 homebuyer tax credit for current homeowners.  Both of these programs, which have been discussed extensively in this space, provide a great incentive for people who are thinking of buying a home to go ahead and take the plunge into homeownership.
 
Something else to keep an eye on is interest rates.  The Federal Reserve has been working very hard to keep a lid on inflation and mortgage interest rates have been hovering near record lows for so long that many people don’t even realize anymore that 7 or 8 percent has traditionally been considered a fantastic mortgage interest rate.  Is 2010 the year that rates return back to historical levels?  That’s the million-dollar question.  But pay attention to the Fed.  When they start raising the rates at which they lend money to banks, mortgage rates are likely to go up shortly thereafter.
 
Another item of interest is the department of Housing and Urban Development’s recent waiver of the FHA 90-Day Flip Rule.  This rule prevented an FHA loan from being approved on the purchase of any property the seller had owned for fewer than 90 days.  Since 80-90 percent of the mortgages in our marketplace are now FHA loans, this meant that investors often had to hold property longer than they desired before it could be sold to a homeowner.  The lifting of the 90-Day Flip Rule for one year beginning February 1 should help foreclosures and other distressed sales – which are often purchased by investors intent on quickly fixing and “flipping” the property to a homeowner – to be more quickly re-assimilated into the marketplace as owner-occupied properties.  This should, in turn, help to raise property values as distressed houses are moved off the market more quickly.

In this continuation of last week's episode of Tuesday Morning Coffee, Murfreesboro TN based real estate agent John Jones rounds out his list of the 15 most important characteristics of people who are top producers and performers in their industry.

Allow me to preface my comments by saying that determining a list price for a house is a subjective task.  Different people can look at the same data and legitimately come up with different assessments of market value, especially if the property is unique. 

Having said that however, if the house is in a subdivision populated with other homes of similar size and floor plans, accurate pricing becomes a much easier exercise.  And aside from possibly the physical condition of your house, your asking price is the most important factor you control in determining whether or not your property will sell. 

The unfortunate truth is that some real estate professionals are willing to do what’s called “buying a listing” in order to get hired by the seller.  This means that the agent probably knows that the price he’s selling you on is too high to bring in any legitimate offers, but he’s willing to let your house sit for awhile if it means that he gets your listing.  Once he has the listing secured, he can work on convincing you to lower the price when the inflated price fails to produce showings. 

Why would a Realtor do something like this?  The answer is actually simple.  Among the best sources of buyer leads are existing listings the agent can advertise with yard signs, in publications and online.  The buyers call in on your house and become potential buyers for the agent.  If your house is overpriced, he can sell them another house priced to sell.

The bottom line is when a listing price sounds too good to be true, it likely is.  Just as you are justified in asking your listing agent to support what seems to you to be a low price with comparables and absorption rates, you should also require the same kind of proof when the agent says he can bring you more than anyone else.

We all want to get as much as we can when we sell our homes, but National Association of Realtor statistics clearly show that the average seller of an overpriced listing, actually nets much less for their home than those who price aggressively on the front end.  Use common sense and look at your house alongside the competition as if you were a buyer.  If there’s another house that offers more value for the money than yours, potential purchasers will choose that property before yours.