Feast or Famine...this is something us Realtors use to describe our business...
It really describes the past few years in Real Estate....I always have alot of people ask me, "hows the market", or "I can't believe you're still selling"... Well I'm hear to tell you ...It's great at my office and in Northern Ky... In the past week 2 weeks I have shown property in about 4 different counties Grant, Boone, Kenton and Shelby and have been out showing real estate most nights till well past 7 pm.... It's definitely paying off.. I have a first time home buyer who just found a home perfect for their family in Demossville Ky. ....I am waiting on a clear to close on another couple so they can move on to their dream home in Shelby County and I got an offer on a friends property in Corinth that was only on the market about 3 months ( which is really good for the market). I think staying in the Real Estate business even though it sometimes felt more like famine than feast has helped me maintain a great Repeat and Referral business.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Rainy Days
TWENTY THINGS TO DO ON A RAINY DAY:
1. Make paper airplanes and fly them across the room.
2. Have your own film festival. Pick a theme and rent several action movies, or sci fi movies, or movies with the same actor in them.
3. Go to a museum or an aquarium
4. Do crossword puzzles - even make your own puzzles!
5. Try sudoku puzzles, fun for the whole family.
6. Play Scrabble, Monopoly or Candyland or another board game.
7. Bake cookies and give some to your family or friends.
8. Tell family stories and take the time to learn about family history.
9. Call someone you care about for a talk.
10. Make tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
11. Make shadow puppets with your hands and a flashlight on the wall.
12. Make mandalas. Learn more about them here:
13. Make paper bag puppets with lunch bags.
14. Teach the children how to say hello and goodbye in a foreign language.
15. Teach mom how to play the video game all the kids are playing.
16. Get pizza delivered for lunch and eat it picnic style on the floor.
17. Draw pictures to send to the grandparents and other relatives. Sit down and write actual letters to everyone.
18. Go to the library and have everyone get a book they like. Take turns reading out loud from your books reading to each other.
19. Watch the Discovery channel and learn about animals and nature.
20. Write a funny story together, everyone writing one sentence until you get to "The End".
1. Make paper airplanes and fly them across the room.
2. Have your own film festival. Pick a theme and rent several action movies, or sci fi movies, or movies with the same actor in them.
3. Go to a museum or an aquarium
4. Do crossword puzzles - even make your own puzzles!
5. Try sudoku puzzles, fun for the whole family.
6. Play Scrabble, Monopoly or Candyland or another board game.
7. Bake cookies and give some to your family or friends.
8. Tell family stories and take the time to learn about family history.
9. Call someone you care about for a talk.
10. Make tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
11. Make shadow puppets with your hands and a flashlight on the wall.
12. Make mandalas. Learn more about them here:
13. Make paper bag puppets with lunch bags.
14. Teach the children how to say hello and goodbye in a foreign language.
15. Teach mom how to play the video game all the kids are playing.
16. Get pizza delivered for lunch and eat it picnic style on the floor.
17. Draw pictures to send to the grandparents and other relatives. Sit down and write actual letters to everyone.
18. Go to the library and have everyone get a book they like. Take turns reading out loud from your books reading to each other.
19. Watch the Discovery channel and learn about animals and nature.
20. Write a funny story together, everyone writing one sentence until you get to "The End".
Published by Abigail Beal of the Associated Content from Yahoo....
Thursday, September 15, 2011
PMS Chocolate Cake
So I had to post this on my blog... I had luch at one of my friends cafe's today and she was serving PMS chocolate cake... not only did it look amazing it was delicious...Her daughter gave me a sample...I didn't dare think about eating a piece...but seriously I could have jumped in head first and ate my way out the other side....but I didn't...Since I left, I haven't been able to get that cake out of my head...so I found a recipe online for PMS cake and so here it is....I'm about to make it...I will let you know how it goes...
Ingredients:
2 cups of sugar
3/4 cup of Hershey's Cocoa Powder
1 1/2 teaspons of baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 cup of veggie oil
1 cup of boiling water
1 3/4 cups of all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of milk
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Great and flour 2 9 inch round baking pans.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 30-35 minutes or until wooden toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost.
Ingredients for frosting:
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter
2/3 cup Hershey's Cocoa
3 cups of powdered sugar
1/3 cup of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount of additional milk if needed. Stir in vanilla.
foreclosure buying....
Admit it...you all want to know about it and how to get in on it....This thing we call foreclosures...."diamonds in the rough, equity gold mines" you heard them called alot of things....and want to know how to make a sweet profit... Unfortunately even though foreclosures are a great way to buy property especially if you are planning on occupying the property, they are not a gold mines or a easy way to make a profit. They are alot of hard work and in the current market trend, the profit on these units have shrunk dramatically from what they use to be, before the boom....
I get this question on a daily basis..."how can I buy a foreclosure"? There's many ways to buy foreclosures.
One way you may have heard abou,t is buying on the court house steps. When you purchase a home at the courthouse steps, a few things you need to keep in mind: 1. You usually have no access to the house, it is bought sight unseen. You can usually walk around the house and get the public information on the house, but you can not enter the house. It is usually required that you put down at least 10% of the purchase price of the home on the day of the auction. This is a great way to obtain a propery as long as you are comfortable with the information and have the means for the down payment.
Another way to purchase foreclosures is thru HUD (housing and urban development) This is usually done thru a real estate professional. HUD is a great way to purchase a home, however it is usually open to a owner occupant (someone who plans on living in the property for at least 2 years) for the first 15 days. After that period, if it doesn't sell to a owner occupant it is open to everyone on a daily bid. Sometimes HUD will even pay for closing cost and if you use their closing co. you usually can get free Title Insurance ( Owners Policy) Last but no least...you can use a Real Estate professional to buy a foreclosure directly from a bank. This means the home has gone thru the complete foreclosure process and is owned by the bank and is deeded to the bank. This process is very easy...but keep in mind that if they are priced well and in a good location you may be bidding against many other buyers...This can happen in all 3 of these scenarios so be prepared to pay the price the bank wants and sometimes over the asking price. I hope this information has helped...please contact me if you have any other questions. This is just a small amount of information about buying foreclosures.
I get this question on a daily basis..."how can I buy a foreclosure"? There's many ways to buy foreclosures.
One way you may have heard abou,t is buying on the court house steps. When you purchase a home at the courthouse steps, a few things you need to keep in mind: 1. You usually have no access to the house, it is bought sight unseen. You can usually walk around the house and get the public information on the house, but you can not enter the house. It is usually required that you put down at least 10% of the purchase price of the home on the day of the auction. This is a great way to obtain a propery as long as you are comfortable with the information and have the means for the down payment.
Another way to purchase foreclosures is thru HUD (housing and urban development) This is usually done thru a real estate professional. HUD is a great way to purchase a home, however it is usually open to a owner occupant (someone who plans on living in the property for at least 2 years) for the first 15 days. After that period, if it doesn't sell to a owner occupant it is open to everyone on a daily bid. Sometimes HUD will even pay for closing cost and if you use their closing co. you usually can get free Title Insurance ( Owners Policy) Last but no least...you can use a Real Estate professional to buy a foreclosure directly from a bank. This means the home has gone thru the complete foreclosure process and is owned by the bank and is deeded to the bank. This process is very easy...but keep in mind that if they are priced well and in a good location you may be bidding against many other buyers...This can happen in all 3 of these scenarios so be prepared to pay the price the bank wants and sometimes over the asking price. I hope this information has helped...please contact me if you have any other questions. This is just a small amount of information about buying foreclosures.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Poems of fall
Our business meeting today was like usual talking about new ways to market our homes, ourselves and the business....but one thing we talked about was what happens in the fall of the year...things dry up leaves start to fall and the plants start to expand their roots...I think we all need to do this. If we start spreading our roots or start storing our "nuts" as my grandpa use to say...then I think we will be ready for the cold hard winter and maybe, just maybe it won't be so cold after all...
trail leading into mammoth cave
Autumn Leaves
One of the nicest beds I know
Isn't a bed of soft white snow.
Isn't a bed of cool green grass
After the noisy mowers pass.
Isn't a bed of yellow hay
Making me itch for half a day
But autumn leaves in a pile that high,
Deep and smelling like fall and dry.
That's the bed where I like to lie
And watch the flutters of Fall go by.
~by Aileen Fisher~
trail leading into mammoth caveAutumn Leaves
One of the nicest beds I know
Isn't a bed of soft white snow.
Isn't a bed of cool green grass
After the noisy mowers pass.
Isn't a bed of yellow hay
Making me itch for half a day
But autumn leaves in a pile that high,
Deep and smelling like fall and dry.
That's the bed where I like to lie
And watch the flutters of Fall go by.
~by Aileen Fisher~
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Understanding your Credit....
I get alot of questions about credit and what it takes to get a loan in todays real estate market...I Usually send those questions to a qualified mortgage lender. I thought I would take this opportunity to to try and find something online for my readers to help them with these questions..I found this article on Realtor.com written by John Adams.. Hope you enjoy!
Thinking about buying a house? Then think about your credit history...the folks who lend money do!
How well you have handled your credit obligations in the past is of utmost importance to lenders today. The good news is that this information, for the most part, is available to you.
Your credit history is maintained by three different private companies called credit reporting agencies: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. You can order your report by phone and charge it to your major credit card if you like. It usually takes about a week to arrive. Or you can order your report online and view it within seconds.
It's a good idea to get a copy of all three reports, because if an error exists on even one of the reports, it may negatively affect your chances of getting the loan you want. Your credit report lists all the consumer credit that has been extended to you over the past seven years. It will show what your highest balance has been and what your current balance was on the date last reported by the creditor. It will also show how many payments you made on time and how many late payments were late. Late payments are grouped into categories showing how late you were. For example, if your credit card payment was over 30 days late one time, it might not be considered too serious. But if payments were over 60 days late four times, over 120 days late two times and over 180 days late one time, you have had a serious problem. That problem is going to impact your ability to borrow money.
It just makes sense to find out about your credit and correct any errors now. Regardless of how many credit problems you have had in the past, there are two good points to remember.
First, negative credit information can be reported in your credit file for only seven years. After that, it drops out and cannot even be considered. The one exception is bankruptcy, which can be reported for 10 years. But after that you start with essentially a clean slate.
Second, lenders are much more concerned about how you have handled your credit recently than with what happened several years ago. Even if you have had a bankruptcy, if you have kept your nose clean and paid your bills on time since then, it is possible you could qualify for a loan after as little as two or three years.
One of the best developments in the world of lending has been risk-based pricing. That's a five dollar term for the ability of lenders to offer higher priced loans to borrowers based on their demonstrated ability to repay. In other words, even if you have slightly fractured credit, you can still likely get a loan. It just may cost you a little more.
*REFERENCE Realtor.com written by John Adams Copyright © by Move, Inc.
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