What Makes A Good Neighborhood?

What Makes a Good Neighborhood?
When you buy a house, you also invest in the neighborhood that surrounds it. The identity of a neighborhood may be as important to property values as the individual properties themselves. In a planned community, strictly controlled architecture governs a carefully crafted identity block after block. In a rural town, tree-lined streets and an old-fashioned town square preserve a disappearing way of life. In a large city, an older neighborhood's ethnic history has shaped its character and often drives its rejuvenation. It's important to know where a neighborhood has been—and where it's going—before you decide to buy.

Start with Statistics
It's now possible to get valuable neighborhood statistics online. Crime statistics, school scores and demographic information are all readily available. Want to feel right at home? Let our team of highly-trained professionals show you neighborhoods that are most like your current one. Or you can set your own criteria and search according to your preferences, and find the right neighborhood for you. This means that you don't have to depend on anecdotal information to learn about crime or the quality of the schools.

Check with City Hall
You can get any kind of town planning document from your town or county's zoning and/or planning authorities. If you want to be sure that the rural hideaway you just bought stays rural, check with these officials. They start planning large projects like major road construction years from the actual start date.

WARNING: BEFORE YOU BUY, INVESTIGATE
If you can't investigate a neighborhood before you make an offer, include an inspection contingency in your purchase contract that covers both neighborhood and house. It may state that the offer is dependent upon the buyer's satisfactory inspection of both the property and neighborhood. You can write more specific contingencies into the contract, too. For example, your offer may be contingent upon confirmation that a restaurant cannot be built next door.

Research the Resale Potential
The quality of the neighborhood will play a big role in your home's resale value—whether you live in the least or most expensive house on the block. The Johnny White Team has tools and resources to show you the areas with the most new growth, and therefore have the most potential. We can help you can find and compare any two neighborhoods against regional averages. Get a list of homes for sale in the neighborhood from your agent to determine how many days they've been on the market. If properties haven't been selling quickly, find out whether the market is slow or if there are neighborhood issues that may make resale difficult.

Get to Know the Community
It may sound like a cliché, but nobody knows a neighborhood like the people who live and work there every day. Visit a neighborhood on your own at different times of day and night. Talk to neighbors. Visit nearby schools and local businesses. Subscribe to the local paper. Small local papers can be chock-full of information that gives you a feel for the neighborhood or community. If you depend on public transportation, find out how accessible it is in this area. Drive to and from the house from several different directions, so you see both the scenic and not-so-scenic routes.

The Bottom Line:
If you take the time to research and investigate the neighborhood around the property, you can maximize the gain and minimize the risk of buying a property. It can make or save you thousands of dollars, so do your diligence.

Emotions and Real Estate

Buying and selling a home is more than understanding investment values and money. It can be a roller coaster of emotions.

It is about families and their futures, future wealth, security and needs, parting with memories, selecting proper schools, taxes, financing, the physical move, notifying utility people, etc. etc.
When you have raised children in a home, there is an additional emotional attachment to the home and memories that were created there.You’re anxious, worried, and feeling that you have lost someone that you once controlled.

So, in order to sell your home quickly, and at the highest possible price—keep your emotions in control and work closely with a real estate professional who communicates well and understands that he is in charge of the process—you make the decisions.

For Information on our unique team of real estate professionals, contact me:
Johnny White
Mobile: (704) 301-0877

Five Mistakes When Landscaping

Not Having a Plan
Many home landscape designs evolve helter-skelter. A plant is planted somewhere in the yard simply because there is room for it there at the time. Ideally, it's best to start from scratch, draw a plan for the whole yard, and stick to it. Short of that, try at least to sketch a rough plan for one large area of your yard, and put all your energy into implementing that plan this year.
Insufficient Fall Color
Spring and summer receive most of our attention when it comes to planting. Unfortunately, it's easy to forget to plant for fall. Yet the fall season holds enormous promise for those landscaping enthusiasts willing to plan for it. Don't allow your home landscape design to miss out on the colors offered by autumn's bounty!
Lack of Winter Interest
If the fall season is often neglected in home landscape design, matters stand twice as bad with the winter season. It is in wintertime that we most need a yard decor that will bring us cheer.
Proper Irrigation
Many of us face a dilemma: we enjoy having plants in our yards, but we also like to travel during the summer. So how do the plants get watered while we're gone? Sometimes a friend or relative can come to the rescue, but why chance it? There's a lot tied up in your home landscape design, both in terms of money and sentimental value. But don't ditch your travel plans! Just install an automatic irrigation system in your home landscape design.
Failure to Work With What You Have
Do you have a yard with a lot of shade? Or perhaps your yard's problem is a punishing summertime heat that scorches all in its path? Sometimes you can successfully fight the terrain you inherit in your yard, as in the case of building retaining walls for slopes to fight erosion. Other times, instead of fighting it, it's better to go with the flow and work with what you have. The key is to know what you're up against and what options you have.

Homeowners Spending More On Remodeling Projects

After posting quarterly gains of as much as 20 percent in 2004 and 2005, remodeling expenditures rose only 1.5 percent to $168.7 billion in the last three months of 2006, reports the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard.
The return on investment for certain home improvement projects also declined last year. According to Hanley-Wood's Cost vs. Value survey, home owners recouped only 77 percent of a $38,000 bathroom remodel in 2006, compared with 93 percent the prior year. Manufacturers are responding to reduced project budgets by releasing affordable products with an upscale appearance.
Formica Corp., for instance, displayed more than two dozen laminate countertops with the appearance of wood and river rocks, among others, at the recent International Builders Show in Orlando, Fla. Other manufacturers are catering to do-it-yourselfers.

Source: Wall Street Journal, June Fletcher (02/16/07)

Tips For Buying New Construction Homes

New home communities are more popular than ever—with good reason. New home builders are using popular open floorplans, including appliances, sod, and blinds, and helping make it easier than ever to get into a new home with little or no money.

If a buyer chooses, they can buy a new home without contacting anyone except the on-site sales agent. However, this might expose you to devastating losses that you could avoid. There are steps to protect yourself when buying a new home, and to ensure that your experience is a success.

Some people think that they can save money by not using the services of a REALTOR® when buying a new construction home. PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

Some new home builders try to monopolize a transaction—they only give you their attractive incentive packages if you agree, in writing, to use their lender, their title company, and sometimes even their insurance company.

The Johnny White Team will walk you through the transaction and will make sure that you're protected every step of the way. If you've agreed to use the builder's lender, our team of professionals will help ensure that you get a fair interest rate & fair closing costs.

Our Team will educate you, so that you will know what the industry standards are, and will make sure that the builder doesn't try and stretch beyond these. And best of all, The Johnny White Team has established relationships with many of the top homebuilders. Because of this, the homebuilder will be on their "best behavior."

The homebuilder doesn't want to run the risk of getting a bad reputation in the REALTOR® community, who represent most of their future homebuyers.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Real Estate Agents

About Finding and Hiring Real Estate Agents
I hate to admit this, but I was once hired to sell an expensive house simply because I was standing in the street, wearing my name badge and yakking on my cell.
The seller spied me from her front porch and said, "Hey, you look like a real estate agent. I want to sell my house!"
Speaks volumes about agents, doesn't it? She was lucky. I knew how to price her home. I could have been “Freddie First-Timer” straight out of pre-licensing class (no offense to those first year agents).
What few agents will acknowledge is the fact that more than half of the deals they get are because the agents are in the right place at the right time—not because they are competent. Sometimes they are in the right place by design, others by luck. The lesson here is that you need to be careful in how you select a real estate agent.

Questions to Ask a Realtor
· Is the Realtor full time?
· What is the communication plan? Can you call them any time? How quickly can they return your calls?
· What is the Marketing plan? Is this customized to me? Who controls the Advertising and Marketing on the home (the agent or the broker)?
· What level of technology is used? Internet, Websites, Virtual Tours, Photo Galleries, Online Networks, Search Engines?
· Are there letters of recommendation?
· What is the agent's and company's closed rate on listings?
· What is the agent's and company's expired rate on listings?
· What is the average time on the market?
· Who services my listing? (REALTOR®, Assistant, other REALTOR®-Agent).
· Is the REALTOR® a Single Agent or is there a Team? How might this be more effective?
· What are the agent's Designations? GRI, CRS, ABR, CMS, CNS, etc. What does this mean to me, the client?

Visit our website at www.TheJohnnyWhiteTeam.com or call us today for our answers to the questions above.