Record Low Mortgage Rates for Buyers

Low mortgage rates help propel U.S. home sales and the refinance market. Mortgage rates in the United States have fallen to the lowest level ever on the heels of concerns stemming from the coronavirus outbreak.

As mortgage rates remain near three-year lows, those who are considering refinancing shouldn’t wait on the sidelines. Many lenders have hit their capacity in terms of how many loans they can process. Banks are currently inundated with small business loans. This is a response to COVID-19 and the government stimulus, but are still processing mortgage loans.

Rise in Mortgage Applications

Mortgage application data has shown that a growing number of Americans have been applying for loans to finance the purchase of a new home. Most consider this a positive sign for the spring home-buying season.

Low Inventory

“In order to take advantage of low mortgage rates, buyers will need homes to buy,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. According to Market Watch, the inventory of homes for sale has an hit all-time low amid the high demand from buyers. The low inventory is largely the result of depressed home construction activity in the wake of the 2018 recession, which did not keep pace with household formation across the country. Many single-family homes were also purchased by investors during the bust years and converted into rentals, further constricting supply.

Economic Health

Another factor that could prevent Americans from taking advantage of low rates is the overall health of the economy. Many buyers might get cold feet despite the potential savings they would be leaving on the table, Hamrick said.

“There’s no avoiding the fact that a home purchase is the most significant purchase individuals will make in their lifetimes” Hamrick said. Whether you are looking to downsize your home or take advantage of low interest rates, contact Karen Cannon, Realtors to walk you through the process. We can advise you based on the current climate and demand.

Get started today by exploring Dunwoody homes for sale, Sandy Springs homes for sale, and Chamblee homes for sale!

Sources: bizjournal.com; marketwatch.com

The Importance of 3D Virtual Home Tours

Whether you are stuck inside or not, the new 3D home tours are a great way to check out a potential home from the comfort of your home. Karen Cannon, Realtors provides 3D virtual tours of every house we sell so buyers anywhere in the world can tour our listings as if they were actually walking through your house. Our 3D virtual tours offer such an immersive experience that only the most serious buyers visit our listings in person.

Homes with a 3D virtual tour get more views via websites and social media, far exceeding those without it. The virtual home tour also has the capability to be emailed and is proven very effective in real estate search engines.

3D virtual home tours also allow a 24-hour open house and saves both the seller and buyer time. With a 3D virtual tour, prospective leads can do their own walk-through of your properties from anywhere, anytime, generating higher engagement and interest. According to viz360, “More than half of their respondents have taken a virtual tour of the property they liked. They like the technology so much that 54% of them won’t check out a property without these virtual images.”

When you sell with Karen Cannon, Realtors, we provide the highest quality 3D virtual tour of your home. It allows Karen Cannon, Realtors to:

Sell at a 4-9% higher sales price.
Decrease time on market by up to 31%.
Increase time on site by 15%.
Attract more qualified prospects by giving viewers the most complete representation of your property, filtering out those the property may not be right for while also attracting leads that are genuinely interested in your property.

5 Female Trailblazers in Real Estate History

According to the National Association of Realtors, the U.S. residential real estate industry is dominated by women with 63 percent of all Realtors are female. In 2011, Trulia found “that there are more women real estate professionals in every state than male real estate professionals.”

‘But women weren’t always dominant in selling homes. According to NAR’s history of women in Real Estate, when the association first started in 1908, its membership was entirely male, despite 3,000 women working as brokers nationally. Their first female member, Corrine Simpson, a broker from Seattle, Washington, wouldn’t join until 1910. And though organizations like NAR didn’t explicitly ban women from joining, organizations did require local real estate board membership, and these boards did explicitly ban women. So, just like so many times in history, women decided to create their own professional organizations.’

Here are 5 women who took a first step that paved the way for many of the women in residential real estate today:

Ebby Halliday

Any woman who started and owned a business in the late 1930’s was almost by definition a trailblazer, but Ebby was not satisfied with owning her own hat boutique. She easily transitioned to residential real estate and dominated the Dallas market for decades. She credited her success to simple hard work and caring about the needs of others.

Ebby died in September 2015, but her real estate firm continues to sell homes. At the time of her death, the firm was the largest independently owned residential real estate services company in Texas and the 10th-largest in the nation. The firm closed 19,200 transactions in North Texas that year with a sales volume of $6.64 billion. Ebby Halliday in 1968 from a retrospective on her life that appeared in the Dallas News.

Dorcas Helfant

Dorcas was the first female president of the National Association of Realtors. She elected to the office in 1992 and was also the first woman to serve as the president of her state association. Her service to others in her profession included a key merger of her own real estate firm with other Caldwell Banker firms that provided “an effective career track for our associates.”

In addition to her leadership in the real estate field, Dorcas is a past chair of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. She served as president of the Virginia Aquarium Foundation and was named Hampton Roads Woman of the Year in 1990. Dorcas currently is vice-chair of the Foundation Board of Virginia’s Community Colleges. Dorcas Helfant

Abby Hamlin

As the founder and president of Hamlin Ventures, Abby has blazed trails where most women and many men fear to go. Her stated goal is to use real estate and urban design to enhance people’s lives. She has won recognition for her development in Brooklyn for formerly homeless and low-income individual. Her firm remains one of the few successful female-owned development firms.

Abby is a civic leader as well as a noted developer. She has served as a board member of the Van Alen Institute for Public Architecture from 2001-2010 and as the chair for the last 4 years of her tenure. She is currently a Trustee of Art Omi, a board member of Trainor Dance and of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Abby Hamlin

Tracy Dodson

While women have been very successful in residential real estate, commercial real estate has been a much more difficult market. Only 35% of professionals in this sector are women, and virtually all of them work in property management. As vice president of brokerage and development at Lincoln Harris in Charlotte, N.C. Tracy is one of the pioneers in commercial real estate development.

“In this industry, it’s hard in a lot of ways. You have to have a lot of success to work your way up,” Dodson told Bizjournals.“It’s not just the hours. You’ve got to have successful projects and you’ve got to have successful deals.” Tracy Dodson

Debra Cafaro

Debra has blazed a trail of success. She took over the helm at Ventas, a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) in 1999, the firm was facing collapse. The sole tenant of the properties was bankrupt and had stopped paying rent. The firm had a market cap of $200 million and $1 billion in debt. In addition, there were claims of Medicare fraud.

Now, Debra is recognized for returning shareholder 3,981.3 % for the 16 years ended December 31, 2015. She is one of only 23 CEOs named by Harvard Business Review for four consecutive years and one of only two women on the 2017 list. This same year Forbes Magazine recognized her as among the 100 most powerful women in the world.

A portion of this article was written by Christian Miller for www.sharestate.com on December 2017.

Other sources: apartmenttherapy.com

How Accurate Are Zillow Estimates?

How much is my home worth? Before you move, it’s the first question you have to ask. There are numerous real estate value estimators online, but Zillow’s is by far the most popular. While surfing homes on Zillow.com, home values are assessed to the dollar. This can be very misleading. If you are committed to starting online, start by collecting data from numerous sites like Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia to see the differences in estimates.

Taxes

Professionals agree that online home estimators have advanced in the last 5 years and are useful as a ballpark pricing tool. They are not comparable to value estimates made by professional real estate agents. In addition to public data on the sale of property in that area, “the Zestimate also takes into account actual property taxes paid, exceptions to tax assessments, and other publicly available property tax data. Tax assessor’s property values can be inaccurate. The tax assessor’s database might have a mistake related to a property’s basic information. This causes the assessed value to be too high or too low.” For instance, a finished basement or exterior improvement.

Market Algorithm

One of the major issues we see within Dunwoody and Sandy Springs real estate market is the issue Zillow has with turnover. The more homes sell in a particular area in a period of time, the more data Zillow has on estimated value. Families in our area tend to retain their homes and thus the cost at purchase is very different than selling.

Home Upgrades

Many homeowners choose to make upgrades on their current homes. This is generally overlooked by Zillow unless the upgrade requires a permit. Once that permit is issued and passed along to the tax assessor, it will then be a factor of the “Zestimate.” It is important to research which home improvement investments have the greatest return on investment. An experienced Realtor will be able to offer insight as to which renovations will make your home more appealing.

Get a Complete Value

Zillow.com is a great tool for allowing potential buyers or sellers an idea of what and where they need to be looking. If you are more serious, the only way to get an accurate answer is to contact a real estate agent. Five homes built in the same year in the same area code, can be priced differently based on a number of factors. In addition to factoring in home improvements and similar home values, they can weigh in school districts, potential growth, taxes and neighborhood trends to assess the value of your unique home. When you are ready to get an estimate on your home, call Karen Cannon Realtors. Our real estate team has also been recognized as a Top 5% for Team Volume. Every agent on the KCR team has been chosen for his or her professionalism, industry knowledge, and connection to the community. This recognition reinforces the fact that we have one of the most accomplished teams in town.

Sources: www.investopedia.com