Are you building a new home or a custom home in Sequim or Port Angeles? If you’ve decided to build your next home, this article answers the question, “What is the next step.”

(This article written by Rick Anderson and posted by Marketing Consultant Chuck Marunde.)

The Series:
Read Building a New Home or Custom Home (Part 1 of 6)
Read Building a New Home or Custom Home (Part 2 of 6)
Read Building a New Home or Custom Home (Part 3 of 6)
Read Building a New Home or Custom Home (Part 4 of 6)
Read Building a New Home or Custom Home (Part 5 of 6)
Read Building a New Home or Custom Home (Part 6 of 6)

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That much of the nation is in the midst of a tenacious real estate correction is hardly headline news anymore. Investors have beaten a hasty retreat, leaving behind inventories of unsold homes that presently outpace the number of buyers in many markets. What should be headline news, however, is how the wisest of sellers have reduced their profit expectations and happily entertain all offers reflective of the corrected values of their homes. Yet, just because these market forces—combined with low interest rates—add up to an extremely good time to buy, doesn’t necessarily make purchasing a home a piece of cake. But there are ways to make it one.

Here are five tips to help buyers tap into the best prices in many years:

Get pre-approved for a mortgage. It’s a different sort of buyers’ market if you need to finance your purchase. Credit markets have tightened considerably, with half the products offered only a year ago no longer available today. Lenders have retreated to safer standards of underwriting that protect borrowers from overextending themselves. If you can’t afford a particular home using solid mainstream financing, you should continue looking.

Let your fingers do the walking. With so many homes to see, attempting to visit each one is counterproductive. Wasted time creates missed opportunities. [At SequimPortAngeles.com, you can browse the multiple listing service for all of the Sequim and Port Angeles areas.] Once you’ve narrowed your search, contact an experienced Realtor to help you judge the best values in your price range. Their insights, along with the analytical tools they bring to the table, will help you discard the overpriced lemons in your target neighborhoods.

Beware of strangers bearing gifts. You aren’t shopping for a new car lease or a sexy new flat-screen TV, so don’t let merchandise incentives cloud your vision. If a seller is offering an incentive to buy, make sure it has something to do with the house, like a credit toward a desirable upgrade or a further reduction in price.

When you find the right house at the right price, buy it! If recent sales in the neighborhood support its asking price, go for it. Presumably, you are hunting for more than just a good price; you’re also looking for that one special house that completely suits your lifestyle. Holding back in hopes that prices will go lower is a flawed strategy. You can never know this until prices are heading up again. Meanwhile, someone else may buy the home, especially if it is priced correctly.

Make intelligent offers that enable you to negotiate with skill. Right now there is plenty of room to negotiate, provided you aren’t making uninformed offers that sellers don’t take seriously. You are in a much stronger position when you can show that recent sales in the neighborhood justify your offer. This provides a much firmer foundation from which to begin negotiations and takes you a giant step closer to enjoying your new home.

Article Courtesy of Michael Saunders

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Investing in real estate comes in many forms, including paper.  If you are looking for a secure way to invest in real estate and get an above market return on your money, buying a secured interest in real estate is an excellent way to do this.  You can purchase a note (and deed of trust) at a discount, a real estate contract at a discount, and receive a rate of return that is substantially above the rate in the original note.  I used to work for the largest purchaser of notes in the State of Washington, and traveled the State enforcing the notes we purchased.  There’s a lot to doing this, and a full explanation is beyond the scope of this brief blog entry, but you should be aware of this opportunity.  I’ve had clients who have a retirement based completely on their income from the discounted notes they purchased.  It’s very cool, but there are many traps for the unwary, so know what you are doing, or get professional help.

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I’ve had so many clients who made the mistake of doing their own Quit Claim Deed on their real estate.  They owned a vacant piece of property, and thought they would save attorney’s fees and accomplish their own estate planning by avoiding probate with a Quit Claim Deed signing the property to their two boys.  They signed it and recorded it.  Three years later, I get a call from this kind gentleman who is now wanting to sell the lot, because their plans have changed.  He is told by someone now that he cannot have his minor children sign a deed back to himself.  He asked me what he could do to sell his property.  I explained that it wasn’t his property any more, at least not since he deeded it to this children.  His children could not legally sign it back to him without a court appointed guardian, so he would have to hire an attorney to do a guardianship.  That could easily cost several thousand dollars before the dust settles.  That’s one example of how not to use Quit Claim Deeds. 

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Kijiji is a site you may not have heard about before - it’s online marketplace eBay’s community based classifieds service. The site has been operating in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, and Taiwan since February 2005, and has now just launched in the US.

Much like craigslist, it aims to help people post and find advertisements in a number of categories including automobiles, jobs, personals, and, of course, housing.

For Realtors looking to market their listings online, Kijiji (whose name means “village” in Swahili) is just another option in a growing number of Web 2.0 sites looking to aggregate real estate listings; Google Base, Yahoo! Classifieds, Microsoft’s Live Expo, Edgeio (see Edgeio on InmanTV) to name just a few.

Jay Thompson, a Realtor who blogs at the The Phoenix Real Estate Guy, has given it a try and calls it “a snap”.

Keeping track of all these options can be overwhelming however. Web services like vFlyer and Postlets help agents by syndicating their listings to all of the sites in one shot and if you need some help sorting through all the options, read this post Craigslist Alternatives Compared from the site Mashable.com.

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