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A Townhome Community in Winter Springs is offering some fantastic deals that won't last long. The community is located in the heart of Winter Springs, on SR 434. They're offering $10,000 towards the closing costs, a 30 year fixed interest rate of 5.875%, and they'll even pay your electric bill for a year! Check out some of these popular townhome models available:

Belize Model - 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage. 1,690 square feet. Was $212,046. NOW $188,872!

Cape Verde Model - 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage. 1,953 square feet. Was $242,590. NOW $204,647!

Denmark Model - 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 car garage. 2,215 square feet. Was $268,349. NOW $231,195!

These deals will be going fast. If you need any further details, feel free to give me a call at…

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 There's actually some good news in the Orlando Real Estate Market! The Orlando Regional Realtor Association (ORRA) has released its June report and sales are up! At a total of 1,443 closed sales, June sales are up by about 100 over May. In fact, this is becoming a trend! Sales have been increasing about 100 a month since March and we are getting closer and closer to the number of properties sold at this time last year.

Inventory is down again, too! At the time of the current report, inventory in the Orlando area is down to 24,575 properties. This is another number that has been steadily dropping since February.

But on the negative side (of course there's a negative side), the interest is up to 6.35% from May's average of 5.94%. Well, two out of three…

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At the end of last year, Congress gave us a gift that few people seemed to notice. Without much fanfare, Congress made a major change to the Capital Gains Tax.

According to the previous version of the Capital Gains Tax, when you sell your primary residence you can deduct $250,000 of the capital gains $500,000 for a married couple filing a joint return (providing you have lived in the house for at least two of the last five years). This remains unchanged. Unfortunately, a problem arose when a spouse dies. The old IRS code said that for the surviving spouse to receive the $500,000 exclusion they must sell their home in the same tax year that they filed their joint return. In other words, if a spouse passed away later in the year, the surviving spouse…

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In the Orlando area, there are over 20,000 homes for sale. So, how do you beat the overwhelming odds and get your house sold? What's the not-so-super-secret number one selling tip? It's easy. Set the price right in the first place.

This market is no place to test the price for a month or two. Average home prices are clearly falling, so you don't want to be behind the curve when selling. Look at it this way, the average sales price in the Orlando area fell a little more than 10% from August to September this year. That's quite a drop in a month. So if you had placed your home on the market in August with a price that was only 5% too high, not only are you not likely to get any offers, but by the time you're ready to try dropping the price, average… Read Full Post

Better late than never, here's the Market Analysis for the Orlando area in October, 2007.

Overall, stats are pretty similar to September. Inventory is at 26,330, compared to September's 26,310. Only slightly higher than last month, but certainly quite a bit higher than last year when it was 21,324.

New contracts have gone up slightly from last month's 1,173 to 1,304. That's compared to 2,602 in October of last year.

Though expired listings has dropped by 211, withdrawn listings have made up the difference by going up 228 to 2,181 total.

If there's one good statistic in the report, it's that sales, thankfully, have at least gone back up into quadruple digits. 1,034 sales for the month is certainly not stellar, but it's better than last…

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With inventory high and housing prices low, it’s nearly impossible to sell a home in some markets these days. So it should come as no surprise that many people are looking for a little divine intervention. Thus, St. Joseph is seeing an increase in popularity among many people trying to sell their home.

Some sellers firmly believe that burying a statue of Joseph, the patron saint of workers, in the yard of your home can help bring in more buyers. There are some arguments over how he should be buried. Some say he should be buried upside down. Others say he should be buried facing away from the house to denote “leaving”. For some, he should reside in the back yard and for others in the front. And what about those trying to sell a condo or townhome? Well…

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Well, it's that time again - time for the Orlando Regional Realtor Association to release the market stats for September of '07. As we've come to expect, the news is fairly grim. 

New contracts are down to 1,173 from 2,182 last year. 

Inventory has gone down for the first time this year...by three - from 26,313 to 26,310.

Average Days on the Market is up to 113, compared to 67 days during September of last year. 

But the real heartbreaker is Sales, down to triple digits for the first time in recent memory - 924 compared to last year's 2,434.

Is there any good news in the report?  Well of course there is, someone just needs to let the buyers know.  Inventory is up, housing prices are down, and mortgage rates have dropped more than a third of a…

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With a inventory higher than it's been in years, the buyer certainly has the upper hand in this housing market. Faced with a sea of competition, sellers have been forced to slash prices if they hope to have any chance of making a sale. It's tempting for a buyer to use this current market to their advantage and make drastically reduced offers. This is understandable, of course, everyone wants to get the best deal possible, but it can be risky. An offer that is much lower than the listing price runs the risk of offending the seller or making the buyer look like they're not serious about making a deal. Follow some of these tips for bidding low:

 

Gauge the Seller's Motivation
There are many outside factors that could prompt a seller to accept a lower bid… Read Full Post