rmasse10's Blog: All Categories

I have been thinking about this lately, why would someone invest in Tampa Real Estate or move completely to the Tampa Bay Area?  Well, I decided to show you why I moved here some 5 years ago with my wife and 3 dogs (although I knew no one here at the time)

1. The Weather - By far the main reason I moved here, I hate the cold.

2. No Income Tax - I am not cheap, but I hate paying the tax man

3. Could afford a home on the Water - the market has gone crazy up and down at the time and now it is beginning to  stablize...but still the same reason

4. Theme Parks - I love Disney and Busch Gardens and hate to take a plane to get there.

5. Fishing - Some great fishing in and around the Tampa Bay Area

6. The Weather - Did I say that already?

7. A Simpler Life -…

The Tampa Real Estate Market has slowly being showing signs of recovery.  Tampa Foreclosures have been on the decline, Buyers are starting to light up the phones, people are more optimistic regarding the real estate outlook, at least locally.  I think what has happened is that sellers are becoming more realistic in pricing their homes and therefore, buyers are realizing that these homes will not stay this low for ever and therefore are jumping on the band wagon and are starting to get off the fence.  First time homebuyers are looking, 2nd home buyers are realizing that now is the best time in years to buy, and investors are trying to get their hands on as much property as they can.

Whatever is causing this, I hope it continues so that we can come back to…

I often think about what I would do if I had a spare minute again to breath, reflect on where I came from and where I am going.  I am a Realtor selling property in the Tampa Real Estate Market and am heavily involved in the Tampa Foreclosures Market as well.  My wife is typically working somewhere around 30-40 leads at any one time, I am growing my team, have added another team member and looking to grow it another 5 people minimum.  I manage at least 4 blogs per week, several websites, go on Listing presentations, meet with developers about marketing their product, and manage my commercial projects.  In addition, I am the Technology Director of my company for some 600 agents, teach between 3-5 hours per week and hold office time for 5 hours a week to help…

I currently sell Real Estate in the Tampa Real Estate Market, and I use to sell Real Estate in MA on Cape Cod.  If you are not familiar with Cape Cod, it is basically an island with a couple of bridges.  Anyway, I remember looking at some property that said they were Water view.  When I was there at the home, I could not figure out how in the heck this was water view.  I mean, it was a good 3 or so miles from the water, had homes and trees all around it for miles, and soon thought it was a typo.  I contacted the listing agent and let him know that this must be a typo as he must have been speaking of another property.  He let me know that in the Fall, when the leaves have all fallen off the trees, if you go up to the Widows Walk and look to the North, you…

Interesting article just published in one of the magazines I get from being a member of the Florida Association of Realtors.  The data was put together by the National Association of Realtors for the Florida Association of Realtors (say that 10 times fast).  Anyway, I am a huge advocate of Social Networking which most of you already know.  I Blog, Vlog, have accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc and most of that works for me automatically with some maintenance on a weekly basis.  Being in the Tampa Real Estate Market, which seems to be fairly competitive, it takes these added tools to stay on top of my game.

Anyway, NAR created a profile of 2007 buyers in the Florida Market and found that 38% of buyers found their home thru the use of Social…

Boy, I must just love writing about this...or should I say complain about this.  I have read the reports and blogs indicating that the banks are getting short sale friendly...I guess I just don't see it.  It must be some bank like "Freds Bank" that is getting friendly because the big boys don't seem to be reacting that way.  So property in the Tampa Short Sale process are likely to yield the bank more money than if they transition into the Tampa Foreclosures category.  But hey, what do I know, I am just a stupid Realtor, who just so happens to understand basic accounting.  So let's do the math for a second here...A short sale property will probably cause the lender to loose maybe up to $40,000-$60,000 depending on the amount owed on the home, and…

Here we go again (or at least here I go again).  The Tampa Market has been pretty active lately, especially for Tampa Foreclosures, Bank owned and Short Sales.  I can tell you for a fact that people want to buy homes, have the money and the credit scores to do it with (my wife has one client that has a score of 825) and the offers are being written (my wife, in the past 2 weekends has written up no less than 13 offers) and with all this going on, cannot get more than 10% of those to the next level.  Seems that the banks still don't know what to do with these offers other than hold them until they get enough of them and then make a decision.  Well, that can backfire on you just as fast.  The buyers out there don't want to wait so they just pull their offer…

You hear this all the time in the news now, Foreclosures, Short Sales, REO, Repossessed, Bank Owned, etc...what the heck is the difference between all of these.  Well let me try to separate this all out for you.  If you are looking for these properties, look no further, check us out at Tampa Bank Owned for FREE access to all residential and commercial properties available for sale.

1. Tampa Foreclosures - This is a home that has or is going through the foreclosure process, in other words, the lender is trying to get the property back due to lack of payment per the mortgage agreement.

2. Tampa Short Sale - This is where the bank has authorized the current owner of the property to sell the property for less than what is owed the bank.

3. Tampa Repossessed…