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| 26 Jan 2008 06:18:37 pm |
 How to Buy a House |
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Here are some home buying tips compiled for first time buyers from buy-and-sell-house-fast.com
Learning the home buying process
Start by learning as much as you can about how the home buying and mortgage application process works. Read as much as you can about buying a home. Check out the many books in your local library that offer hints to first time home buyers. Read financial web sites on the internet for tips for first time home buyers. You may even want to sign up for a class aimed at first time homeowners. Many towns and cities offer these kinds of classes, and they can be a great source of information for the buyer looking for his or her first home.
Find out the pre-qualified price range
It is important to find out how much you can borrow before you start looking for a home. Talk with several mortgage lenders in your area and get pre-qualified for a particular price range. The mortgage lender will be able to help you determine how much you can borrow based on your annual income. In general, mortgage lenders recommend that all home related expenses, including the mortgage payment, insurance premiums and real estate taxes, do not exceed 28% of your monthly income.
Get Pre-approved for mortgage loan
The next step buy a house is to get pre-approved for mortgage financing. This is similar to getting pre-qualified for a price range, but it is a more formal process. You will need to supply proof of your income for the pre-approval process to move forward. Most lenders will want to see income tax returns from the past two years as proof of the income you are claiming.
House hunting
After you have been pre-approved for your mortgage loan, it is time to actually start house hunting with a realtor (find out why you need to find a realtor before buying a house?). Your mortgage lender will give you a letter stating that you have been pre-approved for a mortgage and the amount you are authorized to borrow. You will need to present this letter to the real estate agent when you get started. It is important to get pre-approved for a mortgage loan before beginning your home search. The real estate agent and real estate company will be much more willing to work with you if they know you can afford the home you are looking at. In addition, sellers will take your offer much more seriously if it is accompanied by a pre-approval letter from your mortgage lender.
Make an offer
Once you have found a home that meets your needs, it is time to make an offer on the property. You will already know the most you can spend from the pre-approval process, and you probably will have your own ideas on what the property is actually worth. In addition, your real estate agent can guide you through the negotiation process and offer procedures. A copy of your pre-approval letter will be presented as part of the written offer. This will ensure the seller that your offer is legitimate.
Negotiation process
If the seller accepts your first offer, congratulations. Your negotiations are over and you're ready to start preparing for your move. More likely, however, is that the seller will come back with a counter-offer. This negotiation process can go on for a short or long amount of time, depending on factors like the motivation of the seller, the local real estate market, and a host of other factors. The real estate agent will be a good guide through the negotiation process. After all, he or she will have been through this process many times before.
Provide copy of Purchase and Sale Agreement to mortgage broker
After the negotiation process has been completed, you will need to present your mortgage broker with a copy of the Purchase and Sale Agreement for the home.
Work to close the mortgage loan
After presenting the Purchase and Sales Agreement, you will need to work with the mortgage broker to ensure you meet all the conditions required for the closing of the mortgage loan.
Home inspection prior closing
Prior to closing, you will want to make sure to have a thorough home inspection performed by a qualified and certified home inspector. A home inspection will protect you from flaws in the construction and condition of the home that are not obvious to the naked eye. Home inspections can uncover things like foundation cracks, termite infestation and other home quality issues.
Hand over down payment
After the home inspection has been performed and the report has come back clean (or all the items uncovered have been repaired), it is time for the buyer to actually hand over the money for the down payment and sign the loan documents.
Collect the house key
After the closing of the loan, the fun part of home buying begins. Your real estate agent will hand over the keys to your new home and you can actually move in and enjoy your beautiful new home. Welcome to moving day! |
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Category : Buying A Home
| Posted By : richardbrazil |  Comments[1] |  Trackbacks [1768] |
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| 22 Jan 2008 04:44:55 pm |
| Lead Generation & Blogging |
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How does blogging lead to lead generation?
How to make your website stand apart?
How to keep visitors coming back?
Jim Cronin addressed these issues in his post.
Here are the excerpts-
What really has to come to set the real estate blog apart as a lead generating tool has nothing to do with web 1.0 tactics.
The real estate blog is the Realtors' introduction to the Age of Participation: Web 2.0.
Developing a relationship with your audience and peers is the foundation of leveraging the Web 2.0 model to build your business as a real estate blogger. By simply embracing the relationship you are able to build with your audience, you will gain their trust. This trust, once earned, will have you earning a client; for all sales are based on this most important element: Trust.
The convenient placement of a home value report form, or the soft barrier to a home search is a ubiquitous effort. Everyone is doing it. There is no element of distinction if your site offers something that can be found on any capable real estate template website.
What makes the real estate blog stand out, above the offering of obligatory tools is the regular effort of the Realtor to educate, enlighten, entertain and engage each visitor. It is this distinction that not only generates leads for their traffic, but clients by means of a relationship.
"I've been reading your blog for months."
"I feel like I already know you."
This type of contact from a visitor to your website makes the collection of email addresses with standard web forms seem archaic.
Be the passionate expert that stands out in the crowd of cookie cutter websites and online real estate tools. Consistent dedication to the education of your clients and visitors is the key to building a relationship and winning their trust. Handling their concerns, challenges, hurdles, worries, confusions and misconceptions with your clearly thought out articles has you almost sitting at the kitchen table with them, one step closer to making what can be considered the most important financial decision of their lives.
Once you recognize how to leverage the blog in this manner, then and only then is a well placed lead generating form of any significant value. Otherwise, it's just name collecting. Understand, it's not the collection of leads (names and emails), it's the creation of a future clients when someone contacts you because of your blogging (read: commitment, passion, knowledge, consistency, dedication, experience, understanding and wisdom). It is that person contacting you, that is ready to work with a someone that is you.
Blogging should be seen as a natural fit for Realtors that choose to embrace it as a their primary marketing tool. Realtors play the part of consultant, counselor, confidant, and chauffeur well before they close. Proper blogging allows the Realtor to develop that relationship with their future client, save for the driving around.
Well said Jim! Click here for entire post |
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Category : Real Estate Agent
| Posted By : richardbrazil | Comments[1] | Trackbacks [189] |
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| 16 Jan 2008 12:59:55 pm |
| How To Choose A Real Estate Agent? |
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A real estate agent will guide you to - and through - the most important decision of your life. How do you know, for sure, that he will act in your best interests?
How do you know if he will really work for you? Is he too busy for you? What of his personal integrity? How much effort will he expend for you?
You will want to feel very comfortable with the real estate agent that you choose, comfortable enough to be able to say 'no' to the bargain of the month and 'no' to the almost perfect house.
He must not be intimidating to you, yet a business-like attitude and assertiveness are qualities you will want in a professional acting for you. |
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Category : Real Estate Agent
| Posted By : realtortemple | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [31915] |
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| 16 Jan 2008 12:54:40 pm |
| Buying Your First Home |
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Becoming a first-time home buyer is a tremendous step in life. The sense of personal accomplishment, pride, satisfaction, and joy is irreplaceable. It is not without it's challenges, though. Because of the huge number of options available to you as a potential buyer, you need to take the time to become familiar with an overview of the buying process, the terminology used, and how to best approach buying your first home.
My strong suggestion to you as a first-time home buyer would be to seek competent, professional financial guidance. It is relatively inexpensive, and could save you from making a costly mistake. Buying a home is not right for everyone. Even if it is a good choice for your financial future, you may need to take the time to save money for a down payment, or to fix any issues with your credit. Be patient, and make your preparations carefully... |
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Category : Buying A Home
| Posted By : realtortemple | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [1024] |
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| 15 Jan 2008 06:59:07 am |
| Customer Satisfaction Counts |
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This post is written by Maria Patterson and is the cover story on rismedia. I am republishing it because we can emulate the success story. 
Five years. That’s all the time it took for one company, GMAC Home Services, to reinvent the very meaning of the much-used, but often misused phrase, “customer satisfaction.”
In 2002, when John Bearden became the company’s president and CEO, he took a long, thoughtful look around the real estate industry. He didn’t care much for what he saw: an industry beset by plunging commission rates and consumers growing more fickle by the day.
Bearden was equally disturbed by what he didn’t see: not a single national real estate company providing comprehensive and meaningful customer service on a consistent and predictable basis.
Bearden decided that company would be GMAC Home Services. Simply put, he was looking for a way to serve up a consistently better service experience for the consumer, to help his brokers build the financial net income of their businesses, and to help agents cultivate more loyal and profitable customer relationships. In other words, to help differentiate GMAC Real Estate as a brand that stood for something tangible: day-to-day, transaction-to-transaction excellence in customer service. The kind of service that pleasantly takes customers by surprise and brings them back for future home-buying and selling needs, along with their friends and family members through positive word-of-mouth referrals.
Today, close to six years later, his team has completely integrated a customer-focused business plan and an unprecedented culture of customer service throughout the company’s four operating units, including GMAC Real Estate Franchised Operations, GMAC Real Estate Company-Owned, GMAC Global Relocation Services (see sidebar) and GHS Mortgage. The results have forced more than a few industry observers to sit up and take notice.
When Bearden and his team embarked on creating a new model for customer service, they were keenly aware of the challenge of accurately and thoroughly measuring quality service in the real estate and relocation industries. Quantifying customer satisfaction for many years had been a concept, but not a practice.
“Agents are notoriously independent, and that’s what makes them so successful and enjoyable to work with,” Bearden says. “But trying to persuade tens of thousands of these independent-minded entrepreneurs is very challenging at best. Looks good on paper, but reality is a much different story.”
Bearden and his executive team at GMAC Home Services knew that if they truly wanted to establish the company as the national leader in customer service, it would require an initiative like none other.
Premier Service: A New National Model
Thus, in 2002, Premier Service¨ was born.
“Through Premier Service, we set an extremely ambitious goal for GMAC Home Services,” Bearden explains. “And it was that we would become the sole leader in providing customer service, and the only national real estate company willing to measure, and then recalibrate as necessary, our performance by using an independent, third-party company to survey the customers we serve. We also set a goal of establishing Premier Service as the most comprehensive and effective customer-service initiative offered by any real estate company, bar none.
“There was a fair amount of skepticism in the industry about our plans, and especially about our claims for what we would achieve through Premier Service.”
Results That Speak (Loudly) for Themselves
When you look at the national awards the company has racked up over the past three months, it appears that GMAC Home Services might be getting the last laugh, and customers couldn’t be happier.
Indeed, with more than 500,000 customer internal surveys already conducted, the company posts an extraordinary 94% customer satisfaction rating (with 82% of customers “very satisfied” and 12% “satisfied”).
What’s more, for the past two years, GMAC Global Relocation Services has received a perfect 100% customer satisfaction rating following a comprehensive survey of global clients that gave the company a Premier Service rating of excellent, very good, or good for “value received.” Also for the past two years, 100% of clients surveyed said they would recommend GMAC Global Relocation Services to prospective clients.
In addition, GMAC Global Relocation Services ranked “Highest in Transferee Satisfaction with Relocation Companies,” according to the J.D. Power and Associates’ 2007 Corporate Relocation Transferee Satisfaction StudySM.
There’s more. Through the company’s Premier Service program, GMAC Real Estate sales associates: Serve as their customers’ “trusted advisors” and partners in the truest sense of the phrases Seek, in all they do, to be their brokers’ partners in success As a result of a national survey released in 2007 conducted by the independent research firm Quality Service Certified (QSC), it found: In 2007, 94.2% of sellers were either very satisfied or satisfied with their GMAC Real estate sales associate. Also in 2007, 94.8% of buyers were either very satisfied or satisfied with their GMAC Real Estate sales associate. 850% of GMAC Real Estate sales associates have achieved 100% customer satisfaction (with every client being very satisfied or satisfied). Nationwide, two of the top three real estate companies for 2007, as judged by consumers participating in post-transaction customer satisfaction surveys, were GMAC Real Estate franchisees: Real Estate Professionals GMAC in Redding, California, and Vanguard Realty GMAC in Jacksonville, Florida.
One of the Industry’s Best-Kept Secrets
The company’s growing ranks of exceptionally satisfied customers might disagree, but Bearden says GMAC Home Services is one of the North American real estate industry’s best-kept secrets.
“Are we the biggest? No. Are we the best-known? No. Are we the best, especially in terms of satisfying customers and pointing the entire industry in a new, more positive direction for the future?” he asks.
“You’d better believe it. And next up will be phase two of our rollout plans for helping to transform the company and industry even more,” he says.
With the customer service component clearly in place and generating bona fide results, the second part of Bearden’s four-part plan to reinvigorate and push the industry into new areas includes: The launch of a new technology infrastructure like no other the industry has seen. The implementation of the technology desktop will make it easier for agents to manage their businesses, effectively track and manage leads and close more transactions while providing an unequalled experience for consumers. Additionally, the technology desktop has been specifically developed to provide leads to other service providers (such as mortgage, title, etc.), thereby creating new revenue streams. Less reliance on “brick and mortar” since Bearden believes real estate offices will have a greatly reduced role in the way real estate business is conducted in the future. As Bearden says, “If we know that 80 percent of consumers today are using the Internet to do their research, we need to be developing technology to work with them on their terms, not dazzle them with fancy and expensive offices.”
Bottom line: GMAC Home Services, whether in real estate, relocation or mortgage, is best in quality across the board. |
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Category : General
| Posted By : richardbrazil | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [245] |
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