Plantation Lakes Blog!

You got the big promotion at work, but there's one catch: you have to move across the country. Myrtle Beach homeowners may have mastered Myrtle Beach house hunting, but doing it in a location that requires travel can be a logistical nightmare—especially when the distance in question is more than an afternoon’s drive.

Chin up! Many others find themselves in the same kind of house hunting bind all the time. No matter how unworkable it seems as first, you will find your new home—and there’s plenty of help out there to see that it happens with less difficulty than you’d suppose.

Here are some of the ways that make long distance house hunting easier:

Research Online

If you know little about the area you are heading to, there are many painless way to get your bearings online. It’s easy to get a sense of what the area is known for, which places are safe, what the local cultural highlights are, and other characteristics that distinguish the area. Almost every town has its own site and a Chamber of Commerce site as well; and resources like the City-Data website can flesh out lots of other details.

Experienced Agent

Your long distance house hunting will require the services of an energetic real estate agent there on the scene. You can ask your future employer for a local recommendation, or use the web to search for stand-out candidates. In addition to a solid track record in the community, the agent you choose should be familiar with the unique challenges that go with out-of-state house hunting. The phrase you are looking for is ‘relocation experience.’

Cost of Living Differential

There may be significant cost of living differences between your current location and your new one. Consult cost of living charts (they’re online, too!). When you visit, pick up local store fliers to get a more visceral feel for the current cost of goods and other expenses in your new area. If the numbers shock (in either direction), be doubly sure factor in the percentage differential when you establish your housing budget.

Identify Must-Haves

Create a concise list of must-haves for your new home. This doesn’t just help your out-of-town real estate agent to find the listings that best fit your relocation needs, it also focuses your own priorities. An accurate list can cut down the number of trips you’ll need to take before you zero in on your house hunting target.

Make the Most of Visits

Every trip will take a lot of energy, but after the home tours are over, stick around to experience what the target neighborhoods feel like at all times of day. If it’s practical, consider renting a room or apartment through a service like AirBnB. It’s a real plus if you can arrange your stay right in a target neighborhood instead of in the kind of commercial area where hotels are usually located.

If you are an out-of-stater about to arrive for a Myrtle Beach house hunting adventure, or a Myrtle Beach resident with an impending long distance search of your own, don’t hesitate to give me a call. I’m here to offer all kinds of relocation help and advice!

Myrtle Beach real estate observers got some background information last month that seemed to confirm much of what we’ve been seeing for a while now. Mid-term election politicking is now safely behind us (for a brief while, at least), but in the run-up to the elections, this was a comprehensive real estate canvass that yielded some comparisons of note. It was called the 2014 Election Housing Scorecard, released mid-month by RealtyTrac. The idea was to rate how national real estate conditions had fared in the two years since the previous national election. The answer: better off.

Think back just a couple of years, and it’s not hard to recall the period following the bursting of the housing bubble, when it was hard to find anyone with a cheerful attitude about investing in residential real estate (Myrtle Beach’s included). It may have been intellectually certain that those deflated prices wouldn’t last forever—but even so, it took hardy resolve to step up and buy into such an outwardly unstable market.

That was then; this (as they say) is now—and by mid-October, the Housing Scorecard ‘s findings were in. By something like five to one, the majority of Americans now live in a housing market that is better off than it was two years ago.

The scope of the study was broad: residential real estate markets in 1,547 counties were evaluated based on affordability, median home prices, unemployment figures and foreclosure start rates. What the study found was largely positive.

A full 811 of the analyzed markets—or 52%—rated as "better off." Only 176 markets (11%) rated as "worse off." The remaining 36% were tossups. The total combined population in the "better off" markets was 140 million. The population in the "worse off" category was just 24 million.

Those positives paint a fairly broad picture of the recovering real estate market. Other statistics show that foreclosures and short sales recently hit their lowest level since the start of data collection in 2011. Add to that the sales numbers released in October showing existing home sales in America at their most robust in a year, and with Myrtle Beach mortgage rates still down in historically low territory, and it’s easy to agree with Reuters’ opinion that the housing market recovery is gradually “getting back on track.” If you are of a mind to take advantage of the rising market, I hope you will stop by or give me a call!

Part of the art of listing a Myrtle Beach home for sale is to highlight features that will catch eyes in a wide assortment of different groups of prospective buyers. It’s “the more, the merrier”—and very often the ultimate buyer winds up being unlike the typical prospect you would have thought most likely.

For prospective buyers searching Myrtle Beach homes for sale, the same is true: the seller of your future dream home could be anyone. It could be a motivated young professional dealing with an out-of-town promotion, or an elderly librarian hoping to hand the home off to a loving family. Or the seller could be a stubborn, angry tyrant, willing to compromise on nothing. You never know.

Sooooo…what can you do (other than walk away) when you’ve found the right Myrtle Beach home for sale and made a reasonable offer—only to have it summarily rejected? Perhaps even with a ‘you don’t understand value’ thrown in for good measure? In short, what’s left for you to do when a home seller refuses to negotiate? Some ideas:

1. Let Your Agent Handle Negotiations

If you’ve been trying to deal one-on-one with the seller or seller’s agent, maybe it’s time to call for reinforcements. Home buyers with agents don’t need to talk to sellers—and that’s often a good thing! When your agent is doing the talking, emotions have a chance to cool. Sometimes a perfectly reasonable offer has elicited an emotion response simply because it wasn’t presented in the most professional manner. Always let your agent handle the business end of negotiations; if someone has to look like the bad guy, your agent’s willing to accept the burden. A seasoned agent knows how to effectively appeal to a seller’s most reasonable impulses—making sure that negotiations never fail to spotlight the benefits that will flow to the seller.

2. Find Common Ground for an Amicable Deal

Sellers who refuse to budge on their asking price might respond to other negotiation tactics that allow them to rethink their position without losing face. Perhaps the seller won’t take a nominally lower offer—but would be willing to contribute some money to update the home, pay for the first year’s insurance, or expand the inclusions (perhaps adding in the new appliances they were planning on taking).

3. Know When to Move On

Some sellers don’t know how to recognize a good offer—just as some correctly know that a better one will come if they wait. When buyers find themselves butting heads with immovable owners, sometimes it’s best to just walk away and find another suitable home for sale.

For buyers and sellers alike, having an experienced Myrtle Beach Realtor® on your side provides an advantage that’s hard to pass up. It’s why giving me a call is your strategic first step!

When I think of the term ‘marketplace,’ the first mental image that comes to mind is of a local farmer’s stand or of one of those community farmers’ markets where you get the old-fashioned experience of picking through the offerings of local farmers and bakers. The goods may not be as inexpensive as you’d wish, but the experience is worth it. It’s the kind of ‘marketplace’ our great grandparents would have recognized immediately.

As a Myrtle Beach Realtor®, a good part of the success I offer my home selling and buying clients comes from staying abreast of today’s very different kind of marketplace. Thirty years ago, that would have been a much easier assignment: a Realtor in Myrtle Beach had merely to keep an eye on local newspaper readership (to know which papers and which “throwaway” marketing mailers brought the best results); then do all the other things that the real estate pros had been doing for decades.

It’s barely exaggerating to say that a Myrtle Beach Realtor in 1980 was following the nearly same playbook as a Myrtle Beach Realtor in 1950. The marketplace was almost entirely here in Myrtle Beach. Prospective home buyers had little choice but to travel here in order to check the ads, visit a real estate office, or (the least efficient method) drive through the streets looking for ‘For Sale’ signs. That made the Realtor’s outreach area simple and well-defined. Intensely local.

Then came the Internet! Today’s most successful Myrtle Beach Realtors know that the potential home buying ‘marketplace’ is literally everywhere on the planet. Statistics from the NAR show that international buyers purchased more than $68,200,000,000 (yes: those are billions!) in U.S. property between 2012 and 2013. At least part of what amounts to that huge increase is due to video-sharing platforms that have empowered Realtors to market properties in innovative ways. Hugely popular YouTube is an example of one new media tool that enables Realtors to reach audiences who would have been impossible to find in the past. Search engines like Google have replaced the role of the local throw-away—but today, it’s a “throw-away” that can land on any porch in any corner of the globe.

To be sure, some elements of the marketplace remain the same. The vast majority of buyers will still show up right here—but today, they’ve traveled here only after having ‘visited’ a wide sampling of the current crop of Myrtle Beach homes for sale via their computer or laptop or cell phone screens. And have no doubt: today’s Myrtle Beach home seller is that much more sophisticated, too. Features and asking prices of neighboring properties for sale are, after all, now just a mouse click away…

It’s knowing today’s marketplace and keeping in tune with the quickening pace of innovations that keeps this Realtor excited and active. Call me anytime to chat about what’s new—and how we can put all of it to work for you!

You’ve watched as your little ones grew from stumbling toddlers into young adulthood… and now out into the world on their own. It’s been a slow transition—but it’s also sped past in the blink of an eye! The bumpy economy may yet prompt some extended Myrtle Beach home stays in the future, but for now, the empty nest is suddenly reality.

So now what?

For most parents, the onset of your own Myrtle Beach empty nest comes at a time when emotions are decidedly mixed. There is the satisfaction of the child-rearing project well done—perhaps a measure of astonishment at the personal time that has now amazingly been liberated—but also undeniable tinges of loss and anxiety. The anxiety part is familiar (what parent hasn’t lost sleep as their offspring gradually ventured further and further from the not-yet-empty nest)?

The sense of loss is new, though.

Letting go without getting down in the dumps is not easy for everyone. We’ve heard it called the “empty nest syndrome,” which may not be a clinical diagnosis, but it’s a condition with easily relatable symptoms. Myrtle Beach homeowners with newly vacant rooms and a suddenly quieter environment may find that it takes a while to get past feelings of emptiness. Psychologists recommend allowing time to adapt to the sudden change of role; some say it can take as long as 18 months to fully adjust. There’s no huge rush—they say, “be gentle on yourself.”

Moms seem especially prone to the negatives of going from motherhood as primary role to …??? To the extent that an empty nest creates a loss of role, recognizing the array of newly opened positive possibilities is an antidote. Sooner or later, it’s going to be time to reclaim your space! Just pick your plan of action, for instance—

Create a gym:

Use the space for something positive that will benefit the whole family. Has there ever been a better time to lose those extra pounds and get into shape?

Turn your hand to meditation:

Create a relaxing space to unwind, meditate or practice yoga. When you take active steps to find your own pathway to a positive frame of mind, the journey itself can be hugely restorative

Turn fallow space into a creative den:

Do you have a book in you that is just itching to get out? Did you once abandon the promise of an artistic pursuit because there just wasn’t enough time or the right space? Well, hold on! Here it is!

Rent out the spare room:

Think about turning your Myrtle Beach empty nest area into a rentable space—or, if you’ve ever enjoyed the hospitality of a stay in a home-based bed and breakfast (and hankered to do some homespun inn-keeping yourself), consider the possibilities for transforming the whole place into a welcoming B&B. Vacation rental website AirBnB.com has gained worldwide popularity as the new ‘go-to’ booking vehicle for renting out a furnished room (or house) on a short-term basis.

Plan for that big road trip:

Empty out the room, pin up the map and start planning that road trip, Alaskan cruise or trek across South America. Why wait any longer?

An empty nest may create a vacuum—that is, until you let life rush in to fill it! If filling your own Myrtle Beach nest opens up some promising real estate prospects, I’m standing by to see how I can help you make them happen!

According to the National Association of Realtors®, across the nation, short sales and foreclosures accounted for about 10% of sales in September—down from 15% a year earlier. Seventy percent of those were foreclosures, leaving the remaining 30% as short sales. For bargain-hunters who wish to take advantage of one of the remaining Myrtle Beach short sale opportunities, declining numbers can be a double-edged sword. Fewer opportunities mean a sharp eye and more nimble footwork is likely to be required—but the shrinking market has also coincided with less competition from institutional buyers (whether as cause or effect is anyone’s guess).

From the seller’s perspective, completing a Myrtle Beach short sale can be the most welcome result from a difficult situation—usually resulting in the least problematical future credit and financial fallout. For that reason, once having secured lender approval, Myrtle Beach short sellers are eager to do what is needed to see the sale through to completion. They are ahead of the game when they enlist the expertise of an experienced Myrtle Beach Realtor who knows what to do when the time factor drags on…and on!

Since there are limits to how responsive institutional lenders will be to the timing needs of the participants, it usually takes proactive involvement to encourage a Myrtle Beach short sale buyer to stay in the game. Most strategies incorporate psychology in one way or another—sometimes obvious, sometimes not.

Setting a deadline for lender approval is one of the more straightforward ways. The short sale addendum was made standard in many states during the height of the last wave of distressed sales after many overwhelmed or uncooperative lenders failed to respond to buyer offers. The inclusion of drop-dead timing deadlines removes the feeling of being in limbo from the process. It tends to encourage buyers, who feel more empowered when they see approval deadlines in place.

Experience teaches that lenders who know a motivated buyer is on the line are more likely to approve a short sale, particularly if a buyer is paying with cash. At the same time, buyers who feel a sense of ownership and control during the approval process are more likely to pursue the contract no matter how time-consuming it turns out to be. Contacting the loss mitigation department regularly for updates on their approval progress is one way to prevent a deal from slipping through the cracks.

Buyers who require a dependable closing schedule—or who lack inherent flexibility—are unlikely to weather bureaucratic delays gladly. One way to soothe jangled buyer nerves is to prepare in advance a market analysis that demonstrates in black-and-white what a great deal they’re getting. Likewise, if the buyer is taking out a mortgage, a side-by-side printout of two amortization tables—one for a comparable MLS listing at full price and one for the short sale— can buy some extra patience. Meanwhile, at all times while doing as much as possible to hang onto a buyer, adept short sellers keep their property attractive and well-maintained. There’s no downside to that!

These are some tried-and-true tactics for driving a short sale through to completion. If you are looking for success on either side of a local short sale transaction, I hope you won’t hesitate to give me a call!

In TV commercials, the idea is to get the point across as economically as possible. That’s why, when the theme is a thriving business, they show a graph with lines that move up (often at an angle that would worry a mountain goat). It makes for an easily grasped, direct message.

Alas, graphs showing Myrtle Beach home sales never seem to show such neat, orderly trajectory—and that’s for any number of reasons. For instance, if some closings happen to be delayed by a day or two for clerical reasons, they may show as having fallen out of one month, only to show up the next. The real world is like that.

Keeping track of national home sales numbers is subject to the interventions of that same stubbornly real world, of course; so when home sales registered a slight drop in August, few seasoned analysts saw it as an emerging trend…or so it seemed.

That reading was confirmed when it turned out existing U.S. home sales notched the fastest pace of the year in September. Commentators who had been noting the August falloff picked up on the shift quickly. A few gleanings:

“…existing home sales increased 2.4 percent to an annual rate of 5.17 million units, the strongest reading since September of last year.” –Reuters

“…single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, increased 2.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.17 million in September from 5.05 million in August. Sales are now at their highest pace of 2014”–the Realtor®

“…Sales in September were up 17% from a year earlier…in the U.S. rose…to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 467,000…”–The Wall St. Journal

Area homeowners have been hoping that the continued level of low mortgage interest rates would spur home sales in Myrtle Beach, especially now that regulators are working on relaxing tough regulations that have discouraged lenders from issuing loans to any but the most prime credit risks. Young people and others with less than stellar credit have sometimes found themselves eyeing those low rates, but frustratingly unable to take advantage of the situation. It has been a real weak point in the housing rebound, so opening up the mortgage spigots would allow many first time Myrtle Beach home buyers a chance to enter the market.

In case you have a rooting interest in the Myrtle Beach home sales picture either as potential buyer or seller, don’t hesitate to give me a call to discuss the outlook for this fall and winter. Give us a call to check out the best of today's Myrtle Beach prospects. Trust in your local Myrtle Beach Real Estate Experts! (843)796-2111

Home buyers’ first impressions are visual, and a flawed exterior will turn them away faster than a two-hour wait time at a family restaurant. Myrtle Beach curb appeal is the same as it is anywhere: when ‘curb appeal’ becomes ‘curb repel,’ the outcome to expect is at best offer numbers lower than they should be. Since major exterior remodels can carry prohibitive price tags, keeping the asking price competitive involves finding ways to brighten up the outside of a home without breaking the bank. It’s doable (and affordably) when you tackle the issue keeping the bottom line in mind. Some ideas:

1. Go for the Deep Clean

Cleaning up is the first order of business—but creating true curb appeal may mean being prepared to go beyond the surface. Remove any weeds attacking walkways, then rent a power washer to clean both them and the home exterior (being careful that the power setting isn’t so strong it damages fragile areas). If the gutters look moldy or mildewed, use it on them, too—perhaps with a little mildew-killing solution to finish the job. Really important: wash the windows (once your local prospects get past the curb appeal hurdle, sparkling windows are guaranteed to brighten their impression of the inside).

2. Pick Pots

A mistake many homeowners make is to spend a bundle on landscaping at the last minute. If you’ve devoted years to fostering a well laid-out and cared-for garden, it’s a big plus—but just too expensive to try to create in a few weeks. A pretty yard can certainly help with curb appeal, but it’s also true that not every local buyer will be looking for a gardening experience that involves much upkeep. The budget-minded alternative that can be quite effective? Add the color and curb appeal of flowering plants—but put them in pots. This has the added value of providing local home buyers with green thumbs the general idea of what the yard could look like with their loving care, but without the permanence of established plants. If your home offers a pristine canvas, prospects are more likely to draw their own home ideal on it.

3. Numeral-ology

You’d be surprised at how difficult some people make it to just to find their home. You need only provide an address that’s clearly visible from the street, to obey the Curb Appeal First Commandment: Thou shalt not irritate thy buyers! Adding big, attractive house numbers in a font that matches the style of the property is a finishing touch whose value far outstrips the cost and effort involved.

Curb appeal predictably affects both the speed and bottom line of any sale. When you boost it with just a little bit of time and money, you expand the opportunity to show off the gracious interior of your Myrtle Beach home. Give me a call anytime—we’ll put our heads together to come up with more ideas to tweak your Myrtle Beach property in ways that are effective and cost-effective!

For many decades, Hollywood has made box office gold creating comic films about the hilarious possibilities that nightmarish house remodels present: from Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House to The Money Pit (and even Under the Tuscan Sun), audiences delight in the shifty tradesmen and rotting timbers that define the genre.

If you’re an energetic Do-it-Yourselfer without much remodeling experience, Job One is to gather professional opinions to minimize the likelihood of costly discoveries. But before you even get that far, there are some general concepts that veteran turnaround investors know. These are disqualifiers that make it much more likely that buying a home in Myrtle Beach will be a shrewd investment instead of dollar demolisher.

Bad house, bad neighborhood

Is it worth buying a fixer-upper in a rundown or otherwise somewhat undesirable neighborhood? It can be tempting—especially when the asking price makes buying such a home a seemingly unbelievable value. But ignoring the ‘location, location, location’ truism is risky business. In many cases, such an investment may yield a diamond in the mud—a renewed structure that will never rise in value until the whole neighborhood rises in value (which could be never). Safer choices will be found in neighborhoods that don’t need remodeling themselves.

Bad house, good intentions

Buying a home in Myrtle Beach—especially when the neighborhood is fine and the price is more than right—can give rise to overly emotional decision-making. It can be tempting, when a property is almost okay, to make an instantaneous decision…but if you find yourself making excuses for this or that drawback, or finding yourself indulging in a bit of wishful thinking here and there, take a breath! Hopeful eyes may easily transform to fixer-uppers into mansions, but that’s the only time ‘easily’ will apply. Buying a home that needs major renovation is a probable mistake for home buyers who are uncertain about the money, time, or construction expertise that lie before them. A realistic mindset is the first ‘tool’ you need as you transform a fixer-upper into a winning investment.

Bad house, bad budget

Sometimes, buying a Myrtle Beach home as a fixer-upper seems exciting not for the challenge of the remodel but simply because you can’t afford that much house in any other way. Sure, fixer-uppers offer the tantalizing prospect of more house for less money—but down-to-earth budgeting for big repairs such as a new roof, a cracked foundation, or all-new floors will produce a realistic bottom line. Sometimes less house (but good house) is the call that yields a lot more restful nights!

Bad house, bad house

Finally, buying a house that seems like a fixer-upper—but would more accurately be called bulldozer fodder—is actually pretty easy to avoid. If your home inspector tells you about critical issues with a home’s bones (foundation, roof), infestations, or dangerous wiring issues, it’s most likely one of those.

Have faith: your home is out there! Remodels can be (in fact, often are) great investments. With a clear vision and a savvy team, you could be one renovation away from your dream home. Give me a call to check out the best of today’s Myrtle Beach prospects.

The previous decade’s burst of the real estate bubble, with its plummeting Myrtle Beach house prices and accompanying economic dislocations, made a lasting impression. For most homeowners the damage was strictly psychological: the majority weren’t even tempted to sell while Myrtle Beach house prices were dropping (or hovering below what they darned well knew were way beneath reasonable values).

That was a half-decade ago, and since then, prices have been in recovery mode—with gusto. In fact, last year the rises across the nation were so steep that we began to hear grumblings about a new real estate bubble starting to form.

The numbers did suggest a rambunctious market: a 20+ month streak of double-digit year-over-year U.S. price appreciation (by August of this year, a 6.5%). For homeowners, any rise in Myrtle Beach house prices certainly comes as relief from the emotional distress of seeing sale prices below common sense levels. But having so recently experienced the ‘bubble’ burst, it was easy to begin to worry about the same cycle already in progress…again…?

Some good news, and a convincing analysis, has just been produced from one of our most reliable sources. The author, Mark Liu of CoreLogic, released “Another Look at U.S. Housing Market Conditions” late last month. He thought it time to examine “suggestions that a housing bubble is reemerging” following the release of the latest figures that continue to show improving house prices. Others have discounted the ‘bubble’ formation idea, but this time, Liu brought some unusually clear logic to the discussion.

Simply put, he reasoned that since homeowners use their income to pay for home mortgages, in any local market, house prices over the long run can’t be sustained if they grow faster than income. If house prices rise faster than income for a long time, an unstainable ‘bubble’ will have formed (and, of course, will eventually pop).

During the last bubble years—January 2005-November 2007— in the largest 50 markets, home prices were more than 10% above sustainable levels. During the bubble’s ‘pop’ (from late 2010 to mid-2013), home prices fell to “levels of less than 10% below the sustainable price.”

And even by August of this year, house prices still remained 6% below the long range sustainable price. Not only is this not what anyone would call a bubble, instead it seems to lead to the conclusion that prices will have to rise faster. Myrtle Beach homeowners will be even more pleased at Liu’s forecast through the end of 2016: prices will still remain 3% under sustainable levels—in other words, nothing like a bubble!

Whether you’re looking to buy or sell a Myrtle Beach home, rising prices at sustainable levels is a pretty encouraging action scenario…and a pretty good first action will be to give me a call!