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Tips from Sarnia Home Sales: Four Life Stages Where Resale Value Matters

Here at Sarnia Home Sales, we know everyone wants to buy their forever home, but sometimes, life gets in the way. There are four life stages where buying for resale value, instead of your current lifestyle, is wise.

Growing Family: You may end up selling your first house for a home because you need a home with more bedrooms and bathrooms for your family.
Promotion or Job Changes: If a job change requires a move, you could end up buying a house another city or even another state. A quick sale will make a huge difference to being able to get a great start in a new home.
Aging Parents: If you end up needing to take care of parents later in life, you may need a house with a mother-in-law suite.
Retirement: Someday you’ll want to leave your children a house that is an asset, and that means it needs to be resellable.
To assist with your decision, here are four key resale value considerations:

Location: Is the neighborhood on the decline? Is the street outside noisy, with tons of traffic? If the environment the house is placed in makes you uncomfortable now, it will make other buyers uncomfortable later.
Bathrooms: You may only need one for the two of you, but a second full bathroom will make visitors more comfortable and improve resale value enormously.
Layouts/floor plans: Older houses have some really interesting floor plans, with chopped up hallways and rooms. If you’re not planning on modifying the layout with massive renovations, it’s worth considering whether it’s the right house for you. A floor plan that’s inconvenient for you will be harder to sell in the future.
Curb appeal: If you drive up, or look at it online, and don’t say “Wow,” but “What were they thinking?” it’s a good sign it might be a hard sell later. Don’t forget, though, that looking good from the outside will not make the inside better, so take that into consideration while you’re walking through.
More than anything, trust your instincts. If you have issues with it, a buyer down the road will, as well. Don’t forget, too, that buying for resale value doesn’t mean you have to sell. It just means, if you need to sell someday, you’ll be glad you kept it in mind.

Contact us at Sarnia Home Sales today–we can help you find the right home for your needs now, and your future need as well.

Sarnia Real Estate Listings + Working with an ABR = Successful Home-Buying

If you want to buy a home you want to ensure success. Successful home-buying can mean much more than just ‘getting a good deal’ or ‘finding a good investment’ or even ‘finding the right home’. Successful home-buying can include all of those things and more. Success can include a hassle-free experience, knowing the home you buy is in the sort of condition you want (or need) it to be. Successful home-buying also has a lot to do with neighborhood, commuting times, school districts, cultural opportunities or whatever else is important to you. Your goal might be simply to get you on the property-owning ladder, to find somewhere to bring up your family, somewhere to live in forever or just a great vacation place that will also bring in rental income to cover all your costs.

The Sarnia Real Estate Board currently shows that there are about 400 Sarnia real estate listings currently available to buy. About 135 of them are in Sarnia and have been advertised in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for anything from one to six months. This number includes apartments as well as single family homes, by the way. Camlachie has something over four dozen homes with at least 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Bright’s Grove has, typically, about half that number. Look at it from any viewpoint and you can see there is a wide choice.

Many buyers know the ‘must-haves’ for their home, some are fairly clear about the ‘nice-to-haves’ but many only see the ‘must-not-haves’ and ‘don’t-really-wants’ when they spend time in the property and walk out saying “I didn’t realize . . .”

There is a simple way to achieve all of your home-buying goals while you save time, unnecessary effort and minimise hassle. That is to work with a Realtor who has the letters ABR after their name.

An Accredited Buyer Representative (ABR) is not just an ordinary Realtor. An ABR has gone through a lot of additional – and continuing – education to make sure of several things that really benefit the home buyer. One of them is to be very clear about the property market, the communities those properties are in and what they offer the people who live in them.

An ABR will spend the right amount of time to really understand your needs, wants and priorities. That way, you will see the right sort of homes as you search for the one that really does meet all of your needs.

An ABR knows how to evaluate properties and will put you in touch with professionals who can address all of the details about the home and the buying process that matter to you. That includes mortgage lenders, home inspectors and, if you want, real estate lawyers. An ABR will explain the forms and contract options to you. They will also be able to cover critical points like how to include contract provisions that will protect you if you have concerns about contingencies.

You want your home-buying to be a total success. Working with an Accredited Buyer Representative is the best way of getting that. If you would like to discuss Sarnia real estate listings and find our more about how an ABR Realtor can be of real service to you, please click here to contact us so we can begin to make sure your home-buying is a complete success.

Why You Should Choose Re/Max for Successful Sarnia Home Sales

You have decided to put your home on the market. You want to get the best price, to sell on the right terms and conditions, and you want to sell in your preferred timescale. You also want minimum hassle. You, typically, have four options:-

Arrange a private sale to someone you know
Market your own home and arrange a private sale to someone you don’t know
Choose a Realtor to list and market your home for you
Choose a Realtor with Re/Max to list and market your home for you
Please spend a few moments considering your goals and then compare them against each of those options. If you have a good friend or family member who wants to buy your home, Option 1 might be exactly the way to go. If you are skilled and experienced in real estate marketing, contract negotiating, etc, then Option 2 might be worth considering. If neither of those seems right, then choose either Option 3 or Option 4.

There are more than 400 Realtors in the Sarnia Lambton Real Estate Board. Each is licensed and well-trained, and each specialises in different things, such as a type of property or a geographical area like Sarnia, Point Edward, Wyoming, etc. Many have also undertaken additional training to become really expert in specific aspects of real estate. We always suggest you interview three Realtors and then choose the one you are most comfortable with, and who you decide is most likely to help you achieve your home sales goals.

Real estate is a co-operative business. One Realtor will be responsible for marketing a home and will do their best to do two things. The first is find a ready, willing and able buyer themselves. The other is to make best use of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to advertise the property, and use their personal and office contacts to enable any of the other 400 Realtors to bring a ready, willing and able buyer that they are currently working with.

Your 4th option is quite specific. Re/Max is a global franchise with a local approach. Realtors who work under the Re/Max banner bring certain advantages to selling properties. The first, and obviously important, advantage is that Re/Max agents, on average, sell more homes than anyone else. The most recently published statistics show that the average Re/Max Realtor closed almost twice as many homes as the next most successful franchise’s agents. Entrepreneur Magazine also named Re/Max as the highest ranking real estate franchise 4 years in a row.

As we know, selling homes begins with effective marketing – which is why the MLS is crucial to comprehensive market exposure. Every company, and many Realtors, also have their own web site. It is interesting to know that, last year, the Re/Max site had 62,132,115 visitors. The next best company had about two-thirds of that number.

Earlier we said that Re/Max works locally, and that real estate is co-operative and successful marketing involves using personal contacts. It is worth noting that Jane Baker is President of the Sarnia Real Estate Board (as she was last year as well) so she has many good local contacts. Her sales success is recorded in the fact that she has received awards every year for years in a row.

So, if you intend interviewing three Realtors, and you want to maximize your chances of a successful sale, you might want to choose a Re/Max agent with a great track record, who will also guide you through the entire process from start to successful finish – while keeping totally focused on your major goals. If that sounds like a good option, please contact us by clicking here

We look forward to hearing from you!

Sarnia Real Estate: Let A Professional Help You Buy or Sell

With Sarnia Real Estate, you will be getting more than 11 years of experience to either help you sell your home, or guide you in the process of buying a new home. When working with Jane Baker, you’re going to get outstanding service that puts her skills, expertise, and knowledge above the rest.

Why Use a Realtor?

Especially when you are emotionally connected to a property that you are trying to sell, it’s important to use a realtor. A realtor is there to not only help you to sell your property, but also to be honest with you – brutally honest, if need be.

For example, if you want to sell the house for a price that is significantly above the market value, your realtor has to be the one to ground your expectations. Additionally, she will tell you any flaws with your home that could impact its resale value, and whether you should invest any money into your property before you list it.

Lastly, having someone else deal with the offers and direct negotiations can help relieve stress and tension for you. For example, when someone comes in with a lowball offer, your realtor will be able to guide you in the counter offer process, or let you know if an offer is worth taking or not.

This is really important if you are selling a home with a great deal of family history. Often times, it can be hard to separate the emotions of selling a home, but a realtor will help to guide you through the process and make sure that you are keeping realistic expectations. Just as buying a new home is an emotional process, sometimes selling a home can be just as emotional.

When you have a trusted professional like Jane Baker working with you, either on buying or selling a home, you’ll be in good hands. With years of expertise and knowledge, you’ll get exactly what you need. To learn more about the services we offer, please contact us.

REMAX Sarnia real estate