How to Choose Your New Neighborhood

A guest post by James Kim.

Moving is a strenuous task. Not only do you have to deal with the extremely stressful transition into a new life in a new place, but you have to pack your old life into boxes and coordinate a move. Even more stressful, though, is the process of choosing a new house. One of the biggest components to buying the perfect house is choosing the right neighborhood for you — a task that can become complicated and frustrating if, say, you are perusing Austin real estate but know nothing about the city and its layout. No need to worry. There are several tips to keep in mind that can make your task that much easier.

Familial Situation

A huge component to deciding on an area is whether or not you have children. If you do, you want to look for an area that is near to a school. Try visiting a website like Great Schools to examine schools, their locations and ranking. You may also want to look at real estate property near a park, playground, and local pool to make family activities more accessible. Clearly, if you do not have offspring, you will probably want to steer clear of school zones. However, living in suburbia could have its perks — moving into a location near a school can help you sell your house later on down the road.

Commute

No one wants to wait hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic every morning to get to work. When investigating different neighborhoods, always snoop around during rush hour traffic in addition to normal business hours to really get a feel for the traffic you will be up against.  Being close to public transportation can alleviate this problem, so also investigate other means of getting to and from work.

You may also want to see what “amenities” are near your neighborhood of choice. How far is the grocery store? Post office? Mall? Downtown area? Gym? While that quaint house tucked in the quietest part of town may be charming, it may be more isolated than pragmatic.

Safety

Most importantly, you will want to consider safety. You can check out the crime rates in your prospective area by visiting sites like Family Watchdog. Ask the neighborhood police force or even local business owners if the area is safe. Will you be able to walk home or take a jog around the area at night? You can’t create a home if you don’t trust your neighbors or your area.

Ambiance

Research only goes so far. After researching on the internet, visit the area under consideration. Take a walk around the block, visit the local coffee shop, mingle with the locals, and get a “feel” for the place. To cover all your bases, visit the neighborhoods at all times of day in different circumstances. Chat with a realtor who specializes in the area and ask them how the neighborhood is at night.

While finding a new place and moving can be extremely stressful, you can minimize your headache by keeping these tips in mind. Your efforts will pay off in a home that could last you a lifetime.

James Kim writes for Austin Real Estate service Homecity.com. HomeCity combines powerful online Austin MLS search technology and other online tools with personalized real estate services to provide clients with the knowledge they need to make the right buying and selling decisions.

Following are the most recent batch of spam, trogan, and virus alerts sent to my email filter. Be on the lookout for them and don’t fall for any of their schemes.

Your best protection is to keep your computer updated and keep your antivirus program running at all times.

Please keep in mind that all the links below lead not to the virus itself but to the www.OnlyMyeMail.com alert.

I thought the eBay alert one was especially clever but a fraud attempt nonetheless.

Be careful out there and always practice safe computing.

Virus and Fraud Email Security Updates

Below are the fraud, trojan and virus alerts that were posted to the OnlyMyEmail Spam Blog during the last month.  Emails reported are chosen due to inbound volume and/or the frequency that end users are resending these emails to themselves, indicating they may mistakenly believe them to be legitimate.

Apple Store Order Notification Spam
http://blog.onlymyemail.com/apple-store-order-notification-spam/

Wells Fargo Online Fraud Prevention ? Spam ? Fraud
http://blog.onlymyemail.com/wells-fargo-online-fraud-prevention-spam-fraud/

Critical security patch released! ? Spammed Virus
http://blog.onlymyemail.com/critical-security-patch-released-spammed-virus/

OnlyMyEmail Receives Highest Score Ever in the Virus Bulletin Spam Challenge
http://blog.onlymyemail.com/onlymyemail-receives-highest-score-ever-in-the-virus-bulletin-spam-challenge/

Action Required : Download New Acrobat PDF Reader For Your Windows – Spam
http://blog.onlymyemail.com/action-required-download-new-acrobat-pdf-reader-for-your-windows-spam/

Message from eBay Member Regarding Item # ? Spam/Fraud
http://blog.onlymyemail.com/message-from-ebay-member-regarding-item-spamfraud/

Your account has been locked ? TCF Spam
http://blog.onlymyemail.com/your-account-has-been-locked-tcf-spam/

There are many additional posts on a wide variety of email topics.

Feel free to pass these links along to others that may benefit from these security warnings.

This is an amazing story about a guy that lives in an 89 SQUARE FOOT house!

Yep, that’s 89 square feet.

To give you some perspective a 10 X 10 room is 100 square feet.

Even more amazing is the fact that he’s turned this into a business. Seems the demand for tiny houses is larger than you would think.

To find more ‘normal’ sized houses in the greater Knoxville area visit KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com

For questions or advice on buying or selling a home in the greater Knoxville area Jim Lee is the ‘go to’ Realtor in town.

For some strange reason the post below I wrote several years ago popped on a Google alert. After re-reading it I decided it was still very relevant to today and hopefully you will find it worthwhile:

BTW, this is a pretty cool listing of mine in North Knoxville just in case anyone has a buyer. This listing is NOT several years old.  😉

I just received my July/August issue of “The Real Estate Professional”, a great magazine sent to all REBAC (Real Estate Buyers Agent Council) members.

A feature story is titled “Technology and Home Sales: How the Internet is Changing the Real Estate Industry”. Boy, ain’t that the truth. 😉

I found some of the technology do and don’ts for using technology in your listings to be especially relevant.

1. I think a lot of us don’t quite realize yet is that most buyers (and sellers) are way more tech savvy than the average Realtor. Probably something to do with their average age being in the 30s and ours being in the 50s.
2. The time to make a first impression is shorter than ever before. This is especially important on your websites. You have very, very little time to catch and hold someone’s attention before they’re bored and/or ready to move on to a site that gives them what they’re looking for. In order for your website to be effective it must be:

1. Easily findable by consumers.
2. Deliver the content they’re looking for
3. Have compelling reasons to cause them to contact you to do business.

You hear a lot these days about lower price, lower price, and lowest price as the only way to get a house sold.

Here are 9 things you can do that will make your house stand out from the crowd, appeal to more potential buyers, and probably sell faster. None of them have anything to do with cutting the price.

1. Curb appeal, curb appeal, curb appeal! I can’t emphasize this one enough. Buyers have to be attracted to your home to want to see it. I’ve had lots of buyers say: “Let’s pass this one buy.” when we’ve pulled up to a home that was not attractive from the street.
2. Bright, shiny, and inviting entry. Once you get buyers out of the car and walking up to your front door, you want to continue to set a good tone for your showing. Make sure your front entry is spotless, sweep away the cobwebs over your door, clean front door, paint if necessary, bright, shiny new door hardware if necessary, a new light fixture if the old one is rusty. All these things go a long way towards keeping the mood for showing positive.
3. PAINT! Biggest selling bang for your buck possible. Neutral paint is the word of the day, no bright or funky colors. A fresh, uniform coat of paint throughout your house if needed will bring a faster sale and more dollars in your pocket.
4. Your kitchen. Lots of Realtors and buyers say the kitchen is what caused the sale. De-clutter your counter tops, cabinets, pantries, and storage space so buyers can see it.
5. DEEP CLEANING! It’s gotta be not just spotless but “white glove” inspection clean. No grease on kitchen appliances, bathrooms including tubs, showers, and sinks spotless and clean smelling, all light fixtures wiped down or washed including  the bulbs, clean the blades on your ceiling fans, cobwebs from along ceilings and underneath. In fact it will likely pay you to hire a professional house cleaner to do the job for you.
6. Straighten up,  “lean out” and neaten all your storage areas especially your closets. Don’t forget the fresh paint here too.
7. Let the sun shine in. All blinds and shades should be open for showing even in the evenings. Of course your windows need to be included in the deep cleaning too.
8. Get a pre-sale home inspection. This will alert you to potential problem areas you might not be aware of and let you fix or repair them at your leisure and also prevent a buyer from using some minor issue as a negotiating tool.
9. No funky odors or smells. This one is tough because you live there every day and some odors might not be apparent to you. Ask a friend, neighbor, or real estate professional to give your home the “smell test” to see if there might be something there you’re not picking up on. Don’t get carried away with scents to mask odors; too much is almost as bad as the odors you’re trying to cover up. Get rid of the cause of the odor.

You can find lots selling tips as well as get a free copy of my 52 page e-book titled “450 Ideas To Help Your Home Sell Faster” at www. KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com or just send a blank email to [email protected]

Here’s a marvelous North Hills home that has been extensively updated. Hardwood floors, fireplace, and lots of other great features.

See all the greater Knoxville area listings of homes and condos for sale at Knoxville Home Searcher.com, just click here and you’re there. 😉

My apologies to my regular readers for not posting anything in the past 2 weeks but I’ve been pretty busy listing and selling houses which is a good thing.

The February sales numbers are now available from the Knoxville Area Association of Realtors for the greater Knoxville area and surrounding counties so let’s take a look and see how we did this past month.

February to past Februaries comparison

While this just past February was up 42 homes over 2009 the total volume is still way down compared to the past 7 years or so. According to these numbers we’re basically at around 2001-02 levels.

Here’s the latest Knox County sales figures for the week just past.

From the Knox County Register of Deeds

I count 92 transactions in the chart above. That’s down considerably from the 150 or so we were averaging in 2009 which dovetails with the sales figures above from the Realtor Association.

It appears this February is pretty much like January 2010; down from years past but up over last year a little. Modest good news for the Knoxville area real estate market.

Another way to calculate the current state of a real estate market is by the absorption rate. That means how long will it take to sell the current amount of homes for sale at the current sales rate.

Currently in the Knoxville Area Association of Realtor’s MLS (Multiple Listing Service) there are 4,021 single family homes and condos for sale. Based on the latest February sales figures for Knox County there were 369 closings. That means it would take 13.3 months at the current sales levels to sell all 4,021 listings assuming no new ones came on the market.

Those figures tell me we’re still in a very strong buyer’s market in the greater Knoxville, Tennessee area.

Median sales price is the middle of the price range, half were more, half were less.

If anyone is thinking of buying this year let me remind you the $8,000 federal tax credit expires at the end of April 2010 and most likely WILL NOT be renewed this time. Here’s some FAQ about how it works, please call or email me with any additional questions or to get started buying your own home.

You do have until the end of April to have your selected home under contract and then an additional 60 days beyond that to get it closed. Some active duty military personnel have more time under special circumstances; I can help with that as well.

See all the greater Knoxville area listings of homes and condos for sale at Knoxville Home Searcher.com

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