north orange county for sale — Page 5 — Roy Hernandez Real Estate Services

Top schools equal higher home prices

October 14, 2013 By Roy Hernandez Leave a Comment

Any good parent wants their child to attend the best school possible, but when it comes to finding a home in a top school district, how much more are buyers willing to pay? A recent study performed by Redfin suggests that many parents are willing to shell out even more than you might think. If you’re trying to sell a home and want to get the most for it, you might want to consider “selling” the school first.

Schools have always played an important role in the buying and selling of real estate. More recently though, premiums for homes served by top-ranked schools have been going up, indicating that buyers place remarkable importance on the quality of schools when buying a house.

An analysis by Redfin illustrates the steep price premiums that homeowners are willing to pay for homes served by top-ranked schools, offering the latest concrete evidence that buyers place remarkable importance on the quality of schools.

The sky-high premiums help explain the ongoing race among listing sites to provide razor-sharp school information.

They could also add fuel to a debate over whether buyers and the real estate agents representing them give too much weight to rankings, which school officials say don’t always provide a complete picture of the differences in the quality of education provided.

Redfin’s study found that buyers pay an average of $50 more per square foot for homes served by top-ranked schools than for those served by average-ranked schools. It also found found that, even within the same neighborhoods, buyers will pay substantially more for homes served by top-ranked schools than they do for comparable homes served by average-ranked schools.

“Homes just a short distance apart with nearly identical attributes are selling for drastically different prices,” the report said. “We’ve looked across the country at homes that have sold in the last three months and found five examples where the prices vary on identical homes by as much as $130,000.”

Not accounting for home size, San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Calif., carry the highest price premiums for top-ranked schools while Queens, N.Y., Raleigh, N.C., and Eugene, Ore., carry the lowest of all the metros that Redfin analyzed.

The report adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that many homebuyers are ready to shell out substantial cash for access to top-notch schools.

Three out of 5 homebuyers who responded to a recent realtor.com survey said that school attendance boundaries would be a factor in choosing a home, and most of that group said they’d be willing to go above budget or give up amenities to have their children go to their school of choice.

The online survey, conducted this summer, found that of those who said school attendance boundaries were important:

23.6 percent would pay 1 to 5 percent above budget.
20.7 percent would pay 6 to 10 percent above budget.
9 percent would pay 11 to 20 percent above budget.
40.3 percent would not go above budget.

Some school officials have questioned whether buyers and their agents are relying too heavily on test scores and school ranking sites when pricing listings.

The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that buyers in San Mateo County, Calif., are willing to pay premiums of $200,000 or more for homes served by schools that score only slightly better than other schools in the same school district. School district officials told the newspaper that homebuyers and their agents may read too much into simplified school rankings offered on real estate sites, and are working with Realtors in the hopes of helping them gain a better understanding of what qualities make for a good school.

A Canadian real estate agent who’s branded herself as her community’s “#1 schools advisor” has rankled school district officials and parents by posting not only standardized test scores on her website, but devising her own system for ranking them. The ranking system penalizes schools with lower household income and parental education levels, or a higher prevalence of single-parent households and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students.

The increasingly evident focus among buyers on school quality has helped spur a push by listing services to offer deeper school-centric features and data.

Zillow rolled out a school search boundary tool earlier this month that lets users filter home searches for public, private and charter school attendance boundaries by their ratings from a national school rating site.

A handful of other sites, including realtor.com, Trulia and Century 21 Real Estate, offer school-based search tools.

For its study, Redfin analyzed listings on multiple listing services that sold between May 1 and July 31; school zone boundaries provided by Maponics; and additional school data provided by Onboard Informatics and GreatSchools.

Forecast: Calif. home prices to rise 6% in 2014

October 8, 2013 By Roy Hernandez Leave a Comment

California home prices and sales are projected to continue rising next year, but price gains will be much more modest than seen in the past year, according to the California Association of Realtors’ 2014 housing forecast.

The 2014 median house price house is projected to rise to $432,800 statewide, up 6 percent from this year’s projected all-year median of $408,600.

The median price of an existing single-family home was up 28.4 percent in the year ended in August and is projected to end the year up 28 percent from 2012 levels. But prices climbed dramatically this year due to a tight supply of homes for sale just as demand came roaring back and interest rates remained at historic lows.

The gains meant that more homeowners who owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth were freed up to sell their homes.

“As the market continues to improve, more previously underwater homeowners will look toward selling, making housing inventory less scarce in 2014,” said association Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young. “As a result of these factors, we’ll see home price increases moderate from the double-digit increases we saw for much of this year to mid-single digits in most of the state.”

Realtor economists also project that home sales will rise 3.2 percent in 2014 to an annual total of 444,000 sales, the most sold in eight years. The 2013 sales tally is projected to fall about 2 percent short of 2012 levels.

Also on the increase: mortgage rates. The association predicted that interest on the traditional 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage will rise to 5.3 percent next year, up from an average of 4.1 percent in 2013.

For a median-priced home with a 20 percent down payment, that 1.2 percentage point gain amounts to a $236 increase in a monthly mortgage payment, or nearly $85,000 in increased interest over the life of the loan.

“The housing market has improved over the past year, and we expect this trend to continue into 2014,” said association President Don Faught. “As the economy enters the fourth year of a modest recovery, we expect to see a strong demand for homeownership, as buyers who may have been competing with investors and facing an extreme shortage of available housing return from the sidelines.”

Article courtesy of OC Register.

O.C. homes for sale double in 6 months

October 2, 2013 By Roy Hernandez Leave a Comment

Homes for sale in Orange County have nearly doubled in six months, rising to 6,298 listings as of Thursday, Steve Thomas of ReportsOnHousing.com said in his latest report.

Listings in the Realtor-run multiple listing service were up 98 percent since mid-March, a low in almost nine years of data.

“Orange County housing is moving away from a sizzling hot seller’s market with rapid appreciation to a cost conscious cooler market with restrained appreciation,” Thomas wrote in his latest report.

As listings increased, the number of contracts signings began dropping, falling 25 percent since mid-June, he said.

“The market was starting to cool as values began to dramatically recover from their recession lows a few years ago,” he added. “What looked like a total deal and had attracted a wave of investors had lost a bit of its allure and luster. Investors started looking elsewhere. Homes began receiving fewer offers and buyers shied away from grossly overpriced homes.”

Last year at this time there were 4,416 homes on the market, 1,882 fewer than on Thursday, Thomas reported.

Thomas’ report shows further:

The biggest increase in listings occurred in the $250,000-to-$750,000 price range. Listings in that price bracket jumped 144 percent to 3,386 homes for sale. That category accounted for just over half off all listings.
The next biggest increase was in the $750,000-to-$1.5 million price range, which was up 97 percent to 1,536 listings. That group accounted for a fourth of all homes for sale.
Listings for $1.5 million and above — accounting for 17 percent of the market — increased 39 percent to 1,054 homes.

“Demand continues to drop as we make our way through the autumn market,” Thomas said. “This is cyclically a slower time of the year. … But the downshift is a bit more pronounced this year.”

Article compliments of Johnathan Lansner and Jeff Collins, OC Register.

8 Top Home-Selling Mistakes People Often Make

September 9, 2013 By Roy Hernandez Leave a Comment

It’s a challenging market for home sellers right now. Buyers have a lot of options—and they don’t have to buy what you’re selling. Your house is likely just one located in a sea of for-sale signs, so you can’t be sloppy about putting it on the market.

Luckily, we’ve rounded up the dos and dont’s that will help you collect thousands (if not hundreds of thousands!) for your place.

1. Don’t … ask for too much money.

Yes, you know what you paid for the house. But that doesn’t mean that it’s still worth that amount—or that it’s appreciated in value since you bought it. “Your house is only worth what the market is willing to pay you,” says certified financial planner Ellen Derrick of LearnVest Planning Services, who has bought and sold at least eight homes, including investment properties. “It doesn’t matter what’s in it. And it doesn’t matter what your mortgage is.” Your realtor has an eye on the market and knows what kind of prices homes—just like yours—are garnering now. Pricing your home too high will discourage interested parties from making an offer, and your property could sit for months, which isn’t your goal.

What to do: Have a few realtors give you a price on the home (or get a comparative market analysis), and—this is key—don’t ignore them. Keep in mind that even if you’ve made pricey improvements to the home (granite countertops, stainless steel appliances), you may not get your money back if you’re the only home on the block with such upgrades. If comparable kitchens in the neighborhood don’t have similar upgrades, buyers aren’t expecting fancy perks in yours, and may not be willing to pony up for the difference.

2. Don’t … skip the marketing.

You may think that all you have to do is take one photo of the house, stick a “For Sale” sign in your yard and buyers will come pouring in the door. Au contraire. “The only way to guarantee that you’re going to get the highest price for the house is to use all of the marketing options available to you,” says Holly Mellstrom, a realtor in Pelham, NY. “This means Internet advertising, 30 pictures of your house, public open houses and even postcards.” The more people who see your house, the better your chances are of selling it. In an age when buyers start their searches online, counting on drive-bys and word of mouth isn’t enough anymore.

What to do: Don’t wait until the last minute to notify a realtor that your house is for sale. If you can, give her at least a month of lead time, so she can research comparable homes and set a good price. “Give them time to book their favorite professional photographer,” Mellstrom says. “And give them time to photograph your house on a day the sun is out.” In fact, if you live in a seasonal area, and you know that you’re going to put the house on the market in February, have photos taken in September, when the grass is still green and the trees have leaves.

3. Don’t … go it alone, unless you know what you’re doing.

If you’ve bought and sold half a dozen homes of your own or you live in a sought-after neighborhood where they sell in two days, you might be able to pull off a For Sale By Owner. If you aren’t a seasoned pro, however, let a professional take the reins. “Some people don’t buy and sell houses more than once or twice in a lifetime, and there’s a lot of money at stake,” Mellstrom says. “And there are so many disclosure laws now. Depending on the laws in your state, you’re really accepting some liability by trying to sell it yourself, unless you have a friend or an attorney who can guide you through the process.” A realtor also knows what’s selling around you, and for what price. She can tell you whether an offer is reasonable, and help you negotiate smartly. Plus, you may not save as much as you think in the end. “People who buy For Sale By Owner houses automatically discount the price they’re willing to offer because there is no realtor involved,” Mellstrom says.

What to do: If you can, get a realtor recommendation from a friend or colleague. Check references, conduct interviews and go with someone with a proven track record.

4. Don’t … neglect to fix things that are broken.

If sellers walk through your house and spot a handful of items that need immediate repair, they’re going to wonder how well you’ve maintained the things they can’t see. The entry way is a big tip-off. Got a loose hand rail on the steps, sagging screen door or jiggly door knob? Fix them. Clear your gutters, patch holes in your walls and address dripping faucets.

What to do: Do a walk-through of your own home, pretending that you’re seeing it for the first time. What things have you always meant to fix? Now is the time. Spend a few weekends dealing with all of those niggling projects to get your home in show-worthy shape.

5. Don’t … get emotionally involved.

Yes, it’s your house. Yes, you sweated blood and tears to get it just the way you wanted it. But, no, that does not make it someone else’s “perfect,” particularly when you’ve made some unique decorating decisions. You want the space to look as neutral as possible, so buyers can envision themselves in the space. So even if those teal walls in the bedroom look knock-out great with your duvet, they probably won’t match anyone else’s things. Let go of the features you love, and make it a house most people could love—and that might mean painting all of the walls a soft, neutral color. “My office at home is a robin’s egg blue,” Derrick says. “But if we get ready to sell that house, you can bet I’m repainting it.”

What to do: Have a realtor walk through your home, and when she tells you what you’ll need to change to make it marketable, listen to her. Start thinking about your house as a commodity, not an extension of your identity. If buyers don’t love it, it’s not a personal insult. It’s simply a deal that didn’t work out.

6. Don’t … leave your stuff everywhere.

You want buyers to feel like they could move into your house tomorrow—with their things. And your collectible tchotchkes, photos and utility bills make the space feel a little too personal. “That first impression is really important, and if they’re greeted with a huge photograph of you on your wedding day 25 years ago over the fireplace, that’s really distracting,” Mellstrom says. “It sends the message to the buyer that ‘This is my house, not your house.’”

What to do: Before you put the home on the market, get a few boxes and grab every extraneous thing you see: photos, knick-knacks, books. If it helps, take a few pictures of each room, and try to view them through a buyer’s eyes. What could you remove from each room to make the space feel bigger? “You want it to look like a hotel room,” Derrick says. “Hotel rooms look comfortable, but they don’t look like they’re somebody else’s comfortable.” Also? Don’t hang out at showings. While you may want to tell prospective buyers about all of the things you’ve done to the house, it’s best to leave them be. If there’s some information you think is important for them to know, leave a flyer on the kitchen counter.

7. Don’t … get offended by a lowball offer.

Just because someone came in with a really low bid is no reason to walk off in a huff. Now’s your chance to negotiate. “Buyers are trying to buy your house for the lowest price possible,” Mellstrom says. “Don’t blow them off. They might love your house. You can’t blame them for trying.” In other words, it’s not personal, and it’s not a slam on your housekeeping. It’s a business transaction.

What to do: Come back with a counteroffer. Typically, most buyers will come back with a second offer, which is a better indication of what they’re really willing to pay.

8. Don’t … lose a sale over something stupid.

It’s possible to get 99% of the way through a home sale, only to stall out at the end over a minor detail. Don’t be that seller. “I’ve seen people throw away getting a $450,000 house sold over somebody wanting to take the mantle instead of leaving the mantle over the fireplace,” Derrick says.

What to do: Unless it’s an heirloom that’s been in your family for generations, remember that you can probably find another one—but you may not find another buyer at that price. To be safe, if there are things you’re feeling like you can’t live without, such as the curtains you found at a crazy flea market or the light fixture you discovered at an antiques store, replace them with something else before you show the house.

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5 Reasons Your Home’s Staging Might Not Be Awesome (Even if You Think it Is)

March 28, 2013 By Roy Hernandez Leave a Comment

Nowhere in life is the old adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder truer than in real estate. One woman’s dream home might be a mid-century modern, Mad Men styled contemporary, while another’s includes all the gingerbread charm of a classic Victorian. But when it comes to prepping a home to be viewed and (fingers crossed!) sold, there is both art and science to staging a home before its listed to maximize its appeal to the broadest number of target buyers.

The challenge is this: staging is an investment, one every seller can’t afford to make (although studies have shown professionally staged homes sell faster and for more than non-staged counterparts). So many take it on as a do-it-yourself project which, like all DIY home improvement projects, can be fantastic or, mmm, not – depending on the approach, skill, and resources of the “self” who does it.

The only thing worse than not staging your home for sale at all is to spend your time and money doing the work only to have buyers react badly to it. Here are a few common scenarios in which sellers think their staging is awesome and buyers, well, beg to differ:

1. You used beat up or ugly furnishings and decor. Great staging – DIY or professional – includes choosing furniture that shows the home off in its best light, and positioning the furnishings optimally, too. Sometimes this can be done using certain pieces of the seller’s furniture, other times, furniture must be rented or otherwise obtained. One area in which budget-minded sellers like to save money on staging is by finding cheaper alternatives than renting new furniture from a staging company or store.

In this era of Craigslist, eBay, Freecycle, estate sales and other peer-to-peer online stores and trading sites, there is an abundance of access to used furniture at great prices. I have no bone to pick with the smart sellers who use these tools to replace their own furniture with something that is in better condition, more attractive or a smaller scale than their own, so as to highlight how much space their home truly offers. That said, using old, floral sofas from Craigslist’s Free Section, unattractive thrift store “artwork” or even your own truly worn out, old furniture is a recurring reason buyers cite for focusing on how bad the staging is vs. the house itself.

What’s worse, the furnishings you might think was THE BEST BARGAIN EVER might actually give your nice home a worn-down, unkempt feel to the buyers who come to see it.

2. You created distracting themes and scenes. My friend Barb Schwarz is the head of the International Home Staging Professionals Association; she defines staging as “preparing a home for sale so the buyer can mentally move in.” The goal is for buyers to visualize the new-and-improved versions of their lives that your home will help them realize, so some pro stagers will set up objects to communicate the lifestyle activities that a home facilitates. It’s not bizarre to see a breakfast table and chairs on the patio of a home with lovely views, a crib and baby gear-vignette in a small room suitable for a nursery, or a popcorn maker and recliners to show off a media room’s theater-readiness.

Occasionally, though, these scenes and vignettes can go rogue, creating borderline bizarre scenarios that distract and detract more than they help.

A beach scene (ball, umbrella and all) in a midwestern bedroom, a lively Parisian mural and Eiffel tower replica in a California condo and bizarre collections (taxidermy, anyone?) are all real-life examples of staging scenes that have done more harm than good.

3. Your house is neither clean nor clutter-free. For various reasons, some homes just take time to sell. And if you’re living in a home that is on the market for long, it can be challenging to ensure it is perfectly pristine at all times, meaning every single time a buyer enters it. And it doesn’t take a truly filthy house to turn a buyer’s impression of your home from awesome to awful. The little messes that a family accumulates through daily living can be perceived by buyers as distracting at best – disgusting, at worst.

If your home is well staged, do not underestimate the power of piles of clothes, mail, paperwork, dishes or kids’ toys to deactivate the home-selling power of all the hard work and money that went into preparing the property in the first place.

4. There are glaring gaps. Sometimes a home’s staging leaves a glaring gap, an elephant in the room house, so to speak. This often happens when sellers run out of time and money to prepare a place, but it can be avoided through smart advance planning and budgeting for your pre-listing property preparation.

Rooms – Listen, I personally live in a house that is beautiful everywhere until you poke your head into my young adult son’s room. So I can relate. This situation might be okay to live with, but it’s a real home staging fail for a property that’s on the market. Don’t let there be one or two rooms that it looks like the stager – or house cleaner – missed. And this goes for the garage, closets, cupboards and drawers, too. Buyers like to look inside these areas to see how much space they have – if they are crammed full of junk, it creates the impression that the house lacks storage and order.
Exterior vs. interior. Some homes have amazing curb appeal, but look like they’ve been run over roughshod on the inside. And the opposite is true: some look like Martha Stewart handled the inside and junk man extraordinaire Fred Sanford was in charge of the yard. Neither of these is ideal.
Multi-sensory gaps. If your home is beautiful to the eye but smells bad, is strangely hot or cold, or has a noise issue (think: neighbors’ music, freeway noise or strange in-house creaks or whirrs), buyers might appreciate the visuals but fixate on the multi-sensory challenges. Especially if you have pets, you might want to ask a friend or your agent to step in from the outside and give you a gut check on whether your home is smelly – you might be so used to it you can’t trust your own senses.

5. You lacked a neutral, expert eye. Home decorating and home staging are two different things. When you decorate your home, you customize it with your specific tastes, preferences and aesthetics in mind. When you stage it, you aim to neutralize your home’s look and feel so it appeals to more buyers and doesn’t have turn-off potential.

Schwarz puts it this way: “Decorating a home is personalizing it. Staging a home is depersonalizing it.”

I cannot count the number of beautifully decorated homes I’ve seen where the seller must have thought they needed to do zero staging, and where the seller was simply wrong. Their very personal tastes in Elvis quilt art, red lacquer furnishings or sewing machine collections had been beautifully executed for them, but also were so highly personal, so very specific that it was near-impossible for a buyer to envision their own lives or families or homes or activities taking place in that space.

This is one reason I encourage even sellers who are on a tight budget and can’t afford pro staging and sellers whose homes that have been beautifully decorated to at least have a home staging consultation with their agent and a professional stager. These pros can call out little “edits” (furniture or decor items you should remove) and give you advice about what buyers love and hate to see in a home that you might be able to execute yourself at a surprisingly low cost.

From Trulia Real Estate, author Tara Nicholle Nelson (broker in San Francisco)

5 Things Consumers Should Expect From Housing Market In 2013

January 7, 2013 By Roy Hernandez Leave a Comment

In 2012, the national housing market finally turned a corner. We’ve now experienced 13 straight months of home value appreciation. Sales were up significantly over 2011 as buyers returned to the market, boosting demand.

So what will 2013 have in store? Here are five things consumers can expect to see in the housing market next year:

Up, Up and Away

The national housing market hit bottom in October 2011, and home values have since risen 5.3 percent from that trough. The most recent Zillow Home Value Forecast calls for 2.5 percent appreciation nationwide from November 2012 to November 2013.
According to a recent Zillow survey of more than 100 economists and analysts, respondents predicted home values (based on the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index) to rise 3.1 percent in 2013, on average.
Most markets covered by Zillow’s Real Estate Market Reports have already bottomed out, with only 10 of 255 covered metro areas not projected to hit a bottom within the next year.

Bottom Line: Homeowners looking to sell in 2013 can largely rest assured they won’t be selling at the bottom, and many will find themselves in a sellers’ market. Potential buyers in 2013 may be more motivated to get a deal done while affordability is still extremely high and mortgage rates continue to be historically low.

Real Estate Is Local Again

According to the Zillow Breakeven Horizon, buying beats renting when staying in the home for three years or more in roughly 60 percent of U.S. metros. The areas where it might make more sense to buy (if you’re planning on staying for three-plus years) are clustered in the Southwest and Southeast. If you won’t be staying put for at least a few years, consider renting in the Northeast, where buying often doesn’t make more financial sense until five years or more.
The goal of Zillow’s Buyer/Seller Index is to determine where buyers have the most leverage in a sale, and where sellers might have the upper hand. In general, we determined that metro areas in the West and Southwest – including the Bay Area, Las Vegas and Phoenix – are strong for sellers. Metros in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic – places such as Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia – are best for buyers.

Bottom Line: The housing market recovery has remained true to the old real estate axiom of “location, location, location.” How your local market is faring today – and if it makes more sense to buy or rent, to sell now or to hold off if possible – is largely determined by unique, local factors and fundamentals. Arming yourself with timely and comprehensive local market information is good advice at any time, but will be even more important in 2013 as buyers continue to seek bargains and sellers look to maximize returns.

Coming Up for Air

In the third quarter of 2012, the percentage of homeowners with a mortgage in negative equity – or “underwater,” owing more on their mortgage than their home was worth – fell below 30 percent for the first time since Zillow began tracking that data using an improved methodology in early 2011.
Still, 28.2 percent of homeowners with a mortgage remain underwater. Because underwater owners have a far more difficult time selling their home, a large number of homes that otherwise might end up on the market aren’t getting listed. As a result, inventory in many areas is incredibly tight, leaving buyers to fight it out amongst themselves, which in turn can help drive up prices. This, among other factors, has led to tight inventory in many of the hardest-hit cities around the country.

Bottom Line: As home values continue their upward march in 2013, more homeowners currently trapped underwater will begin to surface. This will be good for buyers exhausted by limited inventory and intense competition in markets such as Phoenix and Miami, but it will also have the effect of cooling price increases. As a result, in 2013, we predict home value appreciation in many areas will look more like a series of steps, characterized by cycles of price spikes and plateaus. Price spikes will free some homeowners from negative equity, allowing them to sell, thereby easing supply constraints and dampening prices until the cycle is repeated.

Historically Affordable

Mortgage interest rates have been hovering at or near historic lows for the past year, and the Federal Reserve has taken concrete steps to ensure they stay low for at least the foreseeable future.
At the same time, home values – while recovering nicely – still have a long way to go to reach their pre-bubble levels. Overall, national home values in November were still down 19.4 percent from their peak in May 2007, according to Zillow.

Bottom Line: Between 1985 and 2000, Americans spent, on average, about 20 percent of their household income on mortgage payments. That percentage increased to more than 24 percent by 2006, before falling to just 13 percent by the second quarter of 2012. If you can qualify for a home loan, the combination of low rates and low prices means your home-buying dollar will continue to take you farther in 2013 than in recent years, even for buyers on modest budgets.
Mortgage Interest Deducted?

Changes to the mortgage interest deduction (MID) may be a key element of any “grand bargain” reached by politicians in order to avert the year-end fiscal cliff. If adopted, any measure to limit or repeal the MID will result in some home price impacts over time and by market segment.
Home values at the high end of the market will likely be more negatively impacted by MID changes than home values overall, according to a recent Zillow survey of economists. For example, in the event that the maximum MID-eligible mortgage amount is reduced from $1 million to $500,000 and the deduction allowance for second homes is eliminated, the majority of respondents said they expect high-end home prices to fall while U.S. home prices overall experience little or no price impact.

Bottom Line: Real estate lobbying groups have long fought against changes to tax rules allowing for the deduction of mortgage interest, arguing that any changes will impact or eliminate some of the historic financial advantages of owning a home. But unless you’re buying a proportionally more expensive home or are buying in a more expensive area, the impacts of MID changes will likely be muted. The decision to buy or sell a home is highly personal and dependent on a number of factors, only one of which is potential tax implications. In 2013, make your decision to buy or sell based on your own informed opinion and your unique situation.

Click here to contact Roy for more information or questions concerning your real estate goals.