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ChangingStreets.com Advanced is Changing Owosso Real Estate Market

We are very proud of David Nemer, Tim Lanphear and the rest of the gang at ChangingStreets.com Advanced. By teaming with Kelly Bila to open an office in Owosso, Michigan they have increased company sales by 165% ytd vs. 2010 since rebranding as ChangingStreets.com January 01, 2011. 

 The entire team brings a great deal of experience to ChangingStreets.com and Our big challenge now is working with them to continue the growth and keeping consumer satisfaction as high as possible, we are meeting on a regular basis to make this happen.

ChangingStreets.com sold over 18 homes in Eastern Shiawassee County in September.

The office is located accross the hall from the Wrought Iron Grill in Owosso, for more information on buying or selling in Owosso contact Kelly Bila 989.721.1271.

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Where’s the Search Box? Bring Back The Search Box!

Good Lord! Change is good Y’all!

What’s our name? CHANGINGstreets.com. Not STAYTHESAME.com! Right? Right! We’re constantly evolving – not just changing WITH the market but AHEAD of the market. The same is true for our website. I get it – you loved our old one. So did we. But it wasn’t working for us anymore. We were limited with what we could do for you and we don’t like limits. Or being told what we can and cannot do for you. The new website gives us more freedom and gives you more services. It’s GOOD I promise!

Here’s the deal – my favorite feature of the old website was being able to simply plug in an address or partial address into the search box and being able to quickly find info on a specific property. Guess what I found out – that was your favorite feature too. Buyers, Realtors, and Loan Officers are all yelling at me. My own family is yelling at me! “I can’t find anything! I miss that search box!”

To them I say, “Hellloooo. It’s right there under your nose.”

So there’s your homepage right? Click ADVANCED SEARCH. In about the middle of that page is a little box that says “address/zip”. Plug in the address and voila! The improvement in this case, new site vs. old, is that NOW in addition to school district and area, you can search by MAP and SUBDIVISION! That’s huge!

I remember one day walking into Target and EVERYTHING was different. I was ticked! I knew Target like the back of my hand and shopped blind folded on auto pilot. The new layout made me think and I hated it. That was years ago and now I love it! I got used to the new arrangement and things make sense to me there. Oh no doubt they will eventually change again and I’ll be irritated all over again. But we will get used to it and understand it in the long run.

So stop yelling at me y’all! If there were no change, you wouldn’t be able to look at a map on our website and see all the houses for sale in a certain area. And you wouldn’t be able to buy milk and refrigerated items at Target.

What do you miss about the old site? What would you change about the new one if you had the chance?

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Home Sales Up in March

We are seeing home sales up March 2010 compared to a year ago.

Maui Home Sales are up 25%

Maui Condo Sales are up 82%

Flint Home Sales recorded their second quarter in value increase for the first time in 16 quarters.

Raleigh / Wake County Home Sales are up 133 units for the month or 15% and showing numbers were the best since April of 2008 pointing to good sales numbers for April 2010.

Oakland County Homes Sales were up 184 units March 2010 vs March 2009.

This is all good news, I am not saying that this is over, but it sure feels better seeing numbers go up then it did watching them go down. Please check back for detailed reports.

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10 Days Left!

Only 10 days to get a home under contract to qualify for the home buyer tax credit!

In order to qualify for the home buyer tax credit ($8,000 refundable tax credit for first time buyers, $6,500 refundable tax credit for non-first time buyers that qualify) you must have a home under contract by April 30, 2010 and close by June 30, 2010. I would also add completing a home inspection to the being under contract, if you do inspection and back out of deal after April 30, you will not get credit on next home.

Ok, so we know it is crunch time. We know $6,500 (tax free!) is a lot of money, which makes $8,000 a lot of money. So what do we do now:

Get on ChangingStreets.com look at homes,

Get a mortgage pre-approval, this is huge, it will make getting the deal accepted by the buyer easier, at a better price and on time,

Contact ChangingStreets.com in your area, your StreetSmart agent can guide you to a reputable lender, home inspector and negotiate your best deal on a new home. (not to mention the fun part…SHOWING HOMES!)

This really is too good to pass up, if your payment is $1,250 now you will live for free for six months!

If you are renting for $1,000 a month you can own a $120,000 home and your payment including taxes and insurance  will be less than your rent, and you get $8,000.

Click here to get more info on the tax credit

Here are some hints on how to come up with $$ to get tax credit.

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AH, House envy in Detroit!!!

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Mobile Home Browsing

I hope everyone’s enjoying Easter break.  Here in Flint we have had a few dark rainy days but I don’t think anyone’s complaining after that amazing sunshiney Easter weekend we had.  But getting back to work is hard, isn’t it? Kids are home from school. Some people have Easter Monday off so if you were working it could have been frustrating to get much done because so many other people were not. Now Tuesday was kind of a stinker too, I have to say. The office internet was down. My home internet and email were up and mostly down. WiFi seemed to be working though. Thank goodness for our gadgets! Actually, I have to admit, I was so busy complaining about agents who wouldn’t call me back (Oakland County! Shame on you!) for showings and cursing my connection that it didn’t occur to me how much I could have gotten done from my phone until I saw this bit about the iPad real estate apps.

I’m a PC. I don’t know Mac at all. I flirted a bit with the Apple Ipod because it was given to me, but I felt guilty the whole time. I gave it away. I get my music from other sources now. This iPad has me intrigued though. And I’ll stay intrigued with that $500 price tag. I’m not saying it’s not worth the money, but between my Android phone and my laptop, I pretty much have the world in user friendly form at my finger tips. But after yesterday’s mess of trying to set up 9 showings for the afternoon in Clarkston & Waterford – not my usual stomping ground and unknown agents – this iPad Zillow application looked like a real problem solver. Agents and buyers can browse listings and access real estate information at home or while driving about.

But then I got thinking. If iPad has a real estate application, wouldn’t my super cool bad a**  Motorola Backflip have an Android app?  It has one for everything else. So I went to the Android “market” and there it was – Zillow! I downloaded it and a few others to try out. I am highlighting Zillow here because it is probably the most well known site for real estate information among every day home shoppers. At least for now, anyway. (wink wink) So you’re on your Android phone, open your (free) Zillow app and start browsing.  Punch in an area and a list of addresses and information pop up. Especially friendly for those days of driving around and window peeking. Everything you would want to know about the house is there, maybe.

The problem with Zillow is, as cool as it is, and as free as it is, it costs the agents to have their listings there.  Is it worth it as an agent to pay to post your listings at Zillow, especially at this time when mobile applications are all the rage? Absolutely. But can every agent afford to have all their listings included at the same time, at THIS time? Maybe not. It’s a tough time for us, too, don’t forget.  With the average sale price of homes dropping so much and sales decreasing, so have our commissions. Everyone might eventually get on board as agents continue to adjust to the “famine” portion of our “feast or famine” cycle.  But for now, as a buyer’s agent, I have to be sure I have access to everything. So Zillow isn’t quite perfect for me. Buyers keep that in mind too. Not EVERYTHING is listed there.

So I thought some more and you know what I thought? “DUH!” My Android phone views and works magnificently with the ChangingStreets.com website! And the ChangingStreets.com website is linked directly to the MLS so IT HAS EVERYTHING. This morning I have been playing with the website on my phone, from a Buyer perspective, and can’t believe how easy it is to run a search or even plug in an address for price and specs of a house that catches my eye on a drive by, right from my phone. My $99 Android. That also plays my mp3s.  No additional gadgets required.

With ChangingStreets.com’s complete & accurate listing inventory and shops popping up nationwide… Zillow better watch out!

Zillow, Android, iPhone, iPad, laptop, netbook, apps market… Things have sure changed from just a few years ago of drive by house shopping and flyer boxes.  How do you mobile shop? What are your favorite apps?

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Fabulous in Raleigh, What’s for sale over $2,500,000

What does $2,500,000 get you in today’s real estate market in the Triangle?  Thousands of square feet of pure luxury, fantastic kitchens, acres of land, and pools.

There are currently 39 homes for sale in the Triangle with price tags over $3.5 million.  15 of these homes are located in Raleigh, five in Durham, four in Chapel Hill, three each for Wake Forest and Cary and one in Morrisville and Creedmore.