Juanita's Blog on Life and Real Estate in Sumter, SC

With all the foreclosures and imminent foreclosures going on, the idea of a "short sale" has gained more and more popularity.  So I thought maybe I'd talk about those a bit. The term "short sale" means the house is selling for less than what is owed on the mortgage(s).  Usually a short sale occur...

It’s a bad idea to take your cues for conduct of your personal life from television, but during the past few weeks, as the news gets worse and worse (banks failing, billions in taxpayer money needed to bail out failing financial institutions – do I get part ownership in those companies for my mon...

Continuing on with the discussion of agency (clients and customers, who works for who and what it means), now I’ll address the concept of “dual agency.” Dual agency occurs when a buyer makes an offer on a house that’s listed by the same company the buyer agent works for.  Classic dual agency is w...

All you first-time homebuyers out there, and anyone who knows someone who’s buying a home for the first time, bookmark this site. http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/ The federal government is offering a tax credit to first-time homebuyers. If you buy a home for the first time between April 9,...

According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report released on August 26, 2008, home prices in South Carolina went up 3.3% over the past four quarters.  Overall in the U.S., home prices dropped 1.4%. The problem with looking at anything “U.S.-wide” when you’re talking ...

Okay, this is a topic that tends to make Realtors’® eyes glaze over, but it needs to be understood.  Not just by Realtors®, but by buyers and sellers.  Especially buyers. So this post is aimed at all you soon-to-be buyers and sellers, and even to those of you who’ve done this before and might not...

My listing with the cat urine odor problem became vacant a few days ago, so I went out to look around, make sure everything was okay, windows locked, A/C turned up, and so on.  I also took a quart bottle of stain and odor remover and a spray bottle.  Yeah, it’s an exercise in futility, but I thou...

When your home is on the market, it’s important to present its “best face” to anyone viewing it.  Some tips include baking bread or cookies, if you’re the baking type, so that people walking in will associate your home with those homey aromas which likely bring back pleasant memories of their own...

I have a new listing.  It’s a nice house, on a large lot in a rural setting.  The house itself is only four years old, five bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms.  Nice kitchen, island stove, built-in microwave, and the refrigerator stays. Wood decks front and back, two storage sheds and a large ...

In recent weeks, the owner of the real estate company I work for has had several people come in wanting to buy homes.  They had taken no action to secure financing, but they wanted to buy houses. She did a credit check on each one, and not a single one came back with a credit score high enough to...