Roger Johnson's (rogerajohnson) Blog

Yes I Want to Sell My House, Would You Like to See it 3 Weeks from Thursday?As a REALTOR® in the Hickory NC market, I do something that a lot of other agents may not do on a regular basis.  I call For Sale By Owner (FSBO) listings in my farm area (my specialty area, if you will).  Yes, I'd really...

NC Foreclosure Help - NC Foreclosure Prevention Fund If you're a resident of North Carolina and are unemployed or facing a financial hardship and are at risk of falling behind on your mortgage payment or have already fell behind on it, you may qualify for help from the NC Foreclosure Prevention F...

This is Big, I mean REALLY BIG!  It should be shouted from the rooftops so every buyer can hear it.  Especially in this market, where getting a loan is tough enough even with great credit.  Applying for any new credit before your loan goes through may totally derail your home buying process. If y...

NC Mountain Land For Sale - Taylorsville NC - Barrett Mountain Acreage NEW PRICE:  $655,000!  Make an offer on some prime mountain acreage TODAY! LOVE THE MOUNTAINS?  Why not own a piece of it yourself? Approximately 119 (+/-) acres of prime mountain acreage on Barrett Mountain, located in Alexan...

An Active Rain blogger recently wrote a member's only post about "Crazy Offers" and how agents should handle them.  (If you're an AR member, you can click here to see the post) Brian Rugg's comment to this post seemed to really cut to the chase, though (it's comment #30, btw).  In it, he said, "T...

Way back in 1990, Al and Debbie Bandy, of Newton, NC, started cooking a Thanksgiving day meal for the community.  They served about 125 people that first year.  Today, with the help of volunteers, they expect to serve over 500 people.  And they deliver, too! The dinner is held every other year (a...

Why Do I Need to Get Pre-Approved Before You Show Me The House? This question has come up a number of times in recent weeks, so I thought I'd write about it here. Some buyers today seem to really get offended if they are asked if they've spoken with a lender yet or if they've been pre-qualified f...

Need A Quickie?  Quick Tips to Staging Your House to Sell If you've even considered selling your house in today's market, you've probably already heard about staging.  Want a great example of a perfectly staged home?  Visit a few builder open houses, or better yet, take a tour through a few model...

To Make an Offer on My Listing, Please Provide Me Your First Born! At least that's the way it seems to me lately.  I have a few investors as clients, so I get to make a lot of offers on bank REOs (real estate owned). For years, REOs have always been more difficult than a "normal" closing.  The ba...

The True Costs of FSBO vs Hiring a REALTOR® Most FSBOs (For Sale By Owners) begin marketing their homes themselves in an attempt to "save the commission."  Unfortunately, very few of them ever really compare the true costs of selling FSBO to the costs of hiring a REALTOR®. Assuming that you've co...