For the 13th month in a row sales figures in Florida have increased when compared to the same period last year. Some localized markets have even seen increase for 15 months. Existing home sales rose 34% last month with a total of 14,419 homes sold statewide compared to 10,778 homes sold in Septe
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10/28/2009
Recently, John Burns Real Estate Consulting took a survey of several home builders in different regions of the US. The highlights were posted on RISMedia.com on October 21, 2009. Later, I will post a link allowing you to see the entire article but obviously, I am interested in my area, SW Flori
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10/27/2009
I was showing several houses last week to two different customers. In both cases, the houses were short sales. As with many short sales they shared several characteristics - abandoned, no electricity, missing some appliances and a distinctive odor hit you when you walked through the front door.
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10/21/2009
Look in the sky…It’s a bird, it’s a plane …it’s...wait, that’s a different fantasy super-hero. In an earlier post, I discussed how my research on Chinese dry wall led me to emails and phone calls to another hero of the housing industry, forensic investigator Spiderman Scott Mulholland. The ann
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10/19/2009
Sorry, this is not a series about a Super hero defeating his arch nemesis who happens to be a flat Asian villain. But this story will be a news worthy story of Super hero importance to anyone affected by Chinese or defective dry wall. Working in the Fort Myers/Cape Coral, an area that le
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10/19/2009
Recently, the local newspaper, The Fort Myers News Press, had an article about the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. This program uses Federal Grant money to help first time home buyers with the needed downpayment to buy a house. The program also targets neighborhoods needing a rejuvenat
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10/02/2009
In a recently released article, CNNMoney.com used research supplied from Zillow.com saying the best place to "haggle for home prices" was Florida. While this is true in a few markets (they named four areas), us in SW Florida aren't seeing it this way. The areas where this is working have an abu
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09/10/2009
Picture on Multiple Listing Service What the Buyer sees when you drive up!*** ***(For those of you that don't get it - the pictures are a joke!) I've been reading more and more about the use of Virtual Staging for abandoned houses. Virtual staging is a computer process that adds furniture
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09/01/2009
One of the largest fears renters have in this market is the fear of being kicked out of the house they are renting because the landlord does not tell them the property is in foreclosure. The Helping Families Save their Homes Act was recently signed into effect by President Obama. This act pro
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08/24/2009
Before Recently, I read an article about people starting "Take Pride in Cape Coral" group in SW Florida. Everyone hears about the neighborhood blight left in the wake of the foreclosures - overgrown lawns, trash built up in driveways and vandalism to abandoned houses. A group in Cape Coral has
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08/21/2009
