Santa

What an interesting time of year, a time of year which brings belief, stress, over spending, friendship, families, arguments, laughs, tears, prayers, expectations and many other emotions and thoughts.

This time of year, Christmas time for me and my family, I have to constantly remember what it is REALLY about- the birth of Jesus Christ. I have to remind my self and I have to remind my child. I also have to remember that this time of year is not this to everyone but many wonderful beliefs to them.

Today, I want to write about what Santa means to me. By the way, this has nothing to do with buying or selling a home...just Santa.

When I remind myself and my family what this time of year REALLY means we also speak about Santa a lot. What does Santa mean to me?

It means belief in a child's eye

It means a time of year where wishes do come true

It means the smell of pine needles when I open my front door and smell the wreath (we went to an artificial tree a couple years ago when we received a beautiful hand me down from my parents).

It means snow and snow men

It means cookies left out for Santa and carrots for the reindeer

It means wearing pajamas too late in the day and hot chocolate too late in the evening

It means so much to me and so many people

So you ask, do I still believe in Santa and I say YES! I believe that the marshmellow gun that David asked for on Santa's lap must come and I believe we must put carrots out for the reindeer's because that is what Christmas is about...it is about believing! So I say to you today- believe in Santa or whatever mythical figure your holiday believes in because it makes all those emotions like stress, tears and arguments seem to be so much easier.

Market Watch for November

Each month the president of F.C. Tucker-Jim Litten publishes an article called "Market Watch". This article is published in many local publications and will now be posted here on my blog each month. The following is the Market Watch for November-





November home sales slower than last year, F.C. Tucker optimistic about local real estate market in 2008

INDIANAPOLIS – Central Indiana’s unpredictable weather and Thanksgiving preparations put another damper on home buying in central Indiana, continuing the 2007 real estate market’s balancing of inventory and consumer demand. November pended home sales were off 15 percent from November 2006. Year-to-date sales statistics show a more promising local picture, with 26,801 homes sold so far in 2007, compared to 29,156 homes sold at this same time in 2006, an 8.1 percent overall decrease.

H. James Litten, president of F.C. Tucker Company’s Residential Real Estate Services Division, said, “With almost 27,000 homes sold in central Indiana so far this year, we remain encouraged by the market’s resilience in the face of increased inventory levels and consumer concerns about housing. Central Indiana is experiencing less of a hit than other major cities across the country, and Indianapolis real estate sales are continuing to balance the number of homes on the market with ongoing consumer demand for those homes.”

Sales in Hancock County experienced the most improvement in November with a 10 percent jump in sales over November 2006 and a 1.3 percent increase year-to-date. November pended home sales in Boone County were off slightly from the previous year by 1.6 percent. Year-to-date sales for Boone County are off less than one percent from 2006 YTD. By comparison, Hendricks County posted the most significant drop in pended home sales in November with a 21.6 percent decrease over November 2006.

“Sales this year are the fifth best on record,” Litten said. “Central Indiana’s continued market affordability, one of the best in the country; less new home building than we have experienced in the recent past; and declining mortgage rates promise to strengthen the market in coming months.”

Overall inventory of homes on the market increased 4.4 percent. On a county-by-county level, Madison County’s inventory decreased 11.6 percent in November from 1,279 homes in November 2006 to 1,131 homes in November 2007, and Johnson County was just shy of balancing out at plus .7 percent ahead of last year’s available inventory. Marion County’s inventory rose 7.4 percent.

Pets

"I just love animals!" - as an old boss of mine once said.

Currently at my house we have three dogs and one cat.

We have Freddy (Freeway Freddy was his racing name) who is a 9 year old retired racing greyhound.

We have Shelby who we adopted from the Hamilton County Humane Society and I think she is around 13 and we think she is a border collie/golden mix (we call her our campfire dog- not that I camp but if I did she would stay close).

We have Brandy who is also a retired racing greyhound and is 4. Greyhounds typically don't bark, jump up or lick and she does all three- she watches what Shelby does and mimics her actions. It is funny to witness.

And last but certainly not least we have Gail who we acquired from a good friend of mine who became engaged and now married to a man that is allergic to cats- we think Gail is around 12 or 13. She had never lived with dogs or kids and is now certainly the best cat I have ever owned.

I can not imagine a life with out my animals.

When you are selling a home typically pets are not the best selling point. So here are a couple pointers for when you list and sell your home if you also have pets.

1) Crate or if possible remove all pets from the home when it is being shown to a potential buyer.

2) Remove water and food bowls from the house during showings.

3) Make sure, make absolute sure there is NO pet smells in the home. This means cleaning and storing any pet beds, litter boxes, carpet (possibly replace) and furniture where pets sleep or lay most.

4) If you have caged animals or reptiles remove or store the cage during showings.

So if you are a animal lover like me- get all the animals you want (my preference would be that you find one to adopt) but just make sure when you are ready to sell your home you "stage" your pets too. Unfortunately NOT everyone likes pets.

Revisiting Property Taxes for the last time

I wanted to revisit the property tax comments I made in a couple of posts a while back. This will be the last time I bring up property taxes at least for this year.

As you may remember from my previous post, property taxes are something is ever changing in the real estate market. This morning I finally found a nice document that explains most items or questions surrounding property taxes in Marion County. I feel like it is easy to read and easy to understand.

Click here to read the document.
property%20tax%20document.pdf

Here are some of the highlights from the article

1) How are property tax bills determined?- page 4

2) How is the tax rate determined?- page 4

3) What does "2007 pay 2008" mean?- page 4

4) Property tax deductions for Indiana Homeowners- page 5- THIS IS IMPORTANT- if you have purchased a new home or refinanced your current mortgage you must file for your deductions. Contact us if you would like for us to make sure your correct deductions are filed.

5) You can appeal your property tax bill- page 6- If you decide to appeal and need assistance on obtaining a current market value of your home, we can help you with that documentation for that value.

So that's it, no more property tax talk for 2007.

David Wilcox

This will be my fourth year as a full time real estate agent. I started working with my mom in November of 04. Each year I look back and realize that there is one item that I have accomplished with my business that stands out to me for that year. The first year it was creating our web site- www.curryteamindy.com, the second it was forming an amazing accountability group with two other woman business owners, the third year (this last year) it was forming a partnership with David Wilcox.

David is an outstanding person, friend, business man, real estate agent, consultant, sales manager and father....also a great pet owner. David worked for the F.C. Tucker company for many many years. Several of those years he was the top producing agent in the entire company, most of those years he was an incredible manager to my mom and all the other agents at the Tucker Meridian North office.

Last year we formed a business partnership where I can help him manage his real estate clients so he would have more time to grow his consulting business Wilcox Realty Consulting, LLC.. The partnership has been tremendous! He has taught me more than he will ever know in a very short period of time about the present, past and future markets. He has sales skills that he is willing to share on a daily basis. His knowledge of all things "real estate" overwhelms me.

So here is the bottom line, if YOU or anyone you know would like to utilize me as their Realtor of choice, you not only get me (and my mom) but you get David too....We make a fantastic team!

Google

I am just crazy about Google! I am sure that you know how to search on Google. That was the original purpose of the site and the company- to enable users to search for key words organically. Meaning to search the Internet and look for actual content. Google has gone so many places since then.

I use Google for lots of stuff. Of course to search the world wide web but I also use it to do these things-


1) The Mapping feature- (this comes in super handy when I am showing homes in an area where I am not familiar with) they have also recently added multiple location mapping where you can map several different stops (again, good when I am taking clients to multiple locations).

2)The Blog feature- to create this blog. Blogs come in handy for many different applications. In this case to give my potential or current clients an insight on me and my business but they can also be used to give a group of people updates on a health or family situations. They can be used to share information with an endless amount of participants or in many cases they can be used to give reviews on products.

3) I use the Alert feature- to see when something comes across the Internet about me. This is for some reason my favorite new tool that I have started to use. It is fun to see when my name shows up. I started this feature to see when my blogs would populate to Google but now there are other places that my name appears like when the PTO I am involved with publishes something to the web or when a volunteer group that I have done work with posts a document. It is fun to keep a handle on where the public can learn about you. This is a must if you are marketing yourself in anyway. Most importantly so that you can be alerted when anything negative would appear and address it quickly. Not that anything negative would appear about you or me.

4) My most favorite feature on Google today that I am currently using is Picasa- Picasa is the tool that organizes your pictures on your computer. I just love to organize! It also lets you manipulate, download, upload and email pictures easily.


There are so many more Google features, some that I have experimented with are documents (where you share and manipulate documents with a particular group of people) and the desktop search (where you can search for items on your desktop like emails or documents- another favorite). There are so many features of Google that I have not tried like their calendar and their checkout feature but really the best thing about using all of these features is that they are ALL FREE. Check out Google today, not just to search the web but to help you manage your computer.

What is Staging?

I was catching up with an old friend (we met in college) today on the phone. She asked me what "staging" a home meant. She had actually seen our advertisement in the Homes and Land publication where I state that I am an Accredited Staging Professional. So we talked a little about what staging actually means and what I think that it can do to help your house sell for more money and in a quicker amount of time. This is what I said-

1) Staging is not decorating but getting your home ready to sell to the general public, general being the key word here. You want your home to be as appealing to as many buyers as possible. Not limiting the buyer in any way as far as their preference. For example, the color of my basement is orange. I love orange and I love the color of our basement but when I painted it (or when my husband actually painted it) my son immediately said Grandma is not going to like this. Orange is not a color that is appealing to the general public.

2) When you list your home, you are moving right? So just start packing now. Pack up all the clutter and extra items that you do not use on a daily basis. If you have been to my home you know that I am not much into clutter (this time of year with all the Christmas decorations actually makes me a little crazy) but if I listed my home tomorrow 50% of all of our stuff would be in storage. Most photographs, many pieces of furniture and all of the items on the kitchen counter tops. You need to picture a model home and make your home look like that- they are all "staged".

3) The property must be "Q-tip" clean. When I took my staging accreditation class the instructor said clean your home (or hire someone to clean your home) like the President of the United States is coming tomorrow. Potential buyers do NOT want to see your dirt. Again, if you have seen my home you would say that my home is pretty clean. Especially if you are seeing it. I might clean a little too much when people are coming over but if I listed my home tomorrow I would hire a cleaning person, a detailed cleaning person (to clean things like the base boards, behind the appliances and all the light fixtures) and a company to clean the windows. My home would be clean!

If you want to find out more about what staging means (like my friend Lisa) then just call me and we can chat about it over a coffee...my treat.

Saturday

As a Realtor it is very normal to work weekend and evenings. I was just telling someone the other day that it actually works well with my family dynamic due to the fact that my husband is in the restaurant industry and what are really "normal" hours in that industry? Since his job has such sporadic hours he does not blink an eye when I work both Saturday and Sunday. This Saturday I met with a client at 8 and another at 2:30 but the best part of my day is what I did in between the two.

From 11-1 I went to Northview Christian Life for their Holiday Bazaar. Northview is a large Christian Church and every year for the past several they give the opportunity to small or home based businesses to show and sell their wares. I helped with a non for profit booth.

The booth was set up to raise funds and share awareness about Greyhound dog adoption through a newer organization to this area called Indy Prison Greyhounds. This program is dedicated to placing retired racing greyhounds in permanent loving homes, while providing the inmate handler with the opportunity of finding compassion, unconditional love and rehabilitation through the human-animal connection. In a typical racing greyhound adoption situation the racer is taken from the track and then hauled to it's geographical destination and then into foster care and then to his or her "forever home". In this situation the dog is taken off the haul and put into foster care at a Greater Indianapolis area prison.

My role at the booth was to introduce the retired racing greyhound (I took my two dogs with me for live examples) to the public via this event. I have done lots of what we call in the greyhound adoption arena "meet and greets" but this one was better because I felt like I was helping two good causes at once- the retired racing greyhound and the prisoner who will gain accountability, responsibility and compassion after sharing his or her life with these remarkable dogs.

If you would like any information about how to adopt your very own greyhound, please contact me and I would be glad to share Freddy and Brandy (my hounds) with you too.

If You Start Your Day off Right

Yesterday I went to a really cool seminar first thing in the morning. It started at 7:30am. I will tell you the best thing about going to a GOOD seminar first thing in the morning is that it really gets you off to having a great day. Yesterday was a great day! Let me tell you a little about the seminar-

It was called "The 7-Tips Workshop", Learn How to Build a Business that Runs with out You. This is a free seminar and I highly recommend you and any business owner you know attend this workshop.

Here are the basics of what we spoke about.

1) Set specific goals. C.J.,who taught the course, made reference to a study done on Harvard business school graduates. It stated that out of all the graduates only 16% of those students had written goals and out of those 16% of those students ONLY 3% of those kept their written goals with them and read them on a daily basis. Now here is the good part- The "16%" students made twice as much money as the other students and those "3% of the 16%" made 10 TIMES AS MUCH as all the other students. Amazing!

2) Develop great habits.

3) Know your KPI's (Key Performance Indicators)

4) Get Different- now this is the one I think I have the hardest time with. In Greater Indianapolis (the 9 county area) there are over 7500+ licensed REALTORS, now let's just say half of those are part time, selling under 4 transactions per year and the other 25% are not really good agents, that still leaves A LOT of REALTORS in this area! I fill strongly that we are good at follow up, communicating, collecting data, negotiating and many other things but so are many other agents. So this is what I need you to do (you that are reading this right now). I need YOU to email me with something that you think I do differently in my real estate business. Email me at ccinamon@curryteamindy.com when you think of something good.

5) Develop a great culture.

6) Build great systems!

7) Influence the behavior of others.

If you get the chance go to one of C.J.'s seminars it will make your day great too!