South Florida Real Estate Blog by Alfredo Ruiz, Realtor

Delray Beach Listings Might Reflect a New Phenomenon

Overall, the U.S. residential market has behaved itself predictably for a couple of years. As a result, there’s been little chance for commentators to point out any new phenomena that might affect our own Delray Beach listings. In general, price growth has remained moderate while the volume of homes changing hands has been relatively quiet.

That might be headed for a change if CNBC’s Diana Oleck is right. In a brief report last week, she made the case for a new trend that could have an effect on the home-selling picture—including the number of our own Delray Beach listings.

The trend is an uptick in one choice seniors are making—in this case, the tendency of retirees to stay put in their current home. “Why seniors ‘aging in place’ is affecting home sales” was the report’s headline. It pointed to an emerging housing trend which has older Americans eschewing the urge to downsize or move to retirement communities, instead choosing to stick it out in their current homes.

That’s a trend that “would remove 1,600,000 homes from the housing market” according to government-sponsored Freddie Mac. That would equal the total number of housing units constructed yearly. If that estimate proves to be valid, it could indeed affect the volume of new Delray Beach listings we might expect to see in coming years.

The reasons retirement-aged homeowners might choose not to move are the traditional ones: they love their home, which is probably their chief investment—and they prefer to remain in the community they know and love....

Have Boca Raton Households Ditched Theaters for Media Rooms?

 

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal’s “Homes” section led with a splashy layout about media rooms. Boca Raton real estate veterans would probably nod at the article’s historical account that “there was a time” when high-end homes demonstrated their media bona fides through well-appointed home theaters. Many did tend to be “found in the basement,” did often have fabric walls for soundproofing, and sometimes added a Godfather or Batman poster to burnish the experience. Some Boca Raton households even included popcorn machines.

The balance of the piece (“The New Mansion Must: A Media Room”) dealt with today’s version of the home theater: “the media room.” Instead of the front-facing padded theater seats, today’s examples more often feature “cozy couches, table and chairs” arranged to facilitate TV and movie watching. The Journal contrasted yesterday’s setup—which frequently had home theatergoers immersed in a dark room on a level away from the rest of the household—with today’s more convenient version, situated at the center of home life.

The shift has been made possible by more compact technology. Instead of having to rely on a big screen projector or one of the gargantuan rear-projection TVs, we have our ubiquitous flat-screen TVs. If you’ve seen any of the newer ones, the image quality can be breath-taking. Almost “3-D”-looking. And somehow the engineers have devised ways to manufacture screens that show in regular room light. In fact, the article includes a shot of a flat-screen that’s clearly...

Do Remodels Make Sense when Selling Your Boynton Beach Home?

 

The numbers are in!

If you are among the local homeowners counting the days until Boynton Beach’s hot selling season begins, unless your house is already in perfect showing shape, you might be pondering which—if any—possible remodeling projects would be wise to take on before you list.

The answers aren’t simple. The first consideration is the calculation for whether your property is likely to attract top dollar in its as-is condition. If not, you need a prospect’s-eye take on which areas are most likely to detract from the apparent overall value of the property. Then comes another factor: identifying which of those projects will go furthest in recapturing their cost.

Even if leaving everything as-is doesn’t inspire much confidence, it might be tempting to “test the market” just to see what happens. Unfortunately, the most common result is that offers (if any) will be lowered to reflect the cost you saved…less a premium, of course. Experienced bargain hunters look to be compensated for the value they’ll have to add.

A number of remodeling associations attempt to alleviate at least some of that guesswork via annual assessments. These survey current national data to compare average costs for remodeling projects with the average value they return at sale. These figures are difficult to pin down with precision, but the folks at remodeling.hw.net take on the challenge annually. As noted above, the numbers are in!  

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Back-Burner House Hunting: a Luxury for Delray Beach Buyers

If you’re pretty sure you will be in the hunt for a new Delray Beach house sooner or later—but have the luxury of being able to wait until you come up with THE perfect one—it’s all too easy to put off doing anything about it until some event or other forces the issue. Experience teaches that using the time at hand to prepare in advance can make the difference between actually landing that dream Delray Beach house and the alternative: just settling.

In case you fit into that category, there are some proven tactics you can adopt to make the most of your current time advantage. You might call these tips for “back-burner house hunting.” Here are four good ones:

  1. Assess your clout. Serious house hunters recognize the advantage of getting pre-approved for a mortgage before they start shopping in earnest. That can be put off until later (and it does involve some financial reporting that carries an expiration date). But the “back-burner” house hunter can usefully assess their readiness from the lenders’ point of view. It’s useful to clear up any credit misreporting, pay down any excessive credit card balance, etc.
  2. Keep a running list of ‘must-haves.’ Make a list of baseline requirements for your ideal Delray Beach house—and revisit it from time to time. Noting items that are added (or deleted) from the list will make it more meaningful—and clarify the difference between absolute gotta-haves and like-to haves!
  3. Drive around—with a purpose. Get to know the neighborhoods and their relative plusses...

Buying Your Boca Raton Home without Credit Confusion

“It can be kind of confusing.” - Tom Quinn, V.P Business Development for myFICO in “The Scores That Matter in Mortgage Lending.

Unless you’re a buyer who falls into the all-cash category, once you begin to zero in on buying your next Boca Raton home, you will already have been paying close attention to your bill-paying reputation. You will probably have requested one or more of the free credit score reports the reporting agencies furnish free of charge once a year.

Mortgage lenders use Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax in differing ways, and since each follows its own system to rate your creditworthiness, their scores differ. And it’s more complicated than that because the agencies offers lenders different scores depending on the type of loan being considered.

In fact, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau once ordered TransUnion and Equifax to pay millions of dollars in fines “for deceiving consumers about the usefulness and actual cost of credit scores they sold to consumers.” So Equifax’s Score 5 differs from its Score 8—and Experian’s Score 2 differs from TransUnion’s Score 4…and so on. FICO will sell consumers access to “28 of the most widely used” score versions—but when you try to find out which scores any given lender is currently using, you’re unlikely to come up with a useful answer.

That means that the successful way to navigate the system is common sense-based. As FICO acknowledges, although evolving credit models “keep pace with changing...