Don’t tell anyone… actually, tell EVERYONE!

So…. I may be the only one having these results, but I thought I would share my philosophy anyway!

It seems to be an ongoing pattern with me, that I do more business when business supposedly slows down?!  I think so many people believe that if they hold out until spring, that’s the time to sell.  Well, I know there are a lot of homes selling in the spring, however, there are just as many homes that expire and do not sell.

It is my belief that because so many people think they should list and will most definitely sell in the spring, the market gets flooded with listings.  The weather gets nicer… more people who are really just bored and have nothing to do, go looking in open houses on the weekends with no intention to buy, and it gives the impression that the market is hoppin!

It is because of this, that I feel you have better chances when it’s fall/winter to sell your home.  The weather gets colder, but because of the transitional area that we are blessed with, local and global companies are constantly moving people in and out of the area with no regards to the weather.  What does this mean?  It means that when people pull their listings off of the market in the winter to hold out until spring, there are fewer homes available… and at the same time, the buyers that are looking during these months are the SERIOUS buyers that you have been waiting to view your home!!

What does this mean to you?  If you are wanting to sell your home, and it’s not on the market right now… GET ON THE PHONE AND CALL ME!!  My business is on fire right now, and the longer you wait, the more competition you will be up against.

So there you go… a little bit of personal experience from me matched with a shameless plug, but a plug that will bring you results!!

Have a great weekend!

Ryan

YIKES!! I’ve Fallen Victim To Some Of These…. Submitted Changes Today!!!

For Full Article, click anywhere on Article above…

Real Estate 2012: Many Positive Outlooks

There is a growing belief among many experts that 2012 will be the year housing turns the corner and starts heading in a more positive direction. Whenever we write a post like this, we unleash the hordes of critics who

via Real Estate 2012: Many Positive Outlooks.

Once In A Lifetime Opportunity… Or The Closest Thing To It!!!

I can definitely understand that not everybody who reads my postings are in the market to buy or sell a home.  But if you own a home, it may be the best time to refinance!  The Christmas/Holiday Season is over… the bills from the season are starting to hit… What a great time to save money monthly, take advantage of long-term interest savings, and/or save potentially tens if not hundreds of thousands in interest by reducing your term!!  You may have heard this all before, but with today’s market conditions and mortgage rates, this may be the perfect storm you have been waiting for!

For more information, click on the picture above and contact Greg Cotton from 1862 Mortgage!  Make sure you tell him that Ryan sent you!  This may put you in position to make this the best Valentine’s Day ever!

Still not convinced?  Below is your personal invitation to learn more about “How to Buy, Sell or Refinance Real Estate in Today’s New Mortgage Environment.”  Please let me know if you are attending…  Thank you ~ Ryan

A Little More About Home Searches…

A subject came up today while speaking with a buyer client of mine that I think may need addressing.  The majority of home buyers out there are using their phones and computers to do most of their home searches.  So, what sites do you trust?

If you are looking in or around the Quad City area, of course I recommend my website for all of your search needs.  You can reach my site by clicking the picture above, or by clicking here.  From my site you can search all listed properties as well as all homes listed on For Sale By Owner websites.

It’s important to know that a lot of search sites that you may find by google-ing your home search, will give you results that may contain extremely outdated material and information.  So, if you are going to search for a home, and you are not using my website, here are the websites in the Quad Cities that you can use to get accurate results:

www.ruhlhomes.com

www.realtor.com

www.melfosterco.com

www.remax.com

www.kw.com

www.qcfsbo.com

www.qchomes.com

www.qchomeshow.com

www.fsbofox.com

No matter what website you use to perform your next home search, contact me when you have questions or are ready to buy (or sell!).

I look forward to helping you in any way that I can.

Thank you!

Ryan

Home Search Made Easy!

Over the past several years and many, sometimes almost daily changes in technology, it has become increasingly important to make your website and subsequent content, “mobile friendly.”

As real estate professionals, a lot of us are bound by our own brokerages’ technology.  My own Ruhl website is not mobile friendly at all… If you look it up on your phone, you will more than likely get redirected to a generic home search page.  Actually, it is only the main home page that does that while trying to access it via smart phone.  The interior pages can be viewed fine, but because of the amount of content and size of graphics, it is very hard and inconvenient to read.

For myself, that’s why I find it extremely important to branch out into other avenues of communication in order to get accurate and timely information into the hands of the consumer.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, and several other social networks as well as blogging, makes access to information about you, your company, your business… and everything else, easily accessible, highly interactive, and overall fun to use.

It’s funny how quickly I got off track here!!  I posted a picture link for “Mobile Ruhl,” expecting to immediately talk about this amazing service… and “POOF!!”  My mind started running in another direction.  Back on track Ryan!

If you want to incorporate a wonderful “FREE*” service into your smart phone, click on the picture above and enter your cell number in the required field and hit “send.”  After doing this, you will receive a text message from Smarter Agent, giving you a link to download Mobile Ruhl onto your phone.  Just follow the few easy instructions on your screen and then get ready to have fun!

My clients love this app!  How many times have you driven around and found homes for sale that look like something you would like… or found a neighborhood you like and wonder if there are any homes for sale within?  Well, with Mobile Ruhl, one of the most used and fun functions is the 1st option when you open this app.  That function is “Find Closest Homes.”  The app uses GPS to locate you, then compiles all of the listings around you… starting with the closest to you.  The 1st display will be a map display.  If you prefer to look at your results in a list format with pictures, just hit your menu button, click on “view,” then click on “list.”

I’m probably confusing some of you while trying to explain something that you are not looking at.  My suggestion would be to download the app by clicking on the picture above, then simply play around with it.  Oh, and of course if you find something you like… CALL ME!!

Thanks,

Ryan

A Little Food For Thought For Home Sellers…

As a seller, I think that it is a good thing to know that in this current market… or ANY market for that matter, there is such a thing as your “chances of selling.”  Pretty scary, right?  Well, if you would like to move rather stay in your current home, things like absorption rates, sold data and active listings become a very important factor in determining where you need to be priced in order to sell and to sell fast!

No one person can control the market, but you can use the market data available to you and your Realtor to better your chances!

It is my experience that most people believe their home to be “the best” in condition in the immediate area around them and often times will look at what’s sold to come up with what they think their house should sell for.  You may possess a crystal ball like instinct that brings an accepted contract by doing this, but you would be in a minority of the population that can do this instinctively!

Without going into too much detail here, you must think of your home through buyer’s eyes!  Shop the competition around you to determine the condition of your home compared to all of the other options and use this incite to help guide you to price your home competitively in your market!  Sometimes the outcome isn’t exactly favorable… especially when you have 6+ months of inventory in your market and you need to price your home ahead of the competition in order for yours to be sold 1st!  Like everything else in life, you only get one chance to make a 1st impression… and when it comes to selling your home, PRICE is a very important thing to consider!

More to come…

Wow, it’s almost Friday?!  Where did the week go?

Best regards,

Ryan

What does it cost me to use a Realtor when BUYING a home???

Answer:  9 times out of 10, the services of a REALTOR when buying a home costs you, the buyer, $0.00!!!

There is a perceived misconception about what it cost to use a Realtor when buying a home.  Maybe you already know how agency and commissions work… or maybe you are like the rest of the world and don’t have too much of a clue.

Realtors are independent contractors, business for self, ok and sometimes hold a grand position on the list of trusted professionals (under attorneys!).  We are not employees of a company, but we do have to pay to use another’s services, brokerage, name, etc…

Bottom line is, we only get paid if we sell homes.  The great thing is, well for buyers… is that the seller is usually the one responsible for paying the commission for both the buyer and the seller’s agents.  I say usually, because there are some circumstances when purchasing a FSBO with the use of an agent, where the FSBO seller may refuse to pay a commission or only pay a certain percentage of the buyers’ agent commission.

When sellers use a Realtor to list their home, there is a stated commission to be paid for the completion of sale written in the Listing Agreement.  From that commission, a certain percentage gets paid to the listing agent and a certain percentage gets paid to the selling agent (or buyers’ agent).  Of course from there, those amounts again get split between each agent and their respected broker.  I’m sure if you look at the commission percentage as a whole, the perception is that as Realtors, we make bank!  But in reality, once all the splits are made, taxes paid, and marketing expenses, etc. are paid, most Realtors have a low $/hr working wage.  However, there are some cases where the sale amount is high or we work as a disclosed dual agent, and the amount we receive in pay is great!  I was told by a great agent that this concept is best stated as such: “We are overpaid for the times that we are underpaid.”  I think that is a fair and fitting statement!

So, bottom line and the point I was trying to make in this rant is that in most cases, it won’t cost you anything to have a Realtor represent you as your own personal buyers’ agent!!  So remember that, next time you drive by a sign and decide to call the listing agent of that home… you know, the one who is representing the seller?!

More to come…

Happy Humpday,

Ryan

Iowa Nice… A little bit about our GREAT state!!

Just in case you were not one of the 280k+ viewers of this awesome video in the last couple of days….

Here ya go!  Warning: strong language…. but not too strong!

Why all of the negativity?!?

I guess I never really put much thought into why people list “for sale by owner” (FSBO) or why we should or shouldn’t show FSBO’s or why we should or shouldn’t strike fear into people who list FSBO or want to buy FSBO?!?  Personally, I still don’t put much thought into it… and don’t really care if you list or buy FSBO.  The fact of the matter is that FSBO’s aren’t going anywhere and you should embrace it and use them to your advantage!

I for one have always shown FSBO’s along with MLS properties… and have ALWAYS included links to all FSBO websites so that my clients get a clear view of all properties in the marketplace… not just listed properties.  I mean, how mad would you be if you bought a listed property, then a week after you move in, you get invited to a neighbors’ house warming party that bought the FSBO down the block… you show up and it’s a 96% match to what you were looking for when you bought the house that was a 90% match to your needs!?!  Oh and your agent neglected to show you that property.  And the kicker… what if your neighbor bought the house for $10k less than what you bought yours?!?  Not saying that this would always or ever be the case… just a hypothetical situation.

When it comes to the business of selling homes, who’s to say that you can’t “go it alone?”  Sometimes you just have too!

Instead of focusing on what others can and can’t do… I choose to focus on the business that I do extraordinarily well… SELLING HOMES!!

Like I said before… I really could care less how you would like to sell your home.  What happened to me today, was that I looked up a friends property today on www.QCFSBO.com and happened to click on this: http://www.qcfsbo.com/articlenet/statusquo.html

I don’t know why, but it got me curious… so I searched Ruhl’s website along with Mel Foster’s and Keller Williams’ sites to see what if anything negative had been printed about FSBO’s in their descriptions on why use a REALTOR.  Low and behold, I couldn’t find anything?!  In fact here are their links:

http://www.ruhlhomes.com/seller-services-guarantee.aspx

http://melfosterco.com/selling-realtor.html

http://www.kw.com/kw/TheDifference.html

We are all “independent contractors” when it comes to selling your home.  It is my wish to you that when it comes time to sell yours, you pick the route that best suites your needs and if by chance a REALTOR makes more sense to you… I hope that you pick the one that has the experience, the know how and a tech savvy-ness about him (or her) to put you in the best competitive advantage to sell your home.

I love my job!!

Happy Tuesday to you all,

Ryan