What Are Your Non-Negotiables in a Home?

As you go through the home buying process, it's important to determine your housing needs. This goes far beyond the number of bedrooms and bathrooms that you want.

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.

When you're buying a home, determining your housing needs is incredibly important. The key is to plan ahead.

If you're moving from a smaller property into a larger one, you'll want to plan for the next three to five years. You should have a list of absolutely non-negotiable things like which area you're going to be in, which school district, as well as bedroom and bathroom counts, but it's also important to be realistic about your budget and needs so that you can find the best house to fill them.

You should have a list of non-negotiables.

While you're considering which home to buy, you also need to consider location and the amenities you need to be nearby. For example, if you're commuting a lot, you may want proximity to I-25 so you can get north and south easily. If you're at one of our many military installations, it might also be important to be close to the Powers Corridor.

Location is important, but you also have to consider your distance to work. How long do you want to commute every day? How far away do the kids have to go to get to school? A lot of factors can determine where your new home will be, and a real estate professional can help you make the best decision to find the right home for you and your family.

If you have any questions for me about determining your home needs, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help!

How Accurate Are Zestimates?

Are Zestimates accurate? Sellers like to think that they should price their homes according to this number, but these valuations are usually not exact.

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.

I’m often asked whether Zillow’s Zestimates are an accurate way to determine the value of your home. Here’s the thing: Zestimates are a software that takes square footage and recent comparable sales into account in order to arrive at a value. As a former appraiser, I’m here to tell you that pricing your home just isn’t that simple.

Zillow’s Zestimate does not factor in specific features of your home, your home’s view, or any other renovations you may have made to the home to improve its value.

Zestimates are not the final word on your home’s value.

The best way to determine your home’s value is to talk to a licensed professional agent to give you a free equity evaluation. Zillow is a great tool to get a base price on your home to begin with, but is not the end of the conversation. An experienced agent will do the research, find comparable sales, physically assess the property, and then analyze the data in order to properly price your home in today’s rapidly changing market. There is no way for Zillow to account for all of the factors that give a property its value.

If you have any other questions about pricing your home properly for the market or would like a free equity evaluation, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!

Why Our Open Houses Are so Effective

With our open houses, we don't just put out a few signs and open the property to see for a couple hours. Our extensive system actually starts the night before and includes online promotion.

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.

We certainly recommend that you do an open house on your property when selling.

My open house system is a little bit different than the standard open house, though. The standard open house is usually a one or two-hour event with a directional sign at a major intersection. My open houses start the Friday evening before the open house.

We put out more than 100 directional signs all around the neighborhood directing traffic to your home.

From there, we really hit the Facebook marketing hard, broadcasting that we'll have the house open both Saturday and Sunday. This allows for a 16-hour open house and allows us to maximize foot traffic. At our best attempts, we’ll see 30 to 40 buyers come through your property during the open house.

Preparing for the open house is going to be important when there is that many people. We want to make sure all your valuables are locked up and out of sight since we're going to have a lot of strangers coming through your property in a short period of time. We work with you to prepare the open house and get your home in showable condition, but most importantly, secure your valuables to avoid any problems.

Our open houses system is guaranteed to get results.

The best thing you can do for the open house process is to get yourself out of the property. Since our open houses are longer than normal, you want to have your kids and pets at a different location for up to two days while we perform the open house. The great news is that the open house has been so effective for us that we can get an offer from our first day. This helps you get the most amount of money in the least amount of time by getting foot traffic in an open house system that's guaranteed to get results.

If you have any questions about our open house system or any questions about the Colorado Springs real estate market in general, give me a call or send me an email. Let's talk soon!