Pending Home Sales Jump in October

Washington, DC, November 30, 2011

Pending home sales rose strongly in October and remain above year-ago levels, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

We all have things to be thankful for; sometimes you have to push aside the daily demands to recognize them. I peraonally am thankfully to be here in Mt. Airy, what a great town filled with wonderful people! My new office already feels like home, that’s something to be thankful for!

Don’t go into the holiday season thinking its year end, go in thinking it’s the start of the New Year! Get pumped up for 2011; start planning for a sucessful year now. Be ready on January 3^rd to hit the ground running, guarantee it will pay off!

The holiday season is the perfect time of year to get in touch with your clients as well as friends and family. Drop them a line and stay in touch, these connections are the life blood of a sucessful career.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you have questions on a sucessful career in Real Estate.

On 11/11 Dr. Mary Miller of Fredericktown Labs brought us Pizza and information on ground water, wells and septic systems. I will be the first to admit I was not a fan of drinking my well water. I had the philosophy that just because it was clean today doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow. For yeas I’ve been buying distilled water by the gallons thinking this was my best alternative, maybe it’s not after all.

Dr. Miller has a 3D model of the ground water filtration that naturally occurs. (Looked like a giant ant farm!) The model was complete with houses, trees, 3 different types of wells, a septic system, cesspool and creek. She started up a water pump and injected “contaminants” into 3 different layers of earth below the typical Frederick/Carroll County neighborhoods. We watched as the contaminants worked they way through the soil(s) and bedrock. (Don’t think I would have liked to compete against her in a science fair project!).

After this demonstration we all had a much better understanding of how the systems work and my fear of well water is now (mostly) gone! This was one of the best Lunch & Learns I’ve ever seen. If you missed it, you really missed something interesting and educational!

Check out the pictures of the model in action on our facebook page Mt Airy Lnf .

Our Silver Team Conference on 11/1 was terrefic! The speaker Steve Harney was AMAZING! Did you ever feel like you just wanted to plug into someone and copy all their knowledge? That’s how I felt about Steve! Here is a simple tip he shared on how to get Sellers to be open minded on the offers they are being presented with in today’s market:

Run a list of the active lisitngs (not just the sold comps) in that neighborhood before going to present the offer. When your Seller hesitates or refeuses to negotiate; show them the active listings and say: “I’m sure if you don’t accept this offer (work with this offer) the Buyers Agent will be glad to present an offer to one of these listings instead. Now your neighbor’s house will be next months sold comp!”  You get the idea, temper it with your personal style and it may help!

Steve also shared a housing market graph on sold properties from 2000 – present.  You may be surprised to see we are on an overall slow and steady climb! Contray to popular belief that the “market is falling, the market is falling” when you look at the graph you see that 2005-2007 were anomialies. The graph shows a sharp spike in late 2004 and a rapid fall in 2007. Guess where the prices have fallen to… late 2004 pricing! Take the sharp spike out and we are on a steady track with an over all increase of 6.5% in 10 years!

If you want more information on Steve Harney, call me or visit his webiste.