The market is hot, the weather is hot….. that’s all for today

Buchanan model Wellington Ridge

This Saturday and Sunday 1-4pm at Wellington Ridge in Franklin Twp (Hunterdon County)

Grand opening of Brinkerhoff’s newest model in Majestic Wellington Ridge is THE BUCHANAN. Situated on a beautiful 7+ acre lot this custom masterpiece is waiting for your finishing touches. This Grand home can be yours in 90 days and there is still time to choose your kitchen, flooring and accents that will truly make it YOURS!! Convenient to everything just minutes from Flemington or Clinton.

Directions:

From Flemington- Rte 31 to Sandhill (Cherryville Rd) turn left on West Sidney, Wellington Ridge is 1/2 mile on the right.

From Clinton- Rte 78 to south on 513, left onto Sidney Rd, right onto West Sidney Rd, Wellington Ridge is 1/2 mile on your right.

With market starting to heat up, interest rates still at rock bottom prices…opportunity is knocking here in Central New Jersey!

The national housing market is heating up, with pending home sales reached their highest level in January in nearly two years, according to NAR’s report this week, rounding out a handful of positive news for housing markets in the last week or two.

NAR’s pending home sales index was up 2% to 97 in January from 95 in December, and is 8% higher than January 2011. The January index is the highest since April 2010, when it reached 111.3 as buyers were in a mad dash to take advantage of the home buyer tax credit.

Look what else is positive……

Improving job market: In January, unemployment hit its lowest level in three years, continuing a five-month streak of improvement. Without jobs, people don’t buy or move so this obviously is a good thing.

Home builders are gaining confidence: Home builder sentiment, tracked by the National Association of Home Builders, in February reached its highest level in nearly five years. This basically means that home builders are more confident that market conditions are improving to the point that new home sales will be positively impacted.

Housing stocks are up: The stock market is a far-from-perfect indicator, but it at least gives a reading of how investors are feeling. The nation’s home builder companies have seen share prices increase since October.

Overall, 2012 is looking to be a great year for housing compared to the last five or six. The presidential election likely will also ward off any major controversial policies that could negatively impact the market. Locally we are seeing some dramatic movement in the market. 1st time home buyers are scooping up some really good deals, move up buyers are finding that the deals added to the interest rate are a great one two punch. With all this in mind, I think we’re looking at a bigger than anticipated year here in Central New Jersey, and YES, now is the time to buy. There has not been such a great opportunity in a LONG time, hell Warren Buffet says its a great time to buy!!  Do not be looking back 2 or 3 years from now saying I should have bought…you were warned!!!

As anyone who follows this blog knows  I normally just talk about real estate, today will be different. Yesterday I was coming home from Delaware where I just had been at a 2 day intensive seminar on teaching a new course/certificate called Military Residential Specialist. On the drive home I dropped off a friend at the Philly airport and since I was that close I decided to get some cheese steaks. The 1st place Tony Ls there was a pretty long line so I decided to venture deeper into the neighborhoods of Philly and hit either Pat’s or Gino’s…. The lines there where even longer, seems that because it was a nice Saturday afternoon everyone was out and obviously hungry. I called Karen my wife to let her know my quest and that I would be going to find steaks in some of the other great places in town. 2 hours into the quest I finally gave up, parking was impossible I did finally find one space near Jake’e but when exiting my car I was informed by a police officer that the space was handicapped reserved . So now needing a bathroom and a beer I finally parked my car on the way out of town went into a bar for both of my needs and called my wife again. She could not believe I had been at this for over 2 hours, I told her I was about to get back in the car and I was finally on my way (hour  home.

When I arrived home I walked in and saw the new family dog playing with a stuffed bee, my wife had found specifically a bee because she knew that I would love it due to it being a huge joke from one of my favorite movies” best in show”! (one crown). After laughing at the dog/bee joke I noticed a beautiful smell in the kitchen…… Karen had gone shopping and was making CHEESE STEAKS!!!!! (crown 2) I was sooooo happy and the cheese steaks were soooooo good. After consuming the perfect sandwich I was sitting in the living room almost asleep (long 3 days) and as a semi joke I asked, any chance you made any chocolate chip cookies (she knows how much I love them)…. you guessed it (crown 3) she said they were in the oven and would be ready in 5 min….

In life it really is the small things and since last Friday was random act of kindness day I need the world to know that I am a VERY LUCKY man to have a beautiful triple crown winner like Karen.

Happy Husband

John Bendall

The feeling that foreclosure is looming over you, clouds everything in your life. About 25 percent of homeowners in this country have found themselves facing a foreclosure as an alternative to unmanageable mortgage debt.

An estimated one fourth of the all U.S. homeowners are upside down on their mortgage – meaning they owe more on their home than they could sell it for in today’s market. Often times, the best solution for a homeowner in this type of situation is what we call a short sale. As short sale is when a bank agrees to accept less than what is currently owed on the mortgage.

I am distinctly qualifed to help navigage the entire landscape of foreclosure-avoidance solutions. If you are ready for a fresh start and determined to avoid scams, I invite you to e-mail me at John@bendallgroup.com and we can help you like the many we have help over the last 5 years.

Don’t wait – now is the time to point your future towards blue skies!

John Bendall

Broker/Owner

RE/MAX Classic Group

908-231-0700

1. House hunting too long. As many as 60 percent of the homes for sale in some markets are short sales. Many other listings are bank-owned (also known as real estate owned or REO) properties, and those homes tend toward two extremes: terrible condition, or so nice at such a low price they receive multiple offers.

Even the nicer, nondistressed homes on the market can end up in and out of contract over and over again due to appraisal or other lending-related issues.

As a result, it is not at all bizarre to hear homebuyers today say they’ve been house hunting for a year, 18 months, even two or three years. When you house hunt that long, you become susceptible to house hunt fatigue, which causes irrationally extreme overbidding out of sheer exhaustion.

Alternatively, it can cause you to settle for whatever house you can get, even if it doesn’t actually meet your needs — then spend the next 10 years obsessively spending to upgrade, improve, repair and furnish the place to try to make it more like the home you actually wanted.

Both of these outcomes negate and deactivate the bargain you stood to score.

To avoid house hunting too long, it’s uber-important to get and stay clear on the differences between what you want and what you need, and to work with a local real estate professional you trust.

Look to your agent to get and keep your expectations centered in reality, so you can make more strategic decisions throughout your entire house hunt, like house hunting in a price range where you’re likely to both find homes that will work for your life and be successful in your efforts to obtain one.

2. Making lowball offers way too low. Overbidding seems like an obvious way to cancel out the bargain potential of your deal. But making excessively low offers — offers sellers couldn’t afford to take if they wanted to — can have the very same result.

Buyers who think they can operate strictly on the basis of buyer’s market dynamics — without realizing that most sellers will need to make enough to pay off their mortgage or at least receive the fair market value for their home — are cutting off their own noses to spite their faces, all in the name of trying to score an amazing deal.

Note to “lowballers”: If you don’t actually secure the home, the superlow price you offered is no deal at all.

3. Freak-outs, stress, drama and mayhem. Once was, it was mostly the buyers uneducated about the homebuying process who tended to freak out and stress the most, especially at the top of the market. These were the folks who found themselves defeated at every turn by buyers who knew what they were up against and were prepared to make their best offer on their first offer.

Fast forward, and now the norm is for buyers to spend much more time reading up on what to expect, but the inundation of information can create brand new mindset management challenges.

Almost every buyer is stressed about whether they can qualify for a loan, and about buying into a down market. Some buyers try to apply national headlines about home prices being depressed to the superlocal dynamics of their neighborhood market.

This is unwise if you happen to be, for example, trying to buy a home in the boomtown real estate markets of Silicon Valley. Others go the opposite direction and deny that the basic truths about, say, buying a short-sale listing will actually apply to them (attention homebuyers: buying a short sale usually takes a long, long time).

The emotional freak-outs that result from having your expectations shattered, sometimes brutally, in the course of buying a home often lead to panic-based and fear-based decisions, which can be costly in the short and long term. Additionally, the stress itself can take a toll on your ability to be productive at work, and can even impair your relationship with your mate, neither of which are worth any deal you think you stand to strike.

Again, managing your expectations by working with a trusted broker or agent you feel comfortable relying on to understand the market in your neck of the woods and the type of transaction you want to pull off is essential to downgrading the role emotion plays in your real estate decision-making.

John Bendall

Broker/Owner

RE/MAX Classic Group

908-231-0700

www.centralnewjerseyhomes.com

Inman News, the leader in real estate and technology news, has selected RE/MAX founder Dave Liniger as the People’s Choice Most Influential Real Estate Leader in 2011.

Liniger, 66, who co-founded RE/MAX with wife Gail in 1973, serves as chairman of the board for the global franchisor. Liniger oversaw the expansion of RE/MAX global franchise operations to eight additional countries in 2011 – there is now a brand presence in nearly every country in Central America and South America, and the franchisor has almost 90,000 affiliated real estate sales professionals in more than 80 countries.

“Our knowledgeable Inman News readers cast their votes for a true visionary of our industry,” says Tim G. Smith, CEO of Inman News. “We are honored to include Dave Liniger among our list of influential past winners.”

Liniger was also selected to the annual Inman 100 list of Most Influential Real Estate Leaders for 2011 — that list is separate and distinct from the individual People’s Choice recognition, and is based on a reader nomination process and an in-house review and selection process by Inman News.

When the real estate bubble burst, neither lenders nor legislators had any idea of what the fallout was going to be.

The unfortunate truth is that millions of Americans lost their homes and millions more are facing foreclosure. There are options to keep this from happening, and I am well versed on the range of alternatives available.

As a Realtor who has been licenced since 1986, sold over 1300 homes and a distressed property expert I have been helping homeowners who are feeling the stress of an unaffordable mortgage. If you or anyone you care about is wondering where to turn and call me and my team. We have helped a ton of families through these tough times.

It is my mission to help homeowners facing tough circumstances, and I would truly appreciate your taking the time to refer any homeowners you know who could benefit from my help. I’m sure that they would appreciate it, too. The sooner they contact me, the more time we’ll have to develop a strategy to get them back on track to financial stability.

Call the office at 908-895-1898

Recent studies show us that people on the Internet do not read. According to social media website Mashable, users read 20 percent of a webpage before moving on. “We spend 15-20 seconds on a webpage before we move on. We are a global planet of fruit flies.”

There are plenty of buyers and sellers online looking for a reliable realtor to help them sell their home in a turbulent market or find that perfect house in an uncertain economy. How do we distinguish ourselves from the thousands of real estate professionals with an online presence?

The answer is social media. PR professional Steve Rubel suggests being “a source of knowledge” through social media. If your friends, followers, and readers know that you’re in-tune with the industry, then they’re more likely to turn to you when they need real estate advice. If your ‘fans’ see that you’re constantly updating your online presence with more information and content, they’ll be more likely to think of you when they decide to invest in a property. 

RE/MAX of New Jersey Associates get the chance to listen to social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk guide them through the steps to establishing an online presence and reaching a new audience. The Tech Rally on September 15th is exclusive to the RE/MAX of NJ Associates and features Vaynerchuk, real estate coach Tom Ferry and an afternoon session with Google. More information on this event is available at www.remax-nj.net/techrally. 

As of 2010, 90 percent of buyers and sellers were online while more are following in the same footsteps. We can’t afford not to be there for them.