Are you thinking about buying a home in today’s real estate market? There are some very important things you should know before attempting to find your dream home. Our real estate expert, Monte Mohr, is joining us today to share some secrets for home buying success. Monte, great to have you.

Great to be here, Kacy.

It is a crazy market out there.

It is. It is hot out there.

We’ve got a great question from PJ out in Nolensville, we’re going to start with. He writes in and says:

We’ve been trying to buy a new home the past few months, and it seemed like every time we find one that we really like, it’s already sold. Can you give us any tips to help us stay ahead of the crowd and find our dream home before everybody else does.

It’s frustrating, and a lot of people are facing this right now.

That’s a great question. Kacy, what we see over and over again is the market is hot, you can’t take the… two years ago, it was a buyer’s market… you could take your time, look at a house, next weekend look at it again, and the weekend after that look at it again… today you’ve got to change your mindset; it’s not a buyer’s market, it’s a seller’s market. Things are going quickly. If you see a home that’s priced right that you like a lot, then don’t wait around. You’ve got to jump quickly, or it won’t be there tomorrow, most likely.

Be ready to take action now.

We’re going to go over 3 tips to help us understand all this.

1. Understand that the market has changed.

2. Automatic Notification System. Call us today. It’s free.
There’s nothing more frustrating than walking into that home that you love so much, only to find out it sold a couple days ago. We have a great system, and other professionals have it around town, as well. It doesn’t cost you anything. There’s no commitment. Sign up for our automatic notification system. As soon as a home hits the market, it will email you. Then, be on the next step. Be on top of your emails. If you see the right home come on the market, don’t wait until tomorrow. I can’t tell you how many times I get phone calls from people that are in love with a home that I have listed, and it sold last week, because they don’t have this type of system working for them.

3. Get a preapproval letter from a local lender
So often, we’re looking at multiple offers on properties. As an experienced agent, if I see three offers on the table, and this just happened a few days ago. One of the offers had an approval letter from a lender in Florida, one of them had an approval from an online lender, and one of them had an approval from a lender that I trusted that was here locally with local accountability. Believe it or not, it’s not just about getting an approval letter, it’s about getting an approval letter from someone local that has local accountability, so you can trust their word. A lot of people go online because they might be able to save a little bit of money. Get a local lender. Don’t go online to get your financing. It’s not worth it. Anything you save, you will more than earn with the frustration and aggravation.

Thanks, Monte, for all your tips today.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393.

Discover Your WE SELL HOMES FOR FREE Savings When You (Click Here)

“We just closed on our home, and Monte and his We Sell Homes 4 Free program saved us over $10,000.

Thank you Monte.”

Are you thinking about buying or selling a home, but you don’t want to make any mistakes in the process? Our real estate professional, Monte Mohr, recently stopped by with some expert home buying and selling tips.

Monte, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for the opportunity, Kacy.

Alright, last time you were here, we were talking about some great tips on what you need to do to prepare your home to put it on the market. We have someone who’s used those tips, but they have one more question. Kelly from Franklin asks:

We’ve been preparing our home to sell and have been doing everything we’ve heard you mention including de-cluttering, lightening, brightening, changed some paint colors, we hired a stager, and had a landscaper freshen up the mulch and landscaping. Is there anything else you’d recommend to ensure we get top dollar for our home?

I love this. They’re doing what I’ve suggested they do. I think what I would do is build on that whole first impression thing. Kacy, I will never forget a few years ago, I was showing a property to this young couple that had just gotten engaged – they were madly in love – and every time we got to the master bedroom, they’d squeeze, they would hold hands, they would laugh, look at me, look at the bed, laugh, hug each other. One night, when I was working with these guys, I listed this home and said this is perfect for someone I’m working with, but this is what I want you to do… I want you to have a fire in the fireplace (because it was winter), I want you to have something smelling really good in the house (maybe in the oven), I want you to have some romantic music on, and I want you to have candles burning in the master suite. So, the next night, we walk in and the music is playing, the fireplace is going, it smells great, and by the time we walked into the master bedroom, they looked at the bed, they looked at me, they looked at each other, they giggled and hugged. They said in unison, Monte, we want to buy this home.

Wow. That’s amazing.

So, it truly works to get all the senses working together. Remember, we have that one chance to make that first impression, and we want to get people emotionally attached to the home. So, always remember that.

And, that’s exactly what happened. When they walked in, they were like SOLD!

You’re helping people save a lot of money. We’ve got a happy customer to tell you about. This one comes from BJ and Kara in Nolensville.

We did everything Monte told us to do, and our home brought top dollar. We saved over $7,000 with Monte’s We Sell Homes 4 Free Program.

So, you’re saving a lot of people a lot of money.

We are. The program works, Kacy, it truly does. BJ and Kara are an awesome couple. They’re in their dream home now, because they followed the instructions and did what I said to do to sell their home.

Well, thanks for helping out so many people. Good to have you hear.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393.

“So, I’ve been in this business for about 13 years met Monte way back when. There’s the times that you really need a good realtor, not the times when everything’s going smoothly, but when everything’s not going smoothly. And, this is probably one of the hardest transactions I’ve ever been involved with, even in my 13 years in the business. But, because of Monte and his team, they were able to work everything out and make it go a lot smoother than it could have been, and it probably would have fell through, if it weren’t for Monte. On top of that, I saved over $11,000 using these guys. Absolutely the best experience. If you have a home to sell, or if you’re looking to buy a home, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you need to hire Monte. He’ll do a fantastic job for you.”

Are you thinking about putting your home on the market this year, and you’re not sure what to focus on when getting ready to sell? Well, our real estate expert, Monte Mohr, is joining us today with the top four things to do before selling, to get the most money for your home.

Monte, welcome back to the show.

Great to be here, Kacy.

Ya know, it’s hot right now. It’s the perfect time to sell. This question we have today is right on topic. This comes from Philip and Herman.

We want to put our home on the market soon, and we’re wondering what we should focus on when getting ready to sell. We have a limited budget, but like everybody else, we want to maximize our home’s potential value. Can you tell us what would give us the best return on investment of effort?

Great question, and we hear that a lot this time of year. Not long ago, a thousand real estate professionals were interviewed and asked this question:

What’s the top 4 things that the consumer can do to get the best bang for their buck that doesn’t cost more than $1,000?

1.) Cleaning and De-Cluttering: You can’t be the value of that. You spend a few hundred dollars, and it makes thousands of dollars worth of difference in what your home will sell for. Remember, there’s a reason why model homes look the way they do. It sends a message, if you buy this home, you’ll live like that.

2.) Lightening and Brightening: Turn on the lights. Open the blinds. If you have a dark room, paint it a lighter color. It makes the room seem larger. It can save you around $1,500; it’s incredible, the different it will make.

3.) Home Staging: When we furnish our homes, we’re thinking about the comfortable chair in front of the TV. A professional stager coming in for a few hundred dollars can literally rearrange the same furniture and make it look far more inviting. So, it’s about presentation, not about comfort. Remember, living in your home and having your home on the market are two different worlds.

4.) Landscaping: This is a huge factor. For a few hundred dollars, the value of pulling up to that house… remember, when someone pulls up to you’re home, their making a judgment based on the outside of what’s going on the inside. I’ve had people refuse to get out of their car and not look at the home because they didn’t like the looks of the outside of the property.

Great tips!

Our happy customers of the week are Kristy and Thomas from Hendersonville.

We have used Monte and his team twice now and have saved a total of $17,000 while getting excellent service.

And, this is just one of many reviews you get like this.

Thanks, Kacy. I love Kristy and Thomas because they’ve used my service twice, they’re Channel 4 viewers and wanted to take advantage of this. They knew they were going to buy and sell a few times in the next few years, and they’ve saved thousands of dollars in the process.

Monte, thanks so much for being here.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393.

Hi. This is Steve and Mary, and we’ve been with Monte… this is our fourth transaction… and we stick with Monte because they’re great with detail, he gets us the best prices, and he does a complete job – he and his staff – and you won’t go wrong when you go with The Mohr Group. Thank you.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393.

Are you thinking about buying or selling a home, but you don’t want to make any mistakes in the process? Well, a real estate professional recently stopped by with some expert home buying and selling tips.

Monte, great to have you back.

Thank you, Kacy.

We’re going to start with a question today that’s really relevant today. This comes in from Jeff P. out in Franklin.

Mr. Mohr, my understanding is that the market is totally different than it was the last time we tried to sell our home. Though my wife doesn’t want to, I’m considering trying to sell it myself without the help of a realtor. I’m sure you would tell us not to, but seriously…

If homes are selling quickly, why in the world would we pay a third party to do something I feel like we can do ourselves?

A lot of people are asking that question.

That’s a great question. And, I would tell Jeff, you’re probably right. You probably could sell your home on your own in certain pockets. Not everything in Middle Tennessee is hot, but there are certain pockets that are crazy. But, the selling part is only a small portion of it in today’s world. The sad part here is, Jeff doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. You wouldn’t pick up How to Climb Mountains for Dummies and go climb Mount Everest, and you wouldn’t pick up How to do Heart Surgery for Dummies and work on yourself. You wouldn’t do that.

Selling a home is a big deal.

There are over 100 situations that could happen that could cause the deal to fall apart. Appraisals are coming in low left and right, right now. How do you argue with an appraiser? If you’ve never been there before, it’s really tough. Selling the home is a small portion of it, but getting it to the closing table, that’s the hard part. Financing is totally different. What are you going to do with those home inspection results? What are you going to do with the termite results? The radon? There are so many moving parts to a transaction. That’s why I have four full-time administrative people, making sure that ever I is dotted and every T is crossed. They make sure all of the details get there, so we can get to the finish line. That’s the hard part.

A lot of people don’t know there’s a lot more to it than just selling the house.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

You’re helping so many people out. This is a happy customer from Bellevue, Ed and Hilda.

Monte sold our home after another agent failed to and saved us almost $9,000 in the process, by doing it for free.

They’ve got to be thrilled.

These are Channel 4 viewers. I love Ed and Hilda. They’re just an awesome, awesome couple. They saw me on Channel 4. They’re home had been on the market six months and hadn’t sold. They dropped the price, the portion that I reduced on the commission, and it sold for full price.

Wow. That’s great. Monte, thanks for being here.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393.

Are you thinking about buying or selling a home, but you don’t want to make any mistakes in the process? Well, our real estate professional, Monte Mohr, is joining us today with some excellent home buying and selling tips. Monte, great to have you here.

Great to be here.

Now, we’re going to start with our first question, and this is something that you get asked quite often, so this is Bethany from Franklin. She writes in and says:

We recently heard about your offer to sell our home for free, if we will buy a home with your help in Middle Tennessee. Now, my father-in-law says your offer is too good to be legitimate. Nothing is free. So, where’s the catch?

And that’s what you get all the time is, where’s the catch?

I do. Where’s the catch? And, what I’d say to Bethany’s father is in most situations, that’s absolutely true. Ya know, you get what you pay for. But, in this case, we break that rule totally. What happened, Kacy, is about five years ago, when the market was so bad, I thought what could I do to help people sell their homes at the most difficult times ever in our country’s history, and I thought whatever if I could help them lower the cost? Lower the cost would help them lower the price, and they could then compete with the distressed sales, the bank owned properties. So, for the last five years, that’s what we’ve been doing. Those individuals wanting to buy a home, we wave the typically charged real estate commission, saving them thousands. So far, to date, it’s no longer an experiment, as a matter of a fact, we’ve sold 110 homes here in Middle Tennessee, saving Middle Tennessee home owners over $800,000 of typically charged fees.

Wow. That’s great!

That’s pretty significant, and we’ve got a lot of great success stories.

And, we’ve got success stories – people you’ve helped here in Middle Tennessee. We’ll start with Leonard and Lisa. This is a couple who writes in and says:

We’ve used Monte’s program twice now to sell and buy, saving more than $15,000.

Leonard and Lisa have become dear friends of mine, and they’ve used the service not only once, but twice. And, they’ve saved over $15,000. It’s been great.

Yea – saving them a lot of money. Now, Kathy and Jerry write in and say:

I used to be a realtor, and I know how hard it is to sell a home. When I found out Monte would sell our home for free, it was a no brainer.

Kathy was another skeptical one. She goes, I know how hard it is to sell a home, why in the world would you do it for free? I said, I’m just a glutton for punishment.

Well, there ya go. Thumbs up from them. And, Tom and Kristy said:

We sold our home two years after buying with Monte, and he still honored his We Sell Homes 4 Free program, saving us thousands of dollars.

Another happy couple!

They ended up buying first. We tried to sell their home, and it didn’t sell. So, they went ahead and put a renter in it, and now, two years later, they contacted me and said, Monte will you still honor your program? And, I said, absolutely. So, just last week, we closed on their property.

That’s great. So, there is no catch.

There is no catch.

Helping us out in a really tough market, Monte, thanks so much.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393. 

Previously, we had started a two-part list outlining the biggest mistakes commonly made by people who are trying to sell their homes. Let’s run back through the first 4 mistakes that we discussed in Part 1:

1. Not Hiring a Successful, Experienced Real Estate Professional

This cannot be overstated. If you use the We Sell Homes 4 Free program with The Mohr Group it costs you nothing to make sure you have a professional in your corner; it will cost you thousands if you don’t!

2. Procrastinating About Getting Your Home on the Market – Now is the Time!

Inventory is low, so don’t wait until springtime to list your home. You will get more for your house now than you will later on.

3. Presenting Your Home Improperly

I see this all of the time; sometimes I walk into a home and think, “Do these people even know their home is on the market?” Take advantage of the one opportunity you have to make a good first impression.

4. Poor Photos

I’ve seen people take pictures of their house using their cell phone instead of getting a real camera. Hire a professional for $150 because we’re talking about a difference of thousands of dollars if you don’t present your home properly online.

Now let’s move on to the remaining part of this list. Here are some other mistakes commonly made by home sellers as well as some tips on how to avoid making the same errors.

5. Pricing Your Home Incorrectly

The sad truth is that our homes are only worth what they are worth. We can imagine other prices, we can imagine that we have more equity than we do, and we can dwell on what we think we have to do with a certain amount of money, but the market doesn’t care.  The home is only worth what it’s worth. Remember, consumers are going online and telling the agent what they want to see, so if you price it too high they aren’t going to find your home. Another component to remember is that appraisers are no longer over-appraising homes like they did in the past.

6. Accepting a “Contingent Upon” Offer

It’s not a good idea to do this because you’re putting your eggs into someone else’s basket.  You don’t know how sellable that other property is, and when you accept a contingent offer on your home, your listing gets highlighted in yellow in the MLS and agents will stop showing your home. Do not accept this type of offer on your home.

7. Thinking You Can Do It All By Yourself

Right now the market is getting hotter and a lot of people are trying to do it on their own. Please hear my heart – there is so much more than just finding someone to buy your property – you have to get them to the finish line. The mortgage effort is ten times harder than it ever used to be which is why we have a full staff to make sure people get to the finish line.  It’s one thing to get it sold, it’s another thing to get it to the finish line. The process is far more complicated than most people realize.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393.

Today we’re going to talk about the mistakes people make when marketing their home.  Below are the most common blunders made by home sellers, as well as some great advice on how to avoid making the same errors.

Mistake #1:  Not Hiring a Successful, Experienced Real Estate Professional

The importance of getting the right tour guide cannot be overstated. So many times people just end up hiring the piano teacher at their church or wherever, to help them out, but you’d never do that if you were going to have your heart operated on; you’d never walk into a hospital and say, “Hi, who here can work on me?” You would do your homework. The same is true for real estate – do your homework – this is your biggest asset and you need to make sure you have a professional in your corner.

Mistake #2: Procrastinating About Getting Your Home on the Market – Now is the Time!

Inventory is low right now and I’m seeing people get more for their homes now than they will in the springtime. Remember, there is more buyer activity in the springtime, but there is 10x more competition as well, and competition drives price.  Don’t worry about your yard not looking as good in the “off” season, or how that will affect curb appeal.  Right now there are more buyers than there are properties out there.

Mistake #3: Presenting Your Home Improperly

You have one chance to make a good first impression. Make sure your yard is clear of debris, clean up the front porch, and make sure that when a buyer walks through your front door that everything “pops.” Your home should smell good, sound good, and look good.  You have one chance to make that first impression.

Mistake #4: Poor Photos

In this day and time, photos are the key to getting people in your house. We are a visual society and your online photos will be the determining factor of who comes to view your house. So if people don’t like what they are looking at online, they are not going to look at your home. Hire a professional photographer to take the photos. It might cost you or your tour guide $100-$150, but it is well worth the price. Remember, this is your biggest asset so you don’t want to cut corners when it comes to getting people in your home.

Stay tuned for Part II where we’ll go over the remaining items on the list of “Most Common Mistakes People Make When Selling Their Home.”

Happy Customers of the Week

The Robertson Family from Hermitage said, “Monte sold our home after other agents had failed and his ‘We Sell Homes 4 Free’ program saved us over $4,000!” This awesome family decided to take advantage of my money saving opportunity and we sold their home in a few weeks.  Now they are in their dream home.

For more information on buying or selling a home in today’s market, give Monte and The Mohr Group a call at 615-376-4500. You can also call Monte directly at 615-300-8393.