Yesterday I pulled up a search of a West Springfield (VA) neighborhood to update a market report and community profile. I ran a CMA and found 12 closed detached homes in the neighborhood. The average sales price number was $446,223. Today I re-ran the numbers and discovered another property had settled yesterday. The sales price of the property was low and as you would expect the new average sales price number for the neighborhood was now down to $432,283.

Another local agent just reported an entirely different set of sales numbers and suggested that home sales prices were up in this West Springfield neighborhood over last year. No matter how many different ways I ran the numbers, I couldn’t get the data or the average sales prices to match their calculations or to see a positive trend in the sales prices.

So how do consumer decide who trust or what set of numbers to believe? Either one of us could be right or we both could be wrong. You have the abililty to look over sales number provided directly by the local Northern Virginia Association of Realtors for general trends. Though these numbers aren’t broken down by neighborhood they can be viewed by zip code. If the average sales prices in your zip code are down by, in this case 13%, then chances are the average sales prices in your neighborhood are still on the negative side as well.

If you are looking to buy or sell a home and you see a market report that catches your attention by all means you should ask the agent (s) to bring the full set of the data they used to come up with their numbers. See if they look right to you before you decide.

I’m sorry to say that according to Martek, a company which researches brain health and creates DHA based products, reported that Virginia ranks #27 on the list of brain healthy states.

Ouch! The number one place for brain health is, drum roll please….DC.

This could be the fodder for late night talk show host and comedians throughout the world. Sometimes when you run across these little bits of news, you have to wonder how much did this study cost and even more importantly who cares?

So Virginian’s try and get more sleep, eat better and don’t let the news that we are cerebrally challenged ruin your day. I’m not…now where did I leave my keys?

One of the first decisions that Northern Virginia buyers look at is whether they should buy a home “inside or outside” the beltway. Commuting is a big part of that decision. The calculator gives you a chance to play with the numbers and compare costs at a number of locations.

“The Housing + Transportation Calculator was developed to help individuals, households, planners, and municipalities understand the true costs of housing and transportation, as well as how these costs can vary from place to place.”

In order to see how the calculator worked I decided to enter neighborhood zip codes that included Alexandria, Burke, Falls Church, Woodbridge & Bristow. The following chart shows the costs associated with each of the areas.

Of course as with any of the standard calculators you find on-line some of the data associated with the calculations are open to interpretation. The Urban Land Institute has determined transit connectivity to mean connections to public transportation within a 10 minute walking distance. Woodbridge transportation connectivity gets a rating of “none”. Yet if you live in Woodbridge you do have a variety of transportation options and depending on where you live those options could be within 10 minutes of your home, maybe not walking distance in all cases but certainly driving.

This tool does provide you the options to make individual changes to some of the calculations and can be a bit of an eye opener when you look at some of the transportation costs for the further west you go in Northern Virginia. The calculator is not restricted to Northern Virginia so anyone in the country can use it to see how their communities compare.

This is a good news/bad news situation. In the past tenants have been hit with the surprise of the sheriff showing up at their door with an eviction notice. Surprise you’ve been paying your rent but your landlord hasn’t been paying the mortgage.

Does this mean that landlords will actually provide the written notice? My guess is that most of them aren’t reading the Virginia Landlord Tenant Laws and so it will be up to a tenant to know their rights. Most tenants figure out that not only are they out a place to live but they also are out their security deposit as well.

If a landlord does give the tenant written notice, what should they do? My advice is to check with an attorney. Never stop paying your rent but you may want to pay the rent to the attorney to hold until you can determine whether you will have any rights to remain in the property or that you will be given your security deposit back. Even though your landlord might be in default of their mortgage they could still ruin your credit by reporting your lack of rental payments to the credit bureau.

If you are considering buying a home of your own in the near future the gap in your rental payments might also be an issue for you on your mortgage application. Paying your mortgage to a third party will provide you the necessary cancelled checks and could keep you from any issue with your landlord.

It is great to see the new addition to the law and we can hope that this will mean fewer surprises for tenants but it does mean that you need to be dealing with a landlord who cares and understands tenant landlord laws.

Related Post:  Military Families What to Do When the Landlord Stops Paying the Mortgage

Read the entire changes in the Virginia Tenant Landlord Laws (HB 2080) for 2009

We don’t hear much about these other commuter projects in our area but they are well worth reading about. I’m not a fan of the “hot lanes” and watching more trees come down to expand I-495 (aka Capital Beltway) doesn’t thrill me. And now the word is out that the proposal to expand the hot lanes south between the beltway and Dumfries (I-395 and I-95) is about to be approved.

The idea of looking at better ways to get more cars off the road and connect people to where they work or want to shop without adding concrete will in the long run be a better idea.

Okay now you know I’m an environmentalist.

The Best US Transit Systems You Never Knew Existed

Back inside head upstairs to a  second master suite & 2 additional  The lower level offers you a recreation room, den, full bath and plenty of storage. Need a place for your toys?  Then the two car garage with extra storage is a start.  If you have a boat or RV the second driveway is the prefect place to park

Located in the wooded community of Woodmont, this home feels as if it is worlds away from the hustle and bustle of daily life.  However multiple shopping centers, resturants and commuting options are only a few miles away.

Priced at $539,900 this one is a deal!

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Serious conversations ensued where the buyer defended the offer and explained their rationale.   That is terrific but the logic wasn’t 100% on target.  We countered with what was a very reasonable offer with appropriate concessions.  The response…well let’s just say they didn’t think we had our heads screwed on straight.

Then I started thinking how do I explain this to the buyer in terms that they might understand better.  Finally I asked “if a buyer offered you $100,000 less for your home how would you react?”  The answer was firm and loud.  “I would be insulted, I wouldn’t bother to respond, and I’d think they didn’t have a clue about the value of my home?  And then the pause came, you know the one I’m talking about.  The long pregnant pause as the realization hit them about their offer and how it might have been received.

I don’t know if we will make a deal or not.  But I do know the buyer has a little different perspective on a low ball offer.

Recently I noticed a marketing report for a neighborhood that I know well. Not because I am the #1 Agent in the neighborhood but because I track sales, show homes in the neighborhood on a regular basis and even owned a home in the neighborhood for 7 years.

This particular marketing report showed that the average net sold price of a detached home was $428,876, yet when I ran a sold report for the neighborhood I came up with an average net sold price of $482,655. This is a significant difference. So I started looking at why the numbers would be so far apart.

What I figured out is it comes down to a matter of the placement of the “wildcard” that an agent uses when searching the MLS. The movement of the “wildcard” (aka asterisk) made the difference in pulling up only detached homes in the neighborhood and pulling in townhouses with a similar name close by.

As a consumer looking to buy a home or an owner in the neighborhood reading a marketing report with a $60,000 lower average sold price is not something to scoff at. This is one reason why checking and double checking marketing reports is so important and why consumers need to read them with caution. If you are thinking of buying or selling a home in a specific neighborhood make sure you double check the data before you make a decision on an offer or list price.  You might not be looking at apples to apples comparisions if the “wildcard” was wrong.

However this offer was a little bit different. It was written on the standard Virginia Regional Contract but the prospective buyer had crossed out a considerable portion of the paragraph relating to protections to both the buyer and the seller regarding default. Of course what they crossed out was not the protection to the buyer but the protection to the seller.

It took us awhile to compare an original contract to their changed copy to determine exactly what had been done. As we know every state has contracts that have been written and reviewed by every manner of attorney to make sure that they are solid.  When we start to make changes to those contracts we can leave our clients open to litigation or take away the protections offered by the contract.

It turns out that the buyer has a relative in another state who is an attorney who decided to make the changes.  As an agent there was no way that I would comfortably recommend that my client accept the offer. It didn’t matter what price they offered, what the other terms or conditions were but taking away the sellers rights in case of the buyers default  is never going to be a recommendation I would make.

If you are searching for an agent this summer who will put your interests first then give me a call.  Our contract may not be perfect  but it does offer you protection that shouldn’t be given up just to sign a deal.

When it comes to learning more about the schools in the neighborhood where you are considering buying or renting there are a number of resources that you can check. With most of the county websites you can put in the address of the property you are interested in and it will give you the schools for each grade level. You then can read more about each individual school. Many families also check the Great Schools site to check on individual school ratings and you have friends or family already living in the area they are a good resource for you to check with as well.

If you are enrolling a child for the first time in a Northern Virginia Schools you will need to come with the child yourself and have the following ready when you arrive to register. Some counties may have additional requirements but this list covers the basics of what you need:

Birth certificate for the child
Your proof of residence (lease or sales agreement)
Original Transcripts from their previous schools
Physical report within the last 12 month
TB test results
Immunization record

For public schools in Northern Virginia you can check the following county school sites for more information on registration requirements, school reports and boundaries for individual schools.

Virginia Department of Education
Alexandria City Public Schools
Arlington County Public Schools
Fairfax County Public Schools
Falls Church City Public Schools
Loudoun County Public Schools
Prince William County Public Schools
Stafford County Public Schools

Are you thinking about going back to school yourself? Then the choices are amazing. Both public and private schools dot the Northern Virginia area, many of them with more than one location. You can find a choice of schools that offer certificate programs, associate, undergraduate and graduate degrees. In addition to this list there are of number of schools that offer opportunities for accelerated degree programs for adults who have already completed 2 years of college and schools on local military installations who specialize in help those in the military finish school or consolidate credits towards their degree.

Sample of Accredited Post Secondary Schools with local operations

George Mason University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute-Falls Church Center
University of Virginia-Falls Church Center
Northern Virginia Community College
Marymount University
Strayer University
University of Mary Washington
University of Phoenix

Relocation is never easy and making the right choices about neighborhoods and schools are a large part of the process for families. Remember not to put the important papers you need for school registration on the moving truck.  If you are relocating to the area for any reason and are looking for an agent experienced with making a move give the Cindy Jones team a call at 703-346-2213. No hassle, no pressure, just straight talk about the real estate market and whether now is the time to buy a new home in Northern Virginia