What’s Hiding in Your Contract?

Contingencies can be a tricky thing to navigate in an offer, especially if they aren’t revealed up front. There are a few key things you need to watch out for.

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Recently, sale and closing contingencies are becoming very popular again. A lot of people are afraid to buy before they sell, or vice versa. 

Unfortunately, some people may not alert you to a contingency within a contract. Whether you’re a buyer or a seller, be sure to read things over carefully and make sure there’s nothing hidden in the fine print that you weren’t told about. 

One red flag to look out for is an offer with far-off closing dates. People who give themselves a long time to close sometimes do so because they’re hoping they can sell their home during this time, before they buy yours. If they don’t, they can wiggle out of the contract and get their deposit back by having their lender verify that their financing fell through. 

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Read things over carefully and make sure there’s nothing hidden in the fine print.

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Personally, I don’t think this is exactly ethical. I think contingencies should be revealed up front. Since this isn’t always the case, though, be sure to have your agent check over your contract for contingencies. Contingencies absolutely must be in writing. 

The first writer refusal time frame is also important. If you, as a seller, get another offer within this time frame, the first buyer needs to make a decision about whether to put their offer in writing or not. I personally think 24 hours is plenty of time for this. 

Lastly, be aware of when inspections start on a contingency offer. My preference is to have inspections completed right away after acceptance, so that the deal can be solidified sooner rather than later.

If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Do You Know a Really Great Maintenance Professional?

I need your help. My team is looking for a fantastic plumber who can replumb a whole house.

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I need your help. 

We need a really great maintenance professional, that specializes in plumbing, who can do everything that a licensed plumber could do, including fixing leaks, snaking the inside and outside of drains, and installing faucets, sinks, and tubs. 

Basically, we need someone who can replumb a whole house. 

HVAC experience would be a plus but is not required. 

We are really growing and buying a lot of properties, so we need a great plumber on our team. 

The maintenance professional will do some handyman work but the main focus will be on plumbing with some light HVAC work. We are looking for someone who is a hard, loyal worker. 

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I need your help finding a great plumber.

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They will need their own truck and tools. We will offer an absolute minimum of $20/hour, and we are not afraid to pay more if the right person comes along. 

This is truly a full-time job with a minimum of 40 hours a week. You will get paid holidays, vacation days, and sick days. 

We are offering a lifetime career here. We are looking for someone to retire with us. 

If you are interested or know anyone who might be, give us a call at 502-458-2722 or email me at JPirtle@JPPirtle.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Your Latest August 2017 Market Recap

Home sales and home values are both up in our market. Does that mean good or bad news?

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How did our market do last August compared to August 2016?

I know I sound like a broken record, but our market keeps going strong and everything looks great—including interest rates. Let’s take a look at how the numbers stack up between then and now:

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Our market keeps going strong and everything looks great—including interest rates.

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• The number of homes sold rose from 1,697 to 1,856.
• The average sale price rose from $207,000 to $211,000.
• The average days on market dropped from 61 to 51 days. 
• The absorption rate declined from 3.59 months to 2.91 months.
• The number of active listings dropped from 5,136 to 4,415.

Finally, according to Statewide mortgage, interest rates are hovering slightly below 4%, with an APR of about 4.058%. 

Now, for my quote of the day:

“Always travel the extra mile. It’s never crowded.” —Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

If you have any questions or are thinking of buying or selling a home in our Louisville market, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you.

How Can Escalation Clauses Help You Beat out the Competition?

Because of the hot competition we’re seeing lately in the market, escalation clauses have become much more common.

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Recently, we’ve been seeing a lot of escalation clauses in our market. But, what is in an escalation clause?

An escalation clause is a buyer’s best and final offer. People have been making these kinds of offers for years, but recently they have become a lot more important. This is largely thanks to our being in seller’s market where competition is hot. 

Buyers right now don’t want to lose out on the right home, but they also don’t want to have to make excessively high offers. 

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Setting a limit will help ensure that a buyer doesn’t pay a ridiculous amount.

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An escalation clause allows buyers to stipulate that they will pay up to a certain amount limit in order to beat out other offers. As an example, an escalation clause might state that a buyer will pay up to $1,000 over any other offer that is made. 

This cap means that buyers don’t need to be as worried about overpaying. Setting a limit will help ensure that a buyer doesn’t pay a ridiculous amount. 

Buyers must also be careful, though, to compare offers by the net sale price. In your escalation clause, ask to see the best and highest offer. 

If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

What Do the Latest Numbers Say About Our Louisville Market?

Our Louisville market is hot right now, and here are the latest statistics to show how far we’ve come since July of last year.

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Right now, our market is as hot as the weather. It continues to amaze me, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it quite like this. How has the market changed since last July? Let’s go over a few statistics.

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Our market is as hot as the weather.

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From July 2016 to July 2017:

• The number of active houses decreased from 5,218 to 4,430. This lack of inventory is driving a lot of the demand out there. 
• The absorption rate decreased from 3.63 months to 2.93 months. 
• The average sale price increased from $213,000 to $220,000. 
• The average days on market decreased from 64 days to 47 days. 
• The number of homes sold decreased slightly from 1,690 to 1,650.
• Interest rates stayed about the same at roughly 4%. 

If you have any questions about these latest numbers, the current state of our Louisville market, or any other real estate topic, don’t hesitate to give us a call. We’d be happy to help you. 

Quote of the month: “If you’re not shorthanded, you’re overstaffed.” - Sam Walton

How Is the Louisville Market Changing?

The Louisville market has improved considerably in the last year. Here are the areas we paid special attention to.

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The market continues to be strong in Louisville. To get more perspective, we’re going to look at the numbers we saw this June and compare them to the numbers we saw in June 2016. Let’s get to it.

Inventory remains extremely low. Last year, the 5,000 homes we had on the market represented a huge need for more inventory, but it has since dropped even further. Right now, there are only about 4,300 homes on the market. Our absorption rate has dropped from 3.5 to under three months.

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Homes are selling faster and for more money on average.

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The average sale price has increased from $207,000 last June to $223,000 right now. That’s more good news for everybody. Not only are homes selling for more money on average, they’re selling faster too. Last year, homes were selling in an average of just 61 days. That number has since dropped to 52. 

Interest rates are at about the same level they were last year, but they have dropped slightly. Right now, our partners at Statewide Mortgage say you’re looking at a 4.125% rate on average.

Quote of the month: “When you get right down to the root of the meaning of the word ‘succeed’, you find that it simply means to follow through.” - F.W. Nichol

There’s our market recap for June 2017. If you have any questions about it or would like more information, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you.

Why Should You Consider Our Team?

Our team is growing and we are looking to add some new agents. By working with our team, you will have a lot of things going in your favor.

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We have great news to share today. Our team has had a wonderful year so far and we’ve been growing tremendously. We want to thank everyone who has helped us grow to this point and also announce the addition of our newest real estate office, right down the street from our current one.

Our office is at 8225 Shelbyville Road, and we want to fill it up with team members and independent agents alike. We need your help to do this. Why would someone choose to work on our team?

We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on advertising and marketing to create name and brand recognition. When you’re with Dream JP Pirtle Realtors, that brand recognition will help you out a ton in this area.

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We provide our agents with guaranteed leads.

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One thing we provide our agents with is guaranteed leads. We get up to 1,000 leads a month, so we need agents who want to work hard to get these leads served and make an unlimited amount of money. Some other advantages to working with our team include:

• A full-time trainer whose job is to help all our agents perform their very best
• A full-time administrative staff, listing manager, marketing manager, ISA, and more
• No royalty fees, monthly fees, desk fees, or sign fees
• Aggressive commission splits
• Very low caps

If you or someone you know is interested in learning more about our team or a career in real estate, contact John Holtzinger at johnh@jppirtle.com or by phone at 502-458-2722. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Property Manager Needed: Full or Part-time

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I am coming to you today because I need your help. My team is in need of an experienced property manager.

We are looking for someone with high energy, enthusiasm, character, honesty, and property managing experience. That means we are looking for someone who has managed apartments or houses before.

In this position, you will be managing both houses and apartments. You will be responsible for collecting rents, making deposits, executing leases, and managing our maintenance people to get repairs done on rentals and flips.  

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Email us your resume today!

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This is a full-time position with a guaranteed weekly salary, bonuses, paid vacation, and paid holidays. If the right person can get the job done in 30 hours a week, we will consider making this a part-time position. However, a full-time property manager is preferred.

If you are applying for this job, you have to love property management. We are looking for someone to start immediately, so if you or anyone you know is the right fit for the job, email your resumes to Ami Vera (Rentals@jppirtle.com) and Jody Cooper (Jody@jppirtle.com).

We look forward to hearing from you!

An Update on the Louisville Market

Our market is fantastic as far as home sellers are concerned. Homes are selling about a month faster than they did last year.

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It’s almost summertime here in Louisville. I hope everyone won a bunch of money at the Derby recently. Today I’d like to discuss a quick market recap. I’ve got the latest numbers from April 2017 and I’m going to compare them with what we saw in April 2016. 

Our market is doing great as you may have heard, but there is a growing problem. I’m talking about the lack of inventory for buyers to choose from. This isn’t a problem for sellers, but it makes things much more difficult for buyers. 

We sold 1,500 homes in April 2016, but only sold 1,380 this April. The average sale price has shot up from $186,000 to $202,000 in the last year as well.

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Our active listings are at a historically low level.

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We are seeing big changes in the average days on market, which is down from 82 in April 2016 to just 58 days right now. Homes are moving a whole lot faster, even if there haven’t been as many of them.

The absorption rate, or how long it would take to just sell off the current inventory if nothing else came on the market, is down to about 2.5 months this year from 3.36 months in April 2016.

Our active listings are at a historically low level. We only had 4,800 last April, but now that number has dropped even further to 3,800.

Interest rates are up from last year but are holding stable for now. They’re right around 4.5% right now for a 30-year fixed rate, which is up about 1% from last year. If you need more information about where rates are today, we’d love to connect you with our preferred lender.

If you have any questions for me, give me a call or send me an email. I would love to hear from you.

Quote of the month: “There is only one small letter between the words can and can’t. That one letter will totally change your life.” -Fireball.

How’d Our Market Do In February?

Another great month is on the books for our real estate market. According to the statistics, now is a great time to be both a buyer and a seller.

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The numbers are in for February 2017, and it was another great month for our market. Today I want to compare last month’s statistics with those from February 2016 to get a broader sense of where things stand. 

We sold almost 1,100 homes this February, which is about the same amount we sold in February 2016. From February 2016 to February 2017, our average sale price rose from $172,000 to $190,000. Our average days on market dropped from 93 days in February 2016 to 76 days in February 2017.

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February was another great month for our market.

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During that same time, our absorption rate (or however many months it would take to sell off our current inventory) dropped from 3.3 months to 2.45 months. Our number of active listings also dropped from 4,600 in February 2016 to 3,600 in February 2017. 

That last statistic is important to note because that drop in active listings is what’s driving the market as far as pricing goes. There is a lot of demand and not a lot of inventory, which makes now a great time to sell your house.

Interest rates have also gone up a little bit. Last February, they were in the 3.5% range. This February,  they were closer to 4%. This increase is something we’ve been anticipating, and rates may continue to rise as the year progresses. This makes now not only a great time to sell, but also to buy. 

Now that the statistics are out of the way, it’s time for my quote of the day:

“Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”

That’s from Ray Kroc, one of the co-founders of McDonald’s. 

Our office is growing, so if you know any agents that would be interested in joining our team, please don’t hesitate to refer them to us. If you have any questions about our market or are looking to buy or sell a home, feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email. I look forward to hearing from you!

What Happened in the January 2017 Real Estate Market?

How does the January 2017 real estate market compare to the January 2016 market? We’ll go over the latest numbers today. 

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The numbers are in for January 2017, so we thought we would compare them to the market stats from January of 2016. 

So far, 2017 is off to a great start. As you know, 2016 was the best year we ever had thanks to you. Now, how is the market doing? 

This January, there were 972 home sales; in January of 2016, there were 949 home sales. The average sales price went up as well, jumping from $188,000 in 2016 to $197,000. The average days on market dropped from 92 days in 2016 to 74 days in January of 2017.

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2017 is off to a fantastic start!

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If we look at the absorption rate, which is the number of months it would take to sell all of our current inventory, you’ll see that inventory dropped from 3.51 months in January of 2016 to 2.6 months this January. 

The number of active listings also dropped, from 4,800 last January to 3,800 this January. That means there aren’t as many homes coming on the market. Since inventory is already low, now is a great time to sell your home. 

Of course, everyone is talking about interest rates. According to Statewide Mortgage, our preferred lender, this January the average interest rate was at 3.75% with a 4.7% APR. In January of 2016, interest rates were at 3.65% with a 4.7% APR. 

As you can see, 2017 is off to a great start. Before I go, I’d like to share the quote of the day:  

“Teamwork makes the dream work.” 

I’m not sure who originally said that, but one of my employees, Tracy, shared that one with me. Thanks, Tracy! 

If you have any other questions about our current real estate market, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

How the Louisville Market Changed in 2016

What's going on in the Louisville market? Today we're taking a looking at December 2015 through December 2016 to get an idea of how things changed over the course of last year.

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Today I wanted to take a quick look back at the market from 2016. It ended up being the best year we ever had, buying and selling more than 500 homes. That's all because of your business and referrals, and I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

To examine last year's market, we will compare December of last year to December 2015. In 2016, we sold 1,357 homes compared to about 1,310 homes in 2015. Last year's average sales price was $194,000, which was down from $198,000 in 2015. The average days on market for 2016 was 69 days compared to 79 days the previous year. The absorption rate—how long it would take to sell the current inventory—was around 2.93 months versus 3.8 months the year before.

The average number of listings in December 2016 was 4,349 homes compared to 5,300 active listings on the market in December 2015. We're seeing that inventory is very low, and it's helping home sellers get a much higher price for their homes.

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Low inventory is helping home sellers get a very high price for their homes.

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Interest rates have finally begun to tick up. A year ago, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rate was about 3.25%, and this year, they're about 3.8%. I know we've been talking about them going up for years, but they have actually started to rise and will continue to do so. 

If you have any questions about our market, you or someone you know is interested in joining our team, or you're looking to buy or sell a home in the Louisville market, give me a call or send me an email soon. I'd love to hear from you!

Finally, I want to leave you with the quote of the month from George Washington Carver, who said: "90% of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses."