KS's Seller's Newsletter, May 2013

Hi There,

You haven’t heard from me lately because all of a sudden I’m in a hot market, well… the bottom of the market is hot. The question is will the heat rising from the bottom bubble to the top? It’s inevitable, isn’t it?

By now, you know I’m an optimist…

And then this:

The Ridge at South Mountain is in Foreclosure

 April 30, 2013, and a Notice of Foreclosure takes an entire page of the Daily Courier from top to bottom. All of the unsold land, in The Ridge at South Mountain, a very fine development, will be sold on the courthouse steps. And what will this do to Rutherford County? It depends. It depends on who buys the property, if another developer picks it up to hold for resale, or if the bank sells the lots piecemeal, and that too, depends, on whether they release the lots onto the market slowly, two or three at a time, or dump all of the parcels at once. Will they hold them in inventory for a few years or release them right away? That remains to be seen. And there’s nothing to be done for it, so I’ll keep on keeping on.

In the interim, the bottom of the market is hot. Properties priced lower than the market value are selling. People are shopping for deals and they’re finding some. Transactions have become more difficult as banks lay on more and sometimes onerous guidelines. A lot of deals are falling apart on the way to the closing table and some right at the closing table. But I am in the business of helping people buy and sell real estate and except for keeping an eye on the weather, there’s not much I can do about all that, so I am here, taking fresh pictures, enhancing properties on the internet, and doing what I can do to market the properties I have listed. And toward that end I am playing with the big boys in the industry, listing aggregate giants, Zillow, Trulia, Homes.com and to a lesser extent Realtor.com. I have a paid subscription to Zillow advertising my services and I’m getting calls. As more people begin their search on the internet, they say 90%, it makes playing with the big boys worth while.

There are still problems with geocoding in the rural areas. I have your latitudes and longitudes in the MLS and on file, but sometimes I sit in the living room on Sunday night with my laptop manually mapping your properties so they’ll show up in mobile searches in the right places. So far there’s no app for that.

Someone said at our board meeting that I must have a lot of free time to attend to all of this technical stuff. Not really. We all have 1440 minutes in a day. Last night around 10 pm I was online figuring out how to hook a dual monitor system to the newest computer in my arsenal and this morning I was here before 6 am writing to you. I have to go to the office today for a business meeting and to preview homes we have listed. My new housekeeper asked me how I could work at this pace, and I told her, half the time I’m playing. I work awfully hard to be able to play at this level. Yesterday morning I was up on Cherry Mountain to talk with two potential sellers, and what a gorgeous spring day it was! Iris and some wild azaleas are blooming; the mountain laurel is covered with buds. There were ducks, and a pony, and dogs, both large and small, there were chickens and running streams and springs and lovely people. I made some new friends and came home with a dozen fresh eggs! It wasn’t like work at all – it was like a mini-vacation. So, yeah, I do put in some awkward hours, but I enjoy it, and that, as Robert Frost said, that makes all the difference.

Karen D McCall, Broker, e-PRO®
4 Seasons Homes and Land, Inc

Mobile 828 429-0251 Direct or Text
GVH Office 828 245-9003
KDMcCall.com

PS  Friends, I haven’t ever asked for you to recommend me to your friends and family members, because I know most of you live far away, but I’m going to ask you on the behalf of the buyers and sellers I may, through you, be able to help. If you run across my profile on Trulia or Zillow (and you can do that by visiting the website and plugging in the zip code here, 28018) and review my service, it would help me, and consequently the higher ranking in the site will generate more phone calls, which will in turn help you. Thanks.