Real Talk with Cindy

What do you mean I have to sign something just to see a house? I just want to see a house. If you're thinking of buying a house and you've been wanting to look at homes, or you have friends or family who are, this is probably something you've said or heard or have a little confusion about. I'm here to break it all down for you. This is a time of shifting and adapting in our industry, so a few things have changed. They're going to be taking effect this summer. So first things first, yes, you are going to have to sign a buyer brokerage agreement. No, it does not have to be for the rest of your life. You can sign a shorter-term agreement, but before you sign anything, make sure that you're working with an agent who is going to sit down and go through the document with you. Go through how they work and what they do. I never show a house without going through a whole buyer's consultation. Now, even if you've bought multiple homes over the years, you probably have not bought multiple homes this year. The forms, market, and even area are probably different. The home itself might be different. So having that buyer consultation is really going to help streamline the whole process for you and make it easier to understand. So yes, you will have to sign that, but please don't sign it without doing that buyer's consultation with the agent that you have chosen to represent you. And yeah, you can interview more than one. So if you have questions about signing the agreement, just know it is now the law. Nobody's trying to get one over on you, but make sure that you understand what you're signing and be kind. We are all trying to navigate this too. So if you call an agent and say, "Hey, I want to see 123, Main Street", and they say, "Hey, I need to sit down and talk to you first", understand that it's probably awkward for them too. We're all trying to figure it out, but as an industry and certainly, as individuals, our goal is to get you into the home that you love, whether it is your first house, your step-down house, your move-up house, or investment property. If you're working with an agent that has good integrity, they want you to understand what you're signing, so make sure they're taking the time to explain it. If you have any questions about it, reach out to me. Send me a message or give me a call, and let's talk through it. I'd love to help you find your next home.

Are you nose blind to those smells in your home? You may not want to put your house on the market until those smells have dissipated. Let's talk about how that may affect the sale of your home and what you can do to fix it. Have questions? Ready to talk real estate? Send me a message via Instagram at CindyBennettRealEstate or via my website www.cindybennett.net.

With the NAR Settlement and changes to the real estate industry, you may be wondering if you can just sell your house yourself. Why do you even need a Realtor®? Technically, you don't, but before you make any decisions you may want to think about why it may not be the best idea.

How do you sell a house if you still have a mortgage on it? A lot of people have this question and it's understandable because most people have a mortgage on their home. The good news is you don't have to have completely paid off your home to sell it. So here's how it works. When you go to sell your home, you have to continue paying your mortgage. Once you accept a contract on your home and you get closer to closing, what are the things that your closing agent, whether it's a title company or an attorney's office is going to do is make sure that they have a payoff for the date of closing. So let's say, for example, you're going to close on July 10. They're going to get the payoff of your mortgage effective July 10. When the buyer brings their money to closing, however, they do it, that money gets paid off to your mortgage company, so you are now free and clear. What's left is what you get, but also what goes to pay your transfer taxes, et cetera, et cetera. Long story short, your mortgage gets paid off by your settlement agent effective the date of the closing. Now, one of the things you may not even think about until you're going through that whole process is the escrow account you set up when you first bought your house. From that escrow account, your taxes on your home, and homeowner's insurance get paid. So usually they have a buffer in that escrow account so that you don't have to get an updated mortgage payment every time the tax rate goes up, or your insurance goes up.  The buffer amount depends on your escrow account, your individual circumstances, and how much is left in that. The leftover amount gets mailed back to you from your mortgage company and it usually takes about six weeks. Sometimes you need to check with them because as you probably know, nobody likes to give up money very easily. So make sure that you're looking for that check once you've moved and that they have your updated address so that it doesn't go to your old address. So if you're thinking of selling, you want to sell your home and you're wondering if you can even do that because you still owe money on it, yes, you can. Give me a call. Let's talk about it. Look at that whole scenario and figure out what you need to get your home sold. Give me a call, send me a message, and let's get talking.

Here are the top 10 things that you might not think about (but should) before you get ready to put your house on the market. Make sure that you've cleaned and tidied up before you leave the house in the morning. If you've got showings (or potentially might have showings) getting those crumbs off the counter, making sure all the toilets are flushed, etc. Those little things go a long way into making your home go from really appealing to "ew, you wouldn't believe the house that we saw today". Make sure that you have something to do with your pets when your home is being shown. Don't leave your dog or cat in a space and then expect the buyers to either not be afraid of them or do something with them (don't let the dog out, don't let the cat out, etc). When you ask people to do chores, it becomes less appealing and then they're very distracted thinking "Oh my gosh, am I gonna let the cat out? Did I let the cat out? Where's the cat?" They're not looking at your house, they're looking for your cat because you've told them that that's what they need to do. You don't always have to have your closets impeccably clean, but 110% people will open your closets. So make sure you're getting stuff off the floor, and that the closets are at least well organized and not packed full of stuff. When people see your home packed full of stuff, they immediately think, "Gosh, I have this much stuff and they are bursting at the seams. Where am I going to put my stuff?". That's not what you want buyers thinking when they're looking at your home. Put all your cleaning materials away. When you leave things like sponges, sprays, etc. out it just looks unfinished. Put all your medicines and valuables away, or better yet, take them with you. You don't know who's coming into your house and while nobody's going to be able to come in and tour without having an agent, you don't know who the people are. Your refrigerator. Maybe you're going to take it with you, maybe you want to leave it but people are still going to open it. So if it looks filthy, it's going to give an impression of your whole house. So make sure your fridge is clean and that it doesn't smell because that sort of thing does leave an impression. People are probably going to use your bathroom. It would be great if they didn't, but often they will. If people are looking at four or five houses in a day, they might have to go and if you're trying to sell your house, you don't want them saying "I can't look at this, I have to go to the McDonald's to use the bathroom". You want them to keep looking at your house. Make sure that your front door/entrance area is neat and tidy on the outside.  Have a fresh doormat, make sure there are no cobwebs, etc. Trust me, in the Richmond area, if you walk away after cleaning cobwebs, there's already a spider doing a new cobweb before you come back. So that's something you need to do all the time. It's not a do it before you put your house on the market and then leave it alone. Give it a look every day as long as your home is on the market and make sure that it's swept off and it looks neat. As we always say, you want people to visualize themselves coming into their (future) home, not yours. The more clues that it's yours, the less they're getting attached and engaged with your home and the idea of it being theirs. Keep your grass mowed and lawn care, neat and tidy. It doesn't have to be a fancy European garden-style situation. It just needs to be mowed, trimmed, neat, clean. If you've got a lot of leaves, get them up because nobody wants to look at a house and all they see is work. Because it's all they see is work, they are not buying your house. Get a friend, your realtor, or somebody to come through before you go on the market, as well as periodically while you're on the market, and give it a once over to tell you if you have weird smells. Do you need to freshen something up, clean it up, or straighten it up? Get somebody that has a more objective vision and viewpoint that can give you an honest assessment of how your home shows to people, and make sure that your agent is getting feedback from the people who come to take a look at your house because that's going to make a big difference. The overall impression and the overall way your home appears is what's going to sell or not sell it. If you have any questions about ways to get your particular home ready, or maybe you are just starting to think about getting your home on the market and you want to know what you need to do, give me a call. I'd love to talk to you and help you make that little checklist that's unique to your home and where you want to be.

So one of the old adages about choosing a contractor is you can get fast, cheap, or good. You can usually get two of the three, but you can rarely get all three. Lots of people ask me all the time if I have somebody who can do xyz. If you are in the Richmond metro area, you can always reach out to me and I'm happy to put you in touch with a great person to do those things. But remember the same person who might be great for one might not be so great for the others. So if you want to get an idea of what questions to ask, get my free guide on how to hire a contractor. In the meantime, here are the top three things that I think you should know. Ask about their license. Make sure their license is active and that they don't have any claims against them with the Better Business Bureau or anywhere online. Check their Google reviews, or ask them for references, and call a past client and ask them what their experience was like. Don't necessarily go with the cheapest contractor, because sometimes they're cheap for a reason and often it's going to be because they're slow or there is a reason they can go in cheaper because they are using inferior materials. So make sure that you are getting a lot of clarity on the actual work that needs to be done. Have a good grasp of your scope when you get started. Before you even hire somebody make sure they're clear with what you need, and that you are also clear with what you need and what they're going to do. Because if you hire somebody to renovate your bathroom, and they're thinking all they're doing is tile and you're thinking they're going to also do all the trim work and finish it and do drywall and plumbing, there's going to be a lot of bad miscommunication and disappointment along the way. So those are a few things to think about if you're hiring a contractor in this busy like "home improvement" season, but if you need a contractor in the metro area, anywhere in Richmond or surroundings, I'm happy to help. Give me a call, let me know, and if you want to know what things you can do to your home to add value and make it more sellable, I'm always happy to come out, and give you some ideas on that as well.

Did you know that out of all of the agents that are out there licensed, 49% of them have sold one home or none? That's kind of crazy to think about. So if you're thinking about buying or selling a home, and you're thinking about who you want to help you in this process, here are some tips on hiring a realtor. It would be really easy for me to say, if you're there in the metro Richmond area call me, done. But maybe you're in another market. Maybe you want to buy a home in another state. Maybe you live in this area, and you want to move to Oklahoma or somewhere else. What are the things that you want to look for when you're hiring an agent? Number one, see what they've done and what their experience is (which isn't necessarily that they are the top producer, standing in the ad in the magazine saying I've sold over 150 homes this year). Usually those people aren't doing that all themselves and there's a bandwidth situation where you're probably not going to get the attention that you need if an individual is selling 150 homes in a year. Another thing to consider is what you want to look at is communication. How do you want to be communicated with? How do you want to communicate with your agent? How accessible do you want/need them to be? So on and so forth. So make sure that you have somebody that you feel comfortable with and can communicate well with. So if they love texting, and you are a phone call kind of person, make sure that you're on the same page, and that you're going to be able to communicate well with that person throughout the whole process. Buying a home or selling a home can be a very emotional, and very complex, logistically, sort of experience. So you want to make sure you have good open lines of communication. Looking at other things that might be important to you. In an ideal world, how do you build out that perfect agent? Make a list of questions to ask them, like, how many houses have you sold, that are getting multiple offers? How do you handle those multiple offer situations? When you're hiring an agent, picture yourself as really hiring somebody who's going to help you and be on your team. So make sure that the things that are important to you are the questions that you're asking them so that you end up having a great experience. Not to say new or old or whatever the agent's experience is, everybody has a different case and a different scenario that will look perfect for them but don't just hit the first agent you trip over. Because this is an emotional and complex experience, you want to make sure that you have the best one. So if you're looking to buy in the Richmond metro area, I would love to help. Reach out to me and if you want to buy somewhere else, I have great connections with agents all over the country and I'd love to put you in touch with somebody who can get you where you want to be.

"I think I want to sell my house, but I don't feel like doing anything to it. Can I just put a sign in the yard, get it on the market, and be done with this whole thing?" Sometimes when you're a seller, those are the things that come to mind. That's what you really would like to do, right? It's kind of a pain to get your home ready for market. And we're in a seller's market, right? This ought to be easy, your house is pretty nice, just throw a sign in the yard, and let's just get it gone. Before you do that, let's think about the ramifications of putting your home on as is and why you may or may not want to do that. First off, think about the reasons why you might want to put your home on as is. So yeah, that's kind of a pain. But often, people think "I want to go as is", and really, their home doesn't need anything except maybe some paint, some caulk, a little touch-up here and there, it's not that big of a deal. If you don't have time to do some of those things that in a lot of cases can be done by the homeowner, I have a great bunch of resources, handy people and contractors, painters, etc., that can come in and knock those things out in just a couple of days. But let's say it's a financial thing and everything is just a little bit of a bigger deal than the paint, the caulk, and so on. The kitchen is older or whatever. Usually, when you say as is, buyers, especially in this climate of higher interest rates, where buyers are being a little more picky, they're being a little more particular with how they spend their money. When you say as-is people immediately think what's wrong, something's wrong. And it's going to be very expensive for me, and it's going to make them not even come to look at your house. So in most cases, you're going to be better off by just letting it letting it roll. So if you know that you've got some plumbing issues, probably they're going to be, you know, maybe no major, big deal, but it's going to have to be done, you're almost always going to be better off getting someone to do those things before putting your home on the market. Even if you are short on money, and you need to find somebody who's going to let you pay for those things out of the proceeds when you actually sell. But if you do those things ahead of time, then you're going to have a better experience overall. The buyer is going to feel more comfortable purchasing the home and it's going to be a smoother transaction, smoother process, and get it sold faster and usually for more money. So as soon as you say as-is, people immediately think there might be something wrong. But if you just let people have an inspection, remember to disclose if there are actually major issues with your home. If the panel box is sparking, you need to let people know that we are a buyer-beware state, but we do have to disclose material defects or major issues to the home. So if you're aware of them, you have to let people know. And better than letting people know, getting them fixed beforehand. Even if it takes a little bit of money, a little bit of time, a little bit of hassle. Trust me, it'll be worth it in the end. There are certainly cases where selling your home as-is is the way to go. But that's a case-by-case situation. And pricing has a big effect on that too. So if you've just inherited grandma's house, you don't know anything about it. You don't have the time, the bandwidth, the money, the energy to get those things done, as is maybe the way to go, but we're then going to price accordingly. So case by case situation, give me a call, send me a message. Let's set up a time to take a look, talk through it, and see what your options are. If you're in the Richmond metro area, I'd love to help give me a call, and let's get started.

Where are all the basements anyway? This is a question I get so often from folks, especially those coming from areas further north than we are here in central Virginia. Well, most of the time my answer is they're not here. You left them where you came from. The reason we don't see basements in a lot of newer homes now, even though a lot of the older homes here in the area do still have basements because that's how everybody built houses back then. So if you see homes from the 20s, 30s, 40s, obviously older than that as well, but up until about the 60s, you would pretty commonly see basements. Here in central Virginia, our soil is so dense and holds on to water so well, that it doesn't drain as quickly. If you have a basement in our area, it is probably wet and if it's not wet, somebody has spent a lot of time, money, and energy getting it to be dry. So while you will still see some newer homes built with basements, usually they're going to be walkout basements. The vast majority of basement homes here in the central Virginia area are going to be older and sometimes that's not what people want. If you have to have a basement, think about why you need to have it. Often, the storage or whatever can be solved with either a finished third floor, a garage, or something like that. We can usually make it work but if you're looking for you know a wide variety of homes with basements, you're probably not going to find them here in Southern Virginia. But if you're looking for a home and want to look at all of your options and see everything that's out there, give me a call, send me a message, shoot me a DM, and I'd love to get started helping you find a great place to live and store all your stuff here in central Virginia.

If you've been thinking about buying a home, you probably have been looking at real estate news and just getting fed by the algorithm, all things real estate. You probably have some questions on what all these changes are as a result of the National Association of REALTORS settlement and everything that's coming to the real estate industry. But, how do they impact you as a buyer? Well, first of all, in many cases, it's not going to affect you. Secondly, you want to make sure that the person you're working with to help you buy a home, and this has always been true, but especially now, is the person that you want to continue to work with. Make sure that you're in a good situation. That you feel good about the person you have hired to help you find a home and help you negotiate and get to closing on that new home you're purchasing. So that means, asking a lot of questions. Ask friends. Get recommendations and referrals from friends, so that you're making a conscious decision and not just calling your best friend's cousin who got their license yesterday. Not that there's anything wrong with the best friend's cousin, but just be mindful that it has always been important and is even more important now. You may have heard that you as the buyer are going to have to be paying the commission for your buyer's agent, and that is true, and it is also not quite true. So in my opinion, the buyer kind of pays for everything, right, because until you the buyer, pull your wallet out, get your mortgage, and actually close, the seller can't pay anybody anything, because the money that they're using to pay everybody is your money anyway. So they're not paying anyone until their home sells. So for all intents and purposes, the buyer's money is what is being distributed. Taking that aside, let's say that you fall in love with the house and the listing agent, the listing company, the seller, they're not offering any commission to be paid to the buyer's agent, and you, maybe a first-time home buyer, are like, wait a minute, I don't have the cash to pay. I don't know how I'm gonna pay. I don't know what to do here. Well, there are a few options and the least of them is going to the listing agent. So I would always recommend having your own representation. Work with a buyer's agent that you know, that you like, and that you trust. You are going to be in a contract agreement with that person. As such, it does say in most cases that you're going to have to pay their commission if there's no commission offered, but it doesn't have to be a big deal. Keep in mind that you can get closing costs paid by the seller to cover those commissions. You can sometimes roll the commission into the price of the home and it can be financed into your mortgage. This all depends on the type of loan you have, but there almost always is a way to solve it without you having to take cash out of your pocket or write an actual check to your agent. So while it does sound like there are lots of changes coming that may affect you negatively, just remember if you're working with a great agent, there is almost no problem that we can't solve when it comes to real estate. If you have more questions about agency or you want to look for a home start looking for homes in the Richmond area, give me a call, send me a message, or shoot me a DM. I'd love to help.