Jeff Ragan's (jeffragan) Blog

One of the hot questions in real estate is this:  "Is print advertising dying?"  While many think so, I don't.  What is dying is "traditional" advertising.  What's the difference? Traditional advertising is more of a mindset rather than a medium.  Take the standard glossy real estate magazine.  I...

One of the first questions buyers often ask after seeing photos of a house is, "What's the floor plan like?"  A custom 3-D Floor Plan answers that question, and makes buyers say "Wow!"  A 3-D Floor Plan enables a buyer to "move into" your home; they can assign rooms, move their furniture in, and ...

I just shared statistics for sold residential real estate in Humboldt County, California, and it seems that prices, both average and median, are plummeting.  Is this really the case, or are there some anomalies or structural changes affecting purchase price?     A while back I explained the diffe...

When I visit with people about selling real estate, they often tell me that the number one factor in working with their Realtor is trust; they've had a relationship with their Realtor for many years, and they trust him.  I always want to ask, "What are you trusting him to do?"  Most people mean t...

With upwards of 90% of homebuyers using the internet to search for homes, marketing your home on a property specific website is a great way to gain a competitive advantage over other listings. http://www.2972OldArcataRoad.com/ While property search sites and MLS services must put limits on the da...

     I got a great question from a client today.  She has her current house in Eureka in escrow, and is looking for a new house in Visalia.  "When do I start packing?" she asked.       A typical, 30 day escrow can be divided into 4 big chunks.  During week 1, the sellers deliver all of their disc...

Selling your home, when you boil it down, is really about 3 things:  the Property, the Promotion, and the Price.  The Property is the one thing over which you, the Seller, have control.  It is your house.  You have complete control over the color, the carpet, the landscaping, the décor, the featu...

Lots of people have been asking me about short sales, foreclosures & bank owned, or REO, properties. Here's the process and how it relates to you.  When a seller needs to sell a house, but owes more on it (say $300,000) than he can sell it for (say, $250,000), he can sell it as a short sale, or s...

639 homes on the market. 232 pending. 79 sold in the last 30 days for an average sales price of $274,181. That's a huge number of pendings! Hopefully we can get them through the loan and appraisal problems and get them closed!

Interesting business story and video, but the summary is that this analyst thinks the housing market is bottomed out in both price and volume. I hope he's right. In any case, we certainly have low prices, and we certainly have low interest rates, and we have great selection. All that equals a go...