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Traverse City, MI Real Estate News

By Fred Schmidt
(Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realtors)
Traverse City Real Estate Market is in fact better.  The numbers don't lie!!!  From July 1st 2008 to September 25th 2008 there were 270 closed residential sales reported in the Traverse Area Association of Realtors (TAAR) MLS system.  During that exact period of time for this year there were 303 closed residential sales reported.  That's a 12% increase over 2008!  Another positive note is that of the 303 residential sales only a total of 68 were either bank owned, foreclosures or pre-foreclosure homes.  Again, this is good because prior to this, foreclosures represented approximately 35% of the closed sales in Traverse City.  Now that number is only 22% over the last 86 days.  "It just feels better" according to Josh Croff of Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realtors 402 E Front Street office.  ...
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By Cherry Wings Realty, Your Traverse City Michigan Realtor
(Cherry Wings Realty)
I am excited to announce that Northern Michigan now has a chapter of Women's Council of Realtors.  We have been working diligently since July to form our chapter.  Currently, we have 25 Realtor members and 10 Affiliate members.  For those of you who may not be familiar with WCR, it is a fabulous organization for both women and men. Nationally, WCR has over 16,000 members.  WCR is not only a wonderful networking organziation but they are founded on the basic principals of helping its membership grow their business through leadership training as well as referrals from other members. The mission of the organization is to build and sustain a strong sense of professional community, create business opportunities, provide educational content relevant to today's real estate professional, create...
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By Jennifer Allen
(C21 Northland)
  At about this time every year, we begin to venture out from our living rooms and dens into the porches, backyards and patios that will be our fresh-aired habitat for the next few months. Summer is here and Traverse City Real Estate is hopping. This year more Traverse City homeowners are avoiding expensive remodeling projects around the home, including large-scale outdoor projects like building new decks our patio spaces. Likewise, fewer people are spending money on big ticket items like high-end grills, above ground pools our lavish outdoor furniture sets. But reigning in spending doesn't mean you can't upgrade your outdoor life this summer. Below are just a few ways you can liven up your deck, backyard or patio without shelling out big bucks. 1) Color Coordinate - The easiest way to ...
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By Jules Yates, Real Estate is Not About Us... It's About You!
(Re/Max Bayshore)
Even after 20+ years buyers still amaze me.  In a market with record low prices, readily available financing, record low rates and mountains of foreclosures all there for the picking... Buyers are still sitting on the fence waiting.  Waiting for what I ask? It seems that despite how good a buy something is, buyers are always looking for a catch.  I say a program on television (20/20 I believe) where a man in a suit was standing on the street corner handing out crisp $20 bills and almost no one would take one.  I was amazed.  It just goes to show how most people believe the saying that "if it's too good to be true". I am convinced that the same applies to real estate today.  I am seeing some fantastic deals selling in our area everyday.  How do people get such great deals?  Simple...THEY...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
Ok, so you are out shopping for insurance for that nice shiny new Ferrari you just bought yourself off that sweet deal from last month (ok... this is a dramatization) and you want to make sure that your investment is in the right hands. You have a choice of two insurance agents in town (it's a small town...What can I say?) Insurance agent A:   You walk in the office and almost scare the poor guy out of the nap he was taking. He moves his feet off the desk, shuffles papers around and sets to writing an insurance proposal. You notice, while he's fumbling with numbers, that his favorite pair of college tennis shoes is peering out from under the front of his desk adorned by frayed fragments of his dirty jeans and it seems that the last time his team baseball shirt saw a washer machine; he w...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
In this economy of intense competition, it is easy to get stressed out at the thought of learning new techniques to getting real estate listings and virtual tours out in the public eye. But, there is no need to completely abandon traditional marketing strategies. The best advertising and marketing strategy is to diversify your marketing to reach a larger target audience. In order to do this properly, you must use all available means of marketing to draw potential buyers and sellers to one central place; most favorably, your website.DIVERSIFY: The efforts of the agent or broker can seem like a monumental chore to undertake, but the benefits far outweigh the effort required in the long run. By diversifying your marketing efforts and funneling leads you can ensure that you are not left wit...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
Are you ready to completely dominate the search engines? Would you like to be the #1 ranking virtual tour company or real estate site in your market? If you answered yes to either of those questions then you are ready for the all NEW RTV SOCIAL IGNITION SYSTEM! We have been very busy testing this system out over the past twelve weeks with BlueLaVaMedia and we are now officially ready to release it to any Full Service or In House provider of RTV technology! Over the last year while Jim Blue has been in and out of several hundred homes here in Northern Michigan, I have been busy working on something truly unique, that is so powerful, and yet incredibly easy to learn. In fact, every time I show someone what I am about to show you they always wonder why they have not been doing it all along...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
Business card sized CD's have been around since the late 90's, but just recently they have become a tremendously popular marketing tool for several RTV virtual tour companies. Business card CDs make great promotional tools for trade shows and especially as hand outs for sales and marketing use. These miniature sized CD's hold many advantages over traditional virtual tour marketing tools such as paper business cards, printed brochures and flyers, standard CD's and even DVD's. Brochures and catalogs are common marketing tools because they are immediate. You can quickly get information about a company's products and services by browsing the printed material. However, because they are so common, those brochures and catalogs sometimes get tossed in the trash with little more than a quick vis...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
The days of Googling your keywords to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy are coming to an end.  According to Bruce Clay of PubCon, there are big changes in ranking. In the name of Top Shelp Organic SEO, Google is tuning into the specific behaviors of individual users to serve up more customized results.  What this means to the end-user is better results and less spam. What does this mean to SEO professionals? Well, for the good ones it means more business. For those that have been concentrating on ranking without any reference to traffic, bounce rates and conversions it means a serious reality check. At the end of the day, this is a change for the better. More individualized search results means higher conversion rates for companies that have a well built website. This does ...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
No matter what type of information your website presents, it is important to get your website properly indexed by Google. While there are many other search engines on the web, Google holds the lead for searches at 71.86% as of October 2008 (Source: Hitwise). To get properly indexed, you have to take into consideration two main methods used by Google to index the internet; crawling and indexing. The Googlebot is a robot used by Google to crawl the internet and find new and updated pages to index. There are two crawler versions used by Google; the Freshbot and the Deepbot. The Freshbot only looks for fresh content, while the Deepbot uses links within your site to index more pages and content. When the Freshbot or Deepbot finds a new page or updated content on a page, it will then pass tha...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
If you have been looking for a way to quickly fill your social network with like-minded individuals, look no further than twitter. With small 140 character updates, you can grow your social network like never before possible. Here are some neat applications and websites to help you get started using twitter to its full potential. Using tools such as www.twellow.com you can search for people with similar interests and start following them. While you are there, be sure to setup your twellow account and add links to your other social networks. If you don't want to use your cell phone to send and receive tweets, you can use a desktop application such as twhirl or tweetdeck. You can use an application like www.friendorfollow.com to make sure that you are following those that are following yo...
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By Jason LaVanture
(www.BlueLaVaMedia.com)
Rently, one of our RTV virtual tour providers sent me an email asking me how to use anchor text in their AR profile and blog. So what is up with anchor text? Why is it so important? Anchor text tells robots and search engines what the web page you are linking to is about. It also helps with what is called relevancy. Relevancy, as far as SEO is concerned, is basically a measure of how related content on one web page is to another web page. And it is important. So without getting too complicated, if you have a real estate blog linking to your real estate website, you want to use anchor text to tell search engines to go to your site while at the same time telling them a little about the content of the site. That is how you get indexed properly in Google. Anchor text is sort of like a littl...
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By Cherry Wings Realty, Your Traverse City Michigan Realtor
(Cherry Wings Realty)
There are no bigger buzz words in real estate today than "Short Sale" and "Foreclosure".  Everyone wants to buy one of these two gems because they believe that they are the best deals on the market.  You might be surprised to find that this could not be further from teh truth.  Although, there are many great deals out there in these two categories, there are equally as many great deals in the market that are not short sales or foreclosure properties. If you are interested in pursuing a short sale or foreclosure there are some things that you shoud first take into consideration: Once you make an offer you wait weeks, sometimes months to get a response.  Not having an answer can be stressful. You have no real idea what you are buying.  You won't get any information.  You have no history o...
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By Fred Schmidt
(Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realtors)
So the big question is how many foreclosure homes closed in May 2009 in Traverse City?  26 homes out of 88 were tagged as foreclosure or bank owned in Traverse City for May 2009.  That represents about 29%.  The better news is right now if you complete a search for foreclosure and bank owned homes in Grand Traverse County, there were only 74 such homes available as of June 12, 2009.  That means that there is less than a 3 month supply of foreclosure/bank owned homes on the market today in Traverse City Michigan.  With the number of foreclosures starting to perhaps taper off, there could be a chance that prices may begin to climb again in the near future.  Please see below the diverse mix of foreclosures in Traverse City Mi: MLS # Ask Price Status Address City Zip #BR #BA Apx Abv Grd Fin...
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By Jennifer Allen
(C21 Northland)
Important Internet Statistics by Jason Kudary Real Estate The latest National Association of Realtors (NAR) report on home buyers and sellers shows the ever increasing role that the internet plays in searching for a home. The study included persons who purchased a home in the 12 months ending in June 2008 and here are the results NAR found: In the 'just starting to look' phase: 33% went to the internet first In the 'seriously looking for a home' phase: 87% began with the internet 32% of buyers ultimately found the home they purchased on the internet Overall, 99% of the buyers found the internet 'somewhat useful' in their search and 81% said it was 'very useful'. As the internet has become increasingly more important, I continually strive to keep my website as technically up-to-date and ...
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By Jennifer Allen
(C21 Northland)
C21 Northland a Traverse City Real Estate Brokerage was recently recognized by the Broker Council. Traverse City— The CENTURY 21® Northern Michigan Broker’s Council recently recognized several CENTURY 21® Northland Realtors with sales awards for the year 2008. Individual sales awards were presented to Kevin Molby, Lisa Rossi, Jim Totten and Susan Trout. Team sales awards were presented to Susan Hintz and Al Rice, and Mike Annelin and Mike Gaines. Linda Zajac and Julia Lilley were recognized as the number one team in the Northern Michigan broker council and also received a Quality Service Award, which demonstrates a dedication to providing clients with positive experiences in all transactions. In addition, CENTURY 21® Northland was recognized for achieving a #2 ranking out of 41 offices ...
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By Jules Yates, Real Estate is Not About Us... It's About You!
(Re/Max Bayshore)
In a market where competition is fierce, why not take some advice from seasoned veteran and raise the commission.  You may be saying to yourself that of course agents want to raise the commission and to some degree that is true but probably for different reasons. As a listing agent I know that in the first 30 days your property is more likely to get showings and offers than at any other time.  I also know that in challenging times money can motivate people (or other agents).  What I suggest is offering an incentive. When you list your property consider a standard rate on the listing side (you don't want to de-motivate the listing agent) and offer a increased rate to the selling agent.  For example if you listed a typical property for 6% (this is an example and all commission rates are n...
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By Jules Yates, Real Estate is Not About Us... It's About You!
(Re/Max Bayshore)
Over the years I have been asked numerous times what is a buyers agent.  Simply put I say this:  Imagine walking into a court room and having 2 lawyers sitting at the plaintiffs table and none at yours.  Would this make you comfortable?  When buying real estate it is a similar situation.  Unless you specifically enter into a written agreement with a licensed professional, that agent represents the Seller (meaning they are not at your table).  I won't begin to imply that you can't get a fair deal if you choose not to use a buyers agent but given the choice of using one or not, I would choose to use one. I have always said that the listing agent is the best qualified person to talk to if you inquire about a property.  Why?  Simple... they have the most knowledge of the property, they kno...
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By Cherry Wings Realty, Your Traverse City Michigan Realtor
(Cherry Wings Realty)
FIRST TIME HOME BUYERS Free Seminar Bayshore Resort, Traverse City Wednesday, May 6, 2009 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm  Experts will be available to answer all of your questions regarding the First-time Home Buyer Credit. This new $8,000 credit is part of the American Recover and Reinvestment Act of 2009 The tax credit represents 10 percent of the purchase price of a home up to a maximum of $8,000 For the purpose of this credit, a first time homeowner is defined as one who has not owned a home for the 36 months ending on the date of purchase.   COME LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF HOME OWNERSHIP AND VIEW SOME OF THE INVENTORY THAT IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE IN GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY.   Christine Stalsonburg, Realtor "A Tradition Of Sound Advice" 231-944-0854 www.stalsonburg.com www.northernmichiganre...
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By Cherry Wings Realty, Your Traverse City Michigan Realtor
(Cherry Wings Realty)
Michigan State Transfer Tax Exemption In 1993, the State of Michigan implemented the state real estate transfer tax.  When a home is sold in Michigan, there is a transfer tax that must be paid by the seller.  This tax is based on the sale price of the home and is equivalent to $7.50 per $1,000 or the sales price on all home sales (unless the transaction is exempted under the statute).  There is a portion of this statue that can potential help some sellers.  It has been on the books for years but is only coming to light due to our recent decline of values.  If the current owner sells their property and the current assessed value is less then when they purchased the property, they do not have to pay the State Transfer Tax. This could affect owners that have purchased a property in the top...
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