Cool Pulse

How to Make (home equity loans) the Most of a Buyers’ Market

By Andrew Stratton

 After years of soaring price appreciation, the U.S. real estate scene has finally cooled off, making it a buyers’ market again. If you are looking to buy a house, you have great advantage over home sellers because there are plenty of new and existing homes available, with each seller competing with the others for your offer. Prices in many areas of the country are lower than they have been in years and interest rates are still low based on historical standards. Yet even with all this on your side, it is possible to slip up. Here is what you need to know to make the most of this buyers’ market:

Get a Great Real Estate Agent

A real estate agent can be an invaluable resource in helping you find and buy the perfect house at this time. Agents work on your behalf to locate potential homes for you. While you can certainly use the newspaper and the internet to search for homes for sale, agents specialize in learning exactly what is out there at any one time and can do the searching for you. You just let your real estate agent know your criteria and she will provide you with a list of possibilities and will set up walk-throughs so you can take a look at the promising listings. Once you find the house you want, the agent can do all the bidding for you and walk you through the buying process. And best of all, a real estate agent is paid a commission out of the profits of the sale, so you don’t end up paying for the services out of pocket.

Don’t Wait If You Find the Right House

There is a lot of hesitation in a buyers’ market because buyers often get scared that prices will keep going down and they will miss out on better deals, or that they will experience negative equity. While those scenarios could happen, the truth is that it is impossible to predict whether the market will keep falling and there is even a chance that prices might start to rise before you find the “right” deal. The best plan is to aggressively search for a home and only buy one that you can truly afford, no matter what the market does. Most home prices will appreciate over the long run, so in the end a little negative equity at the beginning will not hurt you if you start out in a sensible, affordable home loan.

Use Your Negotiation Power

In a buyers’ market, sellers are very eager and sometimes even desperate to sell their houses. This gives you enormous bargaining power to negotiate for a really good price. This is especially effective if you have done your homework and know how similar real estate in the area is priced. You can let the seller know that you have found lower prices elsewhere and ask if they will match them. In most cases, there is plenty of wiggle room when it comes to the selling price.

Look for Real Savings, Not Gimmicks

In hard times, sellers will try to offer incentives to get buyers to close the deal. New home sellers will often advertise free big screen televisions, cruises, and even new cars to those who buy their homes. Yet keep in mind that you are not in the market for these things; you are trying to buy a house. Instead of taking the “door prizes,” ask the seller to take the value of those incentives off the price of the home. Or if that is not an option, make sure the bonuses are things like free upgrades or landscaping. These types of incentives actually add value to the real estate and make it a better purchase for you.

If you’re looking for a great real estate investments during this buyer’s market, consult the Hendersonville, NC real estate professionals at Preferred Real Estate Center. To contact them, log on to http://www.preferredrealestatecenter.com .

Negotiating Tips for Buying Real Estate
By Art Gib

 When it comes to buying real estate, people often have grand ideas of how they are going to negotiate. However, when the situation presents itself, people end up falling short. There are certain things you can do in order to help the negotiation process go your way. That way, you will be able to purchase a new home at a fair price.

The first key to properly negotiating for real estate is being realistic. While negotiations can help bring the price down, they are only going to bring the price down to a certain extent. If you are looking at some property that is out of your price range prior to negotiations, you must understand it will probably still be out of your price range after negotiations.

Therefore, understand the negotiation process and how much it is actually going to help you. Negotiate for a home you can afford so you will not be disappointed. It is never a good idea to purchase something that is out of your means. Look at the homes you can afford, and then you might be able to get an even better deal on such a property through negotiations.

When you are negotiating for the property, do not waste your time or the time of the seller by making an offer that is insulting. Do not offer a price that is too far below the listing price, or the seller will probably not budge at all.

While it is realistic to realize that when you make an offer you will then receive a counteroffer, it is a bad business idea to place an offer too low below the asking price. That is a way to end up not getting the real estate you are looking at.

That being said, the circumstances of the sale can change everything. If someone is facing foreclosure, you will have a lot more room to negotiate. If you find yourself in a situation where you are looking at a property that the seller needs to sell right away, you might be able to negotiate the price down quite a bit. When you know the circumstances, you can then try to negotiate in a different way.

Your demeanor during negotiations is also very important. One of the biggest mistakes people make when negotiating is they are simply too eager. They are so afraid of losing the sale they will jump on an offer even if it is not what they want.

Do not be afraid to counteroffer. The buyer is expecting you to counteroffer, and that is how the negotiation process works. If you appear to be overly eager, the seller is going to pick up on that and they will be less likely to budge.

Proper negotiations are essential when buying real estate. You want to get the best price possible, and negotiations can help you get that. Go into the process using the guidelines and you are more likely to get your Midway real estate at a price that will make you happy.

Art Gib is a freelance writer for PayneSmootGroup.com (http://www.paynesmootgroup.com), a website featuring Midway Real Estate.

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Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 5:10 am and is filed under realestate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.