Archive for August, 2008
Basement or No Basement?
August 19th, 2008 Categories: Alexandria Dirt, Arlington Dirt, Falls Church Dirt, McLean Dirt, Northern Virginia Home Buying, Northern Virginia Real Estate Dirt, Reston Dirt
I just received an interesting question from a reader – he has found a house that he really likes and it is built on a crawl space (the 3 ways homes are built are on a concrete slab, on a crawl space or on a basement - or some combination). He’s been advised by a family member who is out of state to be leary of any home that’s not built on a full basement. The reasoning was that it’s less than a full house. So he asked me what my thoughts are.
My initial words of wisdom to him were just to be sure he’s comfortable knowing what he’s getting into. A lot of people WANT that basement as overflow space – rec rooms, play rooms, home office, guest rooms, etc… Some want it for just storage – in which case, an attic or a well built shed would suffice. Also it depends on the area – for example in an area where half of the homes are basement and half are basement, it might not matter. But it’s not something that can EVER be added – so what you get is what you get.
I decided to do a little research. We know anecdotally that here in Northern Virginia most homes do have basements – so I took a look through the active listings for detached single family homes in the various surrounding counties to get a sense of what percentages have basements vs. not… Here are some statistics on homes WITHOUT basements compared with the total available home market (at least as of today).
So, this is just good info to keep in mind in terms of market expectations. There is a home buyer for EVERY home – a lot depends on what the market conditions are at the time of trying to re-sell. But that’s a topic for another day.
If you’d like to see homes with OR without basements, I’d love to hear from you. I’m experienced either way!
Happy Tuesday
Jennifer
Serving all of your real estate needs in Arlington, McLean and the entire Northern Virginia Region!
Contact me today for a free home valuation or buyer counseling session! Fall is right around the corner!
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What Were They Thinking??
August 18th, 2008 Categories: Alexandria Dirt, Arlington Dirt, Falls Church Dirt, McLean Dirt, Northern Virginia Real Estate Dirt, Northern Virginia Real Estate Finance, Reston Dirt
Lately, I’ve been showing a lot of property that was foreclosed upon and is now bank owned. I’ve seen bank owned properties in all sorts of locations, neighborhoods, buildings, etc… even in the “luxury” market. In considering making an offer on one, I called the listing agent to ask my usual barrage of questions:
“When can we expect a reply from this bank?”
“Are there any other offers on this property?”
“How quickly can we settle?”
“Is the bank willing to pay closing costs”
“Is the bank willing to allow for home inspection repairs?”
“Can we settle with our own real estate attorney?”
“Can we hold the earnest money deposit?”
…. the list goes on ….
Certain banks (and agents, unfortunately) have earned unfortunate reputations of being difficult to work with. It makes me wonder how we’ll ever get out of this situation unless the banks (and the agents) realize that they have to be at least somewhat agreeable, approachable, responsive, etc…
So here I sit - wondering “How did we get here?” Don’t misunderstand, I know HOW we got here, but I wish I could know who was responsible, don’t you? Which lenders? Which ORIGINATORS? It dawns on me that just 
because Bank of America (JUST AN EXAMPLE) holds a loan now, they may not have originated that loan. They may have just made a bad business investment decision. So I wish there was some report that indicated WHO took these risks? WHO was writing B paper loans? WHO was ignoring (or turning a blind eye) to underwriting guidelines with respect to debt ratios? WHO was outright lying? I wish I knew.
I’m glad our credit restrictions have tightened up. I hope that my buyers who are buying now are well qualified and prepared to be homeowners for the foreseeable future!
If you need a good lender, give me a call – I know several who are excellent and in whose hands you’d be well taken care of!
Happy Monday!
Jennifer
Serving all of your real estate needs in Arlington, McLean and the entire Northern Virginia Region!
Contact me today for a free home valuation or buyer counseling session! Fall is right around the corner!
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Arlington Virginia House Styles… Part 7 - What’s Left?
August 12th, 2008 Categories: Arlington Dirt, Neighborhoods
Today I simply offer a few photos that I took while researching my house styles series… I wasn’t too sure what to do with these, so I simply offer them to you for consideration…
I’m sure these styles could be identified by someone more qualified than myself - however, they’re just a bit unusual for around here and caught my eye!
Happy Tuesday
Jennifer
Serving all of your real estate needs in Arlington, McLean and the entire Northern Virginia Region!
Contact me today for a free home valuation or buyer counseling session! Fall is right around the corner!
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Arlington Home Sale Statistics - July 2008
August 11th, 2008 Categories: Arlington Dirt, Market Stats
The months seem to be going by faster and faster - I’m not sure whether that means I’m getting older (let’s not go there) or I’m just busy? Who knows. In any case – here we are again, looking at market statistics. They are what I’d expect for July - pretty flat carryover from June – however, there is one surprise…
First let’s look at the numbers:
All of these numbers are fairly consistent with what we’ve been seeing – a little higher here, a little lower there, but what’s remarkable to me are the number of unit sales in the single family home market. This represents the largest unit sale month since last July! Look at the chart below:
How about that…. where we never saw a huge jump in “spring” – March, April May and June were all up but fairly flat… WOW then look at July! Now perhaps there were just some longer settlements on those contract numbers… after all, it’s hard to make sense of that many contracts being written but not the sales – and believe me, 40% of contracts do not fall apart – so perhaps we’re seeing a larger number of contracts with longer close dates?
So what’s the message? I get asked this all the time.
“Jennifer, how’s the market?”
“Jennifer, what are the market trends?”
“Jennifer, have we bottomed out?”
“Jennifer, what price should I offer?”
These are all difficult questions. My general feeling is and has been that the Arlington market is fairly well protected from the sharp declines that the other markets have felt… our absorption rates are still less than 4 months across the board (how much inventory we have on hand) and I’m looking forward to a healthy fall!
If you’d like to look at more specific numbers, whether it be for your town, your zip code, your neighborhood… whatever, feel free to give me a jingle.
Happy Monday!
Jennifer
Serving all of your real estate needs in Arlington, McLean and the entire Northern Virginia Region!
Contact me today for a free home valuation or buyer counseling session! Fall is right around the corner!
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Arlington House Styles Part 6 - The Colonial
August 6th, 2008 Categories: Arlington Dirt, Falls Church Dirt, McLean Dirt, Neighborhoods, Northern Virginia Home Buying, Northern Virginia Real Estate Dirt
Here we are – at the granddaddy of them all… The Colonial. Around here, this is definitely the most prevalent house style and there are many iterations. From very small, to very large and grand.
This house style can be traced here in the US all the way back to the European colonization that took place from the 1600’s through the 1800’s - and each country brought their own twist on the colonial style – Dutch, German, Swiss and others.
Some of the more notable characteristics of the colonial style home are:
Square and boxy in shape
Usually very symmetrical
Medium pitch roof lines - both hip roof and gabled roof styles can be seen
Paneled front doors
Sometimes columns and a small front porch adorn these homes
They are found all over the area – from Arlington to Leesburg (and beyond), big and small, simple and very ornate. Usually they are brick, and generally very traditional in appearance. Here are some examples:
(the above is a great example of symmetry, but had an addition put on one side)
the above photo represents a Dutch Colonial with a Mansard roof.
Many have stately settings like the one above, but here in Arlington, those are few and far between.
If you love colonial architecture and would like to find out what options there are out there for you and there’s one for EVERY budget! Call today to discuss.
Happy Wednesday
Jennifer
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Arlington House Styles Part 5 - The Contemporary
August 1st, 2008 Categories: Arlington Dirt, Neighborhoods, Northern Virginia Real Estate Dirt, Real Estate 101
We’re ending the week on the Contemporary home. This can mean so many things to so many different people. I went searching for a definition on the internet this morning before beginning the post – it was difficult to find - even in wikipedia! The best definition/description of contemporary house design I found came from about.com. It said that modern or contemporary homes (defined as built in 1965 to present day) could be characterized as:
Contemporary houses have many of these features:
- odd, irregular shape
- lack of ornamentation
- tall, over-sized windows, some with trapezoid shapes
- open floor plan
- natural materials such as cedar or stone
- harmony with the surrounding landscape
I would also add that many contemporary homes, along with achieving harmony with the surrounding landscape, they are also more interested in sustainable design – eco-building, eco-friendly, green homes, etc…
Although we don’t have an over abundance of these homes here in the area - there are some and when done well, they are spectacular! Let’s look at some examples:
While some of these may look dark and windowless from the front - the insides are usually open and stunning!
There are so many wonderful contemporary properties to see and if they interest you, and you’d like to take a look, call me!
Happy Friday!
Jennifer
Serving all of your real estate needs in Arlington, McLean and the entire Northern Virginia Region!
Contact me today for a free home valuation or buyer counseling session! Spring is HERE!
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