Maryland Real Estate Podcast with Kathi Kershaw

As a buyer, how can you be sure you are protected? That is where the concept of buyer's agency comes in.Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationI often hear buyers who are beginning the home search process express frustration about having to fill out forms just to look at a home. Many wonder why this is even needed.The reason this is necessary, though, is because it's the law. We are required by law to inform you of any buyers' agencies and have you sign the related disclosures. This disclosure is not a formal agreement. It is simply a way for us to let you know how we're operating.In years past, at a time when I had just bought my first three houses, there was only such a thing as a seller's agency. Whether you were to work with an agent for three days or three months trying to find the right home, that agent would always only be working in the seller's best interest. Asking questions like what you should offer would only result in answers like, “The seller wants full price.”In short, there was no use in trying to coerce the agent into putting your wants or needs first. There was very little help for buyers in general. In fact, it was often not until the point where you got your keys to the house that you could be sure everything had gone right with the deal.We can guarantee you the best terms by negotiating on your behalf.The concept of buyer's agency came about in California in 1990. Since then, I have worked only for buyers and their best interests. Buyer's agents are beneficial in a number of ways. They can perform a market analysis, help you make a good offer, and will negotiate with your best interest in mind. While buyer's agents can't guarantee the best price 100% of the time, we can always guarantee to get you the best terms for you by negotiating on your behalf.So how do you pick an agent? First of all, you need to get along with them. On top of that, you should ask how many homes they've sold. Even agents with the same number of years of experience could have a vastly different rate of success. Having an agent who has sold a large volume of homes, who knows how to handle contracts and paperwork, and who knows what they're doing is critical. If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

There are two new opportunities in our market for practicing attorneys. I've put together a special team, and there is a great loan program available for attorneys right now. Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationAs you may know, I used to work for local attorneys as a paralegal. In fact, I worked as a paralegal for 21 years, so all of you attorneys out there have a special spot in my heart. Attorneys are always there when we need them the most, so we have put together a special team for you. We have a group of real estate agents, loan officers, settlement attorneys, insurance agents, home stagers, and a designer all for your benefit. You can learn more about this special team here.To sweeten the pot, there is a new loan program available for current, active attorneys. The only requirement is that you passed the bar.  The only requirement for the loan is that you've passed the bar exam.This program has no down payment, escrows, or PMI, allows gift payments, and gives you the chance to buy a single-family home, condo, or townhome—whatever you want! This is really a very sweet opportunity, especially if you are in a bit of a cash flow crunch. For example, maybe you want to spend your money on a bigger office. This loan program allows you to do that and get into the home of your dreams. If you have any questions about this loan program or are interested in buying a home, just give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to help you!

Buying an investment property to use as a short-term Airbnb rental is a new idea many people are exploring right now. Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationThere's a new concept out there in the world of real estate where people buy real estate as an investment by using it as an Airbnb rental. Airbnb essentially provides a home away from home you can rent when you travel or go on vacation. My brother-in-law had a townhouse in Annapolis that he turned into an Airbnb, not knowing if it would work out. He hired a company to take care of the rental logistics and things like cleaning the house and sending him a check at the end of the month, and it worked out great. He's making enough money to cover all his expenses from the mortgages to the insurance and even the management fee. It's a great way to have someone else pay off your mortgage.If you're thinking about buying an investment property—especially to turn it into an Airbnb—there are some key points you should consider. First, you have to consider the location and the zoning, and whether you're even allowed to use it for short-term rentals. That will probably rule out most homeowners associations and condos, which tend to have strict rules on what you can do with a property. However, there are plenty of places in the D.C. area that don't have an HOA that would work perfectly for Airbnb. There definitely needs to be a management company in place to take care of everything; you don't want to get a call in the middle of the night saying the heat isn't working or that the sink is leaking. The management company will take care of all of that. Are short-term rentals even allowed where you're looking to buy?The third big thing to consider is your exit strategy. If the investment doesn't work out, what will you do? You want to make sure the property is in an area with good resale values in case you need to sell. You might also want the property to be in an area where it could be rented long-term for enough money to cover your monthly costs.If you have any questions about using Airbnb as an investment, give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help you out!

The key to selling your home this spring isn't location—it's price. Let me explain what I mean. Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationThe spring market is here, and it's the best time of year to sell your home. Winter is over, the flowers and trees are in bloom, and lots of houses are on the market. Buyers are primed to buy, and they're out in droves. If you're a seller, what's the most important consideration in getting the best return on your investment? Some might say location, location, location, but that isn't true. Of course location plays a predominant role in determining the market value of your home, but it's price—price, price, price—that determines how much your home will sell for and how much you will ultimately net. We've helped buyers and sellers buy and sell over 700 homes. Our experience has been that sellers invariably want to price their home high in the hope that it will sell at a higher price, thereby putting more money in their pocket. In many cases, homeowners feel the home is worth more than it is for a variety of reasons. In reality, it's the buyer who determines the value of your home. Your home is only worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it. A house is a commodity, and its value fluctuates based on the dynamics of the market. Buyers know value, and in today's market with today's technology, they have access to all the information they need to determine the market value of homes. They have access to tax records, home sale comparable statistics, crime statistics, school performance statistics, and a host of other data. The vast majority also work with real estate agents who advise them on the state of the current market.It's the buyer who determines the value of your home.Most importantly, buyers have eyes. They've been in every home that meets their criteria, and they compare your home to every other home they see. If your home is overpriced compared to other homes on the market, they will know immediately. The key to getting the most money out of your home sale is to price it competitively from the start. The quicker a home sells, the more money the seller nets. The longer it stays on the market, the less money a seller nets. The first question a buyer invariably asks a listing agent is, “How long has the house been on the market?” This is because they intuitively know the longer the house has been on the market, the less worth it has. If you want to make more money on the sale of your home, bite the bullet and price it competitively. You can't change the current market value of your home, so act accordingly. If you have any questions about selling your home in the spring market, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'd be happy to help you.

I'm back with Patricia Ebrahimi from Show Smart Staging for part two of “The Benefits of Home Staging.” Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationWelcome back for part two of our staging series. Today, Patricia Ebrahimi from Show Smart Staging and I will go over the final things you need to know about staging your home for sale. When your home is staged it sells faster and you don't incur any extra costs from having it on the market longer. For example, some of Patricia's clients had their unstaged home on the market for six months, which means they were still paying for lawn care, insurance, and the mortgage. On average, staging costs about 1% of the list price if the home is vacant. Occupied staging is different in that Patricia has to see the home and see what she needs to bring in and how much of the owner's things are usable for staging. There are many variables that go into occupied staging, so it does require an initial consultation. Vacant key room staging is the process of giving every room in the home a use and highlighting the usefulness of already established rooms like the master suite or the kitchen. The goal is to get fabulous and enticing online photos. The goal is to get fabulous and enticing online photos.The return on investment for staging is incredible. The cost of having to keep your home on the market longer or having to reduce the price is far more than the cost of staging. In fact, staging is going to get you a better return than painting, floor stripping, or any other typical upgrades. More than anything else, you want to make the home look attractive, and staging will certainly do that. The actual process of staging a home usually takes an afternoon. From the time Patricia sees a home until the time she is ready to begin staging, it usually takes about 72 hours. In today's market, staging is the thing to do to get your home market ready. If you have any questions for Patricia, you can give her a call at (757-619-9789). As always, if you are looking to buy or sell a home, or if you have any other real estate questions, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you!

Just how important is staging your home when it comes time to sell? I'm joined by professional stager Patricia Ebrahimi from Show Smart Staging to help me explain.Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationI'm happy to be joined today by Patricia Ebrahimi with Show Smart Staging for the first of a two-part series about home staging. So why would a Realtor hire a stager? As Patricia says, Realtors simply get better and faster sales when they stage their listings because it creates wonderful photos that bring traffic to a home. The benefit is the same for homeowners; hiring a stager will help their home sell fast for top dollar. We all like that!The first step in staging your home is getting a ‘divorce,' Patricia jokes. When you sell your house, you turn it into a product for sale. Since people get so emotionally connected to their home, you need to divorce yourself from the house and turn the emotion around so that the buyer becomes emotionally connected and finds the house irresistible. Buyers want what they see on HGTV and in furniture stores because we're a display-oriented society. Over 90% of buyers look at homes online first to choose which homes they want to see in person, and the homes they want to see are always the ones with great photographs that are merchandised. Contrary to what you may have heard, staging is not just another term for interior design. In fact, it's the total opposite, Patricia says. Patricia—a certified interior designer—says being an interior designer means helping someone understand what they like and helping them get it. Staging, on the other hand, aims to neutralize the house to the extent of appealing to the widest array of potential buyers whether you as a homeowner like it or not. This goes back to what Patricia said about divorcing your home. When you get ready to sell, it's not your house anymore, so you have to back off and let it show in a way that buyers want to see. Staging makes your home irresistible to buyers.By and large, home sellers pay for staging because they're the ones seeing about 94% of the proceeds of the home sale. There are exceptions, Patricia says, but most of the time, the seller pays. The good part that many people don't realize is that staging is a tax deduction as a selling expense. If a Realtor pays for the staging, it becomes a marketing expense, not a tax write-off. Stay tuned for the second portion of our series on home staging. If you have any questions about staging your home or you're thinking about selling your house in the D.C. area, give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help you!

What are the 10 Commandments of buying a home? I'll go over each one today in order to help you avoid making a costly mistake. Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationWhen buyers get a loan for a home, they often take certain things for granted and make a costly mistake. However, if you want to successfully purchase a home, you need to follow these 10 Commandments: Thou shalt not change jobs or become self-employed. Thou shalt not buy a car, van, or truck unless you plan on living in it. Thou shalt not use credit cards or let payments fall behind. Thou shalt not spend the money you have saved for your down payment. Thou shalt not buy furniture before you buy your house. You can go look for furniture but don't buy anything yet. Do not buy furniture before you buy your house.Thou shalt not originate any new credit inquiries on your credit report. Thou shalt not make any large deposits or withdrawals in your bank account. You might not think it makes a difference if you make a big $10,000 cash deposit, but your lender will want to know exactly where it came from and you'll need a paper trail. Thou shalt not change banks. Thou shalt not co-sign for anyone. They will check your credit right before you go to settlement. Thou shalt not purchase anything until way after closing. These may sound a little silly to you, but every last one of them is the gospel truth. If you have any other questions about the home buying process or real estate in general, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

Today we're back with more tips on how to prevent your home from being damaged by winter weather. Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationWelcome to part two of our series on how to protect your home during the winter months. If you missed part one, click here to get caught up. Today, Tony Campanella joins us once more to give some advice on how to make sure cold weather doesn't adversely affect your home.  Water damage is a constant danger that houses face, and during the winter, this danger takes the form of ice damming. Ice damming occurs through the entire system of the exterior of our roofs. As ice thaws out, it goes behind the gutter and into the wood board that supports the gutter system. That water then runs down the length of either the roof trusses or the floor joists in your home, depending on how the gutter system is built. This creates damage on the interior of your home along the drywall where the downspout and the gutters are attached to the property.You can prevent this from happening by keeping your gutters clear of any debris. You want to do this not just for the sake of ice damming, but for any potential water accumulation. If your gutters are clogged, debris will overflow toward the downspout. If the hole of your downspout is clogged, the whole system won't work. Any accumulated moisture will have nowhere to go. In addition to keeping your gutters clear of debris, another important thing to do is channel the water coming down from the downspout at least eight to 12 feet away from the perimeter of your home. Keep your gutters clean and clear.Snow accumulation atop your roof is another potential problem winter poses. Roofs in our area are engineered to withstand roughly 150 pounds of weight per square foot, so you shouldn't have much of an issue unless you have a flatter roof. If this is the case, you may want to use a broom or a roof rake to sweep that snow off. Carbon monoxide-related disasters are another danger to take seriously. Nowadays, you can buy carbon monoxide detectors that can plug into any outlet for roughly $50. If you have a gas furnace, make sure you place your carbon monoxide detector in that area, because that would be the first place to detect an incomplete combustion. One more useful tip is to change your air filters on your furnace and replace the batteries in your smoke detectors once every three months. You can never be too careful, and this kind of schedule is a good system to have in place. If you need any more advice or information from Tony, you can call him at (301) 437-9229 or email him at tonycampanella@gmail.com. If you have any questions for me, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help!

I'm here with Tony Campanella for part one of our two-part “How to prepare your home for winter” series. Today, we're talking about how to prevent burst pipes. Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationI am looking forward to 2017, and I think it is going to be a fantastic year for real estate. However, heading into 2017, it's going to start getting really chilly at night. It won't be long before we have ice and snow, and people need to know how to properly prepare their homes for winter. So today, I'm here with Tony Campanella of Campanella Construction Company for part one of our two-part “How to prepare your home for winter” series to talk about the best ways you can prepare your home for winter. Tony has a lot of experience dealing with the aftermath that comes from improperly preparing your home for winter and has some tips to avoid those costly repairs. The most common winter-related issues are burst pipes. On the outside of your home is a hose bib which is attached to piping inside your home. The biggest mistake most people make as cold weather approaches is failing to disconnect the hose from the bib. You have to make sure that's the first thing you do. Next, you need to turn the internal valve off, which will typically be where your main water supply line comes into your home or inside an interior bib. There is going to be water left over in the pipe that leads to the exterior bib, so next you want to go back outside and open the exterior valve to drain out that excess water. Make sure to drain the excess water!There is actually a product on the market that makes this process go very smoothly. It's a freezeless wall faucet called a sillcock. When you shut the outside valve off using a sillcock, the interior valve gets shut off simultaneously. However, don't forget to let out that excess water! If you don't remember to drain your pipes, your pipes have a good chance of bursting. Burst pipes are so dangerous because you won't know they have burst until after the water thaws and starts coming out of your pipes at a rate of five to seven gallons per minute. You could be looking at an enormous flood if a burst pipe goes undetected. If you have any further questions for Tony, you can reach him at (301-437-9229) or email him at tonycampanella56@gmail.com.Be on the lookout for part two in our series on how to prepare your home for winter. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, feel free to give us a call. We'd be happy to help.

A 1031 exchange allows you to transfer investment properties in a way that defers any capital gains taxes. Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationToday we're exploring the subject of 1031 exchanges and what you need to know about them.   I decided that this was a topic for an expert, so I brought in Carol Calomiris, managing attorney with the law firm Calomiris & Calomiris and settlement attorney with the company Settlement Pros, to answer these questions.What is a 1031 exchange? Is it the same thing as a Starker exchange? The 1031 exchange (also called a “like-kind” exchange) and Starker exchanges are similar in the sense that they both involve the transferring of investment property in a way that defers any capital gains taxes. The 1031 exchange can be between two or three parties. The Starker exchange, on the other hand, is between three parties, where you have an additional intermediary between the two parties that are exchanging the property. Like-kind generally means the same character of property. In this case, it's real estate for real estate. You can also sell a business and buy another business, but our scenarios would involve unimproved land being exchanged for a commercial building, or a condominium rental being exchanged for a single-family home Is there a certain window of time to make the exchange? Yes. In order to qualify for the deferred capital gains tax, you would need to sell your property, and from the date of closing, you would have 45 days to identify the property that you want to exchange. That means you would have to look for and actually list by address the property that you are going to purchase with your exchange funds within 45 days. You then have 180 days from closing, meaning an additional 135 days to close on that new property. Do you need a special kind of attorney to do the settlement? No. Any settlement company can do the closing for the sale of the property, but the important thing to know is that the seller doesn't take control of the funds. In other words, the net proceeds from the sale of the property must go to a third-party (or intermediary). That company holds the funds until you find your replacement property and settle on it. When you find that replacement property and go to settlement, the intermediary would then take the funds from the sale of the property and forward it to another closing company that would then close on the purchase of your new property.Any settlement company can do the closing for the sale of the property.Can you exchange two inexpensive properties for one expensive property? Yes. The complexity, however, lies within the timing. You want to make sure you sell both properties and purchase the new one within the timelines allowed by the IRS so that you can defer the capital gains tax. The whole point of a 1031 exchange is to defer into the future the payment of the tax on the appreciable asset. In addition to being an excellent attorney, Carol is also a wonderful counselor in all legal matters. If you need her help, you can call her at (202) 363-1870 or visit her website at www.settlementpros.com. If you have any questions for me or have another video topic in mind where I can bring in an expert to talk all about it, please feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call. I'd be happy to help!

I'm often asked about the state of our real estate market. Today, I wanted to answer that question and discuss where the market is headed.Buying a D.C. Metro home? Get a full home search Selling your D.C. Metro home? Get a free Home Price EvaluationOne of the questions I often get asked when people find out that I'm a real estate professional is, “How's the market?”It seems like an easy enough question to answer, but there are several questions I have to ask before I can even begin to do that. Some of these questions include:Where's your home located? Is it close to public transportation? What is the home's condition? When did you buy the home?Once I have the answers to these questions, I can give you my answer. In a general sense, though, we've been in an “up” market for a little over five years, and we're due for a little flattening out. This isn't bad news; it just means the market is stabilizing toward normalcy. What market you're in depends on your location.Another question I often get asked is, “Are we in a buyer's market or a seller's market?” Again, it depends primarily on location. If you live close to the D.C. metropolitan area, I would say you're in a seller's market. If you live 15 or more miles outside of this area, you're in a buyer's market. So, what does this mean to you as a buyer or seller? Buyers want the best house for the best price, so if you want your home sold quickly, make it the prettiest house for the best price.If you're thinking about buying or selling a home or have any other real estate questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be glad to help you in any way I can!

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to my new Youtube channel. Some of the things you can expect here are great seller tips, great buyer tips, and market updates. I want this page to be a resource for all of your real estate needs. If you'd like to know more about any specific topic, just let me know and I'll make a video out of it. Until then, feel free to look around and browse. I'll see you soon!