Another Great Real Estate Blog
26 October 2006Buying a house has been on my mind lately, because I’m planning to do it in 9 months or so and am busily saving up the down payment. After running across some great blogs about real estate and finance just through following links in other blogs, I decided to search for blogs specific to areas I was looking at. It turns out it’s becoming increasingly common among real estate agents to start blogs to try to cater to customers, and that’s definitely a good thing – it both gives you free access to expert advice and lets you get an idea of the personality (and competence) of an agent before dealing with them. I was looking through blogs in the Austin, TX area and ran across this blog that is sort of a combination of general real estate information and local analysis of the Austin market. That stuff most people will want to skip – but there’s a lot of useful information in here, too. For example, this post on what you should do if you encounter a stubborn seller who won’t pay for minor repairs – or this one on how comissions work (which suggests that if you’re a seller, how much you’re willing to set aside as a buyer’s commission makes a big difference). This post offering a number of tips from the perspective of an interior designer on how to stage your home is also a good one. If you’re interested in it at all, I recommend a look around – ignore the Austin stuff and look for the good general posts that apply everywhere.
And I’d think about reading blogs as a way to find an agent. It’s kind of strange to have it replace word-of-mouth or recommendations from friends, but you can get a pretty good idea of how knowledgeable someone is about their work by reading what they write about it. It’s hard to figure out whether they’re a crook or some of the other potential pitfalls, but those are a lot easier to figure out in other ways than whether someone knows their job. All it took me was a quick Google search for Austin real estate blog to find this one.
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3 Responses to “Another Great Real Estate Blog”
October 26th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Thinking about buying a house? Choose carefully – you’re going to live there. Find something comfortable that you like, close to work, the people you care about and the amenities you like. Don’t think about resale – there is nothing more tedious than a co-worker talking about the apprciation in the value of their little tract home. Physcologists call this cognitive dissonance. Despite the publicity about a housing bubble, interest rates are near an historic low making home buying attractive. There is a large government supported industry out there that facilitates home mortages – use it and shop your rate. Beware: realtors are there to make the deal happen and are not always looking out for you. Home inspectors are usually honest – if you select them yourself and make sure they know who they are working for. Prepare yourself mentally at closing to signing a bunch of disclosures that even the closing agent (who is not a lawyer) cannot adequately explain. Last minute fees and charges are common (“oh, buy the way you’re buying a house in a neighborhood that has a homeowners association” – never attend a homeowners association meeting – politics on the local level is always educational and disheartening). Movers are gap-toothed imbciles who will tear up your shit. If you notice that the guy next door is wearing either jungle or desert camo or has a camper trailer or RV parked in the driveway, you may have made a bad choice, unless you like to drink beer and watch the Military Channel – you have to related to fit in. You will suddenly find that the green-ness of your lawn has taken on unusual importance – you neighbor will use this as conversation opener to gain access to your beer. Politely ask about his under-achieving children and feign interest in his office job. Be prepared to buy Girl Scout cookies and make up excuses in advance to you won’t have to be volunteer for God knows what they’ll throw at you.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
I think anything that arms the consumer with more information and more knowledge is ultimately a good thing. Your point about learning the agent’s personality is a great one. Looking back, some of us wished we had that insight before working with one agent or another. I track the bloodhound site as well. It’s a bit thick and verbose, but it’s entertaining and well informed.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Hopefully it won’t be all that bad – although I guess a lot of it depends on the random people I end up near. I’ve mostly lived in apartments before, and having a bad neighbor is even worse there. I’ve never figured out a way to avoid that. As far as the homeowner’s associations, check this out:
http://widelawns.blogspot.com/