Cleveland Real Estate News

It’s been a week of 10 to 15 hour work days; I’m not complaining, it’s been fun working with five buyers whose housing needs/wants could not be more different.  Makes life interesting for this real estate lady.

But….and you knew there was a but. Having several buyers requires a lot of Internet browsing and home previewing.  I get so frustrated at the level of information not provided on the home listings on line.

I have shown about six homes to  one family and now I can tell how much square footage we really need on the second floor in order to satisfy their needs. So I go to my Realtor® website, locate all homes in one community with at least 1500 square feet of space. In one community, I found 38 listings matching my criteria and over half of them had no square footage listed.  And half of those had no room dimensions listed.  So I click away from those homes and move on to the next.  I tell myself, if I can’t find six homes that meet my criteria for searching, I’ll go back to the others and investigate.  Even with no further investigation, it can still take an hour or so to really preview (on line) homes to consider.

Why is this important to you, eh? After all, I’m doing the work.  Well not really.  We are in this together.  Most of the people I work with spend a lot of time on line doing their own searches as well.  How would a home seller feel if they knew so many of us were bypassing their listings because we can’t get enough information about them and there are always four more to check out WITH the added information.  OY!!!  Okay, rant over.

My biggest challenge now is to f ind homes that are not short sales so I can be reasonably sure my first time home buyer clients can take posession by the end of November when the tax credit runs out.  I’m still not shy about showing them foreclosures, because after all, November is still four months away.  But short sales (for me) have taken between four and nine months to close. 

My clients have been fascinating this year (yeah I say that every year).  This year so far, I’ve met an elephant keeper for the Zoo, a client who has lived in places like Poland due to her job, a fascinating woman who knows quality houses when she seems them, two lawyers, an artist, a musician, and a woodworker.  I could go on.  I also admit it’s been a challenge finding time to post here when I’m always running real estate info in my head.

Last Sunday I spent a lovely day with friends I have missed.  That meant a lot to me.  Hope I don’t have to wait months to do that again!  I hate the phrase ‘balancing life’ so I won’t say I need to find it.  But I do need to do better.  Thanks for listening to my rant   Peace Out – 3C