Some homeowners have been waiting for years for a better housing market and a good time to sell.  Is it better to wait a few more years and see if you can realize a higher sale price, or sell now and move on with your life?

Motivation for selling is a key factor: 

• Are you commuting to work several hours a day and the commute is killing you?
• Are your children grown and your home is now too big, in addition to being a burden to maintain?
• Is your home too small?
• Have you taken a job out of the area?
• Can you no longer afford to own your home?
• Or do you no longer want to pay the price it costs to own your home?

These are all good reasons for considering making a move. Not only do current market conditions enter into the equation, but making a move like this is usually more complicated than it was the first time you bought a home.

Finding an experienced, professional real estate agent who specializes in your area as a good start:

Go to friends whose opinion you trust as a source for agent referrals. Once you find a real estate professional, meet them at your home so they can see your home, neighborhood and area immediately around it in order to give an honest comparative market analysis. 

This will give you information about what homes like yours have been selling for in the current market.  This will help your agent find the best sale price of your home and access the state of the current home-sale market in your area.  

Ask your agent how long to expect selling your home.  Some key factors to consider when asking this question are: 

• How many homes like yours have sold recently?
• What is my home worth?
• Are homes like yours in high demand?
• Or, is it located in a less desirable area that could mean a longer marketing time and, perhaps, a lower price than you were expecting?

They can also advise you as to how to maximize the salability of your home.  You and your agent should walk through your home and point out what should be done to make your home more marketable. Homes that sell today are priced right for the market and are in move-in condition.

Then you want to make any cost-effective improvements. If the kitchen and bathrooms are outdated, consider a cosmetic redo. Update paint, hardware, light fixtures and floor coverings, if necessary. Don't do a complete remodel of course, otherwise you won't recoup your investment.

You should then consider where you'll live next and the costs of making your move:  

Deciding where to move — and when – can be difficult. Some buyers can afford to buy a new home before selling, and prefer to make the move that way. Most repeat buyers can't afford to buy first. Others who can won't buy first due to market uncertainty and the stress of owning two homes at once.

One approach to making a move from one home to another is to sell first and then rent until you find the right home to buy. By selling first, you will know exactly how much money you have to apply to a new home.  Today's housing market is volatile.  A dip in the market could shave tens of thousands of dollars, or more, off your selling price.

The other benefit of renting before buying is that you're under no pressure to buy the first listing you see.  Interest rates are low and are expected to stay low through 2012. Prices are also low and aren't expected to move up much for the next several years.  This gives you time to find the home that will suit you for the long term.  

The Bottomline:

Your motivation/reason for selling your home, the salability of your home as well as finding the right real estate professional to guide you thru the process and help you get on to the next stage of your life.  To have an educated conversation about selling your home, the Las Vegas real estate market, or if you are in the market to purchase a home, feel free to reach out to us. 

Below are links to view the current Luxury Home market for Las Vegas:

Luxury homes that have sold within the last 90 days.

Luxury homes that are currently for sale.

Luxury homes that are currently in contract.

Below is the overview for Luxury homes sold:

Lenders are allowing more short sales by financially strapped homeowners and a few people are even getting cash to complete the sale.

Short sales are when lenders allow borrowers to sell homes for less than their unpaid mortgages. They are an alternative to foreclosures.  Short sales have been increasing for months, but the financial incentives — which Realtors say are random and infrequent — are a newer wrinkle.

Here are some examples of what the major banks are offering homeowners:

• JPMorgan Chase went national with short-sale incentive offers last year, paying up to $35,000 in some cases.
• Bank of America is testing incentives from $5,000 to $25,000 in Florida to see if they should be expanded to more states. The Florida program began last fall, spokesman Richard Simon says.
• Wells Fargo's incentive offers range from less than $3,000 to $20,000, spokesman James Hines says.

Short sales, even with incentive payments to borrowers, can save lenders money compared with the expenses involved in completing foreclosures.

In states such as Florida where foreclosures go through the courts, 50% of loans in foreclosure are more than two years past due, says a January report by mortgage tracker LPS Applied Analytics.

"It's a lot cheaper to shell out $10,000 or $20,000 to someone than it is to go through a long foreclosure," says Jim Gillespie, chief executive of Coldwell Banker.  

Banks are more willing to do short sales now than in the past, Gillespie says. Cash incentives appear to be "limited but increasing" in number, he adds.

"When a loan modification isn't possible, a short sale may be a better and faster solution" than foreclosure, says JPMorgan Chase spokesman Thomas Kelly. 

The lenders won't say how often they extend such incentives.

"If you have two similar sellers, one might get it and another may not," says Colleen Badagliacco of Altera Real Estate in San Jose. "It's very random."

Typically, short sale incentives are more common for loans in states where foreclosures take more time, Hines says.

In November, short sales accounted for more than 9% of single family home sales and were up 32% from the year before, according to CoreLogic.

Market researcher Dataquick also shows short sales increasing from January 2011 through last month throughout California and in Phoenix, Miami and Seattle.

The federal government-run foreclosure prevention program also offers short sale incentives, at least $3,000 for sellers, but far more short sales are being done outside the government program.

Through December, just 26,901 short sales had been completed through the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternative (HAFA) program.

In contrast, BofA, the largest servicer of home loans, did 107,000 short sales last year. That was up from 92,000 in 2010, which was double the 2009 volume, it says.

"The trend is up," says Moody's Investors Service analyst William Fricke.

If you or someone you know owes more on a property and you don't know what to do or where to turn, please feel free to reach out to us for FREE information about all the options that are now available to homeowners who find themselves in this situation. 

The Snyder Group views at least 3-5 potential investment properties new to the market every day, and then we run a property performance to ensure we only present some of the best income property deals to you. 

Below are the links to this week's hot deals:

Deal #1 – 1449 Muinos St.  

Located in gated Peccole Ranch -this gem is freshly painted, includes blinds thru-out and has a cash on cash over 7.5% -this one will go soon!

Deal #2 – 9512 Lazy River Dr.  

Beautiful two story in the Lakes, upgraded flooring, fully landscaped with private spa; cash on cash is over 7.5%!

Deal #3 – 1025 Olive Mill Ln.  

Located on the famed TPC golf course in a gated community in Summerlin -offering over 6% cash on cash return!

Deal #4 – 353 Jacaranda Arbor St.  

This approved short sale is located in the heart of Summerlin, near Palo Verde High School with a SID that is paid in full; cash on cash is about 7.5%!

For more information about these properties or to schedule a showing, please feel free to email or call me.

If you're an investor who has been looking at the Las Vegas housing market and the investment opportunities it presents, now is the time.  With housing prices as low as they are, mortgage rates still at record lows and cash on cash returns being high, our market represents opportunity for real estate investors.

However, most investors who are unfamiliar with our market, are also unfamiliar with who they should have representing them in their transactions.  Many realtors specialize in one or two areas of our market but most do not have the backing or support staff to help manage their files, negotiations as well as handling normal seller/buyer transactions. 

The Snyder Group specializes in investors.  In the video below, Dale Snyder goes over the benefits and services of what the Snyder Group offers to real estate investors and why choosing the right team of professional real estate agents is important. 

If you're an investor who is interested in the opportunities the Las Vegas housing market presents, both short term and long term and you would like to have an intelligent conversation about investing here, feel free to reach out to our team of real estate professionals.

We at the Snyder Group do our best to bring you the most up to date real estate news, and this story is no different:

Daily baths, natural stone floors, misting nozzles, heat lamps, a cool pool, fresh greens. No, this isn't a luxury resort spa — it’s the life of a kept reptile.

What leads some homeowners to cater to these toothy, scaly, often-maligned beasts in this way? Call it cold-blooded love, maybe. It all comes through in the clear, simple excitement in their voices and in their pet reptiles' sometimes extravagant, customized living quarters.

Herpers, as those people impassioned by reptiles and amphibians are known, are a different breed, and outfitting homes as oases for exotic animal life is no simple task.

Keeping reptiles in a residential setting requires more than devotion, to be sure — it's a science of controlled humidity and finely-tuned temperature gradients, and specialized food, vitamins and supplements. It ain’t easy.

According to the American Pet Products Association, 4.6 million U.S. households have made the effort to take care of 13 million pet reptiles as of 2011…

Read the full story here…

If you would like to have an intelligent conversation about the Las Vegas real estate market, luxury market or homes for iguanas -feel free to reach out to us. 

The Obama administration announced its latest plan to help troubled homeowners, enabling an estimated 3.5 million underwater mortgage holders to refinance at today’s historically-low interest rates.

However, experts speculate the proposal—which is expected to cost up to $10 billion and would be paid for by imposing a fee on major banks—could have a difficult time getting Congressional approval.

This proposal follows a string of government-initiated programs that have had mixed success, including the Making Homes Affordable Program. The difference is, Obama’s latest plan would assist borrowers with private (non-government backed) loans.

Under the current proposal, to be eligible borrowers must:

• Have not missed a mortgage payment in the past six months, and have no more than one late payment in the six months prior;
• Have a credit score of 580 or higher;
• Have a current mortgage balance within loan limits for FHA-insured loans in their communities; and
• Have the property as their primary residence

This proposal is already getting a lot of attention by the media, and distressed homeowners may view this as a viable solution to their problems.

However, it’s important to remember that this program would require Congressional approval, which may never happen. If you are on the edge facing foreclosure and in need of help, don’t let the media talk of this proposal distract you from finding a real solution.

If you or someone you know owes more on your home and you don't know what to do, feel free to reach out to us as resource for what options are available to you for you situation. 

In the video below, Dale Snyder and Erik Wirtner discuss the potential fallout of the settlement and whether it will actually be of any help to homeowners. 

If you would like more information about the contents of this blog or to have an intelligent conversation about the current national & local Las Vegas real estate market, feel free to reach out to us.

In an apparent change of heart, banks are offering $20,000 or more to troubled homeowners to avoid costly foreclosures.  The moves suggest lenders are becoming more realistic in grappling with the losses incurred in their mortgage portfolios.

Lenders are offering the incentives to spur a short sale, in which a home is sold for less than the mortgage, or a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.  Visit our FAQ page for more information on short sales.

Banks apparently have come to the realization that it’s best for them to cut their losses through these measures rather than pursue foreclosures that can be drawn out and leave a home vacant for months afterward, incurring carrying costs.

Wells Fargo is offering so-called relocation assistance for as much as $20,000 “in certain states with extended foreclosure timelines, including Florida,” a spokeswoman for the San Francisco bank told Bloomberg.  Florida’s foreclosures move through the courts, unlike California’s.

So it’s no surprise that Bank of America selected Florida for testing an incentive program to spur short sales over foreclosure, paying between $5,000 and $20,000 to troubled homeowners.

BofA sent 20,000 letters to homeowners who might qualify for the incentive program and about 15 percent of the recipients expressed interest in participating, said BofA spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens.  “We are encouraged by the initial interest shown in the program.  The bank hasn’t decided whether to expand the program beyond the initial test.

Banks are also trying to spur more short sales by approving such transactions faster and not pursuing their right to collect the unpaid portion of the mortgage resulting from a short sale.  This has spurred many first time buyers and real estate investors into snapping these homes, that are offered at reduced prices.

If you would like more information about the Las Vegas real estate market or if you, or someone you know owe more on your property than what it's worth and you don't know what to do -please feel free to reach out to us.  

Our goal is to keep the general public informed and help people make the best decision regarding their situation. 

This open house is in a gated community -our agent's number will be posted at the keypad for entry. 

ALL DATES & TIMES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME TO CONFIRM THE OPEN HOUSE SCHEDULE(S).

In the video below, Dale talks about the value of our open houses and what we offer you when you visit us at one of our open houses!

If you have questions or would like to have an intelligent conversation regarding the Las Vegas real estate market, feel free to email or call me.  

You can also do your own custom tailored home search.