You have Multiple Offers. Now what?

When inventory is tight and a market heats up, sellers often dream of finding themselves in a multiple offer situation. In a multiple offer situation, more than one potential buyer submits a written offer on the home. With multiple offers on a property, the listing agent can then try and “shop the top offer” in order to try and get the best deal possible for their client.

If you live in a hot market, how do you structure your listing in such a way that you get the best possible offers in a multiple offer situation?

One strategy for cultivating multiple offers is letting buyers know that the seller will only entertain offers on a certain date. Rather than deal with offers dribbling in one at a time, there’s a deadline for offers. When this happens, buyers know they have to have a truly exceptional offer on the table if they hope to be in the running for the property.

Save on Your Heating Costs this Winter

The laws of thermodynamics can be expensive. When the big winter weather arrives, the heat can leach from your home through a variety of obvious and unexpected ways, resulting in high heating bills. Wouldn’t you rather put that money into holiday shopping or upgrades for your house?

The most obvious culprits are in plain sight: Doors and windows. The weatherstripping around doors shouldn’t admit any light, and when it comes to windows, you’ll want to look for holes in the caulking. You could even upgrade your windows to double-pane, or go with storm windows to improve insulation. But the less obvious and less dramatic options are available to you, too. Here are 5 tips you may not have thought of when it comes to heating leaks and your overall energy spend:

1. Cover up your water heater. For $20 - $40 you can secure a water heater blanket at most hardware stores. This will help keep your water heater insulated, which in turn means the water heater will use less energy to keep you in those warm showers. You might even consider dropping your water heater temperature from 140F/60C down to a safe but reasonable 120F/49C.

What to Look for When Evaluating School Districts

Given the way most communities work, the location of a home dictates the local school district. The quality of the school district can have a direct impact on the value of your home. Even if you don’t have kids or don’t have to plan kids, the quality of the local schools can positively or negatively effect your home’s value. Buyers tend to prefer homes in good school districts, either because they have school-aged children, or they are thinking of resale value down the line.

So how do you know if your local schools make the grade? What signs point towards an improving or declining school district? Here are a five things you’ll want to consider:

1. Test scores. It’s a basic measurement of student performance and educator effectiveness. Look at the performance historically for an idea of which direction things have been heading.

Veteran's Day is November 11th

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of November in 1918, World War One ended. Arguably the most terrible war the modern world had witnessed to date was finally over. Few souls on Earth went untouched in some way by the war. So many served, so many died, and so many took the scars of their experience home with them and did their best to get on with life. All had hoped there would never be cause for such sacrifice in the future.