Archive for November 2013

Bridgewater CT – Homes For Sale 

Bridgewater CT – a CT town to explore!  Deborah Laemmerhirt  203-994-4297 – HomesInConnecticutForSale.com

The real estate in Connecticut is full of history – that is if you ask people in the know. Some realtors just have a knack for knowing details of their environment and I enjoy being one of them.

Come visit this quaint quiet town and you will not want to leave.  Tucked into the beautiful rolling Litchfield Hills this town offers spectacular estates and affordable homes as well.  Take a look at Bridgewater CT – Homes for Sale while you are there.  Enjoy traditional events like the Bridgewater CT Country Parade and Fair which occurs towards the end of August each year or boating and other water activities on Lake Lillonah or some of the small town gatherings and events.  The village store is a focal point in town and the site where the famous Bridgewater Chocolate was created years ago. The Bridgewater Chocolate Company is currently located in neighboring Brookfield CT.

At first, some are hesitant at the idea of houses for sale in such a small town: a hamlet really with a population between two and three thousand people. Hesitation, however, usually turns to intrigue when they learn that some of Bridgewater’s more famous residents have included these celebrities: the actress Mia Farrow, as well as the dynamic duo of television news reporter Diane Sawyer and her funnyman husband film director Mike Nichols. Just come and hang around at the village store to hear about more residents! 

Have a look at the MLS listings of the town to see what kind of real estate listings you might find.  See BELOW!

I love being able who is able to guide prospective buyers in the direction of their dream home, especially in a beautiful little town like Bridgewater.  How else could a home buyer find the unexpected treasures?

Take a look at Bridgewater homes for sale below and let me know what you think:

CT Estate Homes – Deborah Laemmerhirt  203-994-4297 – HomesInConnecticutForSale.com

Looking for an Estate Home?  Purchasing a luxury home is not only rewarding, it is also another way of securing your hard-earned assets. When you are ready to make this investment, you will want to work with a REALTOR® who is familiar with the high-end market—a professional who will work to find a home or estate that will fit your lifestyle and needs. Deborah Laemmerhirt, Broker specializes in the luxury market and is committed to helping create your first-class lifestyle.

Built or refurnished with the best designs and materials, luxury homes allow individuals and families to live a lavish comfortable lifestyle. Most of these homes have such superb features as high-quality furnishings, professional appliances, spacious rooms, upscale flooring, landscaped properties, and spectacular views. If you are ready to sell your home, Deborah can help you successfully market your luxury home. We are up to date on the latest market conditions and can offer guidance and expert recommendations so that you can maximize the return on your home. We can also make suggestions on how to show your home in the best light. Whether you are buying or selling an estate home,Deborah Laemmerhirt is available to guide you.

Interested in exploring the possibility of a CT Luxury Estate Home? Please start your search with the map below – if you cannot access what you are looking for please call, text or email me and I will get back to you as quickly as possible.

CT Home Sellers – ARE YOU READY TO SELL?  Deborah Laemmerhirt 203-994-4297

Sellers Info
Selling your home shouldn’t be a stressful ordeal. Making the smart move of choosing a REALTOR® is your first step to ensuring that your investment in your home pays off. Our services and experience allow you to focus on your move while We manage your home sale from our initial consultation to the closing deal, and beyond. We pride ourselves on repeat business and hope you’ll come to understand why.  GET MY UNIQUE INDIVIDUALIZED MARKETING PROGRAM TODAY!

• Complete a comparative Home Valuation that will compare your home’s value to that of your neighbors.
• Compile a comprehensive plan detailing all the efforts we will employ to sell your home, including Internet and local media. (see additional information below)
• Present your home to as many qualified buyers as possible getting your home maximum exposure.
• Help you stage your home and generate curb appeal to ensure you get the highest price.
• Assist with obtaining offers and help you in negotiating the best deal as smoothly as possible.
• Help you find your next home and answer all of your questions about the local market area, including schools, neighborhoods, the local economy, and more.

Recent Home Sales

What are homes selling for on your street? Use Contact us to find out what neighborhood homes are selling for, free of charge, or choose a more detailed analysis of the value of your home.

Getting the Highest Price for Your Home

Curb appeal is key and could make a difference whether people stop and take a flyer, or drive right by. Here are a few tips to increase the curb appeal of your home. Staging your home is important. Many buyers will stay in your home longer if it’s staged appropriately. We have compiled some ideas to present your home in the most effective manner.

Closing Costs to Expect:

• Broker’s commission is a full-service fee and will cost anywhere between 5% to 7%.
• Attorney fees
• Local property transfer tax, county transfer tax, state transfer tax, and state capital gains tax are the charges that you’ll pay for the privilege of selling your home. Credit to the buyer of unpaid real estate taxes for the prior or current year are variable and depend on when you close and when your taxes are due.
• FHA fees and costs are all fees are now negotiable between an FHA buyer and seller.
• Home inspections fees are in some circumstances paid for by the seller (but not usually) and include pest, radon and other inspections.
• Miscellaneous fees can accrue from correcting problems noticed during the home inspection.

When a house goes on the market, first impressions are extremely important.  This is the HOT time for you to capture the buyers who are already in the market, ready willing and able to buy.  Your home must show at it’s peak!  And your home must be easy to show.   They have seen the existing inventory and have rejected it, either the price was not right or it didn’t suit them.  They have alerts set up with their agents and are hungry for new listings.  This is the time you are most likely to experience excited buyers, eager for a fresh new listing.  The longer a property sits on the market the more likely a buyer is going to think 1) the seller doesn’t really want to sell or 2) the seller must be desperate by now or 3) what’s wrong with the house?  In any of the scenarios the buyers are going to, more often than not, want to discount their offer more than they would if they think they are competing with other buyers.  MARKETING YOUR HOME NOW.

Neither the seller(s) nor the agent controls the market, which dictates what a buyer is willing to pay for a home, but what we CAN control is pricing it correctly and marketing the heck out of it.  Some sellers might think that pricing it correctly is just the lazy agent’s answer to sell a house.  If that were true, we wouldn’t devote the amount of resources we do to marketing properties.  With less than one in ten houses selling right now, you want to SELL, you don’t want to be one of the 90% sitting on the market month after month, especially as prices continue to decline.  We market the heck out of our listings to expose them to targeted and qualified buyers and agents so that they sell for the most the market will bear.  This is a proven strategy to get you the most for your home as well as the quickest time to close, price right and market aggressively.

Each house is unique and we craft a marketing strategy to fit each home’s special qualities.  We market to potential buyers, both local and out of area (including international), and we market to other Realtors working with buyers in your area.  We highlight the best features of your home and absolutely saturate the internet with your listing.  In fact, each listing has it’s own custom designed website, just for that listing.  You will be able to see week by week how many buyers are “visiting” your listing.  If there is a buyer out there looking, they WILL know about your home.

We have a a listing marketing and management tools which contains over 50 possible tactics to market, manage and sell your listing.  We sit with you, assess your home and create a strategy specific to your listing.

Here is a list of some of the tools we may use for your listing:

• A fully custom webpage just for your property with interactive google street view maps, statistics, neighborhood info, full captivating description, tons of photos, video, and more with your own custom domain name
• Craigslist advertising
• Social media including google +, twitter, face book, linked-in and Pintrest.
• Detailed and descriptive blog on our website and other blogs
• Custom photo yard sign For those with smart phones this includes a mobile version of your single property website! And, for those who text – there is a unique code to get instant home information
• Custom Open House signs
• Rotating featured property on our websites
• Placed on hundreds of local, national and international websites through the company and my group’s efforts
  
• Work to get your home to rank on the internet with SEO and content
• Enhanced Realtor.com, Yahoo.com, Trulia.com, Aol.com, MSN.com and Zillow.com listing with banner, highlighted info and more
• Custom panoramic tour and/or video of your home on YouTube and many other video sites
• Custom photos and video of the highlights of the neighborhood
• Professional Designer consultation for stating/prep suggestions to sell
• Custom Flyer designed for home showings
• Custom e-flyers emailed to buyers already currently looking for exactly your type of property through our buyer inventory
• Emailed to our 4000+ strong email database
• Emailed to all of the area Realtors
• Docent cards placed in the home to highlight the features of the home
• Public Open House
• Local and regional print ads

Bethel, CT Homes and Community – Debrah Laemmerhirt  203-994-4297

There are hundreds of homes for sale in the small, laid back town of Bethel, Connecticut, where Deborah Laemmerhirt, realtor at www.HomesInConnecticutForSale.com will be able to show you a variety of properties; and in this area, you are sure to find a place you will love.

Not far from Danbury, nestled in the hills and trees of Connecticut, a small town of less than 20,000 people, Bethel, can be found. This town has been around as long as its neighbors; settled in the mid 1700s, Bethel did not officially become a town until it finally seceded from Danbury in 1855. It has this same historic appeal, but none of the detachment that comes from living in old-money neighborhoods filled with impeccable, stately homes–it has them, certainly, but it is a singularly friendly and welcoming place.

An unofficial town website hails Bethel as having a “low crime rate, reasonable taxes, good schools and a healthy economy.” These factors have been instrumental in many Americans’ choices for their new homes.

The Bethel community is an accepting one, inviting newcomers to contribute to a monthly events calendar, it’s library’s website boasting a cake pan lending program. Its real estate listings show an abundance of homes for sale. Its excellent, but few, schools are all located in a central handful, so that high schoolers and kindergarteners are all attending at the same place, and most of its attractions are located in its Greenwood Avenue Historic District. Cinemas, cafes, a zoo, an aquarium, hiking trails, and orchards advertising hayrides; the town is cheerful, placid, even cute. It’s a great place to live, and an even better place to raise a family. If you’ve made the decision to buy a home in Bethel, Connecticut, you’ve made a good one.

There are hundreds of listings in this historic municipality, any of which a Deborah Laemmerhirt, realtor at www.HomesInConnecticutForSale.com can show you. A realtor can answer any questions you have regarding the new homes and historic homes available in Bethel, and help you negotiate the best price in an area that has a range of listings varying in the hundreds of thousands. Make the process of buying your home in Bethel as easy as living in Bethel will be, and go to a real estate agent.

For local Bethel CT updates and news go to www.Bethel.Patch.com.

How is the Bethel CT Real Estate Market doing?  As you can see from the graph below, as the inventory dropped the homes increased significantly.

Are you ready to buy a home? This recent article from Realtor.com has the answer…

While it may be acceptable to snap up a pair of shoes on an impulse, buying a home requires thoughtful planning and decision making. Whether you’re becoming a homeowner for the first time or you’re a repeat buyer, buying a home is a financial and emotional decision that requires the experience and support of a team of reliable professionals including a Realtor, a lender, a lawyer and a range of other individuals.

Why Do You Want to Buy?

The emotional part of the decision comes into play when you think about why you want to move. If you’re a first-time buyer, you need stability in your career and the desire to commit to living in the same community for five to seven years. You should want to establish roots in a neighborhood and look forward to decorating as you please without requiring a landlord’s permission.

Purchasing a home is a lifestyle choice that requires you to think about how you like to spend your time and the type of community where you want to live, such as a rural area without nearby neighbors, a highrise building in a city or a home within a planned community with recreational amenities. The more you understand your priorities for a home, the easier it will be for you to narrow your real estate decisions.

Homeownership can also be a powerful way to increase your personal wealth for you and your family, since you’ll be building equity in your home as you pay off your mortgage.

Are Your Finances Ready for Homeownership?

While your dream home may or may not be within your reach right away, you can take steps to become a homeowner the moment you earn your first paycheck. In order to qualify for a mortgage loan to buy a home, you’ll need good credit, a pattern of paying your bills on time and saving money, and a maximum debt-to-income ratio (your gross monthly income compared to the minimum payments on all recurring debts) of 43 percent. Some lenders have stricter guidelines, so the lower your debt-to-income ratio, the better your chances of a loan approval.

While loan programs are available with low down payments of 3.5 to 5 percent, and a few programs offer no down payment at all, you’ll still need some savings to pay for closing costs and moving expenses, a deposit on a home, and for cash reserves after you buy. Saving money and preserving or improving your credit history are essential elements to homeownership.

What Can You Afford to Buy?

Housing prices and rents vary from one location to another, but you can use a rent-vs.-buy calculator to estimate the difference between your current rent and buying a home. In some markets buying a home can cost the same or even less than renting. Remember, when you’re a homeowner you need to included homeowners insurance, property taxes and homeowner association dues in your housing costs. You can also use a home affordability calculator to help you estimate what you can pay for a home. You should also think about your plans for the future and how you spend your money, along with your comfort level with a mortgage payment. A lender will tell you how much you can borrow, but that lender won’t know how much you spend on travel or golf or your plans for potentially reducing your work hours when you have a family.

Once you’ve thought through the emotional and financial aspects of becoming a homeowner, your next steps should be to find a reliable, experienced Realtor to become your partner in the homebuying process and to meet with a reputable lender who can discuss your options for financing your purchase.

Read the original article here.