Colorado Springs Real Estate Podcast with Donny Coram

As you go through the home buying process, it's important to determine your housing needs. This goes far beyond the number of bedrooms and bathrooms that you want.Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.When you're buying a home, determining your housing needs is incredibly important. The key is to plan ahead.If you're moving from a smaller property into a larger one, you'll want to plan for the next three to five years. You should have a list of absolutely non-negotiable things like which area you're going to be in, which school district, as well as bedroom and bathroom counts, but it's also important to be realistic about your budget and needs so that you can find the best house to fill them.You should have a list of non-negotiables. While you're considering which home to buy, you also need to consider location and the amenities you need to be nearby. For example, if you're commuting a lot, you may want proximity to I-25 so you can get north and south easily. If you're at one of our many military installations, it might also be important to be close to the Powers Corridor.Location is important, but you also have to consider your distance to work. How long do you want to commute every day? How far away do the kids have to go to get to school? A lot of factors can determine where your new home will be, and a real estate professional can help you make the best decision to find the right home for you and your family.If you have any questions for me about determining your home needs, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help!

Are Zestimates accurate? Sellers like to think that they should price their homes according to this number, but these valuations are usually not exact.Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.I’m often asked whether Zillow’s Zestimates are an accurate way to determine the value of your home. Here’s the thing: Zestimates are a software that takes square footage and recent comparable sales into account in order to arrive at a value. As a former appraiser, I’m here to tell you that pricing your home just isn’t that simple. Zillow’s Zestimate does not factor in specific features of your home, your home’s view, or any other renovations you may have made to the home to improve its value. Zestimates are not the final word on your home’s value. The best way to determine your home’s value is to talk to a licensed professional agent to give you a free equity evaluation. Zillow is a great tool to get a base price on your home to begin with, but is not the end of the conversation. An experienced agent will do the research, find comparable sales, physically assess the property, and then analyze the data in order to properly price your home in today’s rapidly changing market. There is no way for Zillow to account for all of the factors that give a property its value. If you have any other questions about pricing your home properly for the market or would like a free equity evaluation, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!

With our open houses, we don't just put out a few signs and open the property to see for a couple hours. Our extensive system actually starts the night before and includes online promotion.Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.We certainly recommend that you do an open house on your property when selling. My open house system is a little bit different than the standard open house, though. The standard open house is usually a one or two-hour event with a directional sign at a major intersection. My open houses start the Friday evening before the open house. We put out more than 100 directional signs all around the neighborhood directing traffic to your home.From there, we really hit the Facebook marketing hard, broadcasting that we'll have the house open both Saturday and Sunday. This allows for a 16-hour open house and allows us to maximize foot traffic. At our best attempts, we’ll see 30 to 40 buyers come through your property during the open house. Preparing for the open house is going to be important when there is that many people. We want to make sure all your valuables are locked up and out of sight since we're going to have a lot of strangers coming through your property in a short period of time. We work with you to prepare the open house and get your home in showable condition, but most importantly, secure your valuables to avoid any problems.Our open houses system is guaranteed to get results. The best thing you can do for the open house process is to get yourself out of the property. Since our open houses are longer than normal, you want to have your kids and pets at a different location for up to two days while we perform the open house. The great news is that the open house has been so effective for us that we can get an offer from our first day. This helps you get the most amount of money in the least amount of time by getting foot traffic in an open house system that's guaranteed to get results.If you have any questions about our open house system or any questions about the Colorado Springs real estate market in general, give me a call or send me an email. Let's talk soon!

It's a common misconception that price is the only thing in a real estate deal that is subject to negotiation. Every contract has many conditional items that can be negotiated in your favor.Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.As a real estate professional, my job is negotiating. One common misconception is that the only thing negotiated in a home sale is the price. While price is very important, there are more things to negotiate besides price. For example, one other negotiation is the inspection items. When the inspection objection comes back, there will be a list of items we have to determine and negotiate in terms of which items are important to fix and which are a necessary expense for you as the seller. Move out date is another important negotiation item. In certain markets, it's important to have some transition time to move from your previous home to the new one. By negotiating move out dates, we can allow you to lease back your current property from the new owner, which allows you to transition to your new home without the stress of needing to do a very instantaneous move.Price isn't the only item that's negotiated.While it's common to move out the same day as closing, lately, we've negotiated a lot of deals that allow the sellers to stay in the home for a couple weeks or even months to allow for a smoother transition. There are other conditional items in a contract that need to be negotiated as well, like closing costs. In most markets, it's standard for the seller to pay closing costs, but in other markets, as they heat up, we may find that closing costs are something we can negotiate out by increasing the purchase price of the home.If you have any questions about negotiations during the home buying and selling process, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help.

When you sell your house, pricing too high or too low can be costly. You need to be aware of timely market trends when you assign a price to your house if you want to maximize your sale.Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.As a real estate professional, I'm often asked what the pitfalls of pricing your home too high or too low are. Pricing your house is not an exact science. To determine the value of a home, you need to really know what's going on in the marketplace at that time. If the market is on an upward tear, you want to price your home just above what you expect to get for it. This allows you to adapt to the current market conditions and avoid leaving any money on the table. On the other hand, if the market is heading downward, you want to price your home just below what you expect to get. Market data will tell us what the trend of the neighborhood is. To determine these values, we look at comparable home sales in your neighborhood. What did your neighbor's house sell for? What have homes in your neighborhood with similar square footage sold for in the last six to 12 months? Analyzing this data will tell us what the trend of the market is, which allows us to price your home within that data. As a former registered appraiser, my job is to find the right value for your home and price it within the market constraints. Pricing too high will lead to your home sitting on the market for a long time and receiving multiple lowball offers and not getting the most money possible. Pricing too low may leave money on the table. If you're thinking about selling your home, I'd love to sit down and talk with you about maximizing your sale based on today's market conditions in Colorado Springs. Give me a call or send me an email and let's keep this conversation going.

Selling your home FSBO (For Sale By Owner) is tricky. While it’s true you don’t have to pay a commission, you leave yourself vulnerable in a number of ways.Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.If you are attempting to sell your home For Sale By Owner (FSBO), I get what you’re going for. You don’t want to have to pay that commission, and you think by selling your own home you’ll save all that commission.However, you should know that the leading reason that sellers end up in litigation in real estate is due to FSBO situations. By not having the proper contracts or negotiations, you can leave yourself exposed to long-term liability issues with your former home.I encounter a lot of FSBOs and I’m happy to say I’ve been able to work with quite a few of these sellers to ultimately end up netting them more money than they thought they would get on their own. We simply have the systems and marketing in place to capitalize on the market, get you the most money possible for your home, reduce your liability, and do it in the least amount of time possible. We can minimize your cost while maximizing your net. If you would like to work with a licensed professional in selling your home, I would be happy to discuss with you how we can market and sell your property for minimal cost while maximizing your net. FSBOs can be difficult because a lot of people simply don’t know all it takes to close a sale.With a licensed professional, you can reduce your exposure to litigation and maximize your marketing, allowing you to get top dollar for your home. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Give me a call or send me an email today.

Days or hours before you close on your home, we will walk through the property to make sure it’s in working condition. There are many reasons why the final walkthrough is so important.Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.The final walkthrough is a crucial part of the closing process. Days or hours before you close on your home, we will walk through the property to make sure it’s in working condition. It’s very important that you use a checklist during the walkthrough to make sure that you don’t miss anything. Part of that checklist will include your inspection resolution items, but there will also be other features on the list that we need to look at before closing. After the walkthrough, you will head to the title company and close on the home, so it’s incredibly important that you check on the property one last time in order to verify that there have been no conditional changes that may prevent you from wanting to close on the home. If the property is vacant, the final walkthrough is extra important because there might have been vandalism or theft since you last looked at the property. The walkthrough allows you to take appropriate action with any issues before you actually own the home. At this stage in the home buying game, you don’t want any surprises. At this stage in the game, you don’t want any surprises. By using a checklist, we can ensure that all of the repairs you requested have been taken care of and that no additional issues have popped up in the meantime. Our checklist really saved one of my clients a lot of hassle. We walked through the property just hours before heading to the title company only to discover that the water heater had been stolen. It would have been terrible for my client to find out the water heater was missing after closing. However, since we did the final walkthrough, the seller replaced the water heater before my client closed on the home. As you can see, the final walkthrough is an awesome way to avoid a lot of pitfalls in the process of buying a home, especially if the home is vacant. You simply don’t know what’s going to happen before you close on it. If you have any questions about the final walkthrough or about the home buying process in general, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.As a real estate agent, people always ask me if they should buy or rent their home. You'd think as an agent, my obvious answer would be to buy a home, but that's just not the case. A lot of it is personal preference, as well as market conditions.As we've seen the market rise here in Colorado Springs, the cost to rent today is 20% more than it was just two years ago. So today, buying a home with really low interest rates and high rentals makes the most sense. As the market shifts though, that might not be the case. In markets like Denver, for example, the prices have gotten so high that you're better off renting, and not paying the top of the market prices. "Luckily, the Colorado Springs market has not peaked yet." Luckily, the Colorado Springs market has not peaked yet. I would say today, your best bet is to buy a home, but you really have to determine what your long-term goals for homeownership are. Treat your home like an investment, not just a place to live. Buying the right home will protect your financial investment for years and years. Whether you're buying a new home or a resale home, you want to think not about what it's worth today, but what it will be worth in the long run. Most homeowners live in a house for three to five years, so you want to try to guess what your home is going to be worth three to five years from your move. By looking at your house this way as an investment rather than just a place to live, you can avoid what's happened in previous markets, where collapse has left people upside down on their mortgages.If you have any questions about buying versus renting, let's talk soon. I can help you find the right investment for years to come.

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net.Many people ask me what happens after a home inspection. After the inspection, an inspection resolution is delivered, which determines what items are requested to be repaired on the home. In most cases, if these items are minor issues and are worth it to get through to closing, we can get those fixed. The seller has the option not to fix these items, but assuming that everything is decided on and is satisfactory, after that, the loan process takes over. "The seller has the option not to fix items that come up."The next step after the inspection is typically the appraisal, which is conducted by a licensed appraiser to determine the home's value. After the appraisal is done, the inspection items are completed, the value of the home is verified, and we proceed to closing. Then you get your keys and move into your new home!If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I know many reputable vendors and contractors that can fix repairs that come up during an inspection to keep the process smooth and painless. Let's talk soon.

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. Determining whether you’re ready to buy a home or not is more of a personal decision than anything else.  If you’ve been a renter for years, that’s one sign you might be ready to buy a home. Let’s face it, you’re writing a check every month to your landlord, and that’s just the beginning of the picture. Determining whether or not to buy a home depends on how long you intend to stay in one place. There’s a common misconception that when you sign a 30-year mortgage, you have to stay in the house for 30 years.  I look at this a lot differently. Buying a home is an investment tool that increases your net worth and spending power. By owning a property, you’re applying some of your payment towards equity. This equity grows over the years. You take that equity and roll it into each property as you move forward.  Buying the right home in this marketplace is crucial because you want to build equity for the long-term future. When you sell that home, you’ll be able to take that equity and maybe buy a larger home or downsize.  Ultimately, whether or not you buy a home is largely decided by your goals and how you want to protect your financial future. If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. We pride ourselves on being on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to marketing and selling homes. Today we are excited to discuss a technology with you that just hit the market, and will revolutionize the way homes are sold. We are talking about the 3D Matterport Camera, which allows potential buyers to walk through your home anytime, digitally. The buyer gets to control the action and see the entire home from a first-person perspective. We have found, on average, our tours are being viewed 200 times per property listing. This means that 200 extra buyers are able to walk through your home, without ever having to step foot inside. You are going to love this technology, just check out the example in the video above. It’s pretty incredible. This technology could mean the difference between you getting top dollar and your home sitting on the market. By utilizing this tech to sell your home, we want to help you sell for top dollar in a shorter period of time. If you want to use this technology to work for you in selling your property, give us a call or send us an email. We would love to talk to you more about it.

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. Today, we'll go over selling your property in the winter season. The conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't sell your home in the winter because no one wants to buy a home and move during the holidays. However, we've seen that winter is one of the best times to sell and get top dollar. Why? It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Due to the conventional wisdom out there, many people opt to wait and sell in spring or even take their homes off the market during the fourth quarter. This leads to a shortage of inventory. No one wants to move during the holiday season. Those that move during winter do so because they have to. Maybe they are a military family. Perhaps, they've been transferred by their employer and need to move in by the end of the fiscal year, which is December 31st. These buyers are highly motivated. Since there aren't as many homes available for sale, you can get the most amount of motivated buyers with the least amount of competition! In the winter, you will most likely spend fewer days on the market, and your overall sales price can go up because of the highly motivated buyers. If you're thinking of selling your home or if you have any other questions for us, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. We've had an amazing summer here in Colorado, but now that the fall is in full swing, there's no better time to start preparing your home for the cold winter months! The first thing to look at is your outside lighting. It's starting to get dark a whole lot earlier, so now is a great time to get outside and replace bulbs and fixtures as needed. You don't want to wait until there is snow on the ground to do these things! You're really going to enjoy the fact that your lights are working when you arrive home after work and it's pitch-dark out! It's been so warm here lately that there's obviously been no need to use the furnace. A bad thing about an unused furnace is that it collects dust, which is bad for your heating system and, more importantly, your health. Now is a great time to pull out the filter and clean it (or replace it altogether)! Next, you should take advantage of the remaining nice weather days to clean your gutters. This is important: as ice and snow accumulates, it will build up in your gutters if it has nowhere else to go. Leaves and brush block the drainage system on your roof, and this is dangerous because once the ice and snow melts, it will not drain properly and could cause harm to your home and your family. Lastly, take a look at your water spigots and your hose and make sure that no water is left in the lines. The biggest problem we have with sudden freezes in Colorado is flooded basements. If you're going to be leaving your house for an extended period of time, you need to leave your thermostat in the 60s to prevent freezing. However, even this can be risky; I suggest unscrewing your hose from the water spigot, which will allow water to flow from the hose and should prevent breakages in the system. If you want to stay dry and warm this winter, we highly recommend taking these tips to heart! Give us a call or shoot us an email if you have any questions for us or if you need real estate assistance of any kind. We're always here to help!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. We are looking for more homes to sell in the Fountain Valley Ranch area here in The Springs.  We recently sold a home at 5578 Kingsboro Dr. This five-bedroom, 2.5-bath ranch home sold in just 22 days!  What's even better is that this property sold for 99% of its asking price! We generated a ton of interest in the Fountain Valley Ranch area, and now we simply have too many buyers looking for homes in this area. Please contact me soon if you're looking to sell in that area. We have buyers waiting for you!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. Today, I want to discuss a topic I come across a lot: whether you should sell your home or keep it and rent it out. There are a lot of things you want to take into account before making the decision to sell or rent your home. The very first thing to consider is your ability to be a landlord. Can you stomach dealing with tenants who trash your property or who make it difficult to collect rent? While these things shouldn't be taken lightly, they are extreme situations - they don't happen as often as you might think. The next thing you want to do is have a market analysis done so you can determine how much you can get for rent. We will help you find out how much you can get for rent, so you can compare it against your monthly mortgage payment and see if being a landlord is right for you!  Really, there is no right answer when it comes to selling or renting. The pros and cons vary on a case-by-case basis. The best thing you can do is sit down with us for a free, no-obligation consultation, where we'll assess your particular situation.  We would love to be your consultant, so that you make informed, and ultimately profitable, decisions in our marketplace. Give us a call or shoot us a quick email to chat about your options, or if you need real estate assistance of any kind. We're always here to help!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. Hey everybody, we are here today to discuss home valuation, a topic near and dear to my heart. As a local appraiser here in Colorado Springs, I learned how to and am licensed to provide valuations of homes. I also learned there is a big difference between the market price of a home and the appraisal price. When I'm evaluating your home to sell, we are going to take into accounts a ton of its features, including floor plan, square footage, and comparable sales in your neighborhood. By taking into account all of these features, I can help you find the best price to list your home. By pricing accurately, we can prevent you from getting pushed out of the market by being either under or overpriced. I'd love to put my valuation skills to work for you to help you list and sell your home, and get you the most amount of money for your home in the shortest amount of time possible. If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I'd like to put my expertise to work for you and make sure your home doesn't sit on the market too long. I can't wait to hear from you!

Interested in buying a home? GO HERE to perform a Full Home Search, or if you're considering selling, CLICK HERE to receive a Free Home Value Report. For any other questions, please reach out to me at (719) 299-5778, or email me at Donny@IntegrityTeam.net. Today we'll be discussing the proper steps that can be taken to get your home market-ready so that you can sell for top dollar this spring. I should have you know that you should put your home on the market as soon as possible to avoid the extra competition in the springtime, but if you need to wait until then to sell, then I have some good tips for you. Clean and declutter your home. Buyers like to see spotless, organized homes. This is pretty basic advice, but I cannot stress enough how clean your home needs to be. Clean in places that you don't think need to be cleaned, like underneath a cabinet or above a door frame. You want your home to look brand new. Get the paperwork prepared. What I'm talking about is the listing contract and your mortgage statements. This helps determine what you will net when you sell the property, and the listing contract will allow you to make sure that the sale of your home goes according to plan. Detach yourself emotionally. You probably have a lot of memories and emotions connected to your home, but when you put your home on the market it's no longer your home - it's a product that we're trying to sell. This is difficult for a lot of people to do, but it's also important for a profitable sale. When you have a real estate agent working with you, it often makes detaching yourself from your property easier. So, if you're ready to sell please contact me. Even if you're not ready to sell just yet you should give me a call or send an email, because I would love to see what I can do to get your home sold quickly and for top dollar.