Picking Planned Communities: How to Find the Best for Your Family

Although searching for a new home isn’t without its stressful and time-consuming elements, there’s nothing quite like the excitement of choosing (and then looking forward to) a new place to live. 

 

If you’re in the market for something that’s “more than just a house”, you might find that planned communities offer a lifestyle that’s best suited to your family. These are master planned developments that feature well-built homes created by builders with a sense of style, thoughtful street layouts and landscaping,  and amenities that provide charm, beauty and convenience.

If you’re looking at planned communities, some of the questions you’ll want to ask or investigate include the following:

Is it really a “planned” community? Some developments bill them as such, but in reality, they are simply a few streets of homes built by one or two builders.

That doesn’t meant that they aren’t lovely or that they can’t be the best choice for your family, but it’s important to understand that they likely won’t offer many of the benefits you can enjoy in authentic planned communities.

Do the homes for sale match the quality of the model home or the homes represented on the brochure? Drive around the community and investigate. Ask to look at more than one home for sale, so that you can get a feel for “the real deal”. You might also want to find out how often homes in that community are placed on the market each year.

Does the planned community offer security features and other amenities? Ask about entrance and exit gates and alarm systems for homes. Look for other amenities like walking trails, gardens, playgrounds and water features.

What are  requirements and protections of the HOA? You’ll want to make sure that you understand what you’re getting into here. If you notice that garbage cans are left out for days or that residents seem to be able to install a basketball goal any old place, this may not be the HOA for you.

To learn more about planned communities, visit http://www.blancovista.com

How to Decipher an MLS Listing: 3 Key Tips

One of the keys to finding the home of your dreams lies in the ability to understand real estate agency listings, and more importantly, the ability to decipher MLS pages. 

Let’s start with an overview of the MLS service:

MLS, or Multiple Listing Service, is a collection of services that allows real estate agencies and brokers to establish offers, disseminate property information, represent sellers, and generally work with each other in a professional capacity.

The data stored in a MLS database is the proprietary information of the broker associated with the property owner. Buyers and sellers can find MLS pages via an Internet search, through either zip codes, MLS numbers, or other identifying data.

Tips for interpreting important property information from MLS listings:

Tip One: Look for the price first. This should be prominently located near the top. Make sure it matches up with the price on the for sale sign or the real estate agency listing. If it doesn’t, ask questions.

Tip Two: Carefully check the property information that related to schools. Again, if it doesn’t match up with your understanding from the real estate agent, ask questions.

In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to contact the school district and ask them to check the double check the schools for the address in question, just to make sure.  School information can get miscommunicated to buyers, especially in areas where school district boundaries and attendance zones are tricky. School districts are the final authority, so it never hurts to find out straight from the horse’s mouth. This is true even if you don’t have kids, since schools can affect your home’s resale value.

Tip Three: Look for other information. A real estate agency listing only has room for so much info, but the details found on a MLS can provide further insight. Look for the year the house was built, the tax district information, square footage, and homeowner association (HOA) information.

For more information about real estate agencies, click here!

Historic Homes: Pros and Cons for Buyers

Old historic homes have  fabulous back stories, tons of character, and they’re usually located in the “cool part” of town. So there’s no wonder that so many buyers are attracted to old historic homes for sale, because the prospect of owning one is filled with excitement and intrigue. 

There are many advantages to owning such a home, whether you’re an investor or someone looking to make the home purchase a permanent one.

However, it’s important that you know what you may be getting into before you go hunting. If you’re in the market for old historic homes for sale, here’s a quick look at some advantages and disadvantages:

Eye candy:

A historic home has a unique visual appeal that you just can’t find anywhere else, even in a beautiful and expensive contemporary home. They often boast architecture styles that can’t be found in modern homes, exquisite craftsmanship, and bells and whistles you can’t get from any other kind of property. If you long for bay windows in the attic, telephone closets, breakfast nooks and a port a cochere that was designed for horse-drawn buggies, you might just be the perfect prospective owner of a historic home.

Costs and taxes:

Let’s face it—an older home that hasn’t been updated for a while is probably going to require some work, and depending on what you want and how much you want to get from resale, it may be a lot of work. The upside is that some historic homeowners have made those updates in preparation for a sale. So you might luck into a property where all the work has been done for you, and you reap the benefits of plumbing, insulation or cooling that’s newer than what you’d get than if you bought a pre-owned modern home.

Restrictions:

If your home is in a designated historic district, there may be limitations on what you can do in terms of additions or renovations. Some buyers don’t like losing this flexibility. Still others find that they appreciate the protections provided by these restrictions, since they serve to enforce the continued aesthetics of the historic neighborhood. 

To learn more about old historic homes for sale in the Austin area or about the home buying process,  visit www.thekinneycompany.com