In the Terminator movies, a robot from the future (Arnold Schwarzenegger) hunts down the human heroine in order to change the future by altering the past. Although that’s actually the present. It’s complicated.

Although generally considered science fiction, the same thing is happening right now in the realm of Cumming, GA home appraisals! Now, before any Cumming, GA readers panic, there’s no immediate danger to the community. The authorities have the situation well in hand; in fact, the robot in question has already been hauled into court. There’s certainly nothing that could affect any individual Cumming, GA homeowner…that is, unless your own house is about to be entered into the Cumming, GA listings.
First, about the robot: this is not the Terminator (Arnold) himself. In real life, he is in no way the fictional robot character who was the antagonist/protagonist featured in the Terminator movies.

Neither is the robot that lurks in some online listings: the home appraisal robot. It, too, is nothing to fear, even though it has probably already visited your house without your knowledge. This robot comes from the Zillow website, and its name is “Zestimate.” It means no harm and is doing the best an automated home estimate robot could be expected to do. Any unintended consequences of what happens when it visits your house are, as the phrase indicates, unintentional.

About that court case: the online information company Zillow publishes a dollar figure that its robot calculates for most U.S. home addresses. It is featured as its “Zestimate” of a property’s market value. An Illinois realty lawyer has sued them because she claims that in her case that number is so low and off-kilter that it has materially hampered the sale of her condominium. State law has it that nobody can publish an appraisal without permission of the property’s owner. Zillow says that the $ number it calls its “Zestimate” is not an appraisal at all: instead, it’s an “estimated market value.” Who wins the court case is yet to be determined.
How this might affect your own Cumming, GA home is because prospective buyers might visit Zillow to see what the robot thinks your own property is worth, and be slightly misled. Zillow admits that, compared with actual sale prices, their Zestimate number has a median error rate of 5% (not bad)—but that it’s only within twenty percent 89.7% of the time. A 20% error would be terribly misleading; especially when it happens more than one out of ten times.

The fact is, this robot doesn’t come from the future like the Terminator. Its numbers are based solely on publicly recorded information, which may be outdated, incorrect, or, most likely, unable to factor in anything other than basic square footage and general comps. What the Zestimate cannot account for are things like how upgraded, or outdated, or depressingly dark, or delightfully light, or traffic-noise heavy, or majestically awe-inspiring the subject property actually is in comparison to the comps used to calculate the Zestimate. When human beings aren’t involved at all, the subject property itself is not actually compared. I think there is room for this kind of automated approach. It can be fun and interesting to look around a neighborhood to see how various individual properties fare, even if the numbers aren’t to be taken too seriously. As the name implies, it’s really just an estimate.

But when the time comes to actually sell your own Cumming, GA home or to start looking in earnest for a house you will be calling home for many years, that’s no time to rely on anything less than comparables and guidance researched by a living, breathing real estate professional. In other words, when the information needs to be right—call me!

This Cumming GA Real Estate blog is hosted by Gayle Barton of BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HomeServices Georgia Properties.

I specialize in Real Estate sales in the following Forsyth County, North Fulton County and East Cobb cities: Cumming, Suwanee, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Duluth, Milton, and Roswell. Other areas are serviced by request.

Gayle Barton South Forsyth Real Estate | Cumming GA Real Estate
Gayle Barton Cumming GA Real Estate | South Forsyth Real Estate

You’d think that the whole notion of the American Dream is vague enough that it would be immune from challenge, and for the most part, that’s still true enough. Not so for its principal emblem, which most Forsyth County residents would agree is owning your own home. Being free to work hard to reach that goal—no matter who you are or how humble your origins—has long been the leading sign that the Dream is alive and kicking.

Even so, lately it’s been getting hard to ignore some media discussions that seem to challenge homeownership’s legitimacy as a pillar of that whole American Dream notion. Simply put, the suggestion is that the financial benefits to be had from owning your own home are no longer valid—or at least, that they are growing less valid.

There’s no arguing that there are many situations where renting makes more financial sense than does buying. Most of them are related to the expected duration of residence. As The New York Times observes, “Buying tends to be better the longer you stay” if only because the upfront costs are spread out over many years. In one of its Upshot commentaries, the Times presents a calculator which adds up “Initial,” “Recurring,” and “Opportunity Costs” for various rent and buy situations in order to show at what monthly rental dollar amount “renting is better.”

Sorry, Times. Your calculator may accurately display the tradeoffs in dollar costs—but it overlooks one factor that can ultimately prove to be the most significant. It’s the real-life factor that is built in whenever Forsyth County families decide to graduate from renting to buying. It begins to take form with the first dollar saved for a starter home down payment and continues until the last mortgage check clears the bank.

You can call it “enforced savings”—but whatever its name, in addition to the emotional benefits of owning your home, a measurable infusion of financial independence is the usual outcome. For example, when the Federal Reserve last reported “Changes in U.S. Family Finances” during the years from 2010-2013, it found that although median incomes fell 5%, “the median net worth of homeowners increased 4%, whereas that of renters or other non-homeowners did not change.”

If the American Dream is one of self-reliance and independence, then owning your Forsyth County home isn’t likely to disappear as its leading goal anytime soon. It’s one of the greatest parts of my job to help clients turn that distant dream into today’s reality. It’s a process that starts with a simple call to my office!

 
This Cumming GA Real Estate blog is hosted by Gayle Barton of BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HomeServices Georgia Properties.

I specialize in Real Estate sales in the following Forsyth County, North Fulton County and East Cobb cities: Cumming, Suwanee, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Duluth, Milton, and Roswell. Other areas are serviced by request.

Gayle Barton South Forsyth Real Estate | Cumming GA Real Estate
Gayle Barton Cumming GA Real Estate | South Forsyth Real Estate

The science of pricing a house to sell fast in the Cumming, GA real estate market isn’t really a science… It’s an ART!!

The thing about science that makes it reliable is that its findings can be confirmed experimentally. If Galileo drops a feather and a lead weight from the Tower of Pisa to prove something about gravity, anyone else can trot right up there and repeat the experiment. If the results are always the same, we’re in the realm of science.

Pricing Cumming, GA houses may not be pure art, but it’s a cinch it’s not science, either. You can’t repeat a pricing experiment because no two Cumming, GA houses are exactly alike (even the same models in a development are situated differently). And even if you sold the same house two times, the pool of possible buyers is changing all the time; the competitive landscape as represented in the moment’s Cumming, GA listings, likewise; even the news of the day can affect the sales climate.

Further muddying the waters is the emotional component most of us feel for the places we call home. Even after the most dispassionate Cumming, GA homeowner has shed any such baggage, there remain two distinct ways to value a home. There is the value it can be sold for, and there is what it is worth to your own family. Hopefully, they aren’t terribly different; but in any case, it’s the former that’s important when it comes to selling.

Once we accept that no pricing strategy can be confirmed experimentally, the best procedure is to follow some general guidelines that have wide acceptance. I advise my clients to approach the pricing of their Cumming, GA house in several ways—

• Canvass the market the same way your future buyers will. See what comparable properties have sold for recently and the asking prices currently listed. Determine where yours belongs. This is one place where my research will be a major help.
• Once you’re satisfied that you know the range where your property fits, look for “holes” in that range. Many times there will be a noticeable gap in asking prices within your range—and one good strategy is to become the lone listing that fills it.
• Once you’ve arrived at a price that seems right, another strategy is to lower it to the next “99” number. If pricing your house led you to a $405,000 asking price, consider notching it down to $399,999. Everybody knows what you’re doing, but it’s such common practice that people don’t regard it as a ruse. It is worth doing because human beings can’t help but react to that second price as if it’s significantly lower!
• Consider how buyer’s actually search. (Ask me and I’ll illuminate this option!)

Pricing your Cumming, GA house properly is just one of the many steps that go into a successful sales campaign. Give me a call to chat about your own situation and goals: there’s never a charge nor any obligation for sharing the latest market information!

This Cumming GA Real Estate blog is hosted by Gayle Barton of BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HomeServices Georgia Properties.

I specialize in Real Estate sales in the following Forsyth County, North Fulton County and East Cobb cities: Cumming, Suwanee, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Duluth, Milton, and Roswell. Other areas are serviced by request.

Gayle Barton South Forsyth Real Estate | Cumming GA Real Estate
Gayle Barton Cumming GA Real Estate | South Forsyth Real Estate

If you’re a typical Cumming, GA consumer, like most Georgia residents, it wasn’t too long ago that you were being constantly bombarded by offers to let you in on a secret: your credit score. The “free credit score” ads got a lot of responses, but lately, they’ve grown scarcer. I think I know why.

It used to be that thrift-minded people shied away from plastic because it made overspending too easy. Today, ubiquitous credit card bonus points and associated discounts and freebies make the opposite true. After all, taking a vacation without using at least some of your credit card airline “miles” or hotel “points” seems more careless than thrifty.

And the fact is, you don’t have to use the credit part of credit card purchases: if you’re careful, you can pay off the balances before interest starts to accrue. And there’s a major additional benefit to conscientious attention to of all your credit accounts— that is, the credit score dimension.

For many years, credit scores seemed a sort of hush-hush affair. That was before initiatives by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Fair Isaac Corp (FICO) changed the rules of the game, making it mandatory to allow free access to your credit scores. Even so, it was still a bit of a hassle to get to see them—and the “free” access was limited to once a year.

But that’s been changing. Today, many credit card accounts include free access to the FICO credit scores associated with them. If you use the card issuers’ online account systems, you’re usually just a mouse click away from your most recent score. Apparently, the banks behind the cards know it’s a good way to make online bill paying more attractive than snail mail—which is a profit saver for them. At last count, by April of last year more than 150 million accounts included the instant credit score feature.

What that means to Cumming, GA real estate transactions is a solid positive. When Cumming, GA consumers can keep a steady watch on their credit scores, they are much more likely to notice FICO mistakes or any of their own inadvertent slip-ups. The scores affect the interest rates associated with their credit card accounts—but they also heavily influence the offers they can expect from the mortgage underwriters.

I recommend prequalifying for a home loan: it’s one of the best ways to make your offer the winner in a multiple offer scenario. For other ideas that can give you a head start when it comes to buying or selling Cumming, GA real estate, just give me a call!

This Cumming GA Real Estate blog is hosted by Gayle Barton of BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HomeServices Georgia Properties.

I specialize in Real Estate sales in the following Forsyth County, North Fulton County and East Cobb cities: Cumming, Suwanee, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Duluth, Milton, and Roswell. Other areas are serviced by request.

Gayle Barton South Forsyth Real Estate | Cumming GA Real Estate
Gayle Barton Cumming GA Real Estate | South Forsyth Real Estate