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| Condominiums – Advantages of Ownership |
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Monday, January 7, 2008
Condominium – Advantages Condominiums provide a unique living opportunity in the United States, one that many people have jumped on in this hot real estate market. Although not for everyone, condominium ownership does have some distinct advantages over stand alone homes. 1. Condominiums are cheaper than stand alone homes. Universally, you will find the lack of a yard makes condominiums a cheaper buying option when compared to the rest of the real estate market. This makes condominiums a good real estate option for first time buyers, as they are often able to get into one when they otherwise would not qualify for a loan for a tradition home. 2. Condominiums are also excellent options after the kids are gone. Once kids are out of the home, you'll find the space in your home is no longer necessary. Many parents will downsize to a condominium and use the cash windfall from a home to take early retirement. This trend is occurring with greater frequency as the baby boom generation begins to retire. 3. Condominiums are also excellent options for people that travel a lot. If you have to travel for work, you know the problems that can arise from having a home sitting empty for weeks or months on end. Burglaries, graffiti and so on are natural results of leaving a home empty. With condominiums, it is much harder for someone to tell if a person is home or not. This makes condominiums very popular with pilots and certain sales people. 4. A detached home requires a lot of maintenance to keep it in good shape. A condominium also requires maintenance, but the homeowners' association is responsible for the upkeep. Generally, the constant attention provided through the homeowners' association makes condos a better long term maintenance option. Condominiums are not for everyone, but they have definite advantages over detached homes in certain situations. While guidelines are a solid method of determining if a condo is a good option, you really need to consider your personal circumstances to determine the best choice for you. Raynor James is with the FSBO site - FSBOAmerica.org - homes for sale by owner. Visit our "Sell My Home" page to sell your house or our home buying page to view and buy homes, houses, condos, land and real estate. Condominiums – Should You Consider Purchasing One Condominiums tend fall into the love them or hate them position for buyers. Here's primer on condominiums. Condominiums Condominiums are all about communal living, which can be good or bad depending upon your personal views. This type of communal living doesn't refer to the failed experiments of the sixties wherein hippies packed into a structure and shared everything. Instead, the modern condominium community is all about sharing common spaces as well as rules, rules and more rules. Condominiums come in all shapes and forms. Condos can be found in a single high rise building in a downtown area or in an apartment complex type of layout in a planned community. The structure isn't the determining point. Instead, the issue is how the properties are owned. Unlike a stand alone home, the property lines on a condominium are the walls of the structure. Essentially, you own everything inside the condominium as your individual property. Everything outside the condominium is owned jointly with the people who own the other units. These areas are known as common areas and are subject to group rule. Every condominium has a homeowners association in one form or another. The association has rules set out by the original developer regarding landscaping and so on. Members of the community are then elected to the board of the association, whereupon the immediately become a focal point of aggravation from individual owners and often wonder why they took the thankless job. The problem with the association and condos in general is the issue of uniformity. If you desire to change the exterior of your condominium in some way, you must comply with the rules of the association. This means you cannot paint your property a different color, do landscaping and so on. For some people, this isn't a problem, but others are frustrated they can't express themselves. When deciding whether a condominium is a good option for your next purchase, you need to carefully weigh the restrictions of a particular association. If you consider yourself an individual and want to show it, a condominium is probably a very poor choice for you. Raynor James is with the FSBO site - FSBOAmerica.org - homes for sale by owner. Visit our "Sell My Home" page to sell your house or our home buying page to view and buy homes, houses, condos, land and real estate. Home Sellers - Advertising Won't Directly Sell Your Home. Home owners thinking of selling often times will list their home with the Realtor who does the most advertising. Sellers want to see their property advertised in newspaper, real estate books or on the internet. There is a misconception by the public that advertising will sell your home. We Realtors are usually happy to take your listing and advertise your property. But not for the reason you would suspect. Most of the advertising we do helps us find buyers and sellers to work with. The main purpose of advertising is not to directly sell your home. If you have been selling homes for a long period of time you know that a small percentage of people buy the home they originally called on. Let's say I am advertising my clients home which is a 3 bedrooms, 2 bath golf course home for $450,000. I will take calls from prospective buyers who ask me about the home. I will give them the details of the home and hopefully they will buy it. However, this does not happen often and history shows that people rarely buy the home they originally called on. So at this point I try to tell them about other homes that may fit their needs. If they decide to work with me I will then hopefully sell them another home that I have found through the multiple listing service (MLS) or some other means. Now, let's say another Realtor is advertising his own listing which is similar to my $450,000, 3 bedroom, 2 bath golf course home for sale. He takes calls from his advertising efforts and does not sell his own listing. However, he has now found a buyer and goes to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The agent finds my listing, shows it and sells it. My sellers home has indirectly been sold by another agents advertising. So, in essence, advertising creates phone calls and some of these callers become my clients. With enough advertising I can build up a pool of potential buyers. Now imagine all of the other agents and brokers in my market doing the same thing. This is the pool of buyers in the marketplace that are represented by a Realtor. The agents get together and match up their clients with the available homes for sale usually via the MLS system. That is how your home gets sold. |
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