Who to help find existing homes?

Closed Thread
Thread Tools
  #31  
Old 10-08-2019, 09:18 AM
manaboutown manaboutown is offline
Sage
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: NJ, NM, SC, PA, DC, MD, VA, NY, CA, ID and finally FL.
Posts: 7,377
Thanks: 12,795
Thanked 4,572 Times in 1,748 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfishjeff View Post
We just went into escrow on a one year old home in DeSoto using a fabulous developer realtor. I noticed in the paperwork that the commission paid totaled 6% so it appears to me that the company realtors are doing OK with resales. Our sales person showed us both new and resales and essentially we ended up splitting the difference - our resale is so new it’s like a new home but with the bugs worked out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rjn5656 View Post
Debra Park from the Villages, great realtor we bought our house with. And have referred many friends to.
The real estate agents who work for The Villages are licensed but are not Realtors.
__________________
"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth." Plato

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” Thomas Paine
  #32  
Old 10-08-2019, 11:45 AM
PrudentLifer PrudentLifer is offline
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: The Villages, Florida
Posts: 196
Thanks: 44
Thanked 66 Times in 50 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by manaboutown View Post
The real estate agents who work for The Villages are licensed but are not Realtors.


A distinction without a difference.


"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears..." [emoji527]
George Orwell
  #33  
Old 10-08-2019, 12:21 PM
manaboutown manaboutown is offline
Sage
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: NJ, NM, SC, PA, DC, MD, VA, NY, CA, ID and finally FL.
Posts: 7,377
Thanks: 12,795
Thanked 4,572 Times in 1,748 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by PrudentLifer View Post
A distinction without a difference.


"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears..." [emoji527]
George Orwell
National Association of Realtors - Wikipedia
__________________
"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth." Plato

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” Thomas Paine
  #34  
Old 10-10-2019, 05:07 AM
Cookie Princess Cookie Princess is offline
Member
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Maine
Posts: 44
Thanks: 28
Thanked 8 Times in 4 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by VillageIdiots View Post
Can you clarify what you mean by "existing homes" and also clarify your timeline? Are you looking to buy soon and move here full time in 3 years, or are you looking now with intent to buy in 3 years?
Thanks for your note! By existing home, I meant pre-owned. We plan to retire in about 3 years so we are starting to look at locations now. My parents rent each year in TV so I am fairly familiar with the area/layout. Our plan is to buy in 3 years, but if we saw something we LOVED in 1-2 years, we could buy sooner and rent it out.

We are also struggling with the snowbird or full-time FL resident question which would make a difference in the house size/price point.

Decisions...decisions...decisions...
  #35  
Old 10-10-2019, 08:08 AM
VillageIdiots VillageIdiots is offline
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 335
Thanks: 0
Thanked 32 Times in 16 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cookie Princess View Post
Thanks for your note! By existing home, I meant pre-owned. We plan to retire in about 3 years so we are starting to look at locations now. My parents rent each year in TV so I am fairly familiar with the area/layout. Our plan is to buy in 3 years, but if we saw something we LOVED in 1-2 years, we could buy sooner and rent it out.

We are also struggling with the snowbird or full-time FL resident question which would make a difference in the house size/price point.

Decisions...decisions...decisions...
Makes sense. It's still my opinion that looking at anything pre-owned unless and until you are ready to buy is a waste of your time and a waste of an agent's time and potentially a waste of the homeowner's time. The best way to get a feel for home layouts, locations, and prices is to just take advantage of open houses. There are 20+ open houses daily of brand new homes and a wide variety of floor plan options to look at every day. There are also pre-owned open houses every day that are also listed in the paper. Usually the new home open houses will be relatively near each other but pre-owned could be all over the place. But an open house gives you a chance to browse at you own pace and you are not tying up someone else's valuable time. Good luck
  #36  
Old 10-10-2019, 08:25 AM
asianthree's Avatar
asianthree asianthree is offline
Sage
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Mallory, Pennacamp, Fernandinia, Duval, Richmond
Posts: 9,082
Thanks: 22
Thanked 3,578 Times in 1,323 Posts
Default

Sadly if you do not plan on buying for a year, I would only go to structured open houses. We are looking to move again, and have known our VLS guy almost 5 years. I try to go to homes that have a open house, and only ask his aid if there is a house that might not be on the market long. The home we currently live in had just been put on the market and we made an offer the same day
__________________
Do not worry about things you can not change
  #37  
Old 10-10-2019, 08:41 AM
OrangeBlossomBaby OrangeBlossomBaby is offline
Sage
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 8,418
Thanks: 6,786
Thanked 9,369 Times in 3,050 Posts
Default

Totally agree with VillageIdiots re: open houses this early in the game. The purpose of a realtor/agent is to help buyers buy. If the only thing you want to do at this point is look, you can very easily do it via open houses.

You can come for a few days (you said you're doing a Lifestyle visit). What we did our first visit:
Check out the Villages Homefinder's webpage and look at locations that seem the *most* interesting to you.
Then the first thing you do after getting to your lifestyle rental and putting your bags down, is open up the copy of the Daily Sun that comes with the visit. Check out the Open Houses section of the paper.

Locate any and all open houses that are located within the top few areas that peaked your fancy when you looked at the Homefinder page. If you liked 4 different models, then select at least 4 homes to look at the first day - one of each model.

You want to get a feel for what it's like to walk from the kitchen to the porch, from the bedroom to the living room, from the driveway to the lanai, etc. etc. What it's like to "be" in the home. The flow, as it's called. Does it feel like you're constantly rounding corners to get from point A to point B? Does that appeal to you, or does it make you claustrophobic?

Also look at the specific neighborhood each of those 4 properties are in. How close to the rec center or neighborhood pool? How close to a road OUT of the Villages? How close to the postal station? What is the condition of the *worst-kept* property in the neighborhood, and will you be comfortable living in close proximity to it for many years?

The next day, do the same thing for another of your top-picked locations. And so on.

You want to see a variety of places, but you also need to see a variety of neighborhoods.


After a couple of visits doing the open house gig, we selected a Villages real estate agent who helped us pick out or actual home.

We picked ours because we wanted the older part of the Villages - we didn't want to have to wait a few years for shade trees tall enough to actually provide shade, and we wanted fewer restrictions on what we could and could not do with our property. But we also wanted an area where - regardless of the lightened deed restrictions, the neighbors still took excellent care of their properties and decorated them with care and thought (no tacky pink flamingos, but an 18-inch granite gargoyle welcoming visitors to the front steps was a fun touch of whimsy).

We were hoping for a site-built but circumstances caused us to change our expectations. We ended up with a really nice manufactured home in an absolutely lovely neighborhood with excellent neighbors, in bicycle-riding distance to the pool.
  #38  
Old 10-10-2019, 09:09 AM
VillageIdiots VillageIdiots is offline
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 335
Thanks: 0
Thanked 32 Times in 16 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jazuela View Post
Totally agree with VillageIdiots re: open houses this early in the game. The purpose of a realtor/agent is to help buyers buy.
Minor technicality, but, though there are such things as buyer's agents, the purpose of an agent is typically to help seller's sell, not help buyer's buy. The two, hopefully, go together, but it's not an unimportant thing to keep in mind. They work with the buyers and need the buyers in order to deliver for the sellers, but they, technically, work for, and get paid by, the seller.
Closed Thread

Tags
homes, existing, year, estate, timeline

Thread Tools

You are viewing a new design of the TOTV site. Click here to revert to the old version.

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 06:17 AM.