Selling Greenville

Sometimes spaces in a home should be left flexible and open to the imagination of the buyer, but many times, defining a space and limiting its function will actually add value to your house. And oftentimes it doesn't cost much to do.  In this short episode, I discuss various real-life situations where giving a space a specific function could help or hurt your home value, as well as some practical...

Sometimes deals literally fall apart because of a bad buyer's agent. Sometimes a good buyer's agent can present an offer in such a way that gets a house for a client when there are other, higher offers. I have a bunch of stories I could tell, and I tell a few of them in this episode to pull back the curtain on what it's like being a realtor in today's market. The moral of the story? Don't just hir...

As we look at the latest data on the real estate market (courtesy of the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors), we find that the Upstate is setting all sorts of new records, and not all of them are good. Is it still a wild seller's market? Yes, for sure. Is that changing going into the fall season? It sure looks that way - maybe even flipping to a buyer's market! We talk about all this and m...

When it's a seller's market, sellers don't typically want to accept an offer that is contingent on the buyers selling their home. This presents some major challenges for the majority of buyers that need to sell their home in order to finance their next home purchase. How do we overcome those challenges as buyers and what should sellers be considering when looking at a home-sale contingent offer? W...

"Housing affordability" isn't just a real estate buzz word; it's a real problem in the Upstate, and it's about to come to a head. What is the trend and what can we do about it? That's what we discuss in this week's episode. As always, if you have any questions or comments (or, of course, need a realtor), feel free to reach out to Stan McCune directly by phone/text at (864) 735-7580 or by email at...

A question that has become much more common in the past year among my real estate clients who are planning to move is whether they should go the traditional route of selling their current house when buying the next one or instead keep their old house and attempt to rent it out after buying their next one. The answer to this question isn't straightforward, and as a realtor, I'm not allowed to give...

Due to local real estate politics, the vast majority of real estate contracts in Greenville are done on a form known as Form 310. There's a lot to like about this contract, but when it comes to how a buyer is supposed to go about his/her inspection period, Form 310 can cause a lot of confusion over what a buyer's (or seller's) options are, including confusion that results in the occasional lawsuit...

This is perhaps the weirdest real estate market of our time - all-time low inventory makes it a great time to sell a house while all-time low mortgage interest rates makes it a great to buy. So what does that mean practically if you're considering buying or selling a home (including investment properties) in the Upstate? I discuss several ramifications of this weird and wild real estate market and...

The 80/20 Principle (also known as Pareto's Law), has helped to explain a lot of things we experience in life. For instance, 80% of your enjoyment typically comes from 20% of your activities, 80% of a company's profits typically come from 20% of its clients, etc. When we apply the 80/20 principle to houses, it helps to clarify a lot of things, from what we can do to best add value to our house to...

When you get that home inspection report back - whether you're buying or selling the house - it's easy to freak out at all the issues it flags, particularly the ones that involve major parts of the house, like the foundation. But not all the problems on an inspection report are as serious as they may sound, and when you're buying or selling real estate, it's important to know which "scary sounding...

Smart thermostats. Smart locks. Smart outlets. EVERYTHING is smart these days. But how does smart tech impact your quality of life and home value - both for landlords and for owner occupants? In this podcast episode, I discuss several smart home gadgets that I've interacted with, how they've changed my life (mostly for good), and how they've impacted both buyer and seller clients. As always, if yo...

Remember when I discussed utilizing backup offers and contracts in episode 15 of this podcast? Well I BACKED THAT UP with a backup contract success for one of my buyer clients just weeks later! In this episode, I tell the story about how one of my recent closings utilized a backup contract, giving you a first-hand look at how the process works and how backup offers can be leveraged in real life. A...

Every now and then we need to have some fun and bring some lightheartedness to this podcast. So in this episode, I poke fun at realtors (like myself) and point out some of the realtor stereotypes that we've all come across (and maybe that some of us... are). Hopefully, it will bring you a few good laughs. As always, if you have any questions or comments (or, of course, need a realtor), feel free t...

I've seen and heard for a while that renting a house in Greenville is disproportionately expensive as compared to buying, but what does the data say? In this episode, I dig into the data on houses that have been rented and sold the past six months in the same neighborhoods to compare what it would cost to rent on average vs. paying an average estimated mortgage payment in those neighborhoods. Unsu...

We hear all the time that "your house is an investment," but the focus on numbers and the investment side of a house purchase has gone so far that now some people are downplaying the reality of how much your house dictates your lifestyle and how important of a consideration that is. I take it a step further - I believe that your is your lifestyle, and in this podcast, I describe why I feel that wa...

The Greater Greenville Association of Realtors released their monthly statistics for May, and the numbers are a mixed bag. Most notably was the plunge in closed sales for the month of May, which seems bad for sellers, but much of the other data paints a contradictory picture of the market. How does it bode for the rest of the year? We discuss all of this and more in this week's episode. As always,...

As real estate agents and sellers try to find more ways to one-up the competition, they are increasingly resorting to new gimmicks to try to market properties or shave down the costs of selling. Most of these gimmicks are just that - gimmicks that don't work. In this episode I discuss five of them that I am frequently running into, and I present alternative strategies that do work and that have he...

One of the most powerful real estate tools both RE buyers and sellers can take advantage of (but frequently don't) is the use of backup offers. The reality is that many people (including real estate agents!) don't know that backup offers/contracts even exist or how they can be utilized. I have used them multiple times with success, and on this episode, I discuss how they work and some creative sce...

I don't know that I've ever seen this much rain in one year, and we're only 5 months into 2020! Rain is wreaking HAVOC on real estate around here, and you should be aware of the issues that rain can cause and what those mean for you when you're buying or selling real estate. Is a flooded crawl space a problem? What happens to a foundation when rain water comes toward it? I'm not a contractor, insp...

BRRRR (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat) is a trendy acronym that a lot of so-called real estate "experts" refer to often. But the BRRRR method assumes you are purchasing a property with substantial equity, and those opportunities are few and far in between when the market (such as the one we currently have in Greenville) has such low inventory. Is there another way to utilize a BRRRR type of s...

The Greater Greenville Association of Realtors produced their monthly data for April, and there is a lot of interesting information to consider. We still have a seller's market, but with inventory going up year-on-year, we may be seeing a shift that could impact the summer/fall market. We discuss that, what we saw happen in the first part of May, and how all of this might impact your buying/sellin...

The spring storm season is in full swing with tornadoes, hail, and tropical storm-force winds all over the Upstate! There is a lot to consider when buying/selling a home or even just as a homeowner when it comes to storm season. So we spend some time discussing practical ways to look for storm damages, what to do if you have storm damage on your home, and some little known facts about how homeowne...

We've been tracking the local real estate market in several of these episodes, looking at new listings, new contracts, and showings in order to get a feel for what direction the market is going. This one is a short (eleven minutes!) snapshot to give a quick update on what has happened the past couple of weeks, what that means historically, and what that means compared to the activity in the market...

There is a lot of debate out there over whether real estate is a good investment, and a lot of that debate stems from confusion over how much (or little) real estate appreciates in value each year. In this episode we look at data from the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors and track how much the median sales prices have appreciated in various markets within the Upstate. Nobody can guarante...

Each week the Greenville real estate market is changing, and this past week was no exception. In this episode we look at the data from the past week as well as the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors statistics for March 2020 and speculate on what all of this information could mean for the market as a whole. As always, if you have any questions or comments (or, of course, need a realtor), f...