The latest issue of my newsletter Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate News is hot off the presses. This issue is packed with informative articles on home buying and selling as well as general real estate facts. Read the newsletter at Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate News.
You are planning to offer your Charlottesville horse farm for sale and are interviewing real estate agents. What is the most important question to ask your Realtor?
You might think it is “how long have you been in real estate?” Or “how many houses did you sell last year?” ”Where will you advertise my house?” Or ever “how much do you think my home sould sell for?”
All of these are good questions to ask a prospective listing agent, but they are not the single most important question that you should ask. The single most important question is “Do you believe that right now is the best time to buy a home?” If your agent doesn’t believe that this is the best time to buy, they will not be able to sell and market your home effectively. If your agent doesn’t truly believe, how will he be able to convince todays skittish buyer? A salesman (and your listing agent’s job is to sell your home) is much more effective if he believes in his product.
So when you are interviewing a listing agent, be sure that you ask him if he believes that this is the best time to buy. He should be able to explain that with the combination of low home prices, a lot of inventory to chose from and interest rates that are still low but are starting to rise it makes sense to buy immediately and not wait.
Good luck in selling your Charlottesville horse farm. With a great property in beautiful Albemarle County that is properly priced and a committed listing agent to assist you, you should be positioned for success.
For more on this subject visit the KCM Blog.
17% of Albemarle County land now protected.
According to the Piedmont Environmental Council 2,253 acres of Albemarle County land went under conservation easement in 2010.
Tthe Charlottesville Daily Progress relates that this brings the total amount of protected land in Albemarle up to 83,600 acres which is about 17.5% or the total county acreage.
Conservation easements are an excellent vehicle for protecting the countryside from urban sprawl. The Piedmont Environmental Council works hard to educate landowners about the advantages of conserving their land. Whether your focus is on protecting working farms, wildlife habitats, rivers, historic sites, or the scenic beauty of the Virginia countryside a conservation easement can be the perfect vehicle.
For more information on conservation easements and whether one could be a good fit for your property visit the Piedmont Environtmental Council website.
This Albemarle County VA real estate market report will focus on the sales of Albemarle County farms for the year 2010. For the purpose of this blog a farm will be considered a property with at least 10 acres.
2009 average list price $2,017,431.
2010 average list price $1,456,000.
2009 average sale price $1,728,710.
2010 average sale price $1,341,308.
2009 median sold price $1,100,000.
2010 median sold price $870,000.
2009 %sold/llist 85.68%.
2010 %sold/list 86.47%.
2009 farm sales – 38.
2010 farm sales – 39.
As you can see from the above figures Albemarle County farm sales have remained flat but the price that buyers are willing to pay has dropped considerably.
The above figures are from the mls and while they are presumed to be correct they are not guaranteed.
This post will focus on the sales of farms in Albemarle County VA during December 2010. For the purpose of this blog we will consider farms to be properties with 10 or more acres.
Since there were not any sales of farms in Albemarle County during December 2010, I have included the November 2010 figures for comparison.
December 2009 average list price $3,298,500.
November 2010 average list price $1,456,000.
December 2010 average list price $0.
December 2009 average sale price $3,041,250.
November 2010 average sale price $1,184,666.
December 2010 average sale price $0.
December 2009 median sold price $2,525,000.
November 2010 median sold price $604,000.
December 2010 median sold price $0.
December 2009 %sold/list 92.20%
November 2010 % sold/list 81.3^%.
December 2010 %sold/list 0%.
In 2009, 38 farms sold on the Albemarle County VA real estate market. In 2010, 39 Albemarle farms sold.
As you can see the sales of Albemarle farms have remained flat year over year. However we can also see that the price range that buyers are comfortable shopping in is way down. Also from the % of sold/list figures it is fair to extrapolate that buyers are looking for a deal and are making low offers and are expecting that those offers will be accepted.
The above figures are from the mls and while they are not guaranteed they are assumed to be correct.
