Donate to a Good Cause Here in West Chester

It’s time again for our yearly food drive. This is something that we’re very passionate about, and we’d love it if you could make a donation.

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For those of you who know me, you know that I’m pretty passionate about my yearly food drive.

This is something that we do with all our clients, friends, and everyone else we know. We’re trying to continue our tradition of donating hundreds and hundreds of pounds of food a year to a very good cause right here in West Chester Borough called the West Chester Food Cupboard.

Every year we do this, we ask people to donate whatever they can. Even though we’re in a flourishing area, we still have people that need us. If you want to help out and donate, you have two options to do so:

The first option is having us come to you to pick up whatever you want to donate. All you have to do is call our office at (610) 692-7361 or email us at clientcare@kirksimmon.com and give us the location. The second option is mailing or hand-delivering your donations to our office at RE/MAX Main Line, 1646 West Chester Pike Suite 2, West Chester, PA 19382.

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We’d love it if you could help.

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We’re very passionate about this cause and we’d love it if you could help. If you have any questions about the food drive or the real estate market, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

You Received a Lowball Offer. Now What?

If you're selling a home, you might receive a lowball offer. There is a right way and a wrong way to handle this kind of offer as a savvy home seller.

What do you do if you're selling a home and you receive a lowball offer?

There are a few things to keep in mind when this happens. The first is that you have an offer, which is better than no offer at all. Then, you want to evaluate the buyer's qualifications. Are they prepared financially to buy your home? We'll take a look at the financials and call a lender if we have to. 

If they are qualified, the next step is to evaluate what price and what terms we're looking at. We're looking for a combination of the two that works best for you. From there, we want to try and determine what that buyer's motivation is for making that low offer. Sometimes people just come into town looking to score a deal or they don't know what's going on in the market.

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A lowball offer is better than no offer at all.

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We want to counter that offer right away; we always counter an offer. Why counter a lowball offer? Remember, it's better than no offer at all, so we start by figuring out where they are and where you are. Inventory is low, and if someone picked your home to make an offer on, it could really be an oasis for them, and they're just starting.

We always counter, though. Sometimes we counter a little off the listing price and sometimes we counter at full price. Then, we want to make sure that if you’re even going to work with this buyer, that we also negotiate the terms. Ultimately, you could lose a buyer if you don't just counter and move forward.

Always make a counter and don't let the buyer go. You can always at least buy some time to find out who you're dealing with in this buyer.

If you have more questions about handling offers or you have questions about Main Line Real Estate in general, you can always give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help you!

Suburban Philadelphia Real Estate Market Update

Our market is currently favoring sellers, but it’s also a great time to be a buyer.

What’s happening in the suburban Philadelphia real estate market?

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that in the time period between August 2015 and August 2016, our inventory dropped slightly from 5.6 months to exactly five months. Since the line of demarcation for inventory is considered six months in terms of the greatest balance between buyers and sellers, we see that at five months of inventory, the market is currently favoring sellers.

There is plenty of inventory out there, though, and the election cycle should open things up for buyers toward the end of the year, so I haven’t seen a better time than right now to be a buyer. Another important thing to keep in mind is that interest rates have dropped from 4% at the beginning of the year to 3.625% now.

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I haven’t seen a better time than right now to be a buyer.

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For the prices that we track, we always track from the list price to the sales price. Compared to last year, people have been paying 1.2% more of the list price. That’s going from about 95% to 96.3%. That tells you two things: more people are buying because they’re paying a little bit more, and inventory is coming down.

If you have any questions about buying, selling, or leasing, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Just give me a call or shoot me an email and I’d be happy to help you.