Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips - Marie Kozacek - iPro Real Estate

REALTORS: The Toughest Home Buyers You’ll Encounter

Real estate professionals meet with a lot of different personalities in navigating complex transactions. Some home shoppers are a joy to work with, while others can make you want to scream. A recent realtor.com® article highlights some of the most difficult personalities you may encounter on the buy side, including:Serial lowballersAll buyers want to get a home at the absolute best price, but some take that too far. Rachel Foy, a real estate pro

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Welcome to the Team Helen Liu out of San Diego

iPro currently deals throughout the states of California and Texas with new offices in New York and Florida. We continue to strive to broaden opportunities for real estate professionals and consumers. Visit www.iprore.com for the latest information and links.Click here for information on how to become a salesperson

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Houston REALTORS® Help Harvey Victims Find Homes

The Houston Association of REALTORS® has launched a housing section on its website to help victims of Hurricane Harvey find a temporary place to live. It allows real estate professionals, property owners, landlords, and property managers to post homes they will make available.Some of the homes posted may be available for free or reduced rent, depending on the owner, HAR notes. The HAR.com site will display properties for sale or lease across th

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Staging Could Lead to 10% Price Boost

Fifty-nine percent of real estate professionals say staging a listing contributes to receiving higher offers from buyers, according to the National Association of REALTORS®’ 2017 Profile of Home Staging. Sixty-two percent of agents also say staging “slightly” or “greatly” decreases the time a listing spends on the market.The amount of money sellers stand to gain from staging their home is significant. Thirty-one percent of practitione

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The Impact Immigrants Have on Real Estate

The impact immigrants have on U.S. real estate is growing, as 13 percent of the nation’s population—about 42 million people—hails from foreign countries, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Immigrants are a big driving force for housing markets across the nation,” Kusum Mundra, an economics professor at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., told realtor.com®. “Most want the American dream, which is to own a hom

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More Buyers Use Co-Borrowers on Mortgages

More home buyers have co-signers on their mortgage loans in order to help defray the rising costs of real estate, according to a new report released by real estate data firm ATTOM Data Solutions. In the second quarter of this year, 22.8 percent of mortgage applications involved a co-borrower, up from 20.5 percent a year earlier, the report shows.Dozens of programs and private companies are emerging to act as co-borrowers for consumers by offering

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A Sign That More Housing Inventory Is Coming

Homeowners who have decided to stay put in their current properties may soon be ready for a move, helping to relieve stubbornly tight housing inventory. The evidence is in Fannie Mae’s latest Home Purchase Sentiment Index, in which the number of consumers who say now is a good time to sell a home neared an all-time high. The index—which is a measure of about 1,000 consumers’ attitudes toward housing—rose 1.2 points in August to a reading

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Hurricane Irma Tests Florida Building Codes

Hurricane Irma, downgraded to a Category 1 storm after tearing up Florida’s western coast Sunday, may prompt officials to rethink statewide building codes—already the strictest in the nation. Irma, which forced the evacuation of 5.6 million people before making landfall, continued to threaten Florida on Monday morning with strong winds and flooding.South Florida has seen a construction boom over more than two decades since its last widespread

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MUSIC: Listen to this Song "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" by Alan Jackson

In memory of September 11th, all that have been effected and what binds us together to make amends."Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" is a song written by the American singer-songwriter Alan Jackson. It was the lead single from his tenth studio album, Drive (2002), released on Arista Nashville. The song's lyrics center on reactions to the September 11 attacks in the United States, written in the form of questions. Jackson de

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Trump Signs NFIP Extension Into Law

After the House and Senate approved a three-month extension of the National Flood Insurance Program this week, President Donald Trumped signed it into law Friday as part of a legislative package releasing more than $15 billion in assistance for storm-ravaged areas in the country.“Extending the National Flood Insurance Program was a must-do item, and Congress delivered,” William E. Brown, president of the National Association of REALTORS®,

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