Carissa Craft

Hello Chris, The best way to tell if a home is priced correctly is asking your Realtor for comparable sales or "comps". An agent will pull available, under agreement, and sold and settled properties within the last six months in the municipality of the subject home, and be able to compare price per square foot, list price versus sold price, and much more to help you understand the pricing of the home you're looking at buying. Depending on the location of home you are searching, demand may also dictate price. In the Lehigh Valley, PA market that I work in, a lot of the times, homes are priced fair to low to get tons of buyers in the door and end up selling for $10,000-35,000+ over list price. Just remember that there is strategy in the LIST price of a home. What the home ends up selling for then becomes DATA and a good comp for other homes that will be sold in the future. Hope this helps!

Hello Koko, Commission to listing and buyer agents are negotiable. That being said, every agent has their percentage that they are willing to work for. Certain brokerages offer different levels of marketing when it comes to listings. Some of the smaller brokerages do not automatically do paid advertising of your listing, so you really want to ask the agent what he/she is going to do to market your property. Does the agent belong to more than one Multiple Listing System to market your property? Some agents just put listings in their local MLS only, and do not belong to a more national-scale MLS such as BRIGHT. The important thing that you decide in the list contract is what you will be paying your listing agent that represents you, and what amount of compensation, if any, you will be offering out to a buyer's agent. It sounds like your agent mentioning maximum exposure is saying that by offering a buyer agent compensation, you will be opening the door for more buyers to view your home because they wont have to pay their own agent and therefore are able to make you a more acceptable offer on your property because their closing costs didn't just go up by 2-3 percent of the purchase price. Hope this helps!

Hello Venessa, Interest rates are always fluctuating. Right now, they are lower than they typically have been in the last 1-2 years. If you decide to purchase a home and interest rates go down, you can always refinance to get that new rate. Also it's important to note, that the longer you wait to purchase property, the more you may end up paying for that property as home valuations in most market appreciate each year. So if you wait 3 years to purchase, a home that was $350,000 could end up being $375,000 because of appreciation value. Hope this helps!