West Chester & Mason Ohio Real Estate & Homes For Sale

Are you getting your home ready to list it for sale? Preparing to sell a home in West Chester, Liberty Township or Beckett Ridge can be an overwhelming task if you are not prepared. The process of getting your home ready can be simplified by breaking the areas of your home up into groups.

1. Curb Appeal, Front Entry/Porch & Landscaping

2. First Impression (interior), Foyer

3. Living Room, Dining Room, Family Room & Study

4. Kitchen

5. Bedrooms

6. Finished Lower Level

7. Rear Yard, Decks & Patio Areas

Why is any of this necessary you ask? Because if at all possible you want to avoid that unpleasant feeling of rejection when home buyer after home buyer comes through your home for sale and doesn’t make an offer.

If you can properly stage your home for sale, you’ve greatly increased your chances not just of selling it in today’s challenging real estate market, but of selling it quickly and for significantly more money than you otherwise would have.

Today we’ll address Curb Appeal, Front Entry / Porch & Landscaping. Always remember, this is the first impression home buyers will have of your home. First suggestion: Stop cutting your grass (yourself). Get a service to maintain your lawn while your home is on the market for sale. There are many good lawn services in the West Chester, Liberty Township & Beckett Ridge Ohio areas. A good lawn service can keep your lawn trimmed and edged neatly, will keep your lawn mowed regularly and can also trim your bushes & shrubs and provide fresh mulch (please use black mulch) to complete the great look.

Keep this in mind: If your yard is beautiful and well maintained, home buyers will assume the whole house has been kept the same.

If your home has a front porch make sure that it is freshly scrubbed and clean. If there is enough room, place a couple of chairs and a small table on the porch to stage the area. Caution: Be sure the size of the table & chairs do not overwhelm the space. Also keep in mind, I am not talking about the “$10 plastic chairs & table” here. They need to be something nice!

If your home does not have a front porch just be sure the outside area around the front door is clean, no cob webs and also be sure the front door itself is clean. More than likely the front door needs a fresh coat of paint and probably new hardware. If you have outside lighting/coach lights they probably need replacing also.

This is a great start on preparing your home for sale in today’s market. In the next post in this series of articles we’ll cover First Impressions (interior), Foyer.

Wondering what your home is worth in today’s real estate market? Request a market analysis here!

Check Out My Feature Homes For Sale In West Chester, Fairfield and Liberty Township, Ohio

Ohio Real Estate: Tax Credit Deadline Extension

June 17, 2010 by Eric Lowry Leave a Comment

The Congress is close to passing a law to give home buyers who were under contract on a home purchased by April 30 an additional three months to close on the home and still be able to claim the federal home buyer tax credit. The new deadline is going to be September 30th, 2010.

This will not extend the deadline for home buyers to qualify for the tax credit. To qualify for the credit you had to have purchased and had a fully executed contract by April 30th, 2010.

The reasoning given for the extension was that many home buyers were not going to be able to close on their new homes in time for the June 30th deadline due to a backlog of loan applications that lenders were trying to handle.

The real issue here though, are the short sales. Many of these sales were not going to able to be closed in time due to the long delays that occur in trying to complete a short, thus there was going to be a large number of “fall-thru’s” (sales which do not close) and all of these properties were going to be coming back onto the market with a large number of them headed for foreclosure.

Looking for deals on short sales and foreclosures in West Chester & Liberty Township?

Click Here To Search The Entire Cincinnati MLS Database Of Homes For Sale!

Wondering what your home is worth in today’s real estate market? Request a market analysis here!

Check Out My Feature Homes For Sale In West Chester, Fairfield and Liberty Township, Ohio

West Chester & Liberty Township OH Real Estate: Tuesday Open House – June 15, 2010

June 15, 2010 by Eric Lowry Leave a Comment

It’s Tuesday, so this must be the Tuesday Open House.

What is Tuesday Open House?? Well, it’s clearly not an “open house”. Open Houses don’t sell homes… good internet marketing does… but it seemed like a good title for this weekly blog post.

It is my way of throwing the doors open on the RealEstate-Ink.com blog and offering up a few quick articles and facts on real estate for the West Chester, Liberty Township, Beckett Ridge, Mason and Fairfield Township, Ohio areas. It is not intended to be all about homes for sale, but it will be about that some of the time…

The Union Centre Bash: There have been a number of questions recently regarding the Union Centre Bash and when it was, etc. So after a little research I found that it is no longer called the Union Centre Bash, but is now known as the Union Centre Boulevard Blast. It is scheduled to be August 13 -15, 2010. According to an article in the Journal News that I found online the “Blast” will be more of a regional draw, employing some best practices from similar showcases across the country. The direction of The Blast will be directed at families, adults, teens and children with multiple activities happening at the same time, “sort of like what you’d see at a state fair. You can reach the entire article online here >>Union Centre Boulevard Blast

New Listing: 5466 Sugar Maple Run, Liberty Township, Ohio. Check out this new listing in Falling Water subdivision in Liberty Township, Ohio. This is a terrific two story home located on a private, wooded lot and features a finished, walkout lower level, island kitchen w/ adjoining morning room & hardwood floors and much, much more!

Searching for foreclosures or short sales? Get a list of all of the foreclosed (bank owned) homes and short sale homes listed for sale in our area for free. Don’t pay for a list of foreclosures, short sales or distressed properties and don’t pay a subscription fee to any website for one either. These are homes that are listed for sale and you can have the information on these homes for sale, for free and without any obligation by just clicking here

2010 Home Sales in West Chester & Liberty Township, Ohio: The tax credit is over and now is when we find out if the homebuyer tax credits for both the First Time HomeBuyer and the move up homebuyer have had an impact on home sales overall. The key thing to watch moving forward is the unit sales numbers each month for West Chester & Liberty Township compared to last year. As can be seen on the graph, the last couple of months have seen home sales above last years totals. The real indicator of the housing market’s recovery will be what happens moving forward with home sales. Clearly the homes sales in West Chester & Liberty Township Ohio picked up when the tax credits were in effect, but what remains to be seen is; Will the home sales in the next few coming months remain at or above last year’s numbers so that the total sales numbers for the year remain above last year? If the sales remain stable and we can stay at or above last years sales numbers, then we would have to judge the tax credits to be a success in stablizing the housing market. If the sales numbers in the few months are not able to be sustained and in fact fall to levels below last year, then all we will have accomplished will be to move sales up into the early months of the year from the later months (July, August, September) and we will not have really improved the West Chester & Liberty Township housing market in the long term. What you can see on the graph is a steady increase in the home sales from January through May of this year in a much more dramatic peak than in the last two years indicating that there clearly was an impact from the homebuyer tax credit incentives. We will continue to monitor the home sales numbers and we will see where we go from here. >>You can read my 2010 1st Quarter Real Estate Market Report here

Our Facebook fan page of the week is: West Chester Farmer’s Market You can find information on the Farmers Market, the products that are available there through the summer and more. As of this writing their page has 129 fans, so I ask that you check out their fan page, become a fan and invite your Facebook friends to do the same.

While you are on Facebook checking out the West Chester Farmer’s Market fan page, please visit and become a fan of our facebook page:

Click Here To Search The Entire Cincinnati MLS Database Of Homes For Sale!

Wondering what your home is worth in today’s real estate market? Request a market analysis here!

Check Out My Feature Homes For Sale In West Chester, Fairfield and Liberty Township, Ohio