The right moves by a buyer and an agency..........

It looks as though creative ideas are finally coming back to the marketplace, and it is certainly much better to comment about some of those instead of the negative statistics being needlessly generated from within the real estate community.

I was glad to see a story about a family in Memphis taking matters into their own hands. As many of you know Memphis has been among the most suffering of real estate markets over the past couple of years. This story is about a family man wishing to purchase a house to live in via an auction and getting a good deal. But he doesn’t need to move, so he would only take a good enough deal or not buy. He realizes it is a buyers’ market.

Why doesn’t he need to buy? Because he already has a house for his family and is meeting the mortgage payments. But he sees the value of buying while the getting is good, which pumps more into the economy and he sees how it would put him in the position of strength.

That is because he knows that he would be able to rent out his current home. There are a ton of people out there who can no longer qualify for a mortgage due to credit problems even though they could likely afford one. This should leave him enough flexibility to rent out his current home for the amount of, or perhaps a slight increase over, his current mortgage.
By doing so, and by purchasing another home to move into at a bargain price, this man will have lowered his monthly mortgage payment, significantly increase his net work (by owning 2 homes), and set himself up nicely for the future. Once the market bounces back, he could potentially make a very nice profit on the home he purchased at a bargain.
He could also offer a “rent to buy” option for the original home and begin the road to a profit ahead of schedule. Based on the scenario I describe above, being able to offer a “rent to buy” could be more beneficial. A rent to buy tenant will take much better care of the home compared with a 6-month or 1 year lease tenant.

This is exactly the type of story we should be seeing a lot more often than it seems like we are.
Here is the link, if you’d like to see for yourself:

http://www.myeyewitnessnews.com/news/local/story/Foreclosed-Homes-Go-Up-For-Auction-In-Memphis-Area/rPi1Vx9-jEiVsVN4bQFkMA.cspx

From the industry side comes another version of an idea that for some reason hasn’t taken off yet. People don’t go shopping for real estate by going to the local realty office. Yet, very few realty offices are in high foot traffic locations. I like what CondoOutlet is doing in the St. Johns Town Center in the Jacksonville Florida area.

They have opened a 10,000 square foot real estate showroom with 2 “life sized” condo models. This is in a major shopping center. (This company is not a client, by the way.) While I am not here to promote a single realty company, I mention this because I applaud their strategy.

Over the years, I have been in literally hundreds of real estate agency offices. But maybe 2 or 3 of them in a location with any degree of significant “walk-in” possibility. With the price of gas being what it is and has been, and open houses seemingly always around the same times, this opportunity to be convenient to the public should not be overlooked any longer. That is, to reach the public that hasn’t already found a way to benefit by the current real estate market!