Latest Great Falls Virginia Real Estate Listings–Observations

Every other week or so I like to introduce new real estate listings in Great Falls Virginia.  So here you go.

Transcription of 8-25-2010 Great Falls Listings

New Great Falls Listings and Deciding How Much to Offer on New Listing www.JustNewListings.com Realty Inc.

Jay: Hey everybody it’s Jay again, the owner of www.JustNewListings.com Realty. I’m back to go over this week’s new listings in Great Falls, Virginia. And what I thought I would do, I’m going to use this post as a guest blog with a realtor down in Miami. I put a focus on the topic of running numbers, crunching the numbers. How do you decide what the initial offer will be on the home that you find when you get that far in the process? And granted this journey of finding a new home, it can be anywhere from one month long to several years long.

Very often now, since so many the consumers like to do a lot of the researching on their own with websites like mine, www.JustNewListings.com. Often I will go out one to three times with people and write contracts because they’ve been actually researching the market and staying on top of new leads, months in advance, sometimes years in advance. They already know who I am. They’ve decided six months ago they want to use to aggressive negotiate their contract when they get to that point. But they don’t contact me till the very end of the process, till they’re at the red zone so to speak of that football field.

So I’m going to go through the latest listings for Great Falls and then we’re going to focus our time on crunching the numbers and exercise so to speak on that you can get familiar with, so that when we get there, you’ll be comfortable with moving forward and being decisive in the process. So you know, “running the numbers” on some homes takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 1/2 hours. I’m cramming 30 minutes of video into 12 minute video…So there is a good amount you don’t see.

Jay: All right. Here are the new leads for Great Falls this week. Let’s open these up a little like gallery format, allows me to scroll faster. This one just came out yesterday, Challedon, really the pronounciation would be Calle don if someone spoke Spanish. But anyway, 699, I mean the median list price in Great Falls is probably 1.3 million dollars so this is one of those very low priced properties, the fourth quartile price bracket for Great Falls, Virginia. It’s a good opportunity to get into Langley high school district. Contemporary loft, it says “needs updating but shows well.”

I’ve looked at some of the photos here. Let me them pop open for you. Excuse some of the paint colors but you got a pretty big kitchen. I am not exaggerating, as I used to work for one of the best painting companies, and I know how it works. It holds five bar stools, three levels. Let’s see if we can see the backyard, nice deck, Jacuzzi. I think it was on…what’s the acreage here?…oh, half an acre. So I must say this is definitely an opportunity for some family to get a respectable sized home, probably 3,000 square feet and get into the school district they’re looking for.

Then you have this one which I’ve already sent to a customer of mine and it brags 7,000 square feet, this Saunders Haven listing. Some of the bedrooms are on the lower level and whenever you see that like right here, lower level and you have two bedrooms. When you see that, it just raises the questions. I need to see those rooms first before I call them bedrooms. They may have been dens which are highly, what’s a good word, dysfunctional in terms of actually using them for bedrooms. Depends on the basement, is it walk-out? Or are there windows? You just need to be suspicious whenever you see lower level bedrooms because it’s the…sometimes they’re excellent and if you decide to make a change in either you can choose the best quality and look for vinyl windows cost so you can use one of the best material for durability and affordability.

Also remmeber Sometimes they’re completely useless other than storage or trying to convert them into playrooms etcetera. That was on a full acre, right here. So 1.3 million. I’ve been in a lot of these homes lately, between 1.1 and 1.3 million because of the customers I’m working with. And this listing is definitely interesting to me. Cul-de-sac backyard, very private, three car garage, a large dining room seating 12 plus. You could also take the assistance of the Billabong car storage and store your additional cars there to keep it safe from any form of damages. Having a storage system which offers services like these is extremely beneficial as it not only allows you to store your car there but you can also store additional items from your house in there.

Let’s look at the photos for it. All right, I’m not used to using Google Chrome. Pretty big kitchen, sort of frustrating, there’s no overhang here. In this giant kitchen island, there’s no overhang for bar stools. That’s a little bit annoying. Maybe one would exchange or swap out some of this island and put an overhang, that way you can have four bar stools there. Big dining room, two storey family room which is nice. If it wasn’t for this two storey family room, they would have a fifth bedroom up. So, it’s give and take all the time in that scenario. The lower level, okay this is the garage, huge garage. Sort of a pimped-out garage meaning, they put flooring on it etcetera, shelving. And then very private backyard [unintelligible][00:05:20]. So this is a neat listing I must say and it’s definitely going to work for somebody.

Then you have Jackson. Now this is two acres, listed at 800, total fixer upper. Let’s see, extensive renovation project or tear down. On two acres, built in 1909. The first thing that comes to my mind on this is, and it also it mentions there’s no septic on the property. I’m just wondering if there’s public sewer or not to this property, well cesspool. First thing that comes to my mind about this property is this is over-the-top. It’s overpriced and I’m suspicious of it. I would not feel comfortable whether someone paying more than… I haven’t even looked at the numbers but I don’t see how it could be worth more than 700 and maybe it’s only worth 600. So that’s definitely is one to be careful about.

Then this new listing, Potomac Forest, 1,950,000.00 and riverfront parkland setting. I bet there are some nice photos for this one. It’s a colonial. Probably on the lower level since it’s such a lower, you know it’s not very tall for a colonial so I bet it’s a complete walk-out basement on the backside which can be made better by giving it a quick basement renovation based on personal prefrence of the new owners. Let’s look at the photos real quick and see what we find. So here’s, I think that’s going to be the backyard. That’s my main question, what’s it like on the backside? Hmmm, okay that is definitely water view. That’s gorgeous. But really, it’s frustrating. You get a home this big and grand in terms of the scene and look how pathetic these photos are. If you’re a consumer, this isn’t telling you hardly anything about the home. So I don’t know why people pay this listing agent 6% for such pathetic presentations.

This one, 931 Holly Creek, I would say this one, it’s a brick colonial upright on half an acre. This one, I’ve looked at the photos and this by far looks like the opportunity of Great Falls right now. It’s a great opportunity, listed on the very low end, very move-in ready. You can always paint that room, that’s for sure but a brick colonial, stately, nice front side. What’s it like in the back? Great deck (visit Danny Deck for more), looks like some privacy there. Yeah, this is a great house. For this price range in the Great Falls, it doesn’t really gets much better than that. And then just recently, at Estates at Longwood, this home is at least five grand, 5,000 square feet. That’s probably not including the lower levels so it may easily be six or seven thousand square feet. And it has a custom swimming pool. Since I’m from Arizona, I love swimming pools. I grew up half…

All right, so let’s pick up one of these bad boys. This one is so new and nice, 1,700,000. Let’s break it down. Let’s run some numbers. Let’s figure out what an initial offer price would be on this home. So the first thing I’m going to do, I’m going to take the listing. I’m going to take the address. I’m going to go into a general search. Going to go to my map and put it in, put in Great Falls. Then find out where we are on the map, okay? Then I’m going to extend it out, okay it again. Zoom out a little bit, going to use my handy-dandy rectangle-radius device over here and grab these listings. I’m going to focus on homes sold since, homes listed since, let’s say, November. And we’ll look at homes between 1.3 million and 1.8 million. Now that one has at least four baths. I really think we need a four or five bath to match it and a four to six bedroom home to match it. Let’s see what we get in that area, what things are closing for, solds and other contract and the active. What we want to take into account is the acreage as well so I’m going to be flip-flopping back and forth to compare the house to this one. All right, 27 listings to choose from.

I’m going to go through, weed this out, pick them down, but first thing I need to do is go reacquaint myself with the listing in question. Let’s see what’s these pictures are.