Monday 31 October 2011

Sicily Real Estate Videos

The final Realty TV and Real Estate video I'm going to post in this series of blog posts is this one covering Sicily.


Once again this is another one to mix it up. It's another video designed to promote buying real estate in Sicily and not just a specific home!

Cleary the production values are up on this one and I'm tempted to take a trip and see what I can afford to purchase!

House for Sale in Colorado Video

Another Realty TV and a Current Home for Sale video I present Colorado:


Again this is a real estate video that I'm using to mix it up! However, it's a fresh new video just posted the other day. In this housing video we have a local Colorado REALTOR® discussing the housing market conditions in his area!

No houses to see in this video, just the real estate agent discussing what is going on. I think it would be of a lot more value for people who are looking to buy homes in that area over what was offered by reality TV.

Real Estate in DC Current Video

Another in my series of Real Estate Video based on Realty TV show I present a current DC video:


Now this one is a little different that others in the past as it's not promoting a current home for sale or a specific REALTOR. Rather I choose it because it was done to promote the lifestyle and value of living in the Dupont Circle area of DC.

The credits at the end of the video indicate that it had several sponsor that where involved in putting it together including the real estate brokerage Keller Williams. Which was suprising to me as I thought that this video needed a bit of audio editing done to it. Since the sound was missing for a wide part of this video and when it did randomly start it was just random background sounds!

Wednesday 26 October 2011

New Orleans Real Estate!

Another Real Estate video that I found, this one is from New Orleans which I covered in another blog poster awhile ago but have not profiled yet!



This house according the video is listed at only $59,900 so it looks like homes and real estate remain pretty cheap in New Orleans still. I wasn't a great fan of this video since it seemed a little too close in and I was never able to get a feel for the entire room! Or outside of the house for that matter.

However, in several of the close ups it looked like there were some stains from what could be water damage. Clearly this one is a big fixer upper. But hey at least this video had a bit of music for it!

4 Mile Beach Real Estate

Another in my series of current real estate for sale video based upon some of the real estate tv shows I've profiled here is 4 Mile Beach down under in Australia!




Now this video is of an amazing looking home! However, I don't think that the video does it much justice lacking sound and that it is of a very limited number of pictures. In addition, I think that the REALTOR or who ever created it went a little crazy with the transition effects.

But it's the best I can do since dispite this video being older it's one of the newer ones available!

Tuesday 25 October 2011

My First Sale - Moving to Colorado

Every time I see this show start I know that I'm going to be watching an American families pain and this show was no exception.

The show sets us up with a couple having 4 months to move to Colorado from DC for work and they need to sell their apartment condo. Now the apartment condo is 2 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms and looks great and has a lot of upgrades. However, it's on the first floor facing a busy road, this setup worked great for the current owners due to their dog, but it's not going to work for a lot of buyers!

The other thing we learn is that the current owner purchased the home for $410,000 and surprisingly for an American only owes $299,000 on his mortgage.

Now the biggest problem for this seller is that he is starting off with competition in his building. One unit is $450,000 on the top floor and has 2 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. While the other is a 1 bedroom unit on the same floor and priced at $350,000 a rather large range.

This home seller goes to market at the $440,000 price point and the pain begins.

After having the house on the market for about 2 months the $450,000 condo drops to $425,000 forcing our home sellers to drop there price and then another similar unit comes on the market $25,000 below our new price!!!

My First Sale is like watching a train wreck in slow motion!

House Hunters in Sicily

Another House Hunters International on HGTV last night and this one took place in Sicily.

This show was the standard setup with a family of 5 (2 parents plus 3 kids) moved to the Sicily area of Italy from England. The family had a budget of approximately $500,000.

Well one of the homes was a half built home that was pitched as a great investment. And once you saw it you knew that this was the home that they would be purchasing given that is what happened that last few times we saw an unfinished home on House Hunters.

And in this case that is what they did, but unlike similar purchases there was no follow up 3 months later showing the home still in an unliveable condition.

However the best line of the night was from the daughter after being introduced to the construction site that her parents had just purchased: "I though you said you bought a house!"

Thursday 20 October 2011

Power Out - Lost the Best Real Estate TV

Well we had a power outage last night in my area, it ended up lasting for about 3 hours! So as a result I lost a night of some of the best Real Estate TV shows on HGTV last night. Which is too bad for this blog.

The good news was that it was kind of fun sitting in the candle light with nothing to watch so we where forced to talk and Tweet of course.

Friday 14 October 2011

House Hunters Mississipi to Dubai

Another interesting show on HGTV of House Hunters International.

In this one we follow a newly wed couple where the husband has been transfered from Mississipi to Dubai in the UAE for his consulting jobs. The twist is that the wife is a nurse and also needs to find a job in Dubai.

As often in these foreign exotic locations, the house hunters are not legally allowed to buy property in Dubai so we follow them as they try to find something to rent. The requirements for this home search seems that it's required to be water front near a marina.

The first apartment we find is in a hi-res building 2 bedrooms and 1300 feet, the only problem is that it's too high up for when the grooms family comes to visit. The next property is a nice villa which is way to far out of town and the 3rd property is a similar apartment to the first one except that it's lower to the ground but as a result there is far to much street noise!

Can you guess which one these home buyers picked?

Thursday 13 October 2011

House Hunters International - 4 mile beach

In the latest show of House Hunters Internation I watched it was about a Kiwi moving to 4 mile beach in Australia. For those of you that do not know a Kiwi is a person from New Zealand so this wasn't a really big move, probably similiar to a Canadian moving to the US.

In any event the home buyer was a single guy who had being living at home to save up enough money for his move and now could afford a $400,000 budget.

In the end he purchased a very nice beach house which was slightly out of town for the full asking price of $380,000. The place looked very nice at the beach with it's own swimming pool!

House Hunters in Tampa Bay

In this House Hunters show we find a family looking for a home in Tampa Bay with a 500k budget.

Now $500k is a pretty good buget in my mind for buying a home, however we have seen it doesn't go to far in other parts to the world. Happily this Tampa Bay Florida which has depressed housing prices. As a result we were able to see several homes with multiple bedrooms that worked for this family.

In the end however, these home buyers purchased a 5 bedroom home with an amazing backyard pool. The house however had a major draw back in that it was a big time fixer upper. However their REALTOR seemed to come through when making the deal as they were able to get the house which was listed for $499,000 down to $435,000 so they could afford the repair costs!

Wednesday 12 October 2011

My First Home Sale near Washington

Every time I watch My First Home Sale I end up feeling really sorry for the home owners and the state of the US economy. In this eposide we follow a mom and her son trying to sell their home so they can move a lot closer to the new high school she has enrolled her son in so he has a better chance at being successful as a football player.

Now she is selling a townhouse just outside of Washington DC so you wouldn't think that the local economy would be all that bad, but it seems the housing market certainly is. When we pick up the story the home owner has her condo listed at $250,000 on the MLS system and has rejected an offer $233,000 as far too low.

Well over the course of the show the $233,000 offer ends up being a pretty good one since we watch the home owner lower there price several times chasing the real estate market lower and lower over several months.

Overall very sad.

However the real estate tip to remember is that your first offer is usually your best offer and to not chase a falling market. In a falling real estate market you just need to accept that the prices are dropping and get out in front of it and move on.

My First Home in Texas

I watched this eposide of My First Home on the weekend and it was about a young couple with a $270,000 budget looking to buy their first home in Texas.

It seems that they had been looking for a home for a while but the wife was working out of town so it was a slow process for them. However, I want to say that the wife came off as spoiled (was she an only child?). She had to have the best of everything in her first home, the counter tops must be granite and the floor must be hard wood since tiles were so gross. I kind of felt sorry for her husband since all he wanted in a new home was a nice backyard.

In the end she did get what she wanted when they were lucky enough to find a home that had everything they were looking for that had just reduced it's price to the $270,000 range. Lucky for them, I think they would have been looking for a house for a long time other wise.

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Holmes Inspection - Leaky House

I caught an eposide of Holmes Inspection late last night on HGTV it is always an amazing show to watch since it shows how poorly made some homes are.

In this show Mike was dealing with a 7 year old home that leaked. The problem was that the home owners had one heck of a time finding the source of the leaks since it wasn't coming in from the roof. Now the home owners had insurance and the insurance company was willing to pay to replace all the damage that occured from the water but it seems it wasn't there responsibility to get the original problem fixed and that is where Mike Holmes came in.

Mike quickly determined that that the bricks where not properly set and the flashing and sealing around the window sills was not properly sealed. So as a result water was getting into the bricks, freezing since the home was located in Toronto Canada and further damaging the bricks to allow more water into the house.

Of course this was just the first problem Mike found, other were improperly support stairs and not enough insulation to other improper seals that allows fumes from the garage to get into the house.

It was big dollars to fix theses problems thankfully for the home owners Holmes Inspection was on the job so the TV show would have picked up a lot of these costs.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Real Estate Investment Video

I'm going to post something that is related but a little different than my past real estate video posts. I'm now posting up a real estate investment video based upon my recent Income Property blog. However instead of it being related to a specific city it's the top YouTube Search results I found on the term "real estate investment for sale".

The result is significantly different than a search under "real estate investment" where the videos are all pitching the latest real estate investment program.