Toronto Homes For Sale Video

Toronto is one of those very busy markets with a lot of REALTORS® trying to stand out in a crowd. As such it was easy to find this current home for sale video.

This one is a pretty standard video, converting pictures into a panning movie shot with some very upbeat back ground music. I liked it a lot.

It had a good production value with some ok intro branding and the level of real estate agent branding was at an appriate level.

Overall a good video.

Cali to South Korea

This was the first house hunters internation show that I've seen that takes place in South Korea. Normally when people are moving it tends to be to a much warmer climate.

In this show we follow to Americans who are moving to South Korea to teach english as many have done before. And as is common as foreigners they cannot buy a home but must rent.

The intersting twist was that in South Korea they required a Key Money deposit of between $15k and $50k! Key money seems to be a lot like a security deposit on the rental unit but it certainly would be a significant barrier to moving out on your own for the first time.

In the end this couple of ending up moving into the cheapest and smallest place available. They tended to come up with reasons why they didn't like the more expensive homes but my gut told me that it really was the money issue.

House Hunters - Tybee Island

House Hunters really kicked it up a notch when they went to Tybee Island in Georgia. The Island community looked like an amazing vacation area, the video of the area had an old style 1800's feel to me.

The home buyers in this show were an older couple looking to buy a vacation home for themselves and their family. Plus wanting the option to rent it out when they were not using it.

They had the standard 3 home options:

1. 549k for a 4 bedroom, 4.5 bathroom, & 3000 foot home.
2. 515k for a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, & 2400 foot home.
3. 525k for a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, & 1700 foot home.

The most interesting thing I saw was something called a ship ladder stair well in home number 3.

However at the end of the day the couple purchased home number 2 since it seemed the best combination of everything they were looking for.

Professional Grade - New Show

I have discovered a new Real Estate show on HGTV called Professional Grade. If you have never seen the show before it's fairly interesting and is more of a renovation show then a moving show.

I suspect that due do the down turn in the real estate market home reno shows are probably going to be a lot more successful these days. Not to many homing flipping shows around now.

The idea behind Professional Grade is that each show home owners declare a home renovation project to the show's host and a local contractor. We then watch the home owners work on there project, sometimes getting in over their head and needing to hire out parts of the work.

At the end of the show the host and the contractor return and write up a quote of what they would have charged to do the job. The home owners then anounce what there trust cost of the reno was and they win the difference between their cost and the quote. Assuming that the quote was higher than the actual cost, which it always has been so far.

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!

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!"

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Country Living From New Orleans

Another House Hunters last night.

Started watching it late and I was unable to figure out where they were looking to buy a home. But the home buyers had a massive budget of $100,000 and appeared to have been moving away from New Orleans since he was a trumpeter and was playing some New Orleans Jazz!

Anyways the purchase a half built country home for $55,000 as the husband figured he could learn to build and complete the home himself. Well they went back to visit and the home wasn't as far along as they expected and they were still living in the Trailer!

The couple did seem happy with there purchase it just maybe awhile before they are able to move in. Reminded me of another show of House Hunters International last year when another family ended up in the same situation!

Texas Real Estate for Sale

Keeping up with profiling some current real estate for sale in a town which has been covered on real estate tv. I present this Youtube real estate video:

No price listed on this property. The home looks empty from the main floor since there doesn't seem to be any funiture or blinds. Yet some of the bedrooms still have beds and looked lived in. I wonder if this video was created from pictures taken while the home was in the process of getting staged downstairs. Or the owner was yet to move out of the back yard.

In addition, I love how this one water front, yet the water front appears to be a man made drainage lake. But I guess that is how they do it in Texas real estate.

My First Sale in Texas

As I said in my prior post I watched My First Sale last night and I enjoyed watching this first show of the new season on HGTV.

In this eposide we had a man who had gone through a divorce trying to sell his home. It seems that it had purchased it for $205,000 some years ago and currently owed $200,000 on the mortgage. He certainly wasn't paying down the mortgage very aggressively was he.

In any event after about 60 days on the market it was able to sell the house for $215,000 but in the mean time the back told him that he now owed $209,000 on the house. So after factoring in all of his moving costs he was going to need to come up with $9,000 to sell his home.

Well the REALTOR in order to make this deal happen and because she felt really bad for her client told him that she was waving her fee and got the buyers agent to reduce the amount that they would be paid as well. This meant that he only needed to bring $1,000 to the closing.

So Good news for him.

Unfortantely, the deal fell apart on home inspection, from what we saw on the show it was a bunch of minor items that any home would have but the buyer decided to walk away.

At the end of the show we have the home owner moving out because the bank foreclosed!

House Hunters - Washington to China

House Hunters International on HGTV last night and it looked to be a show from the new season. In this show we had a family moving from Washington DC to China.

I don't remember which city in China that they where moving to other than to remember it wasn't one that I would normally be able to name.

In any event the choice of homes was really interesting in that we had 2 apartment Hi-Rise homes and 1 detached home. All were very new and very modern looking. Not something that I associate with China and real estate.

Anyways hopefully the rest of this season is as good as this show was.

http://freerealestateadvice.com/articles/blogging/30930-london-ontario-expert-kathy-mendham-meathrel-s-guide-to-buying-a-home-in-london-ontario-for-the-first-time-buyer.html

House Hunters NYC to Rome

I really enjoyed this one. It had a single woman moving from NYC to Rome.

The home buyer was in fact a renter for this show since the price of real estate in Rome seems to be super expensive. It seems her employer was kicking in $4,500 / month to cover the rent so it seems she was certainly looking to pay a real estate mortgage in other parts of the world.

However it seems that the home renter wanted to live in downtown Rome in the center of the action, which is something that I would probably do as well if it was me. So she was willing to kick in an extra $1,000 / month herself or a total of $5,500 a month in rent!

The problem ... the 3 places she was looking at where $6,500 or $7,500 / month!!!

In the end however she got a great place and was able to negiotate the rent down to $5,500 / month.

House Hunters - Australia to India

Another House Hunters International this week and watched a couple moving from Australia to India. Standard format for the show with them looking at 3 apartments.

My thoughts on this show was I am glad "it's not me making the move". I didn't like the idea of living in any of the homes that the show profiled.

I'd be moving back to Australia if it was me.