The Best Kept Secret in Real Estate

Posted on 7-May-2013 by

Although SecondCup syndicates to Facebook and Twitter, its only true purpose in life is casual, under-the-surface communication with our real estate clients.  This post is to pass along a very well-kept real estate secret.

Last week, I represented a buyer-client in the purchase of a home with only 2 days-on-market (DOM).  Fantastically located, and very nicely improved with features not present in other homes in its price range, I knew it would fly off the shelf, as all worthy properties are doing today.

How to be a successful buyer in a seller’s market?  Here’s the first part of the secret.  Even in a market favoring sellers, a very high quality buyer is a commodity in demand.  Fallout… that is, inspections made unnecessarily difficult or buyers who show up as weak financing candidates… don’t have to be part and parcel of a transaction and are not part of the mindset of a high-quality buyer.  A smart buyer knows how to present his or her financial ability and knows how to conceptualize a home’s condition by focusing only on materially-defective and not maintenance-type items.

Here’s the second part of the secret in the deal I put together last week.  Not only did the seller want to work with my client, the listing agent and seller wanted to work with me, which is to my client’s advantage.  When another agent accepts my word attesting to my client’s quality as a buyer, I’ve successfully fulfilled my fiduciary responsibility and have moved my client’s interests ahead.  This is particularly valuable when multiple offers are flying and sellers are evaluating the overall quality of each buyer’s offer.

Back to last week’s deal.  Even as we were targeting a $20,000 discount off list price so the client buys correctly, and I’m told mid-afternoon that two other offers are expected by the end of the day, I’m also told we want to work with you.

How to buy?  Be a great buyer, and have a great agent.

How to sell?  Market a home that sparkles… and have a great agent.

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New Market, New Marketing

Posted on 25-Mar-2013 by

New market.  A new spring market with energy, confidence and focus not seen  in 6+ years.  Have a home that we can help you present to the market?  This is your season.

New marketing.  Real estate marketing ideas that simultaneously enhance property marketability and improve buyers’ access to the real estate market come along far too infrequently.  We’re employing a new marketing method that does both.

IMG_5293Meet the perma-flyer.  The perma-flyer is an 11×17 full color, weather-resistant marketing piece that attaches to our yard sign.

The perma-flyer showcases five of the best property photos, a beautiful narrative introducing the property to the sale market and bullet-pointed highlights of the property’s best features and improvements.

It also has an embedded QR (quick response) graphic that allows anyone with a smart phone and a scanner app to go straight to the property’s individual Web site.

We constantly review our marketing plan to maximize benefit, reach and ease to our clients and to the market at large.

New market.  New marketing.

Linda, Karen and Karen

Serving Others with Integrity, Care and Leadership

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Relishing the River’s History: The Amos Shinkle Townhouse

Posted on 31-Aug-2012 by

A Realtor’s Second Cup of Coffee (fondly, SecondCup) is a casual, periodic conversation about what underlies Ohio and Kentucky real estate… in other words, great good tidbits.  There is no better entre into SecondCup than to introduce the Amos Shinkle townhouse.

A beautiful confluence of history, style and art.  The 1854 Amos Shinkle townhouse at 215 Garrard St, in the Licking Riverside Historic District of Covington.

Researching the history of the original owner, Amos Shinkle, was an adventure into a life of richness and accomplishment.  As a young man born in Ohio, Shinkle worked as a cook on a flatboat, and later established a coal reloading dock for steamships plying the Ohio River.  It was only the beginning of a remarkable life of creation, service and philanthropy.

Amos Shinkle moved to Covington and constructed a number of steamboats.  He became a major stockholder in, and later president of, the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company, the company that, under his watch, built the Roebling Suspension Bridge.  He established the Champion Coal and Towboat Company, and was one of the organizers and first president of the First National Bank of Covington.  Shinkle was the president of the Covington Gaslight Company, and served on the Covington City Council and the Covington school board, at which time he advocated for a number of new schoolhouses.

Parlor

Amos Shinkle was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College and the Freedmen’s Aid Society.  He built the first Covington Protestant Orphanage.  He built an enormous Gothic-style mansion on Second Street in Covington, which was later donated to the Salvation Army for use as a women’s home, and was subsequently used as the original home of the Booth Memorial Hospital.

Amos Shinkle was an industrialist, a philanthropist and an abolitionist.  I found the research effort to be a wonderful reminder of the richness of Ohio River history, and of the

Gentleman’s Study

lives that created the foundation for Covington and Cincinnati as we know them today.

The Garrard St residence, 6835 SF, was used most recently as a B&B.  It’s elegant Greco-Italianate splendor would well suit a multi-generational family, or be a

fabulous professional office property.  There are grand moldings, cornices, gilded bronze chandeliers and Secco painted plaster. The mansion house has 4BR and 4.5B.  The carriage house, originally a stable with the stall features intact, has 4BR and 4B.

Who do you know who might wish to own an important piece of Covington’s heritage and write its future?

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