The typical home seller this year

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

I was surprised to learn that the national average age of home sellers in 2023 was 60. I would have guessed younger. Here are some numbers from the National Association of Realtors seller profile for the last year:

  • The typical home seller was 60 years old, unchanged from last year.
  • For all sellers, the most commonly cited reason for selling their home was the desire to move closer to friends and family (23%), because the home is too small (13%), or a change in the family situation such as marriage, divorce, or new child (10%).
  • Sellers typically lived in their home for 10 years before selling. Among seven of the last 10 years, the typical tenure has been 10 years.
  • 39% of sellers traded up to a larger home and 33% purchased a smaller home.
  • 89% of home sellers worked with a real estate agent to sell their home, 7% sold via FSBO, and less than 1% sold via iBuyer.
  • For recently sold homes, the final sales price was a median of 100% of the final listing price, maintaining last year’s highest recorded since 2002.
  • Recently sold homes were on the market for a median of two weeks, unchanged from last year.
  • 92% of sellers were at least somewhat satisfied with the selling process.
blue house
small house

Home buyers love to ask why the house is on the market and why the owners are moving. The answer is almost always about some kind of a change in their circumstances rather than some big problem with the house.

We survived another hellish 4th of July

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

The 4th of July is my least favorite holiday. It is a hellish day and I am always happy when we get past it. This year neighbors were blowing up some large loud fireworks in the street. They were loud enough to shake the house. Several of us asked them to stop. They said “f-u”. A few of us called 911. It was noisy and the fireworks were close to houses and some of the people detonating them were children who looked to be under 10 years old.

Eventually, a squad car came by and the officer asked the neighbors to stop lighting fireworks. No one said “f-u” They were polite and told the officer they were done. After the officer left they started up again and we called 911 again.

Even though fireworks are illegal in Minnesota (In Minnesota, fireworks that explode or shoot into the air are illegal for use by the general public) in St. Paul there doesn’t seem to be any penalty for the people who play with them other than the injuries they get. Usually, there is a penalty for breaking the law.  The penalty for detonating fireworks in the city should be a fine of at least $1000 and it should double if those fireworks are detonated within 20 feet of a house or building. The fine should triple of people under the age of 18 are lighting the fireworks and quadruple if they are under 10.

Repeat offenders should be fined and sentenced to community service which would involve going around the city and picking up the debris from fireworks and all other July 4th trash.

In Minneapolis, people were arrested for detonating illegal fireworks. it will be interesting to see how that worked out.

The hellish day is behind us but we still have a few more nights of illegal fireworks in the streets. It gets worse every year.

fireworks
shoot fireballs

July 4th 2024

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

Have a safe and fun July 4th holiday. I think I took the picture in 2013 which was one of the last public fireworks displays on July 4th in St. Paul. We used to have beautiful, accessible and free fireworks displays along the Mississippi River or on the state Capital grounds.

July 4th Fireworks in St. Paul

The couple who wanted the loft

Posted on by Teresa Boardman

housesI rarely share details of transactions on this blog but today I am going to share. I’ll change the names and location to protect the innocent and the guilty.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful loft for sale. There were a few interested buyers. One couple saw the place three times. Their agent said he had an offer and he would send it at X time. The sellers were notified and standing by but the offer never came.  The buyer’s agent kept in touch and kept mentioning that there would be an offer but none came.

Then one day a near-perfect offer came along. Qualified buyers who were able to accommodate the owner’s preferred closing date and no contingencies. The owners of the beautiful loft immediately accepted the offer.

The other interested party found out and their agent called and told the listing agent that she was supposed to let the buyer’s agent know about any offers. The buyer’s agent never asked to be informed about offers and even if he had the sellers can decide not to share that information. They can ask their agent to not disclose the existence of other offers.

Bottom line a home can only be sold to one party and often several parties who wish to buy it. Homeowners only need one offer.  When a great offer comes along the seller can and should accept it. Home sellers are under no obligation to have their agent let interested parties know that there is an offer. 

The buyer’s agent claimed that he knows how things are done and that any other listing agent would have called to let him know about an offer. That had been his experience during his three years as a buyer’s agent.

Buyers planning to buy should make sure they are ready to buy before they start looking. Once the right property is identified it is time to make an offer. Waiting rarely works out. A buyer’s first offer should be his best offer. Agents should not repeatedly promise an offer before the buyers. When there is no offer the agent loses credibility with the listing agent and the sellers.

One universal truth about buying or selling residential real estate is that every situation, client, and home is unique. We have to be prepared for every kind of scenario and never make assumptions about what buyers or sellers will do. We expect the unexpected.

Agents should refrain from saying they are going to submit an offer unless they are sure. If an agent says they are going to do something at a particular time they should do it or at the very least call the other party and let them know what is going on instead of making them wait.

Universal printer repair

Posted on by Teresa Boardman
office -1918

I don’t print much these days but I have a wonderful wireless laser printer in my office. I can print from anywhere in my house. I can print from any device. This morning I couldn’t print at all. I tried a few times. The printer is so reliable I had to try a few times.

Then I remembered the universal fix for printers that won’t print. I learned it back in the day when we had a dot matrix printer on a 286 PC.

I turned the printer off and counted to 10 and turned it back on. It still didn’t print. Then I rebooted my computer.

Problem solved, printer fixed it prints.

Some things have changed since the early days of personal computers and printers and some things have remained the same.

If restarting had failed I would have moved on to using software type diagnostic. If that failed I would have messed around some settings and probably would have made things worse. If that had failed . . well lets not even think about that.

Being self-employed sometimes means being my own I.T. department and being able to help others with large PDFs and JPEGs.

Welcome to the first Monday in July.