Big Rapids Real Estate Blog

Up here in beautiful Michigan we have a great place to come relax or live. It's called Canadian Lakes and if you are into Golfing, Hiking, Picnicking, Water Sports, Bicycling, then this is the place for you. There are 700 acres of lakes and 36 holes of golf. Always a great place to search when lo...

At our Annual Meeting for the Chamber of Commerce I beklong to we listened to the speaker who did an outstanding job covering Social Media and how his company could help us strenthen our position. When he referred to us Realtors as "Shameless Self Promoters" I was a little shocked but after a lit...

I have had two separate deals fall through in the last month due to title issues that in my mind probably should have been handled prior to the home being listed. The first one was a manufactured home listed by HUD in our area. With HUD you place your bid online and next day you find out if your ...

Last Friday left me wondering "What the HUD"? but let's start at the beginning. Met with a new client last month. Very nice young man needing help finding the home of his dreams yet within budget. So far so good. We met with the lender who told us where we qualified and what programs were availab...

Day started off like any other. Set up showings for the day and started our adventure. One showing was a HUD foreclosure. While we were there an elderly gentleman and his wife pulled in the drive and decided they should take a look also. I asked them if they were meeting their agent and their rep...

Any foreclosure could be a money pit. No disclosures and "as is, where is" should be red flags. In today's world of foreclosures and bargain hunters you can see where this movie could play out easily. In the movie "The Money Pit", Walter Fielding (Tom Hanks) and Anna Crowley (Shelly Long) decide ...

It often amuses me when new agents are frustrated about their business not taking off at the speed of sound yet when you look at their pc screen you see they are busy playing solitare or another type of game. Rarely do you see agents in the top ten playing anything other than the "Make Me Money" ...

Recently I closed a transaction involving FHA financing and a home in a "Site Condominium" development. I had always treated these like subdivision homes but learned the hard way about the differences. Started out like any other loan but once it hit underwriting things took a quick turn south. Fi...

Last year I joined the Droid world with the purchase of a Motorola Milestone. From day one I absolutely hated that phone. lol. I seriously wondered why people payed extra to be annoyed. This year Verizon took over the Alltel in our area and offered us to upgrade. Against my better judgement I wen...

With this post I will surpass 300K points here in the Rain. For this milestone, I am giving myself a gold star. I had planned on writing an awesome thoughtful post that would leave everyone in awe and then reality hit. Short and Sweet gets the job done. When I first started in Active Rain I was i...