Steve's Austin Realty Blog

I found this post on the web while doing some research on an investment club someone mentioned to me. The story was posted by an investor who apparently joined one of these investor groups that has the entire process all laid out via a pre-established "network". They tell you where to go, what to...

Now that the holidays are behind us and a new year has begun, the phones are starting to ring again and the email inquiries are coming in again from prospective investors who are considering purchasing investment property in Austin. The most common question we hear is, "can I buy a rental house i...

We have a listing with an odor problem at the front porch. The seller assumed it was the neighbor's cats coming around and spraying her front porch, and she's been putting up with it for years. We've taken steps to mitigate the smell, but when I showed up this morning to open the home for a Kelle...

I came across a listing tonight that has "Hurry! Won't Last!" typed into the listing remarks. The listing has been on the market 299 Days. Wow, you'd think after a couple of months the agent would remove the comment, since the market has rendered it false. This made me curious.Do comments like th...

Suppose you were a renter interested in a house I own. In fact, it's a brand new home I just finished building. I tell you that I'll let you move in for no money down, but you're going to be paying a monthly amount of $200 to $400 more than the market rent value of the home, and you also have to ...

I always review the settlement statement for our buyers and sellers to make sure everything looks correct before closing. There are often corrections that need to be made. While reviewing the HUD1 (settlement statement) on a deal we closed today, I noticed a new junk fee I had not previously seen...

A Realtor recently posted that being availble and answering calls 24/7 was the most important customer service feature he offered, stating "I have built my company on the fact that I can be reached 24/7. I believe that I owe that to my clients"I responded with:You don't owe that to your clients. ...

The Austin Rental market keeps chugging along, not burning up any records, but a slow march back toward the better rental rates Austin landlords once enjoyed. Below are the rental stats for January 2007. Since we're at the start of the year, I'm not doing a Year-to-Day, as obviously that would ju...

I had an interesting call today from a Coldwell Banker Realtor in Florida. He spoke to Sylvia yesterday and told her that he has a group of Florida investor buyers that want to come out to Austin and buy a bunch of rental homes. He's trying to get them set up with a good buyer's agent in Austin w...

The article below supports what I preach constantly to buyers in Austin, notwithstanding our strong current market - stay out of the far-flung areas and instead buy the best home you can afford closer in. And from the article below, this instructive quote: "But speculative investors - rather than...