The Potomac Hall Business Center welcomes The Badaki Law Firm On behalf of Potomac Hall Business Center in Hagerstown I would like to welcome Ayodeji Badaki, The Badaki Law Firm Services to our professional group of like-minded business professionals looking to create long term relationships with people and companies where we will be offering a vast menu of services including: Acquisition and disposition, Commercial and Residential services, Property Marketing and Leasing, Property Management, Lead inspections services etc. If you are looking for a Cost effective Office working Solution please stop by our office at 113 South Potomac Street in Hagerstown or call Roberto Gonzalez @301-991-0207 for more information. The Badaki Law Firm is a full service firm providing comprehensive legal c... 02/28/2013

Hagerstown is located at 39°38'34"N 77°43'12"W. It is south of the Mason-Dixon Line and north of the Potomac River and between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains in a part of the Great Appalachian Valley known regionally as Cumberland Valley and locally as Hagerstown Valley. The community also lies within close proximity of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. Hagerstown, by driving distance, is approximately 70 miles (110 km) northwest of Washington, D.C., 72 miles (116 km) west-northwest of Baltimore, Maryland, and 74 miles (119 km) southwest of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 10.7 square miles (27.6 km²), of which 10.7 square miles (27.6 km²) of it is land and 0.09% is water. Major waterways within Hagerst... 02/28/2013

Hagerstown Vacation Home Choice is a Different Animal, You would think that buying a Hagerstown vacation home would be pretty much like buying your primary home. After all, the technical processes are the same: first, you locate a suitable vacation home the same way you found your primary residence (most likely with the active help of a knowledgeable agent), then the offer, financing, documentation, etc. In fact, there are basic differences. Appreciating how they affect your final choice can help you secure a Hagerstown vacation home that provides the advantages you set out for -- a memory-creating family getaway, investment value that builds wealth, or both. Patience is a key virtue in getting the deal right. Financial experts from Bankrate suggest that vacation home buyers are in idea... 02/28/2013

Yard Dos and Don’ts to Sell Your Hagerstown Home, Your yard is your Hagerstown home's calling card. A dated or overgrown yard can be a huge turnoff to potential buyers – just as an appealing one can trump other objections. Landscape designer Cynthia Bee knows this well. "Landscaping often makes the difference,” she says, “between a prospective buyer getting out of the car for a closer look or simply driving on by." The same goes for Internet prospects as they scan through listings in search of a Hagerstown home to buy. An unappealing yard can detract from your all-important curbside glamour photo -- and cause them ‘to drive on by’ your listing. The backyard is not as important in attracting buyers, but often proves vital in holding their enthusiasm. To help sell a home in Hagerstown thi... 02/26/2013

  Restaurants in Downtown Hagerstown   Bulls & Bears Presenting Downtown Hagerstown with a unique experience featuring American cuisine in a New York style atmosphere! 38 S Potomac St #1 Hagerstown 301-791-0370 www.bullsandbears.biz/     Schmankerl Stube Hagerstown’s Bavarian Restaurant carries on the Old Bavarian and German traditions in a truly ethnic atmosphere 58 S Potomac St Hagerstown 301-797-3354 schmankerlstube.com/     Rhubarb House known for its casual atmosphere and pleasurable dining experiences. specialize in American-style classics 12 Public Sq  Hagerstown 301-733-4399 www.rhubarbhouse.com/     The Gourmet Goat The premise of the name begins with the Legend of how Coffee was first discovered. 41 North Potomac St. Hagerstown 301-790-2343 www.thegourmetgoat-ggs.com/   Vince... 02/26/2013

Why the Newest listings for Hagerstown Sometimes…Aren’t! You are doing some serious house-hunting. You’ve been Googling ‘newest Hagerstown listings’, but when you click on the most popular sites, somehow the ‘newest local listings’ are the same ones you’ve seen before. Worse, some of them turn out to have been sold! Or the price was wrong! Or the agent isn’t even the agent anymore! What is going on? Doesn’t Google (or Bing, or Yahoo!) promise to show you sites with the newest listings in Hagerstown? How can the most popular sites (at the top of their results page: Zillow, Realty.com, Trulia) be showing ‘newest listings’ that were sold last month? Or contact numbers that take you to an answering machine that never calls back? The answer is not mysterious, but it can take a while to catch... 02/25/2013

Investment Opportunities Overview, Explore the possibilities of guided real estate investment based upon proprietary market data, exceptional expertise, and innovative solutions designed to cultivate profitable purchases through well-informed buying decisions at all levels of investment portfolios including individual, institutional, and tenant/owner occupied. continue reading        02/24/2013

The Eureka! Moment for Hagerstown Renters It’s pretty common to hear from previously contented tenants who suddenly experience the Eureka! Moment – one where they realize they should have bought a home a while back. Eureka! Moments happen most frequently around April 15 -- but they can strike anytime. To minimize the lapse between Eureka! And the moment when home ownership became the smart choice, here are some indicators current tenants should watch for: Stability Shift When your long-term job stability changes, your ability to predict future finances changes with it. Current renters should start surveying Washington County homes for sale when the breadwinner becomes newly established in a long-term position. Credit Profile Shift To qualify for one of the homes for sale in Hagerstown m... 02/20/2013

Are Home Prices Trends in Hagerstown Sustainable? Who doesn’t want to know what will happen in the future? That’s a very small group, for sure, since good planning is a cornerstone of good management -- for households as well as for organizations of every kind. So, whenever Washington County homeowners see headlines like “Home Prices Up ‘Unsustainable’ 5.9% in 2012,” above a MarketWatch article that explains that price growth is expected to slow, they probably would like to gauge the reliability of the forecasters. In this case, MarketWatch is part of the relatively stalwart Wall Street Journal, so credibility goes up. But closer examination finds that the author is just reporting information real estate site Zillow compiled. Zillow is indeed an internet behemoth -- but can Hagerstown ... 02/19/2013

  Staging Approach Helps Hagerstown Home Sellers. We all know the feeling – the one where guests are due and you haven’t had time to clean the house. You shove all the…well… stuff into the back bedroom and shut the door (you’d lock it if you could). Now imagine that feeling times 10. If you are trying to sell your home this spring, and you have rooms full of that…well…stuff -- you’re in for exactly that. You can prevent it all with just a touch of the staging approach for your Hagerstown home. Not everyone has $5,000 or more to spend on professional staging, but then again, you can’t offer your home in “lived in” condition and expect to have buyers racing to write you their high-priced offers. Real estate is in large part an emotional selling proposition – beyond their basic housing req... 02/18/2013

REO Bargains Remain for Heads-Up Hagerstown Home Hunters Yes, foreclosure rates across the country continue to drop, yet Hagerstown bargain-hunters can take heart: there still remain a goodly number of bank owned properties in our area. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, distressed homes accounted for 24% of national December sales; a large proportion, but significantly down from the 32% of just a year ago. Also known as “real estate owned” (or REO) properties, it is well-known that these homes can often be bought at a significant discount -- frequently by as much as 16% – 17% below market. Before anyone updates his or her Facebook status to tell the world about the millions they are about to make by ‘flipping’ Hagerstown foreclosures, it’s good to bear in mind some key... 02/17/2013

Has the Market Stabilized? www.RgRealtyCorp.com - Best Customized Real Estate Reports for Washington County, Frederick County and surrounding areas.> Are you wondering if the Real Estate Market has Stabilized in your area? Would you like to know how much homes actually SOLD for in your neighborhood? Would you like to gauge how the current Real Estate Market is trending? FIND THIS INFORMATION AND MUCH MORE BY SIGNING UP FOR YOUR COMPLIMENTARY MARKET SNAPSHOT REPORT!           02/16/2013

Rental Price Increases Cheer Hagerstown Investors To the extent that Hagerstown rentals reflect wider real estate movement, there is good news and bad news for Washington County tenants. It all depends on how they view it (and how they chart their personal housing strategy). The bad news was not unexpected: for the third straight year, rents were up across the nation in 2012, according to apartment housing industry expert MPF Research. Although rents rose at a slightly slower pace than in 2011, national forecasts are calling for rent increases in 2013 that match last year’s. The research firm said that apartment rents climbed 3.0% in 2012, down from 4.8% in 2011, but again were above the long-term norm of 2.5% registered over the past 20 years. For tenants currently in Hagerstown rental... 02/15/2013

The Best Day for Listing Your Hagerstown Home is… “Mansion” is the Wall Street Journal’s entry into the high-end real estate magazine world. Well, not quite a magazine -- it’s an extra section they run on Fridays. It’s a nice diversion for those who want to read about really rich people selling their properties. More than that, it could actually be an important source of information if you decide to buy a vineyard in the middle of Los Angeles (Bel-Air, actually -- that one was featured last week). It was another article that caught my eye on Friday, though; one that dealt with a topic we agents have long debated. The article was headlined “THE BEST DAY TO LIST A HOME IS…”. It summarized an elaborately executed study by a national brokerage revealing hard statistics on which day of the w... 02/14/2013

Buying a Hagerstown Home … With a $0 Down Payment? Some of the area’s wealthiest buyers may be getting a mortgage without putting a single dollar down. And we aren’t talking about single-bedroom fixer-uppers, either! It's called 100% financing, and, at first blush, it looks suspiciously like a version of the strategy that sent the economy reeling in 2008. But lenders feel that well-heeled Hagerstown residents who are getting a mortgage through these programs are totally different. How so? you may ask. For openers, these loans are offered only to the super-qualified: those with serious investment portfolios they can use as collateral. That means getting a mortgage with zero cash for the down payment. That can carry an additional tax benefit, since the borrower won't have to pay a capital... 02/13/2013

Hagerstown Open Houses and Losing All That Junk!  Why so many open houses in Hagerstown? The reason is because they are so effective -- not only by instantly spreading notice that a property is seriously entering the market, but also by creating a firm target date – a day when all concerned agree that the property will be in peak ‘showability’ condition. Open houses are like showings on steroids. With dozens of visitors in the offing, there’s little doubt that every effort will go into preparing for them. Along those lines, every agent will tell you that a tidy home is far more tempting than one that looks too lived-in. The New York Times recently offered the assessment that decluttering is vital because "most real estate is aspirational, and buyers want to see themselves in someplace b... 02/12/2013

The Underpublicized Hagerstown Real Estate Option In case you missed it, there is at least one widely overlooked Hagerstown real estate investment possibility that can be available to active IRA holders. Especially if you are among those who look at the current Hagerstown real estate market and find numerous investment possibilities with significant long-term upsides, the Self-Directed IRA option can be worth looking into. Some of the broad outlines of how it works: 1. The right IRA custodian Custodians are trustees who hold self-directed IRA assets and file documents with the IRS. Washington County real estate purchases are considered ‘non-traded’ assets -- and not every IRA custodian allows for them. You may need to find one who does. 2. Use only IRA funds All costs associated with yo... 02/11/2013

Today I'd like to clue you in on a real gem in the Hagerstown, Maryland real estate Market.   You will find Fountain Head in the heart of Hagerstown’s North End, known for its well-maintained, single-family homes with mature trees.  The community is comprised of a mix of single family homes in all sizes and styles — ranging from the high-$100,000s to over a $1,000,000.  There are even opportunities to own brand new custom homes.   Fountain Head is also home to the Fountain Head Country Club,  the area's premier country club.  The Club offers residents of Fountain Head the opportunity to enjoy a variety of upscale amenities. For those who choose to join the club, privileges include the use of luxurious clubhouse, tennis facility, outdoor pool, full-service restaurant with banquet facilit... 02/10/2013

Knowing the Rules Eases Buying Homes in Hagerstown Sometimes, even after your mortgage application has been approved, you have to scratch your head at apparent non-sequiturs that attach to the process (for instance, when a loan is made contingent upon your repaying an ultra-low-interest credit account). Even more so if your perfectly dandy financial situation results in a turndown. How could this happen? The answer usually makes perfect sense…but only if you understand that bankers and mortgage brokers are bound by policies and procedures that apply to everyone currently buying homes in Hagerstown. Knowing the rules ahead of time can influence how readily mortgage applications are approved. Some guidelines: Forget adding "mattress money." Your bank account gets a thorough going-over, of... 02/08/2013

It's one of the most used words in real estate today....FORECLOSURE. Sellers hate them, and buyers want to find one. In Washington County, we have a relatively low number of Foreclosures, which most see as a good thing. But that doesn't mean that they aren't out there. Are you a buyer that is interested in finding a foreclosure in Washington County Maryland?  I've made it easy for you, just click on the photo below and you will see all the foreclosures available in Washington County. Want to see how Foreclosures are stacking up against traditional sales?  Well I have lots of charts to give you an idea. This first one shows the sales numbers YTD for bank mediated vs. non bank mediatedTo give your perspective on the makeup of the bank mediated, here are the numbers for Foreclosures vs. Sh... 02/08/2013