FIRST TIME HOME BUYERS SEMINAR IN KEYPORT

Make your dreams of owning a home a reality!  Thursday May 10th, Better Homes Realty in Keyport will be hosting a FREE First Time Home Buyers Seminar here in town at a local coffee house called Esspresso Joe's. There will be a variety of speakers and Real Estate professionals on hand to answer all of your questions and concerns in todays very challenging market.  Information on Monmouth County Grant Funds and Short Sale advice will be available! Preview available properties for Keyport, Hazlet, Aberdeen and Middletown. The meeting will start at 6pm and for more information please contact the Keyport office directly at 732-264-9593!!!

National Open House Weekend Tips!

ATTENTION BUYERS!! The time has come to get your comfortable shoes on, grab a water bottle and get the car keys, it's National Association of Realtor's Open House Weekend and in Monmouth County the balloons will be everywhere!!! Here are some handy tips that you may want to keep you from getting overwhelmed by it all. First, make it an occasion to spend some quality time with your significant other by getting a babysitter so you can see as many as possible and look forward to lunch or dinner after 4pm when most of them end. Second, have a plan! Know which areas you are most interested in based on school systems, access to work or family members, Hazlet, Middletown and Holmdel are among the most popular. Try to determine the exact style of house that you like such as a Colonial, Ranch, Split, Bi-Level or Cape. Research these different styles so you have an idea of what they look like from the street and try to resist the temptation to look at any that you know will not be your dream house so will have time to preview the right one.  Establish if you definitely want a garage, this will cut down on the amount of homes you would be tempted to preview on your drive by. Bring a pen and make notes on the print outs offered by the Realtors so you will be able to refresh your memory at the end of the day. And finally, remember to have fun and get excited about the prospect of buying your next home! Joanne Schiffres, http://joannes.betterhomesus.com Better Homes Realty, Hazlet 732-757-5013    

Your Realtor Is A Valuable Resource

Realtors are more than just "door openers".  An experienced full time agent has established and maintained great industry relationships over the years in order to serve his or her clients when it comes to the largest purchase they will ever make. Your Realtor's sole purpose should be to make your transaction as seemless as possible. That is why they should be the first person you go to when you need an important referral such as an attorney, home inspector or most importantly, a mortgage representative. Real Estate transactions are only as good as the people involved in order to move things along in a timely fashion and open communication between those related industries are most important when difficulties arise. Why wouldn't you, the buyer or seller, want all parties involved in your transaction to have your best interests in mind and make this experience one of excitement and joy rather than something else entirely! Joanne Schiffres  http://joannes.betterhomesus.com Better Homes Realty 732-757-5013

Waterfront Condos Point Pleasant NJ

2201 River Rd, Point Pleasant NJ Water's Edge  Point Pleasant's Premier Condominium Community Three units remain at Water's Edge, each with 2 bedrooms and 2.5  baths. Select condos offer furniture included in the sale, fireplace, butler's pantry, full kitchen with granite island, and state-of-the-art appliances. These beautiful mid-rise condominiums include units between 2,200 and 2,400 square feet. Balcony views with the Manasquan River or Point Pleasant Canal within eyeshot complete the beach-accessible dream this complex provides. For those just starting out, or those whose children are grown and are looking for a smaller home to retire to, or even those looking for a second home to enjoy, Water's Edge is a perfect location for all walks and stages of life. Come see why Money Magazine named Point Pleasant Borough one of the best places to live on the Jersey Shore, why not enjoy it with waterway views and ocean breezes? Three units remain and are available for a quick closing. Water/sewer fees are included in the association fee. Contact Anita Kazmierczak to schedule an appointment:  Email Anita@BetterHomesUS.com or call (732) 547-2710.

Networking Wine Social

Join the OCBR housing opportunities committee on April 12th at the Bacchus Winery in Toms River from 530-7:00 p.m. for an evening of great food, wine and fun. Enjoy Hors D'oeuvres and fresh Panini's from Buccio's Gourmet Bistro!   click on the link to print out your invitation... Click here for the Invitation

Help for Seniors

Click here for more info from my colleague Sandra RostekFebruary 29, 2012 by Wendy Trager Email: wendytrager@optonline.net.   It comes as no surprise that some of the hardest hit in this economy are seniors.  Homes seniors have been living in their whole adult life may now burdensome to pay for and upkeep.  Many seniors feel they have nowhere else to go.  Reverse Mortgages can be the solution for a variety of problems:

• To help seniors looking to downsize and finance the purchase of a smaller home.
• To help seniors facing foreclosure
• To help seniors suffering from job loss and unable to pay their mortgage
• To help with home repairs
• To help with sale of home
• To help a senior stay in their current home and pay for home healthcare

• The homeowners must 62 years old
• The home must be their principal residence (must live in the home more than half a year)
• The home must be a single family home, a 2-4 unit building or a federally approved condominium or planned unit development
• If there are debts against the home, then the homeowner must use the reverse mortgage to pay it off
• There are NO credit/income requirements

• Traditional mortgage or home equity loans require proof of sufficient income and credit history to qualify, and you will have to repay beginning within 30 days of closing.  With a reverse mortgage, there are no monthly payments to be made at any time during the loan for as long as you continue to occupy the home as a primary residence.  Since there is no monthly payment, the FHA does not require verification of your income and does not require a good credit rating. 

Real Estate Social Media

There’s a URL for That

By JILL P. CAPUZZO

LARRY VECCHIO, a Monmouth County real estate broker, was ahead of the curve in the late 1990s when he started buying up a number of generic-sounding Internet domain names that he thought might come in handy one day. The URLs he first went after were “Homesin(fill in the blank).com,” the blank being the names of the 20 towns his agency, based in Hazlet, served. Once he saw how easy and cheap it was to make these purchases — for a one-time flat fee or annual rentals — Mr. Vecchio started buying up every similar-sounding URL (Uniform Resource Locator) he could get his hands on. “I just thought, if you were going to look for a house, what would you type in?” he recalled. “So I looked up ‘homesin...’ and nobody had them.” Among those he learned were available were HomesintheUnitedStates, HomesinNorthAmerica and HomesinNewYork. (One that had already been spoken for was HomesinNewJersey, which was owned by someone in the Canadian town of New Jersey, from whom he was able to buy it for $1,500.) Today he owns 1,300 URLs, including “Homesin...” and “Condosin...” for just about every municipality in New Jersey, as well as towns throughout the country. He also owns the domain names, meaning that by adding a backslash and the name of any town in the United States, he has a network of some 35,000 URLs. As the vast majority of house hunts happen over the Internet, Mr. Vecchio’s URLs have a colossal resale value — far exceeding what he paid for them. For instance, he said he had been offered $100,000 for “HomesinForeclosure.com.” But this 54-year-old Web visionary has bigger plans for his holdings. Until recently, most of the Homesin... pages have had little or no content. But Phase 2 of Mr. Vecchio’s plans for HomesinYourTown.com envisions the URLs as the go-to real estate search-and-information site for anyone looking to buy a home in New Jersey and beyond. He has recently bought access to real estate listings nationwide, at a cost of $4,000 a month; he plans to populate his Web sites with these by the end of February. This will put him on similar footing with many other national real estate search sites, like Zillow.com, Trulia.com, the Multiple Listing Service, Realtor.com and Homes.com. But what he is hoping will make his sites more valuable are the “town leaders” he is trying to get to host each site: local agents or mortgage officers who will blog about area homes, schools, businesses and other community news in exchange for being the featured real estate professional on the site. By combining this hyperlocal reporting with real estate listing information, Mr. Vecchio said, he has developed “the first social media real estate site.” At the 2011 Tri-State Realtors Convention in Atlantic City in November, agents were competing for blogging rights on the URLs of some towns, said Christopher Sheridan, a real estate marketer who is signing up the local bloggers for Mr. Vecchio’s sites. “If you snooze, you lose,” said Mr. Sheridan, who has thus far signed up 180 town leaders, most of whom are paying the company $50 a month for that privilege. “If somebody wanted a town, I told them they better take it, or at least put something down.” Judith Weiniger, a Somerset County agent, recently signed on to be the featured broker on the HomesinWarren.com and HomesinWatchung.com sites. She described her venture as part of her overall commitment this year to embracing social media as a selling tool. “I’m a big believer in this hyperlocal social media strategy,” said Ms. Weiniger, an agent with Re/Max Premier in Warren Township. “People are more apt to trust a person or a business if they know someone else trusts them. I’m looking to build continued good will.” National Web-based real estate sites, too, are adding social media elements to their offerings, with blogs, links to Facebook and Twitter, and user apps. Patty McNease, the marketing director for Homes.com, said her company’s site was now posting a blog almost every day on some general-interest real estate topic. As far as localizing the information goes, Ms. McNease said, the site offers a question-and-answer section allowing readers to post queries about a given market, and “they’ll be bombarded with answers from local realtors within a few hours.” The goal at Homes.com — the country’s fourth-largest Web-based real estate site, according to comScore.com, a digital data analyst — is to “try to capture and keep visitors at our site as long as possible,” Ms. McNease said. Ian Lazarus, a broker with the Landis Company in Sea Isle City, signed on to host the Homesin... sites in Sea Isle City, Cape May and Avalon. He said he had been slow to embrace the blogging component of real estate sites, which in recent months had provided him with 50 to 60 leads, the majority of them people living outside of New Jersey. “He’s got 1,300 URLs, and every one is linked to the others,” Mr. Lazarus said of Mr. Vecchio. “That’s a lot of juice. And for me it’s important, because it’s something I can never build.” [caption id="attachment_4389" align="alignnone" width="190" caption="Real Estate Social Media"][/caption]

Mark the Date!!! Your Residential Real Estate Questions Answered.

Live Chat on Ustream.tv  by Lisa Alaimo of Better Homes Realty.  Present will be Michael J. Weber of Weber Law Offices in Howell, NJ.  Chat live and ask you real estate questions.  All Residential real estate questions and RE Legal Quesions. Re-sale, short sales, bank owned, foreclosure, condo's, town homes & rentals. Mark the date... March 1, 2012 at 7:PM You can email your request prior, we will respond on live chat and email you back with answers. Email to : LAlaimo@BetterHomesUS.com See you there... Channel Name:  BHRLisaalaimo or search on ustream.tv  NJrealestateagent   or just click the link below and save to your favorites. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/njrealestateagent Lisa Alaimo.. . .www.SearchHomesinNJ.com     for Michael Weber of Weber Law offices...  www.WeberLawOffices.com

Avoiding Foreclosure (Government information)

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/avoiding_foreclosure Call me with any questions. 800-531-2885 x 451 or email me at:  LAlaimo@BetterHomesUS.com  Better Homes Realty   Lisa Alaimo