Pink House Team When we list a house it is important for us to know why they bought the house.  Very often the new buyer will buy for the same reasons.  Our owners at this listing told us why they bought the house.     Why did you buy this house?   They told us that it was just the right size and on a dead-end street so that it would be safe for their children.  The house had a big back yard which was important to them. They were very excited when they bought it to discover that under the carpet was hardwood floors.  They have since refinished them and they are beautiful.  They really fell in love with the kitchen.  It is big and roomy and laid out very nicely.   What are some special things about the neighborhood?   They told us that is was a quiet street and that most of the homes we... 10/31/2013

Pink House Team There are a few things that you can do to set yourself apart from other sellers.  I have found there is a pattern to the things that may hinder your sale and I wanted to share these two with you.     Hope This Helps!   Pamela Madore Pink House Team Keller Williams Realty 7304 SW 34th Amarillo, TX 79121 806*290*1920 http://pinkhouseteam.com   10/30/2013

     Get a Home Inspection. Most buyers will have a home inspection of your property.  Depending on what the inspector finds will determine whether or not your buyer will want to continue. Usually the items are reasonably small but if you have a first-time home buyer most things will scare them.  Depending on the severity of the item, they may back out. One solution is to get your own home inspection.  They usually run between $250-$300. This way you will get ahead of the game.  You will have the opportunity to fix things before the buyer has their inspection. Many buyers are also having a hydro-static test and there has been an increase in problems concerning it.  It would be a good idea to have this done, too.Get A Home Warranty Quite often a buyer will ask for you to provide a Home W... 10/29/2013

    Pink House Team     There have been so new changes in financing for a conventional loan.  In the past you were able to get a mortgage with 3% down payment.  Recently it was changed to 5% down.  The prediction is that this will increase the amount of people that will seek an FHA loan which requires only 3.5% as a down payment.   Another recent change for FHA loans has to do with charge-offs and collections. In the past, depending on how old they were, FHA mostly overlooked them.    Now FHA is requiring that the entire balance of the collections/charge offs be added together and a payment of 5% of the balance be used in your debt ratio. For instance, if someone had $3000 in medical bill collections FHA requires that an $150 payment (5%) be used in calculating your debt ratio.  Their t... 10/28/2013

        Greetings from the Pink House Team at Keller Williams Realty!     The real estate transaction is becoming more and more complex.  Every year, at least once, our contract has changes.  The mortgage part of the transaction eliminates many buyers from buying.  More and more people are beginning their search for houses online.  Sellers are looking online for comparable houses.  In other words, times are changing!   Because of all of the many changes, in order to keep up we decided that it would serve our buyers and sellers better if we became a team of specialists instead of generalists.  Each partner of the Pink House Team specializes in only one thing Mariah Mahaney is our Buyer’s Coordinator.  Her job is to have first point of contact with all of our buyers.  She will help with t... 10/28/2013

As a Realtor with the Pink House Team at Keller Williams Realty, I have the privilege of seeing many houses. There is a big variety of houses in Amarillo. Big ones and little ones. There are fancy houses and not so fancy. The fact still remains that somebody, at some time, built the house. It is fun to think about who built it and why. We have historic houses in Amarillo that have a great history of people that came before us. Some of the houses are modest and I can imagine that the whole family and perhaps all of the neighbors, too, helped to build it. There is a lot of new construction in Amarillo. Someday they will also have a history. So which house is or was your favorite house that you ever lived in? I have lived in 8 houses in my lifetime. I know which was one my favorite and I s... 10/27/2013

    Pamela Madore Pink Houe Team   If you are a learning based person like I am you are constatnly looking for the next book or next webinar or the next class.  The question becomes, can you ever learn too much? Of course, there sometimes is the problem of having a really, really smart bookshelf.  My bookshelf has a PHD in lots of things.  It seems that I never have the time to fully implement what I have learned or should I say "been exposed to".   Take this week, for instance.  I have one all day class, a coaching call, a group coaching call and a live webinar.  Wow I am  going to be really smart by the end of the week!  I think that the only way this really works is if all of the classes and calls were about the same subject matter.  Repetition will increase retention and results. Ho... 10/21/2013

  Pamela Madore Pink House Team     When I was in college I got an A in anatomy.  I failed typing.  Guess which one I have used most since then? Anatomy is a fascinating subject.  The human body has at least 1 Krillion, if that is even a number, parts to it. A real estate transaction doesn't have that many parts but it certainly has a lot.  And each day it seems we are getting more and more parts/steps.   If I can take the liberty of using analogies, I would compare the human heart to you.  Whether you are a buyer or a seller, you are the one that gives the transaction life.  Without you there would be no transaction. Let's say that the Real Estate Agent is the brains.  Certainly not because, speaking for myself, agents are brainy but rather because it is our job to not be emotionally i... 10/19/2013

Pamela Madore Pink House Team The Holiday Season is quickly approaching.  We begin with Halloween quickly followed by Thanksgiving and on the heels of that comes Christmas.  And don't forget New Years! Let's start with Halloween.  If  you are someone that loves Halloween and decorates accordingly, here are a few tips.  Don't have goblins and skeletons in every corner.  A buyer looking at your house shouldn't be frightened to death.  If you use those cob web things by your front door be sure you put them high enough so if a 6'2" buyer comes to look at your house, he or she, isn't caught in a cob web.  It is especially bad if you have a big black fake spider in it, too.   You might consider having an open house on Halloween night.  What better time then when kids and parents both come to ... 10/18/2013

Pamela Madore Pink House Team   The real estate transaction is becoming more and more complex.  Every year, at least once, our contract has changes.  The mortgage part of the transaction eliminates many buyers from buying.  More and more people are beginning their search for houses online.  Sellers are looking online for comparable houses.  In other words, times are changing!   Because of all of the many changes, in order to keep up we decided that it would serve our buyers and sellers better if we became a team of specialists instead of generalists.  Each partner of the Pink House Team specializes in only one thing.     Mariah Mahaney is our Buyer’s Coordinator.  Her job is to have first point of contact with all of our buyers.  She will help with the mortgage qualification process.  S... 10/17/2013

Pamela MadoreThe Pamela Madore GroupKeller Williams Realty806-290-1920 The Veterans Administration provides a number of benefits for Veterans.  I think the least used one may be the VA home loan benefit.   There is sometimes a misunderstanding of what eligibility really means.  It means that you are eligibile but you still have to qualify based on income and credit.  There are some very unique things about VA loans.  The first one is that a Veteran does not have to have a downpayment.  The eligibility provides 100% financing. There is a misconception about VA requirements as far as repairs and restrictions about the property are concerned.  VA wants the property to be safe and worth its value but their guidelines are no different than FHAs. VA does require a "funding fee".  The chart be... 10/16/2013

Here is a search in the Greenways.  Search your neighborhood!  It's easy and free.  This is the exact search Realtors have in the Multiple Listing Service Pink House Team Keller Williams Realty 7304 SW 34th Amarillo, TX 79121 http://pinkhouseteam.com 10/15/2013

There is nothing we value more than your opinion and questions. I have created a survey through "Survey Monkey" for you. It only has one question and will only take a minute. I am going to compile the information and I will send it out to everyone that responds! Thank you in advance for your help!http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8ZQK3QPPink House TeamKeller Williams Realty7304 SW 34thAmarillo, TX 79121http://pinkhouseteam.com   10/14/2013

  Columbus Day, October 12, is being celebrated on October 13 this year.  It is more convenient for us to have a Holiday on a Monday.  If it is on a Sunday it really isn't like a Holiday anyway. I don't think that Christopher will complain. There are some other pretty exciting things that happened on October 12 throughout history. For instance, October 12, 539 BC, Cyrus the great of Persia takes Babylon.  That was a pretty big event.  Pope John IV died on October 12, 642 AD.  Another pretty big event.   Edward VI of England (1537), Jonathan Trumbell (American Politician-1710), William Hardee (American General--1815), Ding Ling (Chinese Author-1904), and Luciano Pavarotti (Opera Singer--1935) all share the October 12 birthdate.  That is very interesting. This one seems pretty interesting... 10/13/2013

    Pamela Madore of the Pink House Team at Keller Williams Realty just completed the Broker Responsibility Course offered by the Texas Real Estate Commission. The Broker Responsibility Course is offered by the Texas Real Estate Commission and is a required course for license renewal for Brokers and Agents that supervise other agents. The class was held at the Amarillo Association of Realtors in Amarillo and was taught by Chip Staniswalis of Chicago Title. The Course is designed to add greater knowledge and in turn greater protection in helping clients through the increasing complicated Real Estate transaction. Within the next few months there will be many changes take place in the Real Estate industry and this Course is a gateway to the needed information. Madore says, "There are so ma... 10/11/2013

Go to the app store.  Download KW Mobile app and enter agent code KW6OLNJ1. This app will let you search properties by drawing your own map and finding houses within your specified area.  It is interactive and "real time". Do it today!     Pink House Team Keller Williams Realty 7304 SW 34th Amarillo, TX 79121 http://pinkhouseteam.com   10/10/2013

  The Pink House Team at Keller Williams is here to tell you that the market in Amarillo is incredible!   The Amarillo Association of Realtors is reporting that 276 houses sold in September.  The dollar volume through the third quarter was $747,054,442. Through the same period in 2012 the volume was $692,003,524.  Here is the interesting part.  Do you remember the year of the "bubble"?  In 2006 the rest of the country was peaking out at unprecidented prices.  Amarillo was much more stable than the rest of the country but we did experience an upward trend.  In 2006 through the same period the volume was $725,385,925. We have exceeded the 2006 totals by just under $22million.  Would you describe that as a bad market? The average months of inventory is 4.5 months with some prices as low as... 10/09/2013

Challenges are nothing more than opportunities.  Diana Kokoszka, President of MAPS Coaching at Keller Williams Realty International, is someone I respect and admire.  As she teaches us in BOLD, our mindset and how we view things will determine how we deal with challenges. "Develop success from failures.  Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success."  Dale Carnegie If your mindset is that failure is an end, then it will be.  If your mindset is that the failure is an opportunity for growth, it will be.  Someone once helped me with the mindset of failure.  They helped me understand that I didn't fail, the project failed.  What a relief!  Something about the project failed. John Maxwell wrote a whole book about failing.  It is called Failing Forward and just... 10/09/2013

One of the most difficult things for you as a seller to know during the home selling process is to know how many people know your house is for sale.   When you go to a football game you can look around and see how many people are in the stadium.  And then you add TV viewers, radio, and live internet and at that point you really don't know how many people are watching or listening to the game.  The number is nebulous and exponential.   Our marketing is much the same.  You can look around and see how many other agents we have marketed your house to but behind the scenes we are marketing around the world.  We have an internal marketing system that markets to all 92,000 agents we have.  We are partners with more than 350 search engines.  And our proactive prospecting for your buyer sets us ... 10/07/2013

    Today I went to open a house for a client.  He is buying the house and it is on a well.   When they did the water test it was "hot".  That means that the test didn't pass because there was bacteria in the water.  So I wondered how he was going to fix that.   My past experience with this problem is that you simply dump a bunch of bleach down the well.  That doesn't seem very scientific so I thought I would google for some ideas. Apparently there have been lots of wells that didn't pass inspection because there is a ton of information out there. I saw the word bleach floating around a lot but there were some other solutions, too.   One solution was a UV Light.  I didn't know what that was so I had to google that. It turns out that a UV Light is what I always knew as a Black Light.  Ye... 10/05/2013