Tips on Purchasing a House—Why Consider MLS

After many years of working while renting an apartment, you’ve finally saved enough to buy your own house. This is an opportunity you don’t want to miss or take lightly so you will surely use any possible means to make a worthwhile purchase. Here are some of the things you can do to make sure that the house you will buy is what your family longs for.

Expect the selection phase to last for months. Unlike buying an item in a department store, buying a home is a critical process that involves thorough research and inspection. Factors like transportation, proximity to basic establishments and weather have to be carefully considered. You also need to spend ample time visiting and inspecting several houses per day and to learn how to turn down offers that you think don’t fit your needs.

To make an even more informed decision, hire a reputable real estate agent. Not only can an agent guide you effectively, he can also minimize the tasks you need to perform throughout the purchase. He can do the searching, marketing and documentation required, and he can do them better.

Modern-day agents even use multiple listing services to make their search for a home that matches your standards even more accurate. MLS is an online software where sellers provide detailed information about the homes they sell. This makes purchasing easier since the agents can quickly identify the home the meets their client’s needs.

Find Your Calgary Dream Home with MLS®

The Canadian housing market is experiencing a boom, evident by the unforeseen increase in prices of Calgary real estate in 2013. Future Calgary homeowners should not fret about these prices, as they can use the MLS® to help them find their dream home at a good price.

Home Inspection: Confirm and Compare

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but there's no telling them whether those words are good or bad. You should never believe in anything you see until you've seen it firsthand.

It's for this reason that home inspection remains a crucial stage in the real estate process, not just in Alberta where homes sell like flapjacks. The inspection team often consists of at least two people: the buyer and a home inspector. Why is it often done this way? The buyer may fall in love with the couch, but the inspector may see bedbugs lying in wait.

In other words, the home inspector looks where the buyer rarely goes: wall cavities, plumbing, roofing systems, and the like. The intelligent buyer makes sure the house lives up to its description posted on the online listing. Nobody can perform this job better than a home inspector with years of experience under his belt.

You also have to remember that most pictures on real estate listings are taken with a digital camera. With some Photoshop skills, any picture of a living room can appear attractive enough for buyers to consider the real estate. Hold any plans of buying until your eyes confirm that the picture speaks the truth.

Multiple Listing Services – What You Need to Know

If you want to sell your home, you might want to put it up through a reliable MLS or multiple listing service. Having your home for sale up in an MLS allows real estate professionals to see what you offer. This is a great springboard for you to be able to find your prospective buyers.

MLS

Basically, MLS is a collective database that can be accessed by real estate brokers who have shared listing agreements with one another. This way, you aren’t just relying on the skills and resources of one broker to find buyers for your home, but of an entire team. These brokers earn by commission, depending on the sale of properties they sold or helped sell.

FSBO

While some properties bought and sold through MLS are listed by a broker who is representing the seller, some listed properties can be unrepresented; these are called “for sale by owner” or FSBO. The sellers of these properties circumvent the usual MLS restrictions by paying a flat fee to a broker for having the house listed without representation.

Benefits

The main benefits of MLS are essentially the same for both the seller and the buyer: access. The seller gets to place his home more efficiently in the market, with multiple brokers serving as channels to prospective buyers. The buyers on the other hand, can see a comprehensive list of homes with helpful data and photos to help them make their choice.

Calgary’s Housing Market Greets 2014 with a Bang

Real estate values and rates are often considered as one of the main contributing factors that determine a community’s economy and in turn, its potential for excellent home purchases that won’t go anywhere near bleeding the prospective homeowner dry of his funds. In this case, there’s little doubt that Calgary, Alberta is definitely one of the “it” places to buy a property this year, finance-wise.

A population surge, notably the in-migration of Ontarians due to the influx of available jobs in Calgary, is driving the city's economy and animating its housing market activity. Reports on Calgary’s real estate market reflects a spike in both sales and home prices—a huge jump compared to last year. Home prices have beefed up because of tight inventory and a close-to-zero vacancy in the rental market.

However, while the prices yield a strong showing in favor of Calgary's housing market, industry trends suggest that if new listings continue to surge relative to sales activity (with demand overwhelming supply), prices will soon to level off after a time. In any case, it won't hurt to “strike while the iron is hot”, as they say. Deal your property aces by getting in the forefront of news and activities through reliable resource channels today.

How the Calgary MLS System Increases Your Chances of Selling Your Home

What these home sellers don't realize is that they don't have to carry the burden of finding a buyer all on their own. They can simply enlist the services of a real estate company, or better yet, a real estate broker with access to the Calgary MLS® system. Not all brokers are required to have access to the MLS® System, but those who do have access to it can enter the home seller’s information and thereby get word out that a particular property is indeed up for sale. These days, home sellers can seek the help of a real estate broker to increase their chances of getting a good offer for their properties. As such, it is crucial to choose brokers who keep up with the latest real estate developments from such sources as the trusted Calgary Real Estate Board or CREB®.
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How Home Sellers Can Use MLS in Calgary

The Calgary residential real estate market may have been sizzling hot in the past few months, but if you don't know how to sell your product, you won't end up with a sale. There are several ways for you to announce to the world that you are selling your home, starting by placing ads in newspapers and magazines. However, you have to remember that such publications face tough competition from online media, so your ads may not reach as wide an audience as you may hope.

Thus, you may want to consider signing up for a multiple listing service (MLS®) System courtesy of a certified real estate agent. You simply have to pay a monthly fee for your home to be listed. Real estate agents can then readily access this information and help you sell your home for a finder's fee or a commission. Another great thing about an MLS is that you are not associated with a single real estate company or representative, which means that you’ve got better chances of reaching a wider audience.

You will also get access to other properties listed in the MLS® System. This way, you can check out the competition and see where your home currently stands. From there, you can further improve your strategy. 

Understanding How MLS Works

For some people, there's no better time to relocate to Calgary than now, especially with the city being declared as the fifth best city to live in by the Economic Intelligence Unit last August. However, if you and your partner have decided to take a big leap and settle abroad to pursue your lifelong passion, it's best to enlist the services of a real estate broker to sell your current home. With professional help, your house can be listed in a Multiple Listing Service or MLS® System. 

 

A MLS® System is a computerized database of all the real estate properties for sale in the Calgary area or in any other areas that buyers are interested in. By enlisting your property on a MLS® System, you can boost your chances of making a sale compared to solely relying on newspaper or magazine advertisements. However, a MLS® System is not free of charge, and similar to placing adverts on publications, costs may vary depending on how long you wish to keep your house listed.

A MLS® System is also beneficial to homebuyers as it contains all the critical information they need to know, including the property value, size, features, and amenities. Buyers can likewise easily have an idea whether or not a certain property fits within their budget. Likewise, buyers can instantly leave out any property that doesn’t meet their budgetary requirements or other preferences.