The Original Clintonville Charmer. 79 Acton sold in 1996 for $145,545

You’d be amazed how often I read the remarks on a new listing, check out the history of the listing in the Columbus MLS, and find the EXACT same remarks the previous agent used. It’s uncanny. Sometimes the remarks are in the entirety, sometimes it’s most of the old remarks with a few fresh ones thrown in or maybe it’s simply an obviously borrowed phrase from a past listing.

The whole idea simply proves my point about how unoriginal and lazy many real estate agents are — and I’m not even talking about maximizing views of the home in front of potential home buyer’s eyeballs (i.e. marketing).

Every once in a while you find a phrase that sticks through the years. “Clintonville Charmer” is one in particular. It was in the description of a home that came on the market today in the 500 block of Acton and it got me thinking about how over-used some descriptive phrases are in the Columbus MLS, “Charmer” being one of them.

The phrase Clintonville Charmer has been used to describe a home for sale in Clintonville 145 times since the inception of the modern Columbus multiple listing service. Most recently today. The earliest recorded use of the phrase seems to be on another Acton house -79 Acton Pictured Above- on the market 13 days in May and June of 1996 before selling for $145,545.

Anatomy of a Clintonville Charmer:

4 Active Clintonville Charmers averaging 1,728 sf listed at an avg of $154.25/sf

117 all time Sold Clintonville Charmers averaging 58 days on market and 1,455 sf

2 Clintonville Charmers that are in contract currently for $148/sf on average and both, coicidentally, on East Pacemont

I look at listings all day long and see some doozies. What descriptions of Columbus homes for sale have caught your eye over the years?

Click Here to See the Today Show Segment.

Sometimes, having a Realtor with a stellar web presence pays off.  While it probably won’t create a sale, and despite the objections regarding the color of the dining room and the potential addition of an eat-in table in the kitchen, today’s airing of my listing at 1224 Fair Avenue received almost a full minute on National Television with the kitchen onscreen for ten full seconds.

If nothing else, it was enjoyable for the Sellers and the publicity can’t hurt. It all happened because the Delicious Real Estate Brand is tech savvy, distributed well across the Interet and  because I work hard for my clients. If this sounds like what you’re looking for in a Realtor, call or email me.

And, for the record, I think a small table in front of the brick fireplace in the kitchen would ruin the aesthetic that the kitchen has worked so hard to achieve. Yes, the space is there and yes potential buyers could easily have some eat-in space in the kitchen should they so chose.

I’ve always been a fan of City Center.  Everything everyone has ever pointed out about its faults, chiefly that it should have opened up to the streets surrounding it, has been true but it held a special place in the downtown retail fabric. I’m a buy-local guy and not a fan of big box retailers, malls or shopping itself but City Center was always close and always convenient. Parking was cheap and easy and chances are if our family had some kind of a retail need, we could fill it at City Center.

With the Annex in River South Condos literally just down the street finishing construction and Neighborhood Launch a stones throw away, will downtown Columbus condo buyers continue to consider living in the Center City now that City Center is gone?

Yes, they will. While the city of Columbus is touting a park to spring up from the ashes of the demolished mall, that is not the long term answer anyone wants to see in that prime spot. The City is talking to developers right now who are willing to put down their own money to build on the location. I’ve heard rumors of more condos, more apartments, major grocery, convenience and other retail stores in conjunction with class A office space.  It’ll happen.  Will we ever see another Macy’s type store downtown? Probably not. But maybe we could see some other fantastic possibilities.

Of possible interest from this and other sites regarding downtown retail and living…..

• Downtown Columbus’ Neighborhood Launch – a quick update

• Top 10 Chains We Wouldn’t Mind Seeing Downtown

• The Past, Present and Future of Retail in Columbus

• Population increase hasn’t translated into retail growth

Replacing Sidewalks can be a big job but a valuable one.

I’ve found that sidewalks tend to be a value added feature for buyers looking at Columbus Homes for sale. Most of my buyers buy homes inside of I-270 and most of my buyers prefer to have sidewalks for ease of travel when walking around the  neighborhood, for a safe place to meet and greet neighbors, for a safe way to travel through a community, for the perceived safety of theirs and the neighborhood children (I couldn’t find a study that says sidewalks keep children safer but since they keep kids and cars from being in the same place at the  same time, I have to think it’s true) and because they simply feel that a home, a community, needs sidewalks.

In a neighborhood like Clintonville, most streets have sidewalks but the sidewalks don’t necessarily extend the length of the street,ie-there are some that seem to end somewhat randomly as you get closer to Indianola – often only to be taken up again down the street. Also, some North – South streets in Clintonville have no sidewalks.

In slightly more urban areas like German Village or Victorian Village, you can pretty much count on sidewalks though you definitely can’t always count on them being in good repair. In German Village, for example, some of those sidewalks are well over 110 years old and they’re brick which is a bigger maintenance issue. This leads to the next point, the sidewalk is the homeowner’s responsibility. Not just for shoveling snow, but if the walk has cracks all over it and is falling apart the City of Columbus will ask you to fix it. Nicely the first time.

It’s a bit of a catch-22 for homeowners who might buy a house, based in part, because of the lovely trees up and down the block only to find that the roots of those trees have demolished the sidewalks and now they have to pay to replace the walk.

You might get lucky though. Smaller municipalities like Bexley have more discretion and money to throw at keeping sidewalks in good repair. This summer the city of Bexley went around and marked sidewalk squares to be replaced and replaced them on their own dime, sparing the homeowner the cost. (Yes, the money no doubt came from homeowners to begin with)  That won’t always be the case in Bexley and it’s not something you can count on happening anywhere else in greater Columbus.

In less urban areas and sprinkled throughout Columbus you might find communities with no sidewalks. These homes are usually a little farther from the street and the yards are big. Typically, these areas also have less traffic and less need for sidewalks and the poor children who live there never have the opportunity to break their mother’s back.

Despite living on one of the oldest blocks of the city, my sidewalks are unusually wide, probably 5 feet.  This adds to my overall love of my block and is a small luxury that I really enjoy, even if only in the back of my mind. Also, because my neighborhood is so urban there are people who walk up and down my street all the time. I love that about my street.

In Gahanna and Dublin there just aren’t random people walking down your street and the quotient of local flavor goes down because of it. I’m sure many Columbus area home buyers might find that comforting but I say if you’ve got sidewalks, use them.

I love that the guy in the studio starts out saying the  home is overpriced, then they flash the text that the interested buyers want to tear it down just as the Real Estate Agent is going on about it and it ends with the anchor complaining about the train whistle being heard from a $2.3million dollar home.

Because I pride myself on being an informed, educated and aware Real Estate Professional, between working hard for my clients, I am constantly reading up on and researching the business of real estate and how to better serve my clients by tweaking my own Brokerage’s Business Model, becoming more efficient and organized and following the cutting edge professionals across the country.

In the process, I often run across news items – some fun, some important, some thought-provoking, some controversial – that I share on my personal Facebook page that never become blog posts.

If you aren’t following me on Facebook, you’re missing some of the information I am distributing. Delicious Real Estate is about empowering the consumer for easier, faster, less expensive and more pro-client real estate transactions. Facebook is one way that I deliver that promise.

View my page anytime….. http://www.facebook.com/joe.peffer

I've always loved the stone pillars flanking this Bexley Home

Instant Equity. Two words anyone buying real estate in Clintonville, Bexley, Grandview, Downtown, Short North, Berwick, Westgate or anywhere else in Central Ohio love to hear.

The problem is, I’ve heard those two words too often lately. The problem is the context and the definition of instant equity.  In my opinion, anyone buying a home that has instant equity is anyone buying a home at a substantial discount to the Market Value of the  home. That range from selling price to market value equals instant equity (though the bank might not think so).

What I’ve heard a lot lately is something along these lines, “…and this Seller paid $338,500 for it just a few years ago and is selling it for only $299,900. That’s a lot of instant equity for your buyer!”

Hold on a minute Buster, who cares what the Seller paid for it! In today’s market, if the home the Seller paid $338,500 for in 2006 is only worth $290,000 then there is NO instant equity. It’s simply priced at or around market value. Market value simply means whatever the market (all you buyers out there in Columbus thinking of buying a home) is willing to pay for it.

Hold on though, because it works both ways…..I always tell Buyers that what the  Seller paid for the home has no bearing on what the home is worth.  That means if the Seller bought the Columbus home via foreclosure, at auction or even on the market with Instant Equity….ie-if the Seller got a deal…you can’t punish them when buying the house. They are the one who got the deal, they deserve to make a profit and the Buyer should anticipate paying market value for the home. Just because the Seller got a deal on the home doesn’t mean she has any obligation to pass that deal on to the Buyer.

Obviously the big orange dot in the middle is Columbus. While visitors came from as far away as Indonesia and Turkey, my analytics tell me that Reynoldsburg and Pickerington were 2nd and 3rd in visitors from Ohio during this time frame but that visitors from Powell, 5 unique visitors, spent the most time on the site-per visitor.

I just particulary liked the way it looked.

How nice it is to have some outside affirmation of our fair city's intelligence.

While it’s much easier for me and others to criticize the City of Columbus for Real Estate related dos and dont’s, I also enjoy giving Columbus props when we make the National spotlight in same way. My hope is that anyone considering Moving to Columbus, Ohio will find that it’s a rich, vibrant city. Usually, it’s some inane list of Best Cities to …. but today, thanks to Andrew Miller, I see that Columbus is in the top 15 smartest cities as ranked by Smarter Cities, a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Their self-description…Smarter Cities, a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non-profit 501(c)(3), is a multimedia web initiative whose mission is to foster a little friendly competition (see Annual Cities Research and Rankings below) as well as provide a forum for exploring the progress American cities are making in environmental stewardship and sustainable growth.

Mostly, they talk about Mayor Coleman’s downtown housing initiative and Columbus’ plan, “to be the bicycling capital of the country. The Bicentennial Bikeways Plan, finalized in May 2008, calls to double the city’s 50 miles of biking lanes and trails by 2012, when the city celebrates its bicentennial. By 2018, the city plans to add another 200 miles for biking by connecting greenways and activity centers…”

Three out of four of the Clintonville area homes I showed last night had sign riders with fun exclamations.