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?

First time buyers could buy this 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home in Old Towne East for around $250K

This afternoon President Obama signed the bill into law that will extend the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit to contracts signed by April 30 and closed by June 30.

I’m surprised that they left the two month window but I think it’s very smart. Still, even if it were this week, I would not try to buy a short sale property or a foreclosure that doesn’t have the deed in the bank’s name even with the 7.5 month leeway.

Here’s the best part–a tax credit for SELLERS. The bill creates a $6,500 credit for those who buy a home after living in their current house at least five years. That will apply to contracts signed by April 30 and closed by June 30. The current credit defines a first-time homebuyer as someone who has not owned a residence within the past three years.

The credit will be available only for the purchase of principal residences priced at $800,000 or less.

This is huge. If you have owned your Columbus area home for at least five years–and I believe you must have lived in the home for at least five of the last eight years–you too can receive a credit. I can’t envision a scenario where you could claim both sides of the tax credits unless it was something along the lines of you selling your home and then turning around and buying the next home in your new spouse or girl/boyfriend’s name who has not owned a home.

The bill will raise the adjusted gross income cap to $125,000 for single filers and $225,000 for joint filers. The amount of the credit currently begins to phase out for taxpayers whose adjusted gross income is more than $75,000, or $150,000 for joint filers.

This is important. It opens the tax credit up to a whole new set of first time buyers who were not previously eligible and who could, conceivably, purchase a home with a little higher price tag that this year’s crop of first time home buyers weren’t even looking at.

Clintonville

Greater Short North including Harrison West, Italian Village and Victorian Village

German Village and Brewery District

Schumacher Place and Merion Village

Greater Olde Towne East

Grandview Hieghts and Marblecliff

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'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.

What will this Clintonville Home Sell for? Who will buy it?

It’s a rare home in Columbus, Ohio that has NEVER been for sale. Of course, homes that were newly built for the current sellers would fall into that category, but how about an 86 year old home in Clintonville that has never been for sale?

The home was built in the early 1920’s for the Parents of the now late 93 year old Seller. Two generations have lived there for an incredibly long time and the Clintonvile House has never been on the  market.

The kids have 2 sport practices and a music lesson tonight. Are you eating round the table?

This is a post I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Over the last few years, Buyers have fallen on both sides of the  dining room fence.
The bottom line-Dining Rooms are like Fireplaces, everybody wants one but few use one. Americans love the idea of a dining room but how many families do you know that eat dinner together every night gathered around the dining room table? I do maybe 3 nights a week and I think that’s high. I also don’t have a formal dining room, rather a spot to fit a formal dining room table between the kitchen and living room, all of it open space.

When staging a home to sell, the  dining room better look like a dining room. If it exists, show it off.

If you live in Bexley or Upper Arlington or parts of Worthington and have a 4 bedroom house then buyers are looking for dining rooms and you’d better have one. If you have an $850,000 contemporary home in Upper  Arlington though, it’s OK to NOT have a dining room but instead have a large open space.

Grandview buyers like traditional floor plans and, obviously, so do Olde Towne East buyers – but those homes are so large that there’s plenty of space for everything. Clintonville buyers are always looking to maxamize space and I’ve seen many homes that live without a dining room but always  “re-install” it when it’s time to sell.

Eating space is important in German Village and so is historical accuracy.  Space, however, is often at a premium and a dining room just isn’t as important as it used to be. When those same German Village couples start their families and move to Bexley, though, it becomes more important, at least in theory.

Dining rooms are a hold over to pre-television, pre computers, pre-this-family-has-3-practices-and-a-music-lesson-tonight households. They just aren’t as important as they used to be. Eating dinner together as a family is a romantic notion that isn’t always feasible to follow-through on.

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

Wait a minute. All I have to do is pick a house and HUD will give me an $8,000 down payment?

Although nobody called me for the panel of distinguished guests at the mid-year meeting of the National Association of Realtors today in Washington D.C., I have found out that Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, decreed today that the Federal Housing Administration is going to permit its lenders to allow homeowners to use the $8,000 tax credit as a downpayment.

Secretary Donovan went on to say, “We all want to enable FHA consumers to access the home buyer tax credit funds when they close on their home loans so that the cash can be used as a downpayment,”  According to Donovan, the FHA’s approved lenders will be permitted to “monetize” the tax credit through short-term bridge loans. This will allow eligible home buyers to access the funds immediately at the closing table.

Is this great for Columbus area first time home buyers? You bet! You can read more about it here.

On the flip side, It seems to me that this is typical of the American ‘gotta-have-it-now’ mindset and all too reminiscent of the sort of ‘lend to anyone with a home buying twinkle in their eye’ mentality that got us into this mess.  Don’t have enough money for a down payment? No problem, here’s $8,000.

And, since you’re wondering anyway, that means that you could purchase about a $228,000 Columbus area home with no out of pocket down payment if you’re going with an FHA loan product and their 3.5% minimum down.

You’d be Suprised where you can put a 1/2 bath from joe peffer on Vimeo.