Austin Texas Real Estate Blog

As an eight-year resident of the Blackhawk area and a 16-year resident of Pflugerville, I like to keep an eye on the market values here in our neighborhood.  When the toll roads first opened in the fall of 2006, the prices started trending upward, then they flattened out somewhat, with some tough economic factors at play.  Since the fall of 2010, the market has been very active again in this area.  As a fellow homeowner in Blackhawk, this stuff is important to me, too! 

Currently, there are 5 resale homes available on the MLS in the Fairways, with an average asking price of $235,760.  The average square footage for these homes is 2,700, for an average price per square foot of $88.55. 

Presently, there are 4 homes under contract in the subdivision, with an average listing price of $212,075 and an average square footage of 2,706, yielding an average price per square foot of $78.85. 

In 2010, there were 23 sales closed within the Fairways of Blackhawk.  The average listing price was $225,468, and the average sales price was $216,678, which means homes sold for 96.1% of the asking price.  The average square footage was 2734 s.f. for these.

OTHER AREA NEWS:

Located at the southwest corner of the intersection of the aforementioned toll roads (45 and 130) and about a half mile from Blackhawk, Stone Hill Town Center will eventually have over 1,000,000 square feet of shopping and entertainment.  Home Depot, Best Buy, SuperTarget, Verizon Wireless, Mattress Firm, Chick Fil-A, Bealls, Rack Room Shoes, Dick's Sporting Goods and several others are open now.  In May 2011, a new Cinemark theater and a 24-Hour Fitness are slated to open as well.

HOW TO REACH US:

If you are a consumer living in another area around Austin and you are interested in seeing the trends in your particular neighborhood, please don't hesitate to contact me, and I can create a custom report for you.  All of my contact information is below. 

If you are considering selling your home in the Fairways of Blackhawk (or anywhere in the general Austin area), please feel free to give me a call.  I would love the opportunity to help you get it sold quickly.  Also, You can visit my primary Austin real estate website at www.austintexashomes.com.  You can also reach me anytime on my cell phone at 512-796-7653 or via email at jason@austintexashomes.com.  Thanks for checking out this brief analysis!

One of the better and more interesting books I've read in recent years was "Everything Bad is Good for You" by Steven Johnson.  This past week, I finished reading another of Johnson's works, "Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life". 

When I was younger, I had a handful of professions in mind, none of which actually ended up being my chosen career.   I thought of being a pediatrician, comedian, or perhaps a psychologist.  With regard to that last one, I suppose I've always been curious about how people think, and what motivates them.  Instead of psychology, I've been in sales for 15 years now, and understanding decision-making and the emotions and factors behind this have always intrigued me. 

"Mind Wide Open" explores the science behind laughter, hormones, music, love, fear and more.  Johnson's writing is stellar.  Without a doubt, this man knows how to craft a sentence.  He even spends part of the book discussing an MRI that he underwent in order to see what his own brain does when he is writing.  Johnson is both mildly self-deprecating and genuine when including anecdotes about his own fears and personal stories. 

If you've even been curious about why certain people seem destined to abuse drugs, that's covered here as well.  In a nutshell, it comes down to brain chemistry.  People who end up addicted to drugs are probably predisposed because of something natural which is lacking within their specific brain and its receptors. 

I do have a couple of criticisms, which probably reflect my own preferences more than anything else (what reviews aren't?).  Namely, I felt that some of the examples/chapters were longer than necessary to get the point(s) across, and I thought that the use of Darwinism was a little heavy-handed, considering that there was no mention of intelligent design (i.e. God) at all.  I suppose this is to be expected in scientific writings, but I did tire of hearing about Darwin and the evolution of our brain from lower life forms.

My complaints notwithstanding, the book is worth the read, and I did learn a good deal about brain science and even a little about reading others' thoughts, which could always come in handy.  :)  You can find "Mind Wide Open" on Amazon or at your local bookstore, more than likely.  If this subject holds interest for you, this book would make a nice addition to your collection.

Thanks for reading!

Ever since November, we've been busier at our company than we have been in years.  November was my best sales/income month since 2007, and it appears as though February will be even better.

I'm hopeful that the market in Austin will continue its upward trend this year (and beyond).  Typically, we don't see this much buying activity in the winter.  Even since I can remember, the market begins to pick up in February.  Instead, I find myself with multiple daily appointments with clients.  I've hired a handful of new agents at Austin Texas Homes, LLC, and I'm looking to expand further this year. 

I guess it just plain feels good to be truly busy again, with buyers and sellers both.  I sense that there's a lot of pent-up demand for housing, as many people waited on the sidelines or chose to rent while waiting for other properties to sell.  Our market took longer to turn south than most areas of the country, and it seems like it's rebounding earlier as well (at least I hope that's the case). 

Having been through a couple of downturns in my career, especially with this particular rough patch, I feel more prepared to handle the good times.  If/when I get back to the income level I had in 2006, I am confident that our family will be able to save (and likely give away) a good deal of money.  At a company level, I am prepared to invest more in our marketing and brand-building going forward. 

After meeting recently with my business partner, we identified three strategies that I think could take our real estate business to an entirely new level.  I can't share any of them here, however, since they're just too darn good and creative.  :)

What's your market like right now?  I've heard anecdotal evidence that other markets are also improving.  What do you see?

Last year, I blogged about this topic with solid results.  I hope to do so again.  If so, I can help out a good cause and my daughter at the same time.  

If you live in the general Austin area, let me know if you would like to buy some Girl Scout Cookies.  My 9-year-old daughter Aleah is selling them for the second time, and she wants to sell enough cookies this time around to win a tent.

If you buy at least three boxes ($10.50 or more, as they are $3.50 per box), and you live/work in the Austin metro area, my daughter and I will deliver them to you at your home or office (your choice).  

As a longtime salesperson, I am of the opinion that this could help Aleah to hone her burgeoning sales skills.  If you're nice, we might even hang out awhile.  :)  If you live outside of Austin, keep reading below.  

By the way, I already know what you're asking yourself.  YES!  They are still just as delicious as you remember them.  In fact, you might be doing my waistline a service by getting them out of my house.  They are really, really good, and I don't want to gain back any of the 56 pounds I lost this past year.  

if you want to support our cookie sales efforts, but you are:

• worried about your diet
• too far away, OR
• a crazy person who doesn't like the taste of the cookies

I have another idea for you.

It's called "Operation Cookie Drop". Basically, you donate $3.50 for each box of cookies, and they will be delivered to our troops overseas.

Cool, huh?

I have already bought and consumed cookies myself, but I think I may just go ahead and donate some extra money for this very special cause.

Here are a handful of benefits:

• You can keep your girlish (or boyish) figure intact
• You are directly helping our troops
• You are benefitting the Girl Scouts
• I will like you even more than I already do

Perhaps best of all, the donation is tax deductible!

In an effort to make it easier, you can pay via PayPal (any amount in $3.50 increments) by sending the money to our account at jasonpam@swbell.net. We will then write a check for the total and provide a receipt for your tax records if you like.

If you would like to pay by check (minimum donation of $14), you can make it out to "GSCTX" or "Girl Scouts of Central Texas" and mail it to my office at 3636 Executive Center Drive, #210, Austin, TX 78731. 

Help me demonstrate the power of social media and blogging.  :)  They also make great gifts. 

Feel free to re-blog or spread the word in any way you prefer.  

Thanks!

Having lived in the Austin area since 1988, I'm not surprised when I see our city making national "most desirable" or "best" lists, and a recent list from Walletpop.com is no exception. 

On the list entitled, "10 Best Places to Buy a Home", Austin placed at #1 overall, garnering "Best All-Around City" honors. 

Although we've experienced a tougher economy in recent years, Austin has weathered the storm quite well compared with most cities and local markets around the country, and for that I'm thankful.  Since we've all been inundated with negative messages from the media about the "national housing market" (which is a myth - all markets are local and some are even hyperlocal), I feel like part of my job is to educate Austin -area residents about how good things really are here in this area.

More praise about Austin from the Walletpop.com article:

Texas' capital and a great college town, Austin is beautiful and the 12th-most-affordable American metro area. Job growth from 2000 to 2010 was 14.1%, according to Trulia; unemployment currently is 7.1%, compared with 9.8% nationwide. The city's population is growing too. These positive indicators are expected to continue in the coming decade. Fortune 500 companies abound here; it's home to more than 2,000 tech companies. Home prices are reasonable for the $73,747 median family income and let's face it, nobody does BBQ better than Texas.

To read the entire article, visit http://www.walletpop.com/2010/12/31/10-best-places-to-buy-a-home-in-2011/.

Photo credit: JDN via Flickr (Creative Commons 2.0)

If you're thinking of buying or selling a home in the Austin, Texas area, or if you have any questions, please feel free to call me anytime at 512-796-7653 (cell) or email me at jason@austintexashomes.com.  You can also visit our Austin real estate website at http://www.austintexashomes.com.  Thanks!

I've received this question many times from buyer clients that I'm helping, most recently in an email, so I thought it would be a good idea to cover this in a post. Whenever I write up an offer for a home, there are dozens of questions that come up during the process before we even submit the paperwork to the listing agent.  This particular question typically arises after we've parted ways and everything is signed.

So, is it a good idea to place a "fuse" on your offer, forcing a quick response? 

In my humble opinion, it's rarely necessary to do so, although I can understand arguments in favor of this strategy. 

My normal response is this: You certainly can restrict the timing for acceptance by forcing the seller to respond quickly (e.g. "Seller to respond by 5pm Tuesday, January 25th, or this offer is void."), but I feel that it comes across as pushy in most cases, since a typical seller is probably sufficiently motivated to respond within 24 hours regardless, unless they're traveling or experiencing a crisis of some sort.

With that in mind, give some thought to the message it sends when you opt to place a deadline on any offer.  It might set the wrong tone during negotiations and during the entire process, depending on the personality of the seller.  It also could come across as a little desperate, or weaken the offer and your leverage.  Patience is your friend when it comes to negotiating.

There are really only two instances which immediately come to mind under which I would counsel someone to use a deadline approach:

• You're pretty sure that there's another offer on its way (or more than one)
• You have very limited time to choose a home, and there's a solid backup house in mind that you don't want to lose while you wait for a response

I suppose you could add a third category here if the listing agent is notoriously slow to present offers based on your agent's prior experience, but I've only had that happen once to me in 14 years of full-time sales.

The longest I've ever had to wait for an initial response was 3+ days, which was maddening for my clients, frankly, but also exceptionally rare overall. 

Since the other question I hear often is, "When do you think we'll hear something about the offer?", I should probably address that here as well.  As a guideline, if I send an offer in the morning, it's possible to hear something the same day, if the agent is able to get in touch and present it quickly.  If I present an offer to the listing agent during evening hours, we'll probably hear back sometime the next day, either with a response or with clarification questions, etc.  If it's a weekend, I typically tell my clients to expect to hear back by Monday.

I hope this helps!  Let me know if you're looking to buy or sell a home anywhere in the Austin metro area.  I would love the chance to help you find the right place.

Thanks for reading!

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jon_knox/4721752902

Tomorrow, I hope you can join us live and in the chat room for Social Media Edge Radio (because the cool kids are always in the chat room!). Tuesday, January 25, at noon Eastern, we have the pleasure of speaking with one of the cream of the crop in Social Media Marketing.

We're also making a special announcement about a new series of awards with some actual value.  Ken Cook and I have proclaimed 2011 to be "The Year of Snark" so you can bet any award given will be thoroughly investigated. We, the snarky, are amazed at the volume of worthless awards based on either self-glorification or simple popularity and we're setting out to do something about it!

Our very special guest tomorrow is Christine Perkett (@missusP on Twitter). 

Christine founded PerkettPR in 1998. She has been named one of the ‘Top 25 Authorities Moving PR Forward' in a recent industry study (http://bit.ly/2DfKku), and consistently recognized as one of the most social media-savvy CEOs - currently ranked as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women on Twitter (by Hubspot: http://bit.ly/9OUzJ2), a "Top Influential Woman in Tech on Twitter" (by Google's Don Dodge, alongside such greats as Marissa Mayer, WSJ's Kara Swisher, and more), and featured two consecutive years in BusinessWeek's Social Media Special Report (keeping company of notable CEOs from Zappos, Virgin, Digg, HDNet, Mint and more: http://bit.ly/peioG).

Christine was also awarded "Best Communications, IR or PR Executive" by the American Business Awards and nominated as an Agency Executive of the Year finalist from PRNews.

PerkettPR, Inc., founded in 1998, creates effective public relations, interactive digital services and social marketing campaigns and content for technology, healthcare, business and consumer companies worldwide. Clients include Conduit, Litle & Co., LocationLabs, Mindjet, Northeastern University College of Business, Photobucket, Tumri and many more.

Tune in live here: http://blogtalkradio.com/jckc 

Don't miss this one, but if you do, check out the archive recording at http://socialmediaedge.com/itunes. 

I just finished writing an offer for a client of mine who first found my blog here in 2008.  We hit it off back then, and he and his family almost bought a home with a local builder, but the builder was a headache to deal with and didn't keep their word.  Since then, he has continued to look at listings online on his own, and we appear to have found the perfect place.  Time will tell with regard to our offer, but I was happy to realize that he has continued to read many of my posts since our original meeting over two years ago.

If this particular deal works out, it will one of many that I've closed as a result of my blogging efforts on ActiveRain.  Since early December, I have received SIX referrals from other AR members around the state and country.  Thank you to those of you who have trusted me with your referral business!

When I was in Houston last month at Raincamp, Bob Stewart asked me about how many referrals I get from ActiveRain.  My response was that I probably get 2-3 per month, which has been the case for years.  Here's the condensed version of our talk that Kelly from AR posted on YouTube a few days ago:

I had a brief exchange with someone yesterday who was wondering about the right time to "graduate" from AR to a stand-alone WordPress site.  Although I have several WordPress sites (and I even sell them), I have no intention of leaving this community and the networking opportunities here.  If you're thinking of getting your own WordPress blog, you can still post in both places with no issue (i.e. they aren't mutually exclusive).  If you're concerned about duplicate content penalties from Google or harming your SEO efforts in any way, just change the title and some of the text a little bit to avoid this.  I guess the SEO ramifications could easily fill another post soon.

Since November, the Austin market has been picking up steam and January has been no different.  I look forward to a solid 2011! 

If I can ever be of help to you in any way, let me know.  My cell phone number is 512-796-7653.  Thanks for reading!

As part of my 2011 effort to read at least one book per week on average, I finished another book yesterday, "Guerrilla Social Media Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shane Gibson. 

Shane Gibson has actually been a guest twice on Social Media Edge, our BlogTalkRadio show, and he is also the co-author of "Sociable", which is another book I liked.  Jay Conrad Levinson is the father of the guerrilla marketing movement, and his books have sold over 20 million copies worldwide.

I was excited that Shane sent me a free copy of the book, for two reasons:

1. I love marketing and books about marketing
2. I love free stuff

I found the book to be a relatively quick read, with an emphasis on specific social media tools/platforms, along with goal setting and planning.  There are lots of worksheets and step-by-step plans that make it easy to develop a solid gameplan from the beginning. 

I think this is a terrific book for beginners and intermediate users of new media.  Chapter Four alone is worth the price of the book. Titled 'The Guerrilla Social Media Arsenal', it contains 126 different sites and tools for marketing online.  Yes, you read that number correctly in the last sentence.  Although I had heard of most of them (sometimes just in passing), I have to admit that I learned about a bunch of new and interesting instruments and ideas for gaining exposure.

Levinson and Gibson did a great job of making one critical point: It's important to know whom you're targeting with your efforts.  I've seen agents in our local market who don't seem to test their marketing efforts at all, or even give much thought to who is reading their ads or posts. 

There are many ways to hone your online marketing focus, and they managed to cover most of them within the book.  One thing that I and others have struggled with is how to make the most of time spent on blogging and social media sites.  They provide some tips in this regard which I found helpful.

This book is well worth the read if you intend to make a concerted effort to leverage online tools for your own marketing plan.  Also, Shane Gibson is a terrifically nice guy, and I'm sure he would be happy if you picked up a copy of your own.  :)

You can find "Guerrilla Social Media Marketing" at your local bookstore, or at Amazon right here:

http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Social-Media-Marketing-Influence/dp/1599183838/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295721507&sr=8-1

Looks like it's on sale for only $13.06 right now.  Bonus! 

We had an interesting exchange with one of our clients today that I wanted to share here, partially because it's somewhat instructional and partly because it made me laugh.

We wrote offers yesterday for two duplexes for a cash buyer (investor) who is a past client of ours.  Today, one of them was accepted, and we're waiting to hear about the other one.

The listing agent offered to pick up the paperwork from our client, since he lives nearby.  He also said that he could pick up the earnest money and option fee checks.  The earnest money was $2000 and the option fee is $100.  My business partner told the buyer, "Write a check for two thousand to ______ Title and another check for a hundred which goes to ____________ (seller)." 

Needless to say, the listing agent was surprised when he was presented with two checks, one for $2000 and another for $100,000!  I guess the buyer thought that a rather sizable deposit was required?  Thankfully, everything was corrected quickly.

Two lessons:

• Make sure you communicate very clearly with your clients, and especially with cash buyers, since they might be thinking in different terms than you are.
• Pick up the checks yourself to make sure that no problems occur.

Thanks for reading!