Greater Cleveland Real Estate Blog

That was another great day. I am so fortunate to work with outstanding people - smart, very well educated, curious, informed, funny and caring. Isn't it the biggest reward in our profession to get an opportunity to help people who you enjoy working with! We drove around Solon and Bainbridge with my new clients looking for a bigger home for this nice family. The home where they live now is immaculate! It's lovingly improved from bottom to top, tastefully decorated and meticulously maintained. You understand how eager I am to find the perfect home for this wonderful growing family. 

We visited three homes in one of our finest developments. All at the same street, same size, all priced very well, all three - sad but true - foreclosed. As these houses are in a high price range, they are taken care of by listing agents, pretty clean and not vandalized. They are good deals! Why then my good reasonable buyers who will be happy to enjoy the financial advantages of today's market did not get excited about these homes? We discussed this and got the answer: these houses are not bad, or sad, or depressing. They are just short of love. It looks like previous owners before they lost these houses to the banks just had not had a chance to fall in love with their homes. They probably got some kind of "deal' from the builder or from the bank - we'll never know. But they failed to make these houses their homes, they failed to love them. 

The day was still great. At the very end of our tour we finally found the Home. It is full of love. You feel it. You know it. I usually prefer showing the houses without the owners' assistance. You know, sellers may be kind of annoying when they try hard to show the best of the best in their homes. Not in this case. Great people, great home and - I am sure - that will be the best deal for the buyers.

Real Love always attracts luck. That's more than true in Real Estate. I wish the best luck to all loving sellers and caring buyers!

Local-n-Global Realty invites the home owners to take part in our February contest:

I am lucky to love my home.

Send us your stories, pictures, scrap books, videos. Please express your Love to your Home.

If you can submit your art work electronically, please e-mail it to:

IloveMyHome@Local-n-Global.com

Please feel free to call us with any questions regarding this contest and with any Real estate related concerns or suggestions.

216-548-HOME(4663)

Free 24/7 Local-n-Global Real Estate Hotline: 877-770-5551.

Good luck!

Svetlana Stolyarova, Local-n-Global Realty, Broker

Greater Cleveland Housing market: out of balance or still o.k.? How does it feel when market goes even a little bit out of balance like it happened in Greater Cleveland in 2007?We were fortunate to have a pretty balances housing market here in Greater Cleveland, OH. Balanced market may be not a dream market for flippers or speculators but it is predictable and comfortable for home buyers and sellers. Balanced market means a constant meeting of minds of relatively reasonable sellers and relatively reasonable buyers combined with sufficient supply of money and strong professionalism of Real Estate consultants advising their buying and selling clients.

Are all Real Estate agents greedy and useless? We still have great professionals among our fellow Realtors who diligently serve their clients despite all the troubles and rumors about housing crisis and death of the profession itself. Indeed, only the best survive and prosper on today's market, so if you need a good Realtor to help you sell or buy the house, please choose the one who is active and successful TODAY, not two or three years ago.

Mortgage alert for Cuyahoga County. Mortgage crisis of 2007 created situation of insufficiency in money supply. 2008 may be even worse as not only sub-prime or A- borrowers will be affected, but also good and even perfect borrowers will partially lose availability of mortgage financing because almost all the Greater Cleveland neighborhoods belong to "declining market" according to new Fannie May rules. All Cuyahoga County, Geauga, Portage Counties are declared declining market. Sad, especially considering that Real estate market is strictly local. How can they seriously compare markets in Cleveland and Solon or Mayfield Heights?

Let's measure reasonability of home buyers and home sellers in Mayfield Heights, Solon and Twinsburg. Speaking of reasonability of buyers and sellers: let's compare the sales data for three cities - Mayfield Heights, Solon and Twinsburg. All three are on the East Side of Greater Cleveland. All have excellent school systems. All of them are great places to live and raise kids. All three have strong housing demand and good inventory of houses for sale. Let's see what today's sellers expect to sell their houses for:

Mayfield Heights - 171 house for sale; Average asking price $181,315

 In 2007 207 houses were sold for average price of $153,387. Sellers historically get 95-96 % of the last asking price (after all price reductions) in Mayfield Heights.

Solon                    201 house for sale; Average asking price $395,654

In 2007 245 houses were sold for average price of $368,829. Sellers get 95 % of the last asking price.

Twinsburg             124 houses for sale; Average asking price $242,612.

In 2007 251 houses were sold for average price of $225,527. Sellers get 97 % of the last asking price.

So, now buyers will decide: who is a champion in reasonability among the home sellers

Mayfield Heights sellers expect to get about $172,250 vs. $153,387 avg. sold price in 2007  

Solon sellers expect to receive about $375,870 vs. $368,829 avg. sold price in 2007

Twinsburg sellers expect to receive about $235,330 vs. $225,527 avg. sold price in 2007. 

Let's see what happens in three month.

Good luck to all sellers and buyers! Let's keep it real!

Svetlana Stolyarova, founder and broker of Local-n-Global Realty

Buyers and sellers in Mayfield Heights, Solon and Twinsburg! Need an expert on your side?

Call anytime 877-770-5551 or e-mail Realty@Local-n-Global.com

Winter is coming back to Cleveland. After few fine days of almost spring we are watching snowflakes flying and covering green lawns and trees. Wow! Back to reality.

No wonder that one of the most productive Real estate professional activities has been named Farming. Like farmers, we depend upon weather conditions more than people of any other profession. A week of good weather - and we experience a good buyer's activity in Greater Cleveland. More showings on our listings, more buyers attending Open Houses, more hope for our sellers. That sounds funny but it is true. 

My favorite Mayfield Heights. Great community, great schools, safe and beautiful neighborhoods, affordable and decent housing market. And - like almost everywhere in Greater Cleveland,  we see two parallel real estate worlds here: one belongs to sellers, another one belongs to buyers. From my own and my agents' experience, difference in prices which sellers expect to receive and buyers are ready to pay is more than 25 %. Historic sales data supports neither sellers' expectations nor buyers' hope. We currently have 171 active listings for sale in Mayfield Heights with average asking price of $181,315. Sellers historically receive 95-96 % of asking price for their homes here in Mayfield Heights. So, sellers expect to close with average price of about $172,250 which is much higher than 2007 average price of $153,387 and higher than the record high average price of 2006 - $166,455. The sellers' optimism probably roots in a fact that mortgage crisis almost did not hurt Mayfield Heights. We had just few foreclosures in the area, mostly in the low-end price range. However, amount of sales is a little bit lower than in the record 2006 but still very high. Average price is also lower than in 2006 but is on the very decent level.

Here is the graph of 10 years sales data for Mayfield Heights, OH. Statistics provided by our regional MLS.

This graphics remind that market is pretty steady in Mayfield Heights. Buyers in our community do not depend on fancy "creative" financing which brought a lot of neighborhoods to a deep crisis. Honestly, today we have much more real good buyers with good savings, very high credit score and strong desire to live in Mayfield Heights - if it is not overpriced. There is no base for unreasonable expectations. I hope that this graphics will help two worlds - pre-cautious world of home buyers and anxious but stubborn world of home sellers in Mayfield Heights, OH finally meet in the point where they belong to each other. Let's be reasonable! Mayfield Heights is a very good place to buy the houses and enjoy live. Be reasonable and good luck to all of us!

Svetlana Stolyarova, broker and founder of Local-n-Global Realty, Mayfield Heights Real Estate expert, multi-million dollar producer. E-mail: Realty@Local-n-Global.com

Call 24/7 Free Local-n-Global Real Estate Information Line 877-770-5551

Greater Cleveland is a very goos place to live. Home of Cleveland Orchestra, Play House Square, Museum of Arts, Cleveland Institute of Music, and much more to mention - Cleveland brings us tons of opportunities to entertain and educate ourselves and our kids. I am personally a big fan of Cleveland Cavaliers - Go Cavs! And we have a wonderful houses here in Greater Cleveland for a very reasonable price. Move to Cleveland, invest in Cleveland, enjoy Cleveland!

Here is a quick reference to few events in Greater Cleveland compiled by your Local-n-Global Realty. 

Have questions about Greater Cleveland Real Estate Market?

Need a good Real estate agent to help you sell your house in Greater Cleveland?

Ready to buy in Solon, Twinsburg, Cleveland Heights or other neighborhoods of Greater Cleveland?

Call Local-n-Global Free Real Estate Information Hotline ANYTIME 877-770-5551 or e-mail us: Realty@Local-n-Global.com

Does the web site which is googled  - or yahoo!, or whatever search engine is - on first page, necessarily belongs to a real good real estate professional? Does the first searched web site generate more leads?

I am relatively new to on-line lead generation. As I work with a very defined market niche I used to utilize ethnic newspapers and networking for lead generation. The only real Internet lead generators were my listings which I used to widely expose on-line. When I started my new company about 7 months ago, I planned to build my virtual office first, then follow by brick and mortar one. As a result, the first version of www.Local-n-Global.com is alive and gets a very decent traffic. I am constantly learning about SEO, blogging, web marketing, etc. Big Big Thanks to outstanding professional community of Active Rain! Your tips and advices are priceless.

I do understand my colleagues who decided on using most of their marketing funds for Internet marketing, as it is getting more and more necessary and - alas! expensive. Yes, it is a lot of free services here but, honestly, just few of them are valuable. I am glad that Active Rain is one of the most valuable free web resources, with no strings attached. Unfortunately, our potential clients are going everywhere, not only to "free" sectors of the Web.

I have few confusions though. When I read that 80 % or even 95 % of all business come from realtor's or company's web site I always think that it should be some mistake. My understanding is that lead generation system - whatever its focus is - should be a part of Lead qualification, Lead conversion, Client management, Listing management, Transaction management, and Post-closing follow-up systems. I've learned from my experience and from my trainers that if you do not generate new business from each closed or even not closed deal, you fail. Maybe outstanding web marketing brings so good traffic that you may afford not to care about using more traditional resources of clientelle - like yard signs, Open Houses, neighbors' involvement in sale, person-to-person contacts, agent-to-agent marketing, referrals from SOI and past clients, etc.?

Here comes another confusion. One of my clients recently said about one of the agents that he was good in SEO but he was still a poor realtor. That is true. I like the guy's web presence but I would not refer any client to him so far, as his professional skills and care are insufficient from my point of view. Is it the lack of professional Real estate - old school - experience or it's just a wrong targeting? This guy should've had his own audience! Or -maybe - accept the services of a good coach or trainer in order to improve his skills.

People who pay substantial commission for our servoces want us to be visible on-line but much more they want our experience, knowledge, wisdom, understanding and trustworthy. Otherwise they may use much cheaper robots - order takers.  Happy New Year and more real on-line leads converted to closings!

Have questions about Greater Cleveland Real Estate Market?

Need a good Real estate agent to help you sell your house in Greater Cleveland?

Ready to buy in Solon, Twinsburg, Cleveland Heights or other neighborhoods of Greater Cleveland?

Call Local-n-Global Free Real Estate Information Hotline ANYTIME 877-770-5551 or e-mail us: Realty@Local-n-Global.com