You only get one shot at making a good first impression.

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You’ve decided to list your home in our summer market. Congratulations! In order to take advantage of all the opportunities in front of you, you’ll need to be at the top of your game when it comes to your preparation.

After all, you only get one shot at making a good first impression, so today I’ll share two ways you can make your first impressions count.

You’ll first want to declutter and depersonalize the house. One of my specialties is helping sellers make minor adjustments after their home has gone unsold for a while. Recently, I did this very thing with a seller who asked me to lend my expertise and experience. We did some decluttering and depersonalizing and, just like that, the home sold.

Once that’s accomplished, consider repainting your home—especially if the home’s colors are a little passé. You’ll be amazed at how much more bang for your buck you’ll get with an updated interior and/or exterior paint job. Nowadays, white shades like “jersey cream” and gray shades like “agreeable gray” show really well with buyers.

If you have any specific questions about how to best prepare your home for today’s market or real estate in general, please give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you!

If you’ve been on the fence about selling your home, now is the time to get off. Here are three reasons why.

Interested in selling? Click here to receive more information

Interested in buying? Contact us to view all listings

Is now the time to list? The answer… YES!

If you’ve been on the fence about selling your home, now is the time to make a move. 

The Real Estate market in the River Region (Augusta, Aiken, and the surrounding area) is moving quickly. In fact, according to Realtor.com, Augusta is one of the two three cities seeing the biggest growth in their inbound to outbound ratio. 

“With a high inbound/outbound ratio signaling strong external interest in a market, relative to the desire of locals to look elsewhere, an improvement in the inbound/outbound ratio can signal a potential shift in the attractiveness of a local area’s real estate market and suggests that migration trends could improve as well.” – Realtor.com

As one of our regions most experienced agents, I’m often asked, “Should I put my home on the market this summer?” If you’re asking this question, please read on!

Right now is an excellent time to list your home. 

1. Supply is low. There aren’t as many homes for sale as there are buyers looking, so families who are listing now are positioning themselves favorable in our current market. 

2. A New Demographic. A record number of millennials are entering the market for the first time. I’ve seen that some in this generation have delayed in purchasing until now.  But, with student loans nearly paid off and their families growing, there is a new demographic looking for their next home. This will allow first-time homeowners to move up and allow those looking to downsize to take full advantage of the current conditions.

3. Homes are affordable. Currently homes are affordable, interest rates are low, and there is no shortage of buyers. According to CoreLogic,  a real estate data and analytics company, “Potential buyers who tested the waters in recent years should have an easier time now, which should be especially good news for anyone who made an offer but lost their bid for a home,” said Justin LaJoie, general manager at RealEstate.com. But if mortgage rates fall further, resulting in more buyers entering the market this spring, the competition could get fierce again.”

If you have any questions for me about the current state of the market or what you can be doing as a homebuyer or seller, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Our brand-new office is the signal of a brand-new era for Good Life Augusta. Here’s a sneak peek at the construction phase of our new home.

Interested in selling? Click here to receive more information

Interested in buying? Contact us to view all listings

After being in the same office for 20 years, my team is finally moving to a new spot. It’s the same building, but our new space is a little bit newer, a little bit bigger, and a little bit fresher. We’re looking forward to an exciting new era for Good Life Augusta.

We are excited to take you behind the scenes of the construction that’s going on today. In the video above, you can get a better look at all of our new offices and spaces. We’ve picked out all the colors and all the furnishings, and we’re looking forward to improving and getting better with this new space.

Our team office has beautiful, large windows and our new flooring is being installed at the end of the week. This new space is going to allow us to serve our clients even better, and our tech guys have been in the office setting up all of our new technology.

If you have any questions for me in the meantime or any real estate needs that I can assist you with, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Our seller seminar is coming up, and we’ve got all the details on this event to share with you today.

Interested in selling? Click here to receive more information

Interested in buying? Contact us to view all listings

If you’ve been following our content, you already know that we’ve recently been covering a number of amazing tips to help sellers succeed in our market. Now, we’d like to announce an exciting event that will bring all these tips together into a single presentation: our upcoming seller seminar!

This seller seminar will take place from 6pm to 8pm on January 24 at Meybohm Realtors’ new plaza office (6004 Evans Town Center Boulevard).

In addition to hearing from me on the selling topics we’ve touched on in recent messages, you will also hear from a local home inspector, home stager, and lender during this incredible event. We want to make sure that you walk away from this seminar with a thorough knowledge of the home selling process. To ensure that this is the case, we will also open the floor for questions before wrapping things up.

Of course, you’ll need to reserve your place ahead of time. You can RSVP here.

If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to seeing you on January 24.

The 2018 numbers mean great things for next year.

Interested in selling? Click here to receive more information

Interested in buying? Contact us to view all listings

The numbers are in, and to finish out the end of the year, today we’ll be going over a quick market update for 2018.

The average sales price is up 7% and inventory is down 5.9%. We anticipate that prices will continue rising, meaning it will soon be a great time to sell. To get an idea of what your home could sell for, we can give you information about your specific neighborhood, as well as help you figure out how to meet your real estate goals as a seller. If you’re looking to buy a home, we can help as well—either way, just give us a call.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy a very happy holiday season and spend plenty of time with friends, family, and loved ones.

There are so many real estate tools and resources online. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the overload of information. However, the Internet can provide valuable information you wouldn’t otherwise have. Which ones can you trust?

Ann Marie’s website, AnnMarieMcManus.com, is a great resource for the surrounding area. Particularly, she has the opportunity to connect with those interested in buying, that aren’t currently in the area. This is a stressful process, and she knows how to mediate it as a tailored professional. Thankfully, all of her former out-of-town buyers are now pleased Augusta homeowners!

These days, photography is so beautiful. You can have both pictures and videos. It ultimately allows you to see inside a property comprehensively through virtual tours. You don’t need to be there physically to get a feel for a home.

On the flip side, you need to be extremely careful about accurate information. Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s true! For instance, we run into this issue often with Zillow’s Zestimate tool. Sometimes, it can miscalculate your home’s true worth and misguide you as a result. A home value is too important of a factor to base a decision off the Zestimate.

If you’re thinking about buying or selling an Augusta home, reach out by phone or email. Ann Marie would be happy to answer any questions you might have!

It’s amazing how competitive the real estate industry is. There are over one thousand real estate agents in the greater Augusta Board of Realtors. How do you know to pick the right one?

You need to ask a lot of questions. First, ask how long they have been in real estate. It’s important to know what kind of markets they have experienced. For example, have they worked in a rapidly moving market? That could come in handy in our current market, as prices are rising quickly.

Do they have the skills to handle the market when things get tough? Over the past few years, agents have learned how to navigate new appraisal guidelines, lending guidelines, and more. An experienced agent knows how to be successful in a declining market as well as a rising market.

We also recommend asking the agent how many transactions they completed the previous year. Nationally, the average agent only sells 4 homes a year. Of those 1,000 Augusta real estate agents, a lot of them are part-time.

It’s important to know how many transactions a Realtor has done because then you have an idea of how active they are in the current market. Every day, there’s something new to learn in the real estate industry. You want to make sure your agent sells often enough to help you be successful in your transaction.

Ann Marie has over 30 years of real estate experience and has sold over 1,500 homes. Experience matters. If you have any questions, give Ann Marie a call or send her an email. She would be happy to help you!