General advice on real estate in Coastal Delaware & surrounding areas.

It’s a sign of the times!

Most of us grew up thinking that if we planned well and played by the rules, we’d never have to stand by as our financial lives unraveled. 

But upheaval on Wall Street, unacceptable rates of unemployment and plummeting real estate values have taken their toll.  Since 2007, 7.9 million homeowners have lost their homes to foreclosure. Current estimates are that one in four homeowners owe more on their mortgages than they could get from the sale of their home. Millions more homes will be lost to foreclosure before this real estate crisis runs its course.

The sad fact is that foreclosure is not an isolated event. For months leading up to the loss of a home, financially strapped homeowners live under a cloud of uncertainty.  And…

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Tips for Picking a Great Real Estate Agent

Once you are ready to either rent or buy a piece of property you will most likely need to work with a real estate agent. Like in any industry there are great real estate agents and not so great agents. Here are some tips on what to look for to find a great real estate agent for Rehoboth Beach real estate and Lewes real estate.

Experience: You’ve heard the phrase when it comes to real estate, “Location, location, location”? Well when it comes to real estate agents the phrase becomes, “Experience, experience, experience”. A real estate agent with experience will make your search for your new home or rental property much easier for the simple reason that he or she has done it so many times in the past. This gives you, as the buyer or renter, a real…

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Short Sales in Coastal DelawareThere is a lot of misleading and incorrect information about short sales in Coastal Delaware. Many people don't have a clear understanding of the purpose of short sales or how they actually work.

Essentially, a short sale is when one sells their home for less than the balance remaining on the mortgage attached to the property. The proceeds from the sale are used to repay a pre-negotiated portion of the balance to settle the debt.

A short sale can be a solution for homeowners who really need to sell their home but owe more on the mortgage than the home is worth. Understanding the short sale process can help make the most out of a real estate sale.

Here are some common myths and why they are false:

A short sale damages one's credit record as much as…

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List Coastal Delaware Home for Sale“Mansion” is the Wall Street Journal’s entry into the high-end real estate magazine world. Well, not quite a magazine — it’s an extra section they run on Fridays. It’s a nice diversion for those who want to read about really rich people selling their properties. More than that, it could actually be an important source of information if you decide to buy a vineyard in the middle of Los Angeles (Bel-Air, actually — that one was featured two weeks ago). 

It was another article that caught my eye on that Friday, though; one that dealt with a topic we agents have long debated. The article was headlined “THE BEST DAY TO LIST A HOME IS…”.  It summarized an elaborately executed study by a national brokerage revealing hard statistics on which day of the week is…

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Have you ever found the ideal place to spend your retirement, but shied away because you don't have any family in the area to help you pick out your new home? Well, when it comes to Coastal Delaware living, you DO have family in the area. Mann & Sons, Inc have been helping people find homes in Lewes Beach and homes in Rehoboth Beach areas. Founded in 1984 by Betty Mann-Beebe, in 2001 her sons, Bob McVey & Bill Mann, joined the family-owned & operated business.

Mann & Sons FamilyOur agents are local experts with many years of experience and are dedicated to finding you the ideal home for your needs at the best price. But this is not merely a transaction, all of our agents bring a dedication to personal service to their profession.

They won't waste your time with endless…

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Rehoboth Beach Vacation Condo RentalSince the real estate market is beginning its rebound, maybe you've finally decided to make that retirement condominium purchase. But you've got a few years left until retirement day and would like to offset some of the costs of ownership. Consider putting your Rehoboth Beach condominium on the vacation rental market until you're ready to make the move.

If you plan to place your Rehoboth Beach condominium on the rental market, here are some things to consider:

  1. Not all rental companies are alike. Research area rental companies that actively market the area where your condominium is located to maximize occupancy for your unit. 
     
  2. Just as you would with a home you're trying to sell, make your condominium interior cozy and home-like that complements…

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It may be a fundamental element in nearly two-thirds of every residential real estate transaction, yet when you think about buying or selling a Coastal Delaware home, it’s not likely to be your major focus. Important though it may be, for most people, the appraisal process seems like a mere formality. After all, haven’t the seller and buyer already agreed to the deal? What’s left to do, other than dot the I’s and cross the T’s?

Of course, if you are a cash buyer, you can choose to skip the appraisal altogether. If so, congrats - you are ready to buy as soon as you find the right property! But for the rest of us, if a loan is involved, so too is the lender’s appraisal – or appraisals.  Yet many real estate agents are not a part of this element.

The…

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RetirementYou don’t have to be on the verge of retirement to begin thinking about the nuts and bolts of your future living arrangements. There is more to it than just adjusting your monthly budget. For many people who are winding up their full-time working lives, a governing decision – one that will affect countless others – is whether to buy a home, continue in one you already own, or to rent.

If it has been years since you’ve even thought about the buy a home vs. rent decision, writing up a list of the current tradeoffs isn’t a bad idea. There are many dimensions to consider, but in the financial area, some bullet points on that list:Some retirees view shedding home ownership as a stress-reliever. If they decide to migrate -- whether to a milder climate or to…

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Coastal Delaware homesBuyers’ agent, sellers’ agent. In every Coastal Delaware real estate transaction, the differences are easy to understand, right? Not quite.  

For openers, that sellers' agent may also be called the ‘listing agent’ – both mean the same thing. The ‘trapdoor’ is a further complication that comes into play once a contract is in place -- after which the buyer’s agent may also properly be called the ‘selling’ agent!

The potential confusion between seller’s agent and selling agent doesn’t usually have much practical significance: after all, by then, everyone should know the cast of characters and who represents whom. But it can come into play if buyer or seller are not actually present here in Rehoboth Beach to keep the names and duties sorted out -- but…

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Lately, as national home values have continued to rise, area homeowners have had reason to feel a lot more comfortable with the part of their portfolio that Lewes home values represent. You didn’t have to be thinking of buying or selling to welcome the turnaround.

Of course, homeowners don’t need to feel like helpless prisoners of overall trends when it comes to their own home values. Home improvement projects can significantly raise those values. Yet the opposite is possible -- although it rarely happens, in the worst cases, projects gone wrong can actually damage underlying home values!

Here are some important areas to bear in mind when you are evaluating potential contractors. If you make them a part of your interviewing process, the candidates…

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