Karalyn Hoefer

Woods Bros Realtor Karalyn Hoefer has been awarded the prestigious Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) Designation by the Council of Residential Specialists, the largest not-for-profit affiliate of the National Association of Realtors®.

Realtors who receive the CRS Designation have completed advanced courses and have demonstrated professional expertise in the field of residential real estate. Fewer than 40,000 Realtors® nationwide have earned the credential.

Home buyers and sellers can be assured that CRS Designees subscribe to the strict Realtors® code of ethics, have access to the latest technology and are specialists in helping clients maximize profits and minimize costs when buying or selling a home. For more information about the Council of Residential Specialists, visit www.crs.com.

In addition, Hoefer has also earned the nationally recognized Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource certification. The National Association of REALTORS® offers the SFR certification to REALTORS® who want to help both buyers and sellers navigate these complicated transactions, as demand for professional expertise with distressed sales grows.

According to a recent NAR survey, nearly one-third of all existing homes sold recently were either short sales or foreclosures. REALTORS® who have earned the SFR certification know how to help sellers maneuver the complexities of short sales as well as help buyers pursue short sale and foreclosure opportunities.

The certification program includes training on how to qualify sellers for short sales, negotiate with lenders, protect buyers, and limit risk, and provides resources to help REALTORS® stay current on national and state-specific information as the market for these distressed properties evolves. To earn the SFR certification, REALTORS® are required to take one core course and three Webinars. For more information about the SFR certification, visit www.REALTORSFR.org  or call 1-877-510-7855.

Hoefer has been with the Woods Bros Realty SouthPointe office for 9 years, is the immediate past president of the Women’s Council of Realtors® Lincoln chapter and is a Board Member of the Realtors Association of Lincoln. Hoefer can be reached at 402-450-1355 or KaralynHoefer.WoodsBros.com.

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

Brad Carter

Congratulations to Woods Bros Lincolnshire agent Brad Carter who completed Woods Bros grueling Boot Camp training program.

Boot Camp is a 12-week training program designed to help agents achieve higher personal goals in their career.

Topics included in the 12 Weeks to Better Performance Camp include: prospecting, pricing presentations, buyer counseling, presenting and negotiating and much more.

Participants must commit to completing all homework assignments and to earn a minimum of 1,000 points per week. In addition, they must support their team and work toward team goals, obtain at least three listings or sales to graduate and maintain a positive attitude.

Carter was recognized April 20 in a brief ceremony, where CEO Gene Brake presented him with his certificate.

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

Brenda Mesloh

Brenda Mesloh with the Woods Bros Realty SouthPointe office has earned the nationally recognized Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource certification. The National Association of REALTORS® offers the SFR certification to REALTORS® who want to help both buyers and sellers navigate these complicated transactions, as demand for professional expertise with distressed sales grows.

According to a recent NAR survey, nearly one-third of all existing homes sold recently were either short sales or foreclosures. REALTORS® who have earned the SFR certification know how to help sellers maneuver the complexities of short sales as well as help buyers pursue short sale and foreclosure opportunities.

The certification program includes training on how to qualify sellers for short sales, negotiate with lenders, protect buyers, and limit risk, and provides resources to help REALTORS® stay current on national and state-specific information as the market for these distressed properties evolves. To earn the SFR certification, REALTORS® are required to take one core course and three Webinars. For more information about the SFR certification, visitwww.REALTORSFR.org or call 1-877-510-7855.

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

Pet owners can face a dilemma when putting their homes up for sale.

Many real estate agents will tell them to remove all traces of dogs and cats from a home before showing it to potential buyers. Some even suggest placing the animals in another home during this time.

That’s just what Dawn Pieke was told when her real estate agent tried to help her sell her house. The agent told Pieke to place her two large dogs in a kennel for two months. The advice was like a slap in the face to Pieke. She wasn’t about to remove two beloved family members from her home. Not only would it be hard on the dogs, it would be hard on her.

The attitude of that agent persuaded Pieke to take action to train what she is calling “pet-friendly Realtors.” Pieke, editor of “Pet Enthusiast” magazine, a publication circulated in Omaha and Lincoln, hosted a workshop in Omaha in March for real estate agents interested in learning about becoming pet-friendly Realtors. She plans to host another in Lincoln this summer.

Pet-friendly real estate agents are those trained to understand the needs of pet owners when selling and buying homes.

The former mortgage broker knows this is an issue of importance to a big share of the population. According to the 2009-2010 National Pet Owners Survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, 39 percent of American households have at least one dog and 33 percent have at least one cat.

When Pieck was looking for a new home, she told her Realtor about specific requirements she wanted to accommodate her dogs, such as a walk-out basement and a fenced backyard. Her agent, who was not fond of dogs, did not work to accommodate Pieck’s requirements.

As a result of her disappointing experience, Pieck is convinced that pet lovers should work with agents who are sensitive to the needs of pets and their owners.

Pieck does not, however, believe being sensitive to those needs mean abandoning common sense when it comes to showing homes to potential buyers. Pet owners listing their homes for sale must keep them extremely clean and free of pet odors. Pet toys, beds and litter boxes should be removed from the home during all showings. All dog droppings should be removed from the yard.

And by all means, remove the dogs and cats from the premises when potential buyers come to look. Sellers definitely don’t want barking dogs charging the door when prospective buyers enter.

Removing the animals for weeks or months on end until a home is sold, however, is far too drastic in Pieck’s mind and likely will not be a feasible option for people who consider their pets to be part of the family.

The best option for pet owners is work with a pet-friendly real estate agent, Pieck says. Pieck’s goal through her workshops is to teach Realtors innovative ways to work with home buyers and sellers while keeping their pets in mind.

 Posted by Lori Black

By Matt Olberding with the Lincoln Journal Star:

If you’re looking to take advantage of the federal tax credits to buy a home, time may not be your only enemy.

With only two weeks left before the program expires for good, local real estate agents say they are busier than they’ve been in years.

Read the full article here.

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

Check out our new Market Snapshot, featuring real estate statistics from the Lincoln and Seward, Beatrice, and Grand Island, Nebraska areas. Updated monthly!

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

Woods Bros Realty is proud to present its 2010 Spring Jubilee of Homes. Over 20 brand-new homes will be open to the public from 1-5 p.m. on April 17-18 and 24-25. Visitors can register at each home for a one-in-four chance to win a Visa® gift card.

This year’s Jubilee occurs during the very end of the $6,500 repeat and $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credits, in which buyers have until April 30 to be under contract and until June 30 to close on the purchase of their new home. Buyers could purchase one of these homes in plenty of time for the tax credit. For those who would prefer to customize their own new home, Woods Bros sales professionals will be on site at each home to help buyers through the process of selecting a builder and a floor plan, all the way through to the closing and moving into a brand-new home.

It’s no secret that today’s new homes save home buyers money on heating and cooling costs. From windows and doors to insulation and roofs, the efficiency standards have increased over time. Some builders go above and beyond when considering energy efficiency. A number of our Spring Jubilee Homes have earned the Energy Star rating.

Compared with standard homes, Energy Star homes meet strict energy efficiency guidelines, delivering hundreds of dollars in annual savings on heating, cooling and water bills. These guidelines also help protect the environment, creating less air pollution, and the Energy Star rating is becoming an important quality when considering reselling your investment.

Click here for a list of new homes in the Spring Jubilee of Homes.

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

WHAT: The purpose of this first ever REALTOR® Nationwide Open House event is to increase consumer awareness of the benefits of buying a home, give sellers an opportunity to increase the exposure for their homes for sale, and to make one last effort to help buyers take advantage of the homebuyer tax credits before the April 30, 2010 deadline.

WHO: The REALTOR® Nationwide Open House event is a collaborative effort sponsored by REALTOR® Associations across the nation.

WHERE: Homes will be open all across the city, state and the nation.

WHEN: Saturday & Sunday, April 10-11, 2010

Search more than 700 open houses now!

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

Time is running out for the $6,500 repeat and $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credits, and the government is NOT going to extend the credit. That gives you less than a month to negotiate an accepted offer on a home in order to make the April 30, 2010, deadline, at which point you must close on the purchase by June 30, 2010.

In order to give our customers and clients more opportunities to find the home of their dreams, Woods Bros Realty is holding its “Leave the Light on Thursdays” open houses every Thursday night from 5-7 p.m. throughout the month of April. Search participating homes at www.WoodsBros.com.

 Posted by Woods Bros Realty

For those of you who are old enough, you might remember the days when Realtors would drive around with big books that had all of the houses listed for sale. They would shuffle through the paperwork and come up with that “perfect” house. The Realtor had the “golden key” that could get you in the door. You couldn’t even think about looking for a home without a Realtor.

How times have changed! Just about everyone today has a computer and knows how to look for a home on the Internet. With just a few clicks of the mouse, it’s pretty easy for the general public to get any and all information about a house. So where does that leave the real estate agent of today?

Obviously you need a licensed agent to get you into a house and to get what little information is not already in cyber space. But there are so many more reasons you should consider having a Realtor help you in your home search.

Buying a home is probably the biggest purchase you will ever make. Why attempt to do this on your own? This is our business … it’s what we do every day. Rely on an experienced agent to help guide you. Realtors are unbiased and can look at a home without the emotions of a home buyer to cloud the purchase. Realtors can guide a buyer through comparing a home with others in the area, writing the offer, negotiating repairs, handling issues, setting up title and escrow and making arrangements for the transfer. If the house you want is not listed for sale, Realtors can network to perhaps find your perfect house before it does come on the market.

Sure it’s fun to look on the Internet. But my advice is let a Realtor help you. It will definitely pay off in the long run!

 Posted by Joanne McCoy

I received my real estate license in 1972. All you needed then were a Broker to sponsor you and a passing score on the real estate examination in Lincoln. There were a couple classes you could take to help pass the test, but they were few and far between. Nothing was required.

I started my full-time real estate career in Grand Island in April of 1974. About the only thing that is the same now as back then is we still drive cars. From there it is downhill. Boy, have things changed.

First off we had no MLS system. We had our office listings on a half sheet of paper in a small three-ring binder. The newspaper was our MLS system. The person on duty when the paper came out, would cut the ads out and paste it in a book. Then they would call the company who was advertising to get the address and price. One company complained that more than 60 percent of their calls were from other offices getting information. Then we got smart, and each office would drive their new listings around to the other offices. Finally in September of 1977, we organized our first MLS system with a book. You would have thought we had died and gone to Heaven.

We also didn’t have common lock boxes. Each office had their own with their own key. When you showed other companies’ listings you had to go get their lock box key. To make sure we brought them back and didn’t lose them, some offices had big plexiglass signs connected to the key. One was a Big Red football that was about 10 inches across. Sometimes an agent would keep the key, and no one else could see the home until they brought the only key back.

Since computers–as we know them now–were unheard of, everything was done by hand. I bought a Bomar calculator that had four functions and cost $100. Talk about being high tech. There was no Mapsifter. We had to go to the Court House and thumb through the books for information. The only phones we had were in the office or at home. If you were not at either one, you were out of business. Some of us had car phones, but they were limited in range, expensive and you had to be in the car to use them. The fun part is some car phones were connected to the horn, so when the phone rang, the car horn went off.

One very good thing about selling real estate in the 70s was that we only had three or four lenders. No secondary market. The underwriters where members of the banks and probably knew the buyers better than we did. The appraisers were local and knew the market and the area the home was in. Closings lasted 10 to 15 minutes.

A lot has changed. Most for the better. Some things, maybe not. The one thing that will never change is the clients will always need us to do the work. You can have all the high-tech toys, but they still need us to open the door and be the professional Realtor we are and have always been. I’m looking forward to the next 40 years.

 Posted by Gregg Roberts