By Tara-Nicholle Nelson

If you sat down and tried to call up a mental picture of a smart home buyer, the person in your mind’s eye might be sitting in front of the computer, calculator at hand, running numbers and weighing out pros and cons before arriving at a sensible decision. But ask any agent: even the smartest of their buyer clients looks and feels nothing like this image. Once the house hunt begins or the offer is signed, emotions start to fray, tensions run high and stress-induced gray hairs begin to multiply (and/or get pulled out).

Your home is the largest purchase you’ll ever make. So it might seem that emotional side effects like panic and fear are inevitable. But they’re not. You do have the power to manage your emotions and have a relatively blissed-out homebuying experience. And you should seize that power; doing so will not only minimize the discomfort, it will also keep panic and fear from fouling up your decision-making.

Let me hand you some keys – the keys to having a Zen home buying experience:

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By Tara-Nicholle Nelson

We humans have a natural craving to simplify the complex. This same instinct, which explainswhy legends, films and fairytales from every culture tend to boil down to heroes vs. villains, also explains why so many buyers and sellers desperately seek rules of thumb for making the often scary, rarely simple decisions they face.

Reality check: your real estate transaction is not a children’s story. Grown-up life is complicated, as are money matters and relationships. Since real estate involves all three (being a grown up, money and relationships), smart buyers and sellers should cast a suspicious eye at super simple real estate rules of thumb.
Let’s take a handful of the most persistent ones head on, and decipher which of them are fact, and which are fiction.

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Spring cleaning can be so cathartic

By Veronique Kipen

Make it easy on yourself and cart your cleaning supplies in a caddy, like this pail.

In the beginning, there was dirt. Lots of it. From the layer of black ash put out by coal-fired heaters to the sooty grime of gas and kerosene lamps, for turn-of-the-century housekeepers, spring cleaning was a necessity. A hundred years later, we’re free to choose. The urge to clean house when the days turn balmy springs as much from the soul as the grime.

“Spring cleaning is cathartic,” says Maggie Bright of Mackerel Sky Design in Malibu, Calif. “It frees you up from those jobs you’ve left undone that have been hanging over your head for months.”

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In another sign that the six-year long housing slump could be coming to an end, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) reached 28. To put that in perspective, it went from above 70 in 2005 to below 10 in 2009. The HMI has not seen 28 since June 2007. This and other landmark data points are coalescing to signal calmer waters ahead. That's not to say you should expect double-digit annualized appreciation, but both buyers and sellers are displaying the sort of confidence that is fluttering through the rest of the economy.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending March 17:

• New Listings decreased 1.3% to 1,406
• Pending Sales increased 23.1% to 1,029
• Inventory decreased 27.5% to 17,088

For the month of February:

• Median Sales Price decreased 1.4% to $138,000
• Days on Market decreased 9.0% to 145
• Percent of Original List Price Received increased 2.5% to 90.6%
• Months Supply of Inventory decreased 35.2% to 4.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

From The Skinny.

In another sign that the six-year long housing slump could be coming to an end, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) reached 28. To put that in perspective, it went from above 70 in 2005 to below 10 in 2009. The HMI has not seen 28 since June 2007. This and other landmark data points are coalescing to signal calmer waters ahead. That's not to say you should expect double-digit annualized appreciation, but both buyers and sellers are displaying the sort of confidence that is fluttering through the rest of the economy.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending March 17:

• New Listings decreased 1.3% to 1,406
• Pending Sales increased 23.1% to 1,029
• Inventory decreased 27.5% to 17,088

For the month of February:

• Median Sales Price decreased 1.4% to $138,000
• Days on Market decreased 9.0% to 145
• Percent of Original List Price Received increased 2.5% to 90.6%
• Months Supply of Inventory decreased 35.2% to 4.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

From The Skinny.

Buyer activity: up. Seller activity: down. That could soon change if sellers begin to increase their activity levels entering the spring market. They've understandably been a tad shy lately, but the changing landscape is starting to register with well-informed homeowners looking to move. Buyers have shown that they refuse to let one of the most attractive purchase environments pass them by. As activity revs up this spring, not all segments will benefit equally. Which is exactly why the numbers are so central to assessing both the breadth and depth of market recovery.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending March 10:

• New Listings decreased 0.3% to 1,450
• Pending Sales increased 20.9% to 995
• Inventory decreased 24.3% to 17,899

For the month of February:

• Median Sales Price decreased 1.4% to $138,500
• Days on Market decreased 9.1% to 145
• Percent of Original List Price Received increased 2.6% to 90.6%
• Months Supply of Inventory decreased 35.8% to 4.7

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

From The Skinny.

The last six years or so have been tough on home prices, and even the most optimistic prognosticators say it will take another six years for median sales prices to approach the halcyon days of assured annual value increases for home sellers. Generations of stable home price increases gave way to a boom-and-bust cycle that would have made the Pets.com sock puppet blush. As we enter what should be an active spring market, our communities would do well to focus effort toward creating healthy, happy homes. With those in place, prices will rise again.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending March 3:

• New Listings decreased 23.2% to 1,402
• Pending Sales increased 29.7% to 940
• Inventory decreased 22.9% to 17,818

For the month of February:

• Median Sales Price decreased 1.1% to $138,500
• Days on Market decreased 9.0% to 145
• Percent of Original List Price Received increased 2.6% to 90.6%
• Months Supply of Inventory decreased 36.5% to 4.6

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

From The Skinny.

By Brian O’Connell

NEW YORK (MainStreet) – Growing signs of improvement in the housing market could draw more buyers in the coming months, and although the rules of the game haven’t changed much, the big question for anyone returning to the housing market – or getting into it for the first time – is what are the long-term lessons to be learned from the recent housing downturn?

In fact, all the key lessons are things buyers and borrowers should have known before the housing crash – the crash just underscored how important they were. Even if the market does improve this year, as many experts predict, it’s not likely to strengthen fast enough to offset the damage homeowners do when they make basic mistakes.

Lesson 1: Buy the cheapest home that will serve your needs for the next seven to 10 years. As we’ve seen, home prices can and do fall from time to time. That may be rare on a nationwide basis, but it happens quite often in individual markets. The more expensive your home is, the more you will lose if the market turns south.

Also, the recent downturn highlights a fact well known among experts but resisted by many homeowners: Homes are not always a very good investment. Even when there is not a downturn, in the average year home appreciation barely beats inflation, and mortgage interest, insurance, taxes, maintenance and other costs can turn a home into a money loser. It can be much more profitable to own a modest home and invest the savings in something more promising.

Lesson 2: Plan to stay put for a good, long while. Traditionally, experts assumed that the average homeowner could break even in four or five years. During that time a home could be expected to gain enough value to offset the various costs of buying and selling, making owning better than renting. But price gains could be small and intermittent during the next few years, pushing the breakeven period to seven, eight, even 10 years.

Lesson 3: Stick with a simple mortgage, like the standard 30-year fixed-rate loan. This is kind of a no-brainer right now, as lenders aren’t offering the exotic types of loans that got people into trouble in the mid-2000s – things like subprime, interest-only and pay-what-you-want loans. But as conditions improve, lenders could again offer unique products that could backfire.

Borrowers who can stomach some risk and don’t expect to keep their loans for decades might take a look at straightforward adjustable-rate loans, like five- and seven-year ARMs that don’t start rate adjustments until the initial period is over. But to make any ARM an acceptable risk, you must be certain you can afford the largest payment it could possibly require.

Lesson 4: Spruce up your credit rating. While this has always been a good practice, it is especially so now that lenders are so jittery. The borrower with a top-notch rating is likely to get a much lower mortgage rate than someone with a so-so rating.

Lesson 5: Don’t go overboard on home improvements. For many years, studies have shown that major improvements like new kitchens and bathrooms do not add as much value to a home as they cost. Improvements are lifestyle expenditures, not investments.