New Restaurants to try!

Are you like me and love going out the eat?  I don't get to do is as much as I'd like, but when I do, I like to visit a new restaurant in my area. Michael Klein with Philly.com has provided an amazing map of restaurants opening up in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs. The new establishments plan to offer a range of styles and price points. The restaurant locations are identified on the map and labeled as Open, March, April, Spring, or Future. It's a fun and easy tool to find a new place to try!

Click here: Restaurant Map

Have fun exploring and planning your next night out!

A New Change!

Recently I was approached to join a team at Long & Foster Real Estate in Haverford. It was a tough decision to switch offices and leave the people that I've grown to really like and respect, but ultimately I knew this was something I should not pass up.
So, in February I joined The Steven Katchman Team. Steven has been in the industry for over 20 years and has been a frequent L&F top producing agent. He was born and raised in Lower Merion, but has spent the last 12 years as a Realtor in the D.C. area. Coincidentally I lived in the DC area, on the Virginia side, from 1994-1999 so we had some things in common (both not Redskin fans..!) and the move has been pretty smooth. 


This is a great opportunity for me to grow as a Realtor, learn a lot and build our business together throughout the Main Line and Philadelphia areas. 


Visit our website at www.StevenKatchman.com to learn more about us and read our recent blog posts. 
"Like" our fan page The Steven Katchman Team 


Thank you for your support! 

5 Things To Do NOW If You Want to Buy A Home In 2012

I have read a lot of articles within the past 2 weeks about how the Holidays are still a great time to Buy and Sell a home. People have more days off and relatives are in town, so it seems like an ideal time for serious buyers to be looking.


If you don't find your dream home within in the next 2 weeks or you don't plan to start looking until 2012, there are some important things you should do now so you are prepared for when you find that dream home.


These 5 tips are provided by Trulia.com


1.    Check your credit. Take my word for it: there is no bad surprise worse than a bad credit surprise

Recent studies have revealed that a record high number of real estate transactions are falling out of escrow, and that credit “issues” are a leading cause of these dead deals. Your best chance at catching and correcting score-lowering errors and other derogatory items before they destroy your personal American Dream is to start checking and correcting while you still have time on your side.

2.    Do your research.  The more rapidly the real estate market changes, the more it behooves smart buyers to study up before they jump in.  And now’s the time – you can start doing online and in-person research into topics ranging from: 

·    Target states, cities and neighborhoods. Whether you’re relocating or simply trying to narrow down the local districts to focus on during your 2012 house hunt, December is a great time to start your online research into decision-driving factors like tax rates, school districts, neighborhood character and even prices in various areas. Resident ratings and reviews sites like Trulia and NabeWise can help you make the neighborhood-lifestyle match. 

Once you narrow things down and start speaking to local agents, ask them to brief you on the local market dynamics, including how long homes typically stay on the market and whether they generally go for more or less than the asking price, so you can be smart about how you search. (And yes, Virginia, there are areas where homes sell for more than asking, even as we speak!)

·    Real estate and mortgage pros. If you don’t already have your pros picked out, now is the time to get on the horn or drop an email or Facebook message to your circle of contacts, asking them for a referral to a broker or agent they love....Give them a ring and launch a conversation about whether you and they might be a good partnership.

·    Short sales and REOs. Distressed property sales are not for the unwary. If you want to target upside down or foreclosed homes, or are planning to house hunt in an area where many of the listings are described as short sales or foreclosures, get educated about what you can expect from a distressed property purchase transaction before you get your heart set on a short sale.

·    What you get for the money. Online house hunting is a powerful tool – especially when it’s cold and wet! But there comes a point in your house hunt where you’ve got to just get out into the actual physical homes you’re seeing online in order to get a strong, accurate sense of what home features, aesthetics and location characteristics correlate with what price points.

·    Mortgage musts. You can read a bunch of articles about mortgages and get yourself pretty far down the path toward qualifying for a home loan, but you can only get a personalized action plan for a smooth road ‘home’ by talking with a local mortgage broker and having them assess your basic financials.  They might say you need to move funds around, pay a bill down or off or produce some sort of documentation from your employer.  And the time to start all that is now.

3.    Fluff up your cash cushion. So, you’ve saved up your 3.5 percent down payment. Perhaps you saved a little extra for closing costs.  Or maybe you’re even one of those uber-aggressive 20-percent-down-ers.  No matter how much you’ve saved, you’ll find that you could use more once you activate your home buying action plan. Mark my words – after closing, you’ll crave extra cash to do some repairs, upgrade a couple of things, buy appliances or even just to hold onto in order to minimize your anxiety about depleting your savings!  

So, if homebuying is on your personal 2012 action plan, don’t go hog wild on holiday gifts. Instead, wait until next year and give yourself the gift of a home.

4.    Shed some stuff.  Sell it. Donate it. Give it to relatives who’ve always coveted it.  Just get rid of it. If you do it before year’s end, you can kill three birds with one stone: (a) getting some cold hard cash to go toward your savings, (b) getting some tax receipts so you can deduct the value of your donations in January, (c) minimizing money spent on holiday gifts for loved ones and these two bonus birds – clearing the mental clutter that physical clutter creates and prepping for your move in advance.

5.    Sit very, very still.  Sometimes, the best way to further our goals is to stop tripping ourselves up.  In that vein, commit right now to refrain from making any major financial moves until you buy your home.  Don’t quit your job to start that personal chef business (yet), don’t pull a bunch of cash out of your savings account (without getting clearance form your mortgage pro first), and don’t start buying cars and boats on credit – even if you do love the idea of putting the red bow on the car you give your wife, like in the commercials. 


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