Green Real Estate Appraiser

6% Commision for home sales once were the norm…that’s changing

Posted on May 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

Commissions of 6 percent for home sales once were the norm. That’s changing. – The Washington Post <!–

Mandie Sellars, a homeowner in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, had the misfortune of buying a home and then almost immediately getting a new job about an hour from her new home. Not only did she want to avoid paying commissions to sell the home she just bought and to buy another, but the market was also hot in the area where she wanted to live.

“I knew I needed to move fast, and so when I saw a property online that I liked I contacted a company called SoloPro,” says Sellars. “Twenty minutes later I was in the house with an agent and two hours after that I made an offer. My offer was accepted by 5 p.m. that day after the home had been shown 17 times.”

What’s different about Sellars’s experience is that she opted for an on-demand agent service that doesn’t charge commissions. She paid $25 for email alerts so she could find a property, $50 for the property showing, $100 for an agent to present her offer and $800 for a transaction coordinator. SoloPro will give her a rebate of 3 percent of the purchase price — the equivalent of a typical buyer’s agent commission — at her closing, which she estimates to be about $5,700.

Technology has changed businesses in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago, but even industry insiders say that residential real estate practices have yet to fully adapt to the reality that buyers and sellers have unlimited access to property listings and other information that was once held firmly in the hands of realty agents. That access has led many consumers to question the fees they pay for the services of an agent, commonly 6 percent of the home sales price, including payment to a buyer’s agent and a listing agent, or $30,000 on a $500,000 property sale.

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So Cal – Officials report power outages may loom in region

Posted on May 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

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FYI: People think if they have solar that when grid goes down they can just run off their solar. What most people don’t know if they are hooked-up to the grid they will not be able to use their solar. Check with your solar installer to find out if you can run when the grid is off.

Located in the hills above Porter Ranch, Aliso Canyon is a crucial gas storage facility, supplying 17 power plants in the Los Angeles basin. But the four-month leak that began last October left the facility at one-fifth of its capacity and new injections of gas have been prohibited until all of its wells have passed comprehensive tests.

Officials estimate the storage facility won’t be back online for months, leaving area power plants without a key source of natural gas.

Millions of energy customers could be affected in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties.

In addition to the summer blackouts, the region could face an additional eight to 18 days of outages later in the year, according to the report by Rothleder’s agency and the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

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May not get solar credit if earnings too low

Posted on May 2, 2016 | Leave a comment

One of the big selling points for installing a solar energy system in your house is the 30 percent federal tax credit that comes with it.

But be careful: If you don’t make enough money to pay federal taxes, the solar credit will not apply.

Will solar add value to your home? Contact the appraisers at www.scappraisals.com , the forerunners in green property appraisals in So Cal. for your value questions.

That’s exactly what happened to a retired couple living on Social Security and a modest pension in the Anaheim area who got a rude awakening after spending about $30,000 to have a solar system installed in their home.

“So the total 30 percent (for the solar tax credit) was something like $9,000 and they ended up with nothing because they didn’t owe anything (to the Internal Revenue Service),” said Roger Gresham, president of American Business Services, who prepared the couple’s taxes.

“I hear too many of these commercials talking about this 30 percent tax credit and a lot of people think when they hear that, that it’s going to generate a nice refund and it — in a lot of cases — doesn’t,” Gresham said.

And there is a large number of Americans who don’t pay any federal taxes. According to a report by the Tax Policy Center, 45.3 percent of tax filers do not have any 2015 federal individual income tax liability.

“That’s definitely a problem if you’re retired or a low-income person,” said Ryan Willemsen, founder and chief executive of Solar to the People, a San Diego startup that offers price quotes. “It’s a huge issue and it’s causing a lot of confusion.”

disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only.

6% Commision for home sales once were the norm…that’s changing

So Cal – Officials report power outages may loom in region

May not get solar credit if earnings too low

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