The Neighborhood Experts at Platinum Real Estate have the tips and tricks to help you make your move
By Patricia Nugent
Though the spring home-selling season is usually the busiest time of year, a shortage of inventory in the area is presenting challenges.
I caught up with Denise Zervos, who, along with her husband, Mark, owns The Neighborhood Experts at Platinum Real Estate, to glean her insider’s take on the local market, and find out why now is actually a wonderful time to put your home up for sale.
“The biggest challenge we have to tackle, especially the past few months, is a lack of housing inventory in Lake County,” she says. “If we dig deeper into why that’s happening, I would say it’s partly due to the high percentage of homeowners—65.2%—who are locked into a historically low mortgage interest rate of less than 4%. And 20% are locked into below 5%. They figure the rates will only go up from there and decide to stay put.”
Another dynamic that’s impacting the market is that people are fearful of not being able to find a home once they sell theirs.”
“Homeowners are in a quagmire, reluctant to sell even though that might be the wisest thing for them,” she says. “Now might be the best time to ‘right size’ to fit their lifestyle, but they’re sitting on the fence of indecision.”
The good news is there’s been a rise in Lake County of new home construction, and there are plans for more new neighborhoods on tracts of land recently purchased by developers.
“Several builders are offering mortgage buy-downs at lower rates to get their planned homes sold,” she says. “Another positive position we help homeowners realize is that the value of their home equity has increased over the past several years, as much as 20-30%. With this we can strategize with our partnered lenders to keep the interest rate low on their next home to that sweet spot comfortable rate, and still get the home of their dreams”
Platinum Real Estate has offices in Northeast Ohio and Columbus, Florida and South Carolina. To get more information, call216-990-2100 or440-974-SALE or visit YourNeighborhoodExperts.com.