Lance Mohr & Team

Tampa2Enjoy.com

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Lance Mohr & Team

Tampa2Enjoy.com

(813) 317-4009

Home Buying Tips

How To Hire A Great Home Inspector

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One of the biggest mistakes home buyers makes when they hire a home inspection to inspect their home is thinking all inspectors are the same. This is a HUGE mistake that can cost your thousands of dollars. Watch this video to get some great home inspection tips so your hire a GREAT home inspector. Not all inspectors are the same. You have to do your due diligence to make sure you are hiring the right inspector for the task. This video will help you.

Transcription

Hi everyone. It’s your Tampa Bay Realtor Lance Mohr and in this videos, I want to talk about how to hire a great home inspector. I know this is really hard looking at buying a new home or a pre-owned home if you don’t know a home inspector but I’m going to talk about what you need to do to make sure you get a really good home inspector. That’s going to rip the home apart. That’s what I’m going to talk about in this short video.

I think when you’re buying a home, whether you’re buying a pre-owned home, whether you're buying a new home you need to get the home inspected. It doesn’t make any difference. A lot of people think while I’m buying a brand new home why do I need to get the home inspection before? Why do I need a home inspector? Well as I always say it’s a new home, it’s not a perfect home. So get a home inspector but don’t go out there and just get anybody and let me give you an example.

A while back, I had one of my clients and they hired their own home inspector and it was a 3,000 square foot home. Is about 10 years old. The inspector went out there and did the inspection in 55 minutes on a 3000 square foot home. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it would take him a nap short of a time to do an inspection. So I was curious I asked the buyer I saw how much did you for the home inspection and he said $250 and they’re like oh well there you go.

See there are two types of inspectors in my opinion. Number one is you have the inspector that just goes out there. Tries to cram as many appointments in a day as they can. Maybe they do hour inspections or an hour and a half inspections they charge $250 or $200. They can knock out three or four of them a day and a lot of them do that. There’s a lot of those out there. That’s not what you want. You want someone you might have to pay him a little bit more money or at least fair market rate but if you want someone’ who’s going to be in there a while.

If my inspector went out to that 3000 square foot home he’d probably be there a good three and a half hours. Maybe four hours just depending. You want someone to go in to check the irrigation system. You want them up on the roof. Crawling through the attic. You want them looking at everything. The home inspector is pretty much at least in Florida they’re licensed, they’re insured, they’re bonded but you get what you what you pay for.

So I would say like my inspector he’s four hundred dollars. He would approximate let’s say $400 to $450 on a 3,000 square foot home. He would probably have been out there three and a half to four hours maybe more. I’ve talked to mine 2,500 square foot home where he’s been out there five hours before. He only does on to two inspections a day. Where this one was out there 55 minutes and it was $250.

So first off on how to hire an inspector, you get what you pay for. If the going rates about 400 dollars and you’re going to pay 300 or 200 or something like that. You got a figure you’re not going to get the most detailed inspector out there. Now the other thing I would highly recommend doing. Now but of course you might get the inspector from your real estate agent. You might get them from a family member, from a friend, from a co-worker but you want to do is ask them for an inspection report. So they should have an example inspection report that they could give you. So you could hoe detailed it is. Do they go over and above? Do they not only go through what’s on the state form but that they go through their own form? Do they take a lot of pictures that they give detailed explanations? What about the inspectors done can the selling agent call him or can you call him back.

I’m sure you can, you should be able to. Can the seller of the home call him or is it just like hey we’re one and done sorry I’m on to my next inspection unit pay for a bunch of people to be calling me. So you got to really look at it like you get what you pay for but always do your due diligence. Talk to people get an idea how long the inspector will generally be there for the inspection and get a copy of one of their inspections so you could see how detailed they are. You can see what the inspection report looks like.

I hope this video helps you. If it does and you like this video please do me a favor. Give me a thumbs up so I know that. If you have any questions. There you have anything you want to say leave them in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you. I’d do this videos for you. The home buyer and the home seller. So I hope this helps. I hope you have a wonderful day. If you are in the Tampa area and you’re looking a great aggressive agent don’t hesitate to reach out. Give me a call (813-317-4009) I would love to help you. Have a great day. For more educational real estate videos please visit my YouTube Channel.

Save 3% – 6% When Buying A House – How To Buy A House In Tampa

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Check out how to save 3 – 6% when buying a house in Tampa, FL. Here's how you can save dollars when buying a home.

Transcription

Hello home buyers. Your real estate expert, Lance Mohr and today, I want to talk about how you could possibly save 3 to 6% when buying a home. As a real estate agent, I am always trying to get my home buyers a competitive edge so they could get a better deal or if it’s a multiple bid situation, beat out other buyers from buying their home. And as you probably know by now, the National Association of Realtors, take statistics every single year. They spend millions of dollars and talk to home buyers, home sellers, see what there likes are, dislikes, concerns. And they have shown that home buyers that are pre-approved for a mortgage can save an average of 3 to 6% but let’s just say you are not going to save anything, but you get the home a beat out another buyer in a multiple bid situation.

Pre-approval means so much in today’s real estate market. Now the difference between a pre-approval and a prequalification is when you go to the lender, prequalification is just based off of the information that you give the lender but pre-approval is based on the information that you give the lender and they verify it. So you are essentially a cash buyer. And at the end of the day, you are going to have to get approved for a loan sooner than later. So you might want to do it sooner than later and use it to your advantage.

Think of it this way, if you are going out to a home seller, and let’s say there is another buyer, you are both offering $200,000 and the other agent says, “Well my buyer talked to lander a few weeks ago and they told them they could buy the home with $200,000.” And we go in and we say, “Well, my buyer is already fully approved for a mortgage. Everything is verified, they are basically a cash buyer. Would you like to close this month or next month?” I’ll tell you 1000 out of 1000 times, they’re going to take the pre-approved buyer. So if you’re going to do it sooner than later, you might as well get it done sooner than later.

I hope this helps you. If you have any comments, any questions let me know. If you are looking for a great real estate agent to work with, give me a call, my contact information is below. I wish you the best of luck in the home buying process. Thank you very much. Here is my YouTube channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy. We have tons of educational real estate videos. You can also visit my podcast https://www.spreaker.com/show/how-to-buy-a-house-series.

Understanding The QUALITY of The Home You Are Buying

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In this video, I go over some of the things buyers should know and understand before they buy a home. I talk about someone who paid $493,000 for a home that was built in 1996 by US Homes. They either did not know the type of builder US Homes was or they did not care. Well, US Homes was an entrance (low end) level, builder. I do not understand why someone would spend a 1/2 million dollars on a low end built home? You will be paying an upper-end price for a product that uses lower end material.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video, I want to talk about understanding what you are buying because I see every now and then a lot of buyers getting bamboozled because they don’t really understand the quality of construction and different type of builders. Neither do the real estate agents or even the appraiser. I’m going to go over what’s important about this and what you need to understand and know before you buy a home or for that matter even write a contract on a home.

I had a client send me a property the other day. It already sold. He wanted me to use as a comparable for his so I started looking at it and I noticed it is an about twenty-five hundred something square feet and it sold four-hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars. I’m like hmm I wonder who the builder is. I’m sitting there thinking it’s something equivalent to maybe a Rutenberg or maybe a Cardel sort of an upper-end builder, semi-custom builder, and custom builder and I was shocked to see it was a US Home and I thought to myself “oh my gosh! I cannot believe someone would pay four hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars for a US home and take nothing away from US home but let me just sort of explain US home is an entry-level builder. They were always an entrance level builder. Matter of fact years ago in the early 2000s Lennar ended up purchasing them as their entry-level builder and then they just found out they were a real piece of junk company they ended up shutting them down then for some reason the brought them back over in New Tampa and Live Oaks again and then they ended up shutting them down again. Again they were just the entrance level builder so I’m looking at this home at four hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars and sure it has good architectural detail with columns outside and you’ve looked inside the home and it has some a deep attention to detail inside the home but the problem is they’re basically building the same home as an entry-level home. They’re just making it look a lot nicer. I mean again it’s one of those things you could put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day it’s still a pig and I don’t want to be that mean about it but I’m looking out and I’m sitting there thinking to myself well this is the same quality of construction is behind the walls. The same type of wood, the same type of insulation, the same contractors are all pretty much being used. They’re just making everything grander cosmetically and I really feel personally I just can’t believe someone would spend half a million dollars on a US home.

Now if they go in and it’s a Cardel. Well, Cardel is an upper-end builder or builder equivalent Homes by Westbay or Rutenberg, a really good builder. That’s what I would expect. I just didn’t expect this and I think the problem is when people were buying these homes, they’re not really and I say the buyer, the buyer may not know but they’re going to real estate agents, the real estate agents aren’t really doing a lot of research and they’re just thinking okay well it looks nice, it’s big, it’s in a nice area but what about the utility bills and it’s sort of like a car, you could go buy a car and it might look really nice inside outside but if it’s going to break down all the time, if the maintenance is really bad. Are you going to buy it? Then it’s sort of like that looking at this with the US Home the insulation isn’t going to be anywhere near the insulation of say a Cardel, a West Bay, a Rutenburg not that WestBay was even in existence when this home was built in the late 90s but the appraiser goes out there and unfortunately appraisers are very complacent and a lot of appraisers just don’t know what they’re looking at because they don’t look at many homes when they an appraiser goes out and doesn’t appraise a lot of home they’re looking at one home and one home only that’s the subject property. They’re just looking at the other ones and seeing the other ones in black and white and take nothing away from appraisers there’s a lot that understands a lot about homes but some of them don’t and I even had an appraiser compared a Lennar and a Ryland years ago with an art the Rutenberg so all I would say is do your homework, get an agent that understands the different types of builders. Just so you know they could be perfectly happy in the home and they could even know it’s a Us home and know about the history of Us Homes and know what type of quality US Home was being built to and they might still like it, you might still like it but it’s understanding. I personally would never buy a US Home for five hundred thousand dollars at least today. I just can’t see it. I know what the insulation is going to be like. I know what the quality of construction was like behind the walls. They could fix it all up and make it look nice outside and make it look nice inside, but I do this video because I just think you need to be educated when you’re looking at the homes when I look at homes and I go through I always look at the builders. Now there are some builders that I don’t know who they are. They were built before my time. Maybe they were just a small little builder but that’s not the vast majority of it. The vast majority are the bigger builders, the Rutenbergs, the Centex's, the Lennar's, back then the US homes, now the Homes by WestBay, the Cardel's, the Cal Atlantic's, etc.

So understand who the builder is and that’s the whole point of this video. Just get educated on who built the home in what type of builder they are. It’s sort of like I would tell people in this price range would you rather have homes by West Bay build a home that’s used to building homes in the fours, the five the six hundred thousand dollars range or would you rather have a Centex where is an entrance level builder who would rather have built your home for the same price because that if a builders building if they’re an upper-end builder and their building down there is still using the same quality of construction the same people built in the home that’s an entrance level builder building up. They are still using the same people much like a car you have $30,000 to spend on a car would you rather have a Mercedes Benz build it or would you rather have Kia build it so that’s all I’m saying.

I hope this video helps you. If you have any questions at all please feel free to contact me and if you like these videos share them on Facebook, share them with your friends. Have a wonderful day.

My YouTube channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy has hundreds of educational real estate videos. From buying, selling a house to tips for first time home buyers. Don't forget to share these videos with your friends. Thank you.

How Many Homes Should I Look At Before I Buy?

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Most home buyers ask this question a lot. How many homes do I have to look at before deciding what home to buy? This is a common dilemma for most home buyers, especially first-time home buyers. In this video, I will address that question for you. If you like the area, elevation and floor plan – you found your home. Because you can not change these three things. They are MUST haves! Enjoy the video.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and I want to address a question I get quite frequently and that’s how many homes should I look at before I purchase a home and I’m going over the answer to that in this short video.

All right, for the last 20 years or so being in the business, I actually get this question quite often how many homes should we look at before we purchase? We’ve only seen a few homes, I think we need to look at a lot more homes before we buy this home and I’ll tell you the answer is there is no sin answer for this. You could look at one home, you could look at five homes, and you could look at twenty-five homes. You just need to understand what I call the top three things when you’re looking for a home to make it a lot easier on you.

Number one is you have to like the area. So you have to like the city. You have to like the subdivision. You’re not going to be able to change the city. You’re not going to be able to change your neighbors in the subdivision if you don’t like the area don’t buy the home. Buy somewhere where you like it.

The second thing is you have to like the elevation of the home. The elevation is how the home looks outside. I’m not talking how the landscaping look or the yard does or maybe you have an overgrown tree or the color the paint of the home. Who cares? I’m talking how the home actually looks.

The third thing is you have to like the floor plan. If you don’t like the floor plan, forget it. It doesn’t really matter. The reason is that you can’t change these three things. If you like the area. If you like the elevation and you like the floor plan you’ve pretty much found your home and the reason is because before you go out to even look at the floor plan you could always drive by the neighborhood and around the neighborhood and look at the outside of the home but by the time you get inside the home you’re going to know a lot about the home already. You’re going to know what the price is. How many square feet it is. How many bedrooms. How many bathrooms. Does it have a garage or how many car garage or carport does it have? What year was the home built so you can have a lot of questions answered and then you’re going to have to just take all those questions, decide if you like the are the elevation of the floor plan and then come up with the price? On what works for you but if you like those three things you’ve pretty much found your home.

If you have any questions at all let me know. I would love to help you and please leave a comment. Let me know what you think about this video and give me a thumbs up if you like the video. Have a wonderful day. Thank you very much.

If your looking for more educational real estate. Visit my YouTube channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy. Don't forget to share the videos and please subscribe to my channel. Thank you.

Watch Real Estate Agent Videos to Make an Informed Decision

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It is often difficult to make the right choice in buying a property. The complexities of buying a home can be overwhelming. Hiring a buyer's agent will help you greatly in making a sound decision. He/she will raise any issues you should consider before signing the check. Before you approach an agent, it is advisable to look at as many real estate agent videos you possibly can.

Agent Videos as the Interview Process

An agent acts as your representative when you are searching for your new home, and may even be present during the purchase process. They will help you locate a home that meets your requirements, liaise with the building contractors, provide you a thorough analysis of similar properties in the area and also inform you of trends in property value.

If the real estate agent you’re interested in having represent you has videos about properties or even their agency’s approach, watch them. This is the perfect time to interview them, or even pre-interview them. Real estate agent videos offer detailed information, not only about the trade craft associated with real estate, but also about the agents themselves.

Pitfalls to Avoid When Buying a Home

While it may be taken for granted that the agent you hire will naturally have your best interests at heart, this is unfortunately not the case in many instances. Few agents may represent the property seller too and this leads to a conflict of interest. Non-exclusive buyer's agents could try to sell you properties for which they also double as the seller's agent. It is also important to be aware of brokers who represent other buyers angling for same property. This is why it is recommended that you hire an agent who will represent you exclusively. As stated earlier, watch those real estate agent videos to find out more about the brokerage policy of a particular agency.

The experience of the agent is also a prime factor that will affect your decision to hire the services of a particular agency. An ideal buyer's agent should have closed a number of home purchases. He/she should also have a superlative knowledge of the locality you are interested in and must have a background in negotiation of home contracts. It would also be helpful if the agent has an excellent knowledge of financing, as this will come in handy when you want to apply for a mortgage.

Buyer Agency Agreement

A few states compel you to sign buyer agency agreement with your agent for a secure representation. This puts you at an advantage as it ensures that your agent conducts the negotiations professionally and in accordance with the provisions of the law. The agreement must include a number of details, like whether the agent is exclusive to you and the location and description of the home you intend to buy.

We’ve produced several real estate videos that are straight to the point to help you make the right decision on your home purchase. Contact Tampa2Enjoy Real Estate to have the very best represent you on your home search.

Expert Advice Through Free Home Buying Webinar Event

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picture of home buying webinarTampa, FL – Lance Mohr, Realtor with Future Home Realty, is currently presenting free bi-weekly Webinars discussing the ins and outs of buying a home. The process of purchasing a home can be both confusing and overwhelming, as it is often the largest investment of a home owner's life. “After 15 years working in Real Estate, I've come to notice that almost everyone goes about finding a home the wrong way,” Mohr said. “I've created this weekly Webinar as an educational tool to help the community through this process by breaking it down into easy-to-follow steps.” This free online seminar, or “Webinar”, is filled with information that until now has not available to the general public.

The 30-minute Webinar covers topics such as how to save money during the home buying process, what to look for when buying a home, the correct steps to take and what types of professionals home buyers should surround themselves with. The information provided in Mohr's presentation is invaluable for both first-time home buyers as well as seasoned buyers, as they both will save time and money by following Mohr's expert advice.

Registration for the Webinar can be completed through the following link: http://www.facebook.com/TampaRealEstateExpert. Participants will then select a date and time to watch the presentation. If missed, a link will be sent to the participant's email address for a second chance to watch. Questions or comments should be addressed to Mohr at Lance@Tampa2Enjoy.com. “Like” Mohr's page on Facebook for more information: www.Facebook.com/TampaRealEstateExpert

Lance Mohr is a licensed real estate broker associate who is passionate about helping buyers through the challenging process of finding their dream home. He has extensive experience in real estate sales in California, Utah, Texas and Florida. Mohr is also a member of such top relocation firms as Cendant Mobility, Prudential and Century 21. He has also helped both individuals and corporations with their relocation needs including the employees of many Fortune 500 Companies.

Tips For Prospective Home Buyers

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With the real estate business picking up in the country again buying a home is a lot trickier than it has been for a long time. On a national level homeowners are able to sell their homes for 97% of the price they ask for; in some areas they exceed the listed price due to fierce bidding. Here are 5 pointers that can help you to finally own a home in Tampa FL.

•    Don’t go into a negotiation with a deliberately low bid thinking that you will increase your offer when the seller demands a much higher price. They have been waiting for the trend to change for a long time; they won’t fall for pointless bargaining while other buyers are offering close to their asking price.

•    Remember, the national average sale is 97% of the asking price so try offering 3% less than what is on the price tag. If property in that area sells at more than the listed price, offer the listed price as your opening bid.

•    If you need to go higher than the offer you have made, make your next offer your best offer.

•    Be prepared to meet stricter loan requirements and if you really must have that home, consider mortgage insurance (before making your best offer) if you have to
go beyond your entitlement. Get prices for such insurance from more than 1 company to be sure you are not being defrauded. (4 of the nation’s biggest mortgage insurance providers have recently been fined for over-charging.)

•    With the real estate business finally picking up, many homeowners will be stuck for a place to stay once their home is sold; it will be to your advantage if you can throw into the deal a longer waiting period before finally taking occupancy.

True, you may not get your dream house for a steal but if you keep your wits you can still own it at a reasonable price; besides buying a home is still cheaper than renting one!

For more information on homes in Tampa or Tampa Bay luxury homes, please visit our website at Tampa2enjoy.com

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Mohr Home Group
18302 Highwood Preserve Parkway
Tampa, Florida 33647
(813) 317-4009 | Map | Email
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