Home Buyer Alert site has good stuff!

A home buying expert in Charlotte North Carolina has a bunch of interesting stuff on her blog. I just saw a post on asbestos removal.

Charlotte real estate buying advice

Search Engine Curiosities

Today I was doing some search engine inquiries to see how our webpages faired in the big three search engines "GYM". (That is SEO guy speak for Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The three big players left in web searches.)

I found that our Ann Arbor buyer agent web site came up in the first place on one of the search engines as one might expect. But when I did the same search on another machine in the office the site wasn't in the first two pages of results.

Very strange!

By next month I should be doing optimization for South Lyon Real Estate searches!

Jon Boyd, Broker/Manager
The Home Buyer's Agent of Ann Arbor, Inc.
Member office of http://naeba.org
734-6620-6240
1908 W. Stadium Blvd. Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Ann Arbor's Most experienced Exclusive Buyer's Brokerage!

Website for Good Mortgage Fraud Information

FlippingFrenzy.com (linked above) is a great site for information on mortgage abuse and mortgage fraud.

There are many examples of home buyers and home owners who have suffered from bad advice. (Sometimes from family members.)

In the last 20 years of helping home buyers we have never had a buyer tricked into one of these bad loan situations.

Helping Home Buyers Locate, Evaluate, and Negotiate great home deals!
Jon Boyd, Broker/Manager
The Home Buyer's Agent of Ann Arbor, Inc.
http://buyersagentannarbor.com/
734-6620-6240
1908 W. Stadium Blvd. Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Ann Arbor's Most experienced Exclusive Buyer's Brokerage!

Turkey buzzards come with this 1.1 million dollar home

This has got to be one of my stranger blog posts, but, I was previewing homes today in a very upscale neighborhood and saw this million plus Ann Arbor home with a family of turkey buzzards sitting on the roof.

I just snapped this picture with my iphone camera so you have to look pretty close, but there are four buzzards on the peak of the roof. There are also three more visible in the tree above the home.

Very weird!

Loan officer from Ann Arbor Lender pleads guilty

The Columbus dispatch ran an article today about loan officer Kenyatta Johnson who worked for ABN Ambro in Ann Arbor.

Seems Kenyatta admitted she approved fraudulent mortgage-loan applications for Columbus Ohio home in return for kickback money.

If you click on the article linked above and go to the last sentence you see there are two other defendants in the case who have not yet pleaded guilty. One of them is named Jonathan Boyd! (My name!)

Glad he is in Columbus and not here in the Milford - Ann Arbor area.

Important Inspection Tip for Milford Home Buyers

This link goes to a story about a home in Ann Arbor, but the principle also applies to homes build in the last 13 or 14 years in the Milford Michigan area.

The specific concern in homes with an exterior finish of Drivit or EIFS or Exterior Insulation Finishing System or .... Stucco. These are all basically the same and even though they work fine in many commercial buildings, they can cause tremendous issues for homes.

Here again is the link: Stucco Problem on Milford homes

What the "buyer agent" from the traditional company won't tell you

There is an interesting post on Trulia that I ran across recently from a "buyer specialist" who works for a "team" at a traditional real estate company.

Remember the idea of having a buyer agent is that they will give you:

1. Unbiased exposure to homes
2. Negotiate in your best interest
3. Be loyal to you and your needs
4. Keep your confidential information confidential

Well at that large local company the "buyer specialist" gets paid 25% more if she sells you an in-house listing. How is that for "unbiase expose to homes"???