Archive for July, 2009

How can taxes in New Jersey be a beautiful thing you ask? I’ll tell you why in one word…. RATEABLES! What are rateables you ask? It basically breaks down to the companies and businesses present in a given town. If  you’re a mega sized corporation and you have your headquarters in a given town then you are taxed a high level. The corporation pays a large sum in property taxes but a corporation doesn’t have use for many of the towns services. Sure they may need police and fire service from time to time but a corporation doesn’t go to school.

The high level of taxes and low need of town services make for lower taxes for the rest of the towns residents. In Bridgewater for example, there are countless pharmaceutical corporations who call Bridgewater home. This allows and creates a high number of rateables. This also allows for lower taxes for me and every other resident in town.

If you don’t believe me look at any property listing for Bridgewater and then look at a similar place in Raritan. You will see a noticeable difference in the yearly taxes thus making the property a little harder to manage.

For all you sellers, this is a major point that needs to come across to potential buyers.

With this being said, look at some properties on my website and we can go over everything I just wrote about in greater detail.

Good evening everyone, today’s tidbit is one about the idea of listing your home and pricing it to sell. There’s a great article in the Newark Star-Ledger about this topic printed yesterday. The article goes into many great points which highlight that neither the agent or the seller set the price of a property. The BUYER sets the price because its ultimately what they pay that determines value.

The point aside the main part of this post is to talk about overestimating home improvements. I learned this during my real estate licencing course and it got me thinking. There are a couple things that can be done to bring value to a home such as adding an addition or a bathroom. Putting in those marble counter tops are not one of them. Those counter tops will make your house more SALEABLE! That’s it, depending on the market the rules of the game change. Given today’s market conditions you can expect a buyer to not pay a premium for that marble.

Just remember this before you go nuts on your place. Before you put that full length mural of yourself on the living room wall….. remember no one is going to pay extra for that thing!

Check out the article here: http://tinyurl.com/yg6foxq