My New Northwest Arkansas Facebook Page

Check out my new Northwest Arkansas Real Estate page on Facebook! Become a fan, and if you have used my services before, please leave me some feedback! Also, I will be uploading my listings to my photo section soon. If you become a fan of Tiffany Harris, Northwest Arkansas Real Estate, you will know when I get new listings and we can stay in touch!

Hope you are having a great day!

NWA Surplus New Home Inventory Shrinks

Builders in Northwest Arkansas let the market catch up with the housing inventory a little bit in the third quarter. This information comes to light via the skyline report that Arvest and the U of A put together for us every quarter.

Its good news for home owners and sellers because the supply has been growing and exceeding demand. Its still a great time for buyers- prices are not going up and neither are interest rates! Its simply a matter of getting those chain reactions going that make sellers into buyers.

Although the news from the Skyline report was good, there's still about a 5 year supply of homes on the market in Washington and Benton counties. But, at least the Washington and Benton county inventories are down 33% and 46%, respectively.

Read more report details at the link below...

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/12/02/business/120308bus3qsky.txt

5 Real Estate Questions (and answers):

...based on a Yahoo! article.

1. Q: Who pays the Agents and brokers' fees? A: The seller pays the fees unless the contract specifically dictates that the buyer pay the fees as a part of the closing costs. Typically, agent and broker's fees are around 6%.
2. Q: I am getting a brand new house. Do I need an inspection? A: Yes, for one thing your bank will require an inspection in order to loan you the money for your new home. Secondly, there are often things neglected by even good builders that should be taken care of BEFORE the builder gets all his ir her money. If the builder gets their money in full, don't expect them to come running when you call to tell them your doors are sticky. They don't have much insentive anymore to fix the problem- even under the terms of the home warranty.
3. Q: Why should I hold a real estate title in a living trust? A: from Yahoo!-"

   #1 to keep the house from being sold with out your permission if you happen to go into a nursing home, #2 to keep the person that the house is willed to from paying inheritance taxes."

4. Q: What is a real estate short sale? A: A short sale is the sales of a house for less than what is owed on the property. In other words, the seller is cutting his losses and selling the home for what is owed- he is "upside down" on it and probably owes the bank more than what the home is worth. Normally, the sale is below market prices, but the lender is also likely going to want their money from the buyer after the seller falls short.

5. Q: After the inspection is done and fixes are made, what next? A: Its now time do your own inspection- the walk-through. You and your Realtor, Tiffany Harris, will go through the house and document all the repairs and touch-ups required before completing the transaction. Often these are things like fixing a light, touching up paint, removing trash, etc.

Home Improvement: Remodeling a Kitchen

Lowes owes me. I have spent so much money there over the last 6 weeks remodeling my home kitchen, they should start paying me a dividend.

I (Russ H) have been remodeling my kitchen for the last 6 weeks. I have been to the Springdale, AR Lowes at least 30 times over these 6 weeks. As I have grown familiar with all the faces at Lowes, I have also learned alot about remodeling.

One thing that I have learned is that jackhammering a trench in the middle of your kitchen is no big deal. Hire a plummer to move pipes and do the jackhammering, but its not too hard to backfill that hole yourself with Quikrete. Also, make sure you're keeping track of the hours worked by said plummer. If you don't you'll get rooked.

Another things is that a large room is not the place to try your hand at tiling a floor. That's what I did. I had never tiled anything, but I ripped out my old tile and put down new tile by myself. At the end of the tiling phase I asked for help from someone who knew more about what they were doing, but it was absolutely one of the worst experiences of my life. My back and knees were about to just give out. Shoulda hired someone who had help and experience. tiling was a nightmare.

I had planned on having someone from Lowes come hang the cabinets for me, but I figured that if I could do the tile myself then I was capable of hangiong some cabinets, too... and save about $1200. Well, I was right about that part... hanging the cabinets was a breeze with a second set of hands.

I smartened up and hired someone to install my granite tile countertops. Thank God. I hate tile. It looks good, but not that much better than my work on the floor. At $8/sq ft that stinks, but there's a service fee in there someplace.

Installing sinks is easy. Hire a plummer to hook everything up, though. Leaking under your cabinets is a bad, bad thing.

The rest is trim work... I ordered embossed metal backsplashes, and they were sorta easy to put in, but putting the trim around the cabinets and baseboards is tricky work... there is something to be said for someone who can cut and measure in 32nds of an inch.

All-in-all its been a good experience. Hopefully my wife will enjoy selling homes from her new kitchen, and I will get a good return on my investment. Kitchens usually are- I just hope nobody see's the stuff I wasn't good at!

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Jobs in Northwest Arkansas

Northwest Arkansas has a pretty solid economy.

If you are looking for a job in Northwest Arkansas, here are some of your main options in the corporate world:

1. Wal-Mart Corporate, Bentonville: A lot of the folks I know who work "for" Wal-mart actually work for Wal-Mart vendors and companies who supply products or services to the Bentonville giant. Getting a Vendor job requires that you either have direct working experience at Wal-Mart corporate, the vendor's corporate office or with Wal-mart's proprietary replenishment software, Retail-Link. Retail-Link has been described as a glorified Microsoft Access database that is used to query inventory databases. Northwest Arkansas Community College (NWACC) offers a class in Retail Link for those who want to get in on the bottom floor with a vendor. There is also an agency (Cameron Smith Associates) who specializes in placing folks in these jobs, but they only deal with folks who already have vendor jobs... and the way to make money in a vendor job is to switch companies. That's what people do... they just go from one company to the next expanding their salaries.
2. Tyson Foods, Springdale: I don't know a whol lot about getting a job at Tyson. Most of the people I have met that work there have worked in marketing, and these folks seem to have done well for themselves. As for engineering jobs, I don't think they pay real well... maybe if you are a microbiological engineer. I don't know, but for a guy from Springdale I sure don't know much the place or the people who work there. The one guy I know who works for Tysons goes around checking on chicken houses and farms.
3. JB Hunt transport, Lowell: I happen to work for JB Hunt, and I really enjoy working here. Pay pretty fair and so is the environment. Including JB Hunt in your job search requires that you visit our website (you'll never find it on a search engine unless you type in [JB Hunt]). Go to http://www.JbHunt.com, and upload or fill out your resume. Then, you can apply for job with job descriptions right there. Even when I apply for jobs internally, this is how I have to do it. And, once you uploaded your resume once, you don't have to do it again. There are all kinds of jobs available at JB Hunt- especially for transportation management type folks or driver recruiting bits.
4. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville: they employ a bunch of teachers.If you are the professor type then you have a shot.

Obviously there are other places to work here.. those are the biggies that make the economy here hum. Good luck!

Northwest Arkansas Real Estate Sales Declined

For the first quarter of 2007 the sale of new and existing homes fell by about 15%- says this article by the Morning News.

The magnitude of the slide registered at 15%, and boith Benton County and Washington counties reported slower sales.

Analysts say that the market is going through a correction right now and that there is still an over-supply, as the Skyline Report has been indicating.

What does this mean? Its still a buyer's market. I wonder if there is a difference, though, between the $350k homes market and the $150k homes market... the report doesn't say, but I would venture a bet that lower priced homes are selling much better than the more expensive stuff by comparison year-over-year. Of course, higer priced home always take longer to sell and there are fewer of them, but I bet the slow-down is more pronounced in the upscale markets.

Tiffany Harris of Harris McHaney Realtors in Northwest Arkansas has been as busy as ever. Even through these tough markets she has had a lot of buyers to take care of, and she's been able to find them great deals.

The report also notes that jobs in Northwest Arkansas remain strong- only a slight decline and that the NWA economy remains strong.

As for housing prices... "Benton and Washington counties continue to post the highest average home prices in the state at $195,291 and $186,103, respectively."

The article also mentioned huge incentives offered to buyers (mostly for upscale homes) such as cars and boats... this drove some of the prices down.

Crye-Leike Coming to NW Arkansas

A new Real Estate company that has been very successful in Little Rock and
many parts of the south is coming. Crye-Leike has already set up shop in
Rogers and Springdale. They should prove to be a force for Harris McHaney
and Lindsey to deal with, but I doubt these two proven heavyweights (and
some others) will be just fine. Its probably the little guys who should be
worried.

Fayetteville/Springdale/Rogers named Sperlings Best

The Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers area was named by MSN Real Estate and
Sperlings Best Places (http://www.bestplaces.net) as the best place to live
based on housing cost and available jobs.

"Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Ark.-Mo. The median home price in the
three-city area averaged $212,300 in January 2007 —and that's for a three-
to four-bedroom home with as much as 2,000 square feet of living space,
says John K. Carpenter of RE/MAX Associates in Fayetteville."

Rounding out the top 10 was...

2. Idaho Falls, Idaho.
3. Logan, Utah.
4. Auburn-Opelika, Ala.
5. Iowa City, Iowa.
6. Dubuque, Iowa.
7. Pensacola, Ferry Pass and Brent, Fla.
8. Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford, Va.
9. Huntsville, Ala.
10. Fargo, N.D.

Benton County in Top 100 Fastest Growing

According to the CNN Article
(http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/15/real_estate/fastest_growing_US_counties/index.htm),
Benton County was the 83rd fastest growing county in 2005. No other Arkansas counties made the cut while Benton County posted a 4.1% growth (7,329 residents). Flagler County, FL (Jacksonville/Daytona) was the fastest growing county in America at 10.7%. No Missouri or Oklahoma counties were in the top 100, either.

2005 was a huge year for the US economy. It would be interesting to see what the numbers for 2006 were.