homes for sale in Florida Archives - Page 2 of 3

Sarasota Real Estate Tax Bill

06/12/2014 By La Casa Webmaster

La Casa Real Estate, Inc.
Submitted by
Marilyn Kulibert, President

It’s that time of year again when we get our Sarasota real estate tax statements in the mail . You may have noticed that the valuation of your home in La Casa has decreased in value compared to last year. Sarasota County revalues all property every year and it is based on the previous year’s sales of real estate in your area. If La Casa has 40 sales, they have 40 different properties to compare values on. Since the housing bust a few years ago, prices on homes have fallen, and not just in La Casa. While it is good news that your taxes might be lower, you also could have a lower value listed for your home. Some real estate professionals think that 2013 will show that homes will be climbing back up in value, and that will be reflected in the next statement from the County.

Remember that anyone can access the real estate tax records online within Sarasota County‘s website, including potential buyers of your home. If your home is for sale or if you are thinking about selling, this is just another reason to set the sale price reasonably close to what today’s market value is, plus any furniture.

La Casa residents have purchased a home, have a real estate tax advantage over out of state residents. For those savings, make sure you have your home listed as your homestead with the County.

If you currently do not own a share, remember that shares can be financed with the La Casa Homeowners Association at attractive rates. Ask about it at the office.

Why hasn’t my home sold ?

06/10/2014 By La Casa Webmaster

LA CASA REAL ESTATE, INC .
Submitted by Marilyn Kulibert, President

We get questions all the time like “Why doesn’t my house sell and the one down the street was sold after only a month?” There are a lot of factors entering into a buyer’s decision to buy a home in La Casa.

They have to like the floor plan of the home and the location in the park. Sometimes it is the screened lanai that makes one more desirable than another. People have to visualize their belongings in your space. It helps if you don’t have too many extra things around so they can see the space better. If the house is spotless and well maintained, they will feel that the roof, air conditioner, etc. are also well maintained. Are the windows clean? Is the carpet spot free? Does the house smell good? You never know what turns a buyer off. Why take a chance?

Look around at some of the other houses – can somebody move in without doing a lot of repair work or remodeling? Most people want to just move in and start living the Florida lifestyle. All these things are part of a buyer’s decision to make an offer on your house. One of the important factors would be the price of your home. The staff at the LCRE office can tell you if your price is in line with homes like yours that have sold this past year. Stop by and talk to them.

La Casa Real Estate Homes for Sale in Florida

06/08/2014 By La Casa Webmaster

LA CASA REAL ESTATE, INC.
www.lacasaswfl.com
Submitted by Marilyn Kulibert, President

If someone is thinking of spending time in Florida, either renting awhile, purchasing a home, or visiting friends, more and more people are turning to the internet to see what Florida is like and in particular the area they are focusing on. If they have heard of La Casa, sooner or later they wind up at our website or our Facebook page.

Our new LCRE website will give prospective residents the opportunity to see the beautiful video tour of the park and also a video peek inside some of the homes that are for sale, all from their computer. If that quick look at La Casa gets their interest, they’ll come looking for us on a trip to Florida to check things out.

Often prospective residents find us while driving by on Hwy 41. When they go home, they can continue to check out the LCRE website’s list of homes for sale to see more of the homes they didn’t have time to look at. They can also see any additional homes as they come on the market. This is especially true for those watching our listings to see if a pet section home becomes available.

People who live in La Casa frequently want their “Up North” friends and neighbors to see what we have here. La Casa residents can give their friends the website address and mention the addresses of homes they think their friends might be interested in. Our residents love our park and want their friends and relatives to join them here too.

We are happy to have our improved website up and running and look forward to the La Casa Homeowner’s Association’s website completion in the future so we can link the HOA page to the LCRE page.

Why Choose La Casa Real Estate Inc To Sell Your Florida Home

06/08/2014 By La Casa Webmaster

La Casa Real Estate, Inc.
www.lacasaswfl.com
Submitted by Marilyn Kulibert, President

Why should a La Casa resident choose LCRE to sell their house or lot? There are several reasons.

You save money! An outside firm will charge you 6% for listing, showing and selling the home.
LCRE will charge you 4%. On a $80,000 home, that’s a savings of $1,600. On a $60,000 home the seller would save $1,200. It is ironic that even though you list it with “ABC Realty“, often the home will be shown by Gary or Vicki anyway through a cooperative agreement with the other local real estate agencies.
Statistically, in the past three years, La Casa Real Estate has sold over 150 homes while outside real estate agents have sold only 3.

Outside firms don’t always know the value of manufactured homes in cooperative parks. They could over price the home and you would be waiting a long while for a sale to occur, or they could under price the home and cost you thousands of dollars.

Another reason would be showing off the park. An outside firm does not have the knowledge of what goes on that makes La Casa so attractive to prospective residents. The La Casa lifestyle sells more homes than any other attribute and no one can showcase that lifestyle better than LCRE.

Often outside firms do not know much about cooperative living and how it works. LCRE works with it every day, on every sale, so that nothing is missed that would cause you problems later on.

Statistics are showing that our new and revised website is getting 500 persons visiting each week, just looking at what we have to offer. Your home would be on it with pictures and interior videos. In addition, our presence is on other specialized websites that direct people to look at and contact La Casa.

Why go anywhere else?

How Things have changed for La Casa Real Estate

06/08/2014 By La Casa Webmaster

LA CASA REAL ESTATE, INC.
www.lacasaswfl.com
Submitted by Marilyn Kulibert, President

When we think of how La Casa and North Port have changed in the last 10 to 15 years, one of the most dramatic changes we have had has been the way people look for homes to buy in Florida. Years ago the way people found us was through newspaper ads, promotions, and direct mail to northern states.

As the years went on and people became more comfortable looking for things on the internet, the visits to our internet website increased. We revised our website a couple of times to keep us looking current and to help people find what they are looking for. With our latest addition, showing videos of the interior of homes, we have really increased the visits to the website.

For example, the week of April 21 to 27, we had 964 visits during those 7 days, averaging 137 visits each day. Most people looked at it on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They stayed an average of 6 minutes on the site, but some spent an average of 14 minutes. We had people find us from 10 different originating pages, with the most (362) from Google.com, followed by 243 going right to our website www.lacasaswfl.com. The people who found us via senior mobile.com had the most new visits (77%). Viewers don’t just look at the first page either, they average 6 pages a visit, some as high as 10 pages. All this data is available to us weekly, which was a feature of our latest website revision.

Interestingly, we have had buyers make offers on homes through emails, without even coming to Florida to see the homes. Sometimes they are even too late, as our homes were selling fast this spring. This shows what a powerful tool the internet is for La Casa Real Estate to sell our lifestyle and homes.

Remember when homes had parlors

06/08/2014 By La Casa Webmaster

La Casa Real Estate, Inc.
Submitted by Marilyn Kulibert, President

Remember when homes had parlors, separate formal dining rooms, tiny kitchens with few cupboards, front and back porches, bathrooms with only tubs and no showers, few or no closets?

Styles of homes change over the years and what was current in the 1930’s no longer fit the needs and desires of the home buyers in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

So it is with homes built in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The buyers 30 and 40 years later are looking for things that were not popular or maybe even not available when the majority of our La Casa homes were built.

The homes for sale in La Casa being today fall into two categories.
They have potential to be brought “up to date” and the prospective buyer has the talent and/or the funds to do it. Or alternatively, the sellers have been gradually “updating” the look of their 70’s and 80’s home with new paint or texture on the patterned walls, wood flooring, tiled floors in the bathrooms, new kitchen cabinets, better windows, air conditioning in the lanai, newer furniture, flat screen Tvs, etc. Those homes will sell faster if they are priced right.

To get top dollar for your home, sometimes all you have to do is replace the carpet, redo the walls and clear out the surplus possessions that won’t go with the house anyway. If you are thinking of selling your home, ask Vickie or Gary what you might do to help get it sold. They know what serious buyers want today.

Most home buyers today want to move in and not have to do any updating or renovating. They want to start enjoying the La Casa life style right away – and who can blame them? That is why we chose to live in La Casa too!

If you are looking to buy a home in Florida call Vickie at (941) 426-0663 to set up an appointment

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