CHRIS GRIFFITH

At dark o’clock this morning I sat down at the computer with a cup of coffee and the first email I read began, “If my brother is trying to scare me, it worked. What do you have to say to ...

Naturally, this is the time of the year Southwest Florida is visited by tourists. This year those visitors recognized some of the tremendous real estate values and were inspired to start buying real estate.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an interesting question from the home buyer gallery today. Question: What’s the deal with listing office accompany? What is the point of the listing agent holding the listing hostage or me, the buyer, to their ...

Little would anyone imagine that this winter there would be a market so brisk that we’d be facing multiple offer scenarios. Multiple offers as in someone besides you, the savvy buyer, has decided to place a purchase offer on the ...

Most condominium owners have a set of documents that perform little practical function other than taking up space on a shelf or in a cabinet. That is, if they bothered to keep them at all. Those documents are the rules ...

It’s quite an adventure for buyers to house hunt these days. While the Internet has made it easy for consumers to find homes and research the real estate market, there is still some valuable information that can only come from ...

It’s crunch time. There are about 10 weeks before Easter and the beginning of the end to our busy tourist season. If you are a Southwest Florida homeowner whose goal is to sell your real estate by the end of ...

There have been several calls and e-mails from homeowners who are either struggling through the short sale process or wondering what it really takes to negotiate a short sale.

While e-mail isn’t new or revolutionary in real estate, it has become instrumental to the success of most contract negotiations and closings, especially when a property is a short sale or a foreclosure.

Most consumers only buy and sell real estate as a necessity. Often times there are great periods of time between transactions so there isn’t exactly common familiarity with the procedures and protocols of how things work. Revise that: how things ...

Write something fun about Christmas was the advice I got from friends. I was away when the words were due and, well, I just wasn’t feeling Christmas or feeling like writing about it. It sounds all scrooge, but I’m not ...

Ever hear that old wives tale that says if you touch a frog, you’ll get warts? What do you have to touch to get a half dozen unsolicited phone books dumped on your front door every year. You may not ...

There is a broad spectrum of referral agents and companies out there that range from those who provide little to no service, yet still ask for a fee from the agent at the other end, to the well oiled referral ...

It’s absolutely no secret that there is a myriad of unexpected things that can go wrong in a real estate transaction these days. It’s just the unexpected surprises that catch everyone off guard.

A few weeks ago my daughter came to me with the realization that we needed to formulate a plan for Thanksgiving dinner. My mother had organized and cooked Thanksgiving the last few years. She passed away at the end of ...

There are plenty of valid complaints that consumers may have about whomever they’ve chosen to help them purchase or sell real estate but the fact of the matter is that they have the ability to choose. Consumers can choose or ...

Tourism makes for great people watching. Having just returned from an Olympic level of people watching in New Orleans, I’d actually been a bit reflective and was thinking about the big city versus our little city when a friend of ...

The interesting thing about shopping for real estate is that when the searching and shopping is over, when the contract is executed the home buying systems are still engaged. The systems and the automated searches and notifications set up to ...

In the last decade, shopping for real estate has been revolutionized. At the fingertips of most consumers are the listings of most homes in Southwest Florida or anywhere in the world for that matter.

Buyer’s remorse is a sneaky little thing that creeps its way into the hearts and heads of home buyers when nobody’s looking. Somewhere between, “Heck yeah, we’re buying a house” and the settlement date, something happens and the tides turn.

What could possibly justify a $200,000 spread in pricing on nearly identical homes, within the same community, with remarkably similar options? The answer is nothing. It’s a frequently asked question that buyers pose when they narrow down the search to ...

The mailbag filled up and these two gems stood out as questions that were asked more than a few times. Not only are they important questions but I almost get to use the word Obamacare, which is almost as much ...

Who doesn’t have a friend or family member with a real estate license? I think there is an old joke about driving across the Georgia-Florida state line and having one handed to everyone in the car.

While it is possible to sell for sale by owner, with the current atmosphere it is improbable in most markets. If there’s an excess of inventory or a neighborhood is just moving slower, buyers are scarce no matter who is ...

For the second time this week I was asked by a buyer what that our real estate market is averaging for the percentage off of list price. That question still surprises me because the real estate market has had a ...

Where our northern friends list their homes for the summer, a lot of the Southwest Florida real estate is listed in the fall. Those fresh real estate listings are going to be priced according to recent comparable sales and competing ...

There’s a fabulous little aisle in the Office Max store. Maybe you’ve seen it when you were looking for something you needed just enough to cross that $50 threshold in order to use the $10 off coupon. For you do-it-yourselfers, ...

The biggest issues both sellers and buyers have when dealing with and understanding the intricacies of short sales is how the appraisal process can effect the transaction.

You have to come from a place of yes to be involved in the real estate business. You just do. These days, real estate agents advise purchasers of how the sale process will work, usually in realistic detail. There are ...

E-mail answer bag! Yee-haw! Q. Are you a shill for NABOR? A. No, I am not a shill or even a member of Naples Area Board of Realtors nor have I ever been. If you don’t like what I write, ...

A buyer could have purchased dozens of homes throughout their lifetime but a short sale will be the first time they get to purchase one on a hay ride. It really doesn’t matter how much a buyer or seller is ...

How does one eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. There were so many distressed properties on the market at one time that is was almost insurmountable to believe that it could ever be behind us.

Whenever there is massive confusion and emotional turmoil, there will be people trying to take advantage of the situation. There are people preying on those who are in financial distress and losing their homes by acting like they’re going to ...

Sometimes I really get scared for the circumstances that homeowners are in. People live through the toughest of times, foreclosures, bankruptcy, job loss, accidents. Without minimizing how traumatic losing a home can be, it is a loss that will eventually ...

First of all, we’re not all going to die. Well, eventually we will die, but probably not from exposure to real estate. Second, this too shall pass. The turning points in the real estate recovery are s-l-o-w and when they ...

Whether it’s the well meaning acquaintance or just an overly involved neighbor, someone, somewhere in the neighborhood or complex is going to know when you’re preparing to put your real estate on the market and approach you with an offer.

It’s not the bigger, more obvious things that cause trouble. It’s usually the small, unsuspected anomaly that catches the absentee homeowner by surprise. Typically, when folks are peeling out of town they buckle up their home or condo and leave ...

Southwest Florida is the land of turnkey furnished real estate sales. It’s common to close on a property and have the ability to walk into it carrying a bag of groceries and a toothbrush and spend the night without needing ...

Several weeks ago I walked though a field of cairns on a trail. What’s more shocking than the wild notion of outside exercise is the idea of a positive message formed with rocks. It was just a river bed of ...

There are times when we discover things along the long road to house hunting. Being inside someone else’s home and in their personal space is a strange place to be sometimes.

What compels a seller to accept one offer over another besides dollars and cents? Putting aside the black and white aspect of a business decision based solely on numbers, image that you’re in a position where the offer you are ...

Our busy tourist season is wrapping up and it’s ushered out the way it came in, with outdoor events and festivals. A little unknown fact about our local events is that there are visitors who plan their trips to and ...

The big battle many anxious homeowners have had is finding the buyer for their home or condominium. Depending upon the price range and amount of competing of real estate offers can be few and far between.

If you have your heart set on buying a foreclosure and expect to get a great deal from a bank by taking one of their “assets” off their hands, you should erase just about any romantic notion from your thought ...

There’s a big difference between inexpensive and a good value where home loans are concerned. Throw in a few dozen flashy ads with teaser interest rates and all the magic the loan officer promises to work for you and let ...

Ever hear the saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?” Whoever wrote that was either just picking on women or it’s one of the old sayings that needs updated to fit modern times. How about this update, “Hell ...

There’s currently a fair sized pile of printed out property reports on my desk that have been marked up and highlighted from last week’s showings. Almost 30 percent of them have a big black slash across the page. The agents ...

Chris Griffith: You better have some true patience when buying a short sale

Here’s an interesting bit of information, about 60 percent of those sold properties were paid for with cash compared to about 31 percent five years ago. The investors are back and it looks like they’re taking a second run at ...

What was unusual about this cancellation of an offer was that I didn’t even have an offer on the subject property. I called the real estate agent as a courtesy because I thought he had just faxed the wrong person.