Holly Barr

Times are tough. Especially if you're trying to sell a property in this market. But there is good news. If you need to move, we've got the top five tips for selling your home in today’s market ...

In the last two years I have had two buyers walk away from $1.5 million dollar properties that they loved because they found out that a sex offender was living a few houses away. These properties in Santa Clara County, CA were pristine. But the buyers, who were more than ready to buy, pulled out after we researched the offenders in question.

In today's real estate market buyers are in the driver's seat. Because there are so many choices out there for buyers, there's time to wade through the mounds of information available about an area and really research your choice before you sign.

Curb appeal can help you to get more for your home, and to have it sell faster! I recently had a house for sale in a nice neighborhood in San Jose, CA. Just a few days later another house down the street with similar floor plan, lot size and square footage went on market. Here are the two houses:

The one on the left sold with multiple offers in two weeks and the one on the right sold with one offer in almost 4 weeks.

Fifty years ago it was normal for people to die in their homes. Disclosure laws weren't what they are today and most buyers simply wanted a good, structurally sound home. Today buyers are, shall we say, leery of buying a house in which someone died -- even if it was of natural causes. We've come a long way, baby, but not in the supernatural realm, or so it would seem. In our modern era with our modern thinking, superstitions still abound. Ghosts are revered and feared and death ... well, no one wants to talk about that (you do know that no one gets out of here alive, right?).