Season's Greetings from the Donovan Team

It may surprise some of you to know that we at the Donovan Team are as passionate about music as we are about real estate! Please Check out this year's Singing Christmas Card!

Want to listen to the song? Play Song
Want to watch the full video? Play Movie

With the holidays in full swing, we wanted to share something special with you today.

As many of you may know from prior posts - when we aren’t busy helping our clients buy and sell real estate or helping our team members design their dream real estate career, we love writing and performing music!

We are proud to present our 5th Annual Singing Christmas card for your musical entertainment! This year's presentation is entitled: “Memories Are Evergreen”. With guest vocalist Paul Donovan on lead, Joe Donovan, musical producer on harmonica, and Karen Donovan, singer, song writer, on backup vocals. Warning - this video could bring a tear to your eye as you recall happy memories from your past.

Click here to hear the track and see the music video, which is comprised of our home movies from years ago. You may even recognize a few members of the Donovan team in it!!

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Wishing you and your loved ones a Christmas & Holiday Season that is truly Evergreen!

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From all of us at the Donovan Team, we’d like to wish  all of our Clients, Friends, Colleagues & Loved ones a Blessed Holiday and Happy and Healthy New Year and may all your wishes come true!

In the meantime, if  we can help you or a loved one make your real estate dreams come true in 2017 - don't hesitate to give us a call!

What Is a CMA & Why Do You Need One?

What is a CMA? Why do you need one? I’ll go over the entire comparative market analysis process for you today.

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This month I’m answering a question from Evan Resnick, the winner of our $25 gift certificate. Evan asks, “What is a CMA and why do I need one?”

First of all, CMA stands for competitive market analysis or comparative market analysis. If you want to know what your home is worth, you would ask a real estate agent for a CMA. Some owners might want to use online home valuation sites, but that is a mistake.

If you are buying a car or something like that, it’s pretty easy to go online, look at similar products, and set a price. It is not so easy when it comes to setting the value of your home. Those automated home values do not take the many upgrades you have made to your home into account. They also have no way of knowing what features your home has that other homes do not. The other problem is that those automated values only look at sold properties.

When a Realtor does a CMA, they will look at several different kinds of properties. They will look at sold properties because that gives you a history of what homes in your area have sold for. However, they will also look at properties that are currently listed for sale (your competition) and homes that recently went under contract. If a home just went under contract, that tells you that the property was priced competitively.

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Realtors look at many different properties during the CMA.

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Your agent will also look at homes that did not sell, which are called expired listings. If a listing expired, you’ll know that those homeowners were asking for more money than what the market was willing to bear. In short, the market didn’t support the price they wanted for the house, and you don’t want to make that mistake when pricing your own property. 

Once the Realtor takes all of these properties into consideration, they will come up with a proposed asking price for your home. They will also give you a selling price so that you know what you can actually get if you decide to put your home on the market. 

A lot of the time, people might not be able to sell right away but would still like an idea of what their home is worth. That is no problem. A Realtor can still come by, look at your home, ask a few questions, and put together a CMA for you. If you wait for a year to sell, you can look at that CMA and see if it makes sense for you to sell in that market.

If you have any other questions about finding your home value, please let me know. If you have a question you would like answered in our next video (and if you want a chance to win a $25 gift certificate), please submit it to karen@homesbydonovan.com or text your question to 727-517-1751.

As always, if you need any help in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We would be happy to help you!

Helpful Travel Alert

Travel alert — avoid bright, shiny objects!

More and more people are traveling every year, so I thought I'd better issue this travel alert to watch out for bright, shiny objects at the airport. I'm not talking about guns or knives, but rather clothing with metallic features, like the ones on my shirt in the video above.

I actually set off security with this shirt! I thought they'd just take me aside for a moment, but it turned into a full-body search in a private room. I also had to take apart all of my carry-on luggage so they could check for explosives.

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I'm talking about clothes, not guns or knives.

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My husband and I were able to move on without a mishap from this rural airport, but I can't say the same for the poor French people next to me who were searched. They missed their flight and had to stay overnight in the airport.

So I repeat, don't wear clothing with metallic decorations, and be prepared with extra time in case the unexpected happens!

Likewise, if you're thinking about traveling to a new place to live, I'd love to help you out. Give me a call or send me a text, and let's talk soon. I look forward to hearing from you!