Dewey Beach, DE Homeowners: Time to Think ‘Deck’
Back in March, real estate site apartmenttherapy.com urged homeowners to do some soul-searching before signing up for a new backyard deck. Although their “5 Questions” were said to be those real estate pros “say you should ask yourself,” you don’t have to be a professional to recognize the wisdom in giving them some thought. As Dewey Beach, DE homeowners prepare for summer this year, the questions deckless homeowners should ask themselves are especially worth thinking about. The issues touched upon:
Entertainment. Decks are for entertainment, for you, family, and guests. Do you really like “outdoor living?” If it’s not high on your priority list, you might put off the project until building material prices come back down to earth. Right now, lumber inflation is a thing. Check out Dewey Beach, DE lumber prices if you want to do a double-take.
View. A spacious deck is a pleasure to hang out in—unless the surrounding area is more eyesore than eye candy. If the visual environment genuinely needs improvement, other projects (like fencing or planting a visual barrier) deserve priority. Bob Vila’s site offers some valuable ideas.
Investment. If the primary motivation for adding a deck is to boost your Dewey Beach, DE property’s resale value, studies indicate that the most you stand to recoup is 66%-74%. This is hardly what an accountant would recommend—although renewing a weather-beaten or splintered deck is another story entirely.
Resale. However (this is the exact opposite advice, financially speaking), if you plan to put your Dewey Beach, DE home on the market anytime soon, for some properties, an attractive deck can be the deciding factor. If it makes a sale happen, the added value is hard to calculate.
You. If you have always fancied a deck—and you’ll be sticking around the neighborhood for a while—it can be a priceless addition to the amount of enjoyment your home provides.
If the decision is ‘yes’ for a new deck, the relative cost for wood or composite is currently a moving target. Composite decks have a maintenance and durability advantage, and right now, with wood prices and availability in flux, the initial cost differential has narrowed considerably.
Usable outdoor space is getting more consideration in post-pandemic America. For fresh insight into how Dewey Beach, DE real estate offerings are faring, give me a call anytime. Call/Text me Russell Stucki at (302) 228-7871, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit more listings at www.beachrealestatemarket.com.
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- Written by Jimmie Bachand
One Way Dewey Beach, DE Investments Would be Part of a Black Hole
Last week was an authentic record-breaker for the stock market. The Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all set record highs; the number of new unemployment benefit applicants swooned, and industrial production and retail sales both saw double-digit growth. With achievements booked at record levels and few voices calling for a turnaround any time soon, you’d think that many investors would be thinking ‘Dow Jones’ instead of ‘Dewey Beach, DE real estate’—but that expectation wouldn’t be accurate. The opposite is overwhelmingly true if you ask the average American for their considered opinion.
At least that’s the finding of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—a group with everything to gain from championing their hometown cottage industry (the Wall Street investment firms). The FRBNY was curious about how the attitudes of consumers at large may have changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic—specifically, how people would rate the relative investment merits of a home vs. financial assets like stocks.
The Fed bankers may have been expecting the results to come in as a photo finish. One can picture legions of staff members hovering over their keyboards, standing by for the hard data, prepared to analyze the columns of numbers out to the thousandth of a percentage point, eager to produce scatter plots and density maps of the breakdowns.
But, no—the survey found that over 90% of the consumers preferred purchasing their home to investing in the stock market. So any scatter chart the staffers could have produced would have looked like a galaxy having a big black hole in the middle (the mass of home buyers) with maybe a few wayward stars waiting to be sucked into it (the Wall Street investors).
If there were a density map (the kind with a map with dots that show where the responses originate), it would have been hard to even find the dots where the ‘stock market’ partisans live.
The supplementary comments were pretty self-explanatory, with phrases like “provides stability” and “less volatile” recurring with regularity. To add insult to the Wall Street injury, a majority of home-buying respondents “also favored the idea of being a landlord to purchasing stocks.”
Dewey Beach, DE investors probably wouldn’t have needed to hover over their own keyboards if they’d been awaiting similar survey results. They’ve already come to the same conclusion. If you have been thinking about where your investment dollars might best serve your own strategy, why not consider Dewey Beach, DE investments as part of the mix? If so—call! Call/Text me Russell Stucki at (302) 228-7871, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit more listings at www.beachrealestatemarket.com.
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- Written by Jimmie Bachand
Newbie and Repeat Buyers Take Different Paths to Success
Realtor® Magazine’s editors have frequently described the financial hurdles facing first-time buyers in today’s market. Even so, despite rising home prices and stalled inventories, a third of recent existing home sales have been to the newbies.
A pair of recent RM articles directly (and indirectly) explored several factors that help explain some first-timer successes. The articles dealt with bridge loans and some advantages Dewey Beach, DE first-timers may have over repeat buyers.
Last Thursday’s “Bridge Loans May Help with Intense Bidding Wars” describes the solution that temporary loans provide to existing homeowners. Current owners commonly face a situation where offers they make on a new home must necessarily be contingent on the successful sale of their own property. That snag can make an otherwise winning bid less attractive than a lower non-contingent offer. The solution for the current homeowner is a bridge loan—a temporary, high-interest loan (typically 8.5% to 10.5%, according to Housingwire) that provides enough cash to fund a contingency-free offer.
The bridge loan article points to one path Dewey Beach, DE homeowners can choose to solve a timing dilemma—but it also uncovers a real estate reality that should encourage first-timers. This was dealt with directly a few weeks earlier:
RM’s “Advantages First-Timers Have Over Repeat Buyers” portrayed the same situation from the opposite point of view. Because “anyone in a position to make an offer without a home-sale contingency is going to be better positioned than those who are waiting to free up cash,” first-timers enter the offering arena with that advantage over existing homeowners—at least until the other side arranges for one of those bridge loans (or sells their property). It is also true that first-timers can have access to a number of down payment assistance programs and grants not available to repeat buyers.
Whether you’re a first-timer or a current Dewey Beach, DE homeowner, part of my service is to present the many choices that are available to you as a buyer. Call anytime! Call/Text me Russell Stucki at (302) 228-7871, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit more listings at www.beachrealestatemarket.com.
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- Written by Jimmie Bachand
When Dewey Beach, DE Home Values Rise, Moods Improve!
Lately, most stories dealing with residential real estate have headlined one of two leading subjects: either the scarcity of homes for sale or the recent appreciation in home values. For local owners, reading about a rise in Dewey Beach, DE home values can be a real mood-booster. Even if there is no intention to translate higher numbers into cash by selling or refinancing, it’s a comforting notion to think that the world agrees that your property isn’t just worth what you paid for it: it’s worth a lot more!
For local homeowners who haven’t experienced that pleasant feeling lately, here are a few of the most-trafficked sites that present their computer-generated calculated values for Dewey Beach, DE addresses. Chances are that when you enter your own address, you’ll see that the market value has been on the move lately. There is a caveat to be made after you’ve tested the models—but first, you may want to see how they work:
https://homevaluerealestatecenter.bankofamerica.com/services/hvt/request
https://www.chase.com/personal/mortgage/calculators-resources/home-value-estimator
https://www.zillow.com/how-much-is-my-home-worth/
If you tried more than one of those links, you will probably have noticed that the figures calculated are surprisingly different. That’s what produces the caveat mentioned at the start. The numbers that look so official onscreen are the products of different Automated Valuation Models. AVMs take available price trends and basic property characteristics and shoot out the best results they can. But since the trends are generalizations that are unlikely to be neighborhood-specific—and the property ‘characteristics’ can’t take into account the individual features that make any home unique—the results vary as widely as you’ve seen.
When it really matters, you’ll want to get a much closer picture of how your property rates in today’s market. That’s where I come in—when you are ready to consider listing your own home, it will be my pleasure to put together a thorough survey of today’s market and an analysis of how your property may fit into it. Of course, there will never be any obligation! Call/Text me Russell Stucki at (302) 228-7871, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit more listings at www.beachrealestatemarket.com.
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- Written by Jimmie Bachand
