Pittsburgh Real Estate Podcast with Gina Giampietro - Advice for Pittsburgh Real Estate Investors

Advice for Pittsburgh Real Estate Investors

03/07/17 • -1 min

Pittsburgh Real Estate Podcast with Gina Giampietro

Pittsburgh is an attractive place for real estate investors because of the low prices. However, those low prices don’t always translate to high profits.

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Pittsburgh can be a great market for real estate investors to get into. I probably get three to five calls a week from investors looking at properties to buy and flip here in town. Most of them think it will be a simple process, but it can become pretty complicated if you don’t have your ducks in a row.

More and more investors are coming into the market thinking they can get an automatic 60% ARV. However, if you’re using someone else’s money, you are only going to make a 20% to 30% return after paying the lender and vendors off. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. When there is a property out there with a possibility of a 60% ARV, every investor comes to bid on it. That drives the price up and the ARV down.

One of the biggest problems that investors have when flipping homes here is that they don’t have a lot of local connections. They think they can just hire any old person off the Internet to get everything done right. That’s a bad way to do business. You need to visit the area, see it, understand the market, and understand the properties you’re looking at.

Pittsburgh is an attractive place for real estate investors because of the low prices. However, those low prices don’t always translate to high profits.

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report

Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale

Previous Episode

Tips for Preparing Your Home for the Spring Market

Are you thinking about selling your house this spring? Here's how you need to prepare your house for the market.

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Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale

If you plan on selling your house this spring, there are a few things you should do to prepare your house for the market here in Pittsburgh.

For starters, I'm big on home inspections because they tell you about any problems that would come up during the time your house is listed. If your home doesn't need any additional repairs when you put it on the market (because you already had a home inspection), you can pretty much stick to your price.

Next, you have to prepare your yard after the Pittsburgh winters that make our yards look horrible. Put out mulch, rocks, and plants to make your landscaping beautiful and add some fresh flowers for color. You should also furnish your porch and patio—bring out wicker or white outdoor furniture and add bright cushions. You want to make your whole porch or deck pop and show that there's space for entertaining.

Cleaning is also a necessary task that must be done. When your home goes on the market, you need that spring cleaning. Make sure everything is sparkling clean from the windows to the jambs to the floors and walls. Get rid of cobwebs in the basement and bring some flower...

Next Episode

The Toxic Effect of Buyer’s Remorse on Home Sales

In our current market, buyer’s remorse is happening more than usual. This can have an adverse effect on home sales, but there is a way you can avoid it.

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Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale

Pittsburgh is a seller’s market right now, which means there are a lot of buyers for each home. Buyers are negotiating harder and bidding higher than they normally would’ve just to get the deal. Here’s the problem, though—they’re also having serious remorse after the fact.

If you’re a buyer in our market and you want to avoid buyer’s remorse, you need to know what you want. Do you really want that house? If you’re not sure and you put in an offer anyway and it gets accepted, that can lead to problems in the transaction.

When you enter a home sale feeling that you bid more than you normally would have on that home just so you could have it, you might not feel like negotiating when the home inspection comes along. Perhaps you saw another house and wanted to keep looking while the inspection was going on in case something better came up. Many agents are actually accommodating this trend, which gives you even more reason to not want to negotiate with the seller.

This is pretty unfair. The seller took their home off the market and chose to work in good faith with you to get to the closing table. They worked with you, and you chose to put in an offer on their house. Give them the opportunity to work with you. You don’t know what they’re willing to do ...