Tuesday, September 19, 2017

4 Tips on How to Get a Home Loan

Maybe you're tired of paying your landlord's mortgage and anxious about how to get a home loan.

There are four key areas to focus on to get pre approved for a home loan. Your best strategy is to start several months ahead of when you'd like to buy a home. Getting pre approved is great, but being highly qualified means better loan terms and interest rates. This can have a dramatic effect on your finances over time.

How to Get a Home Loan




Mortgage lenders are going to look at a lot of things, including your debt-to-income ratio. I can tell you, as a Realtor working with clients and facilitating mortgage approvals there's a whole lot more to it.

You can have the down payment, long time at your job and maybe you don't carry a lot of debt. That doesn't mean you can get approved for a home loan. Even if you do, it doesn't mean you'll get the best terms either.

How to Get Pre Approved for a Mortgage


If you're serious about looking into how to get pre approved for a home loan, check out this page on getting a home loan:

4 Great Tips for Getting Pre Approved for Mortgage

I would advise you to do some research on what type of home loans will best suit your purpose too.

There are many different home loan types. Some save you money upfront, others save you more money over the mortgage term. Some are a balance of savings now and later. By the way, if you choose a great real estate agent, they can possibly get your closing costs covered.

One of the four tips for getting a home loan I will share with you is for after pre approval. Please do not go hog wild because you got an accepted offer on a home. Underwriters pay close attention to your credit report not just for pre approval purposes, but right up to the day of closing.

Don't open a store credit card like Home Depot just to get a 10% discount on a new washer and dryer. New credit accounts will lower your score. I've seen a 10 point dip cost home buyers their home loan going through and being issues. Don't scratch that spending itch until after closing.


Sunday, September 17, 2017

Stumble Upon Cincinnati Suburbs Hot Real Estate

Boy did I get up early this morning, a lot of showings to schedule for our Cincinnati house-hunter clients. Just have a lot of other work to get out of the way before making those calls. I'm not even sure where some of these new Cincinnati home buyers found us, but one did mention StumbleUpon.

A long time ago, and at another brokerage, I did place a back-link on StumbleUpon to our real estate website's home page. That's how this particular client found us. Lucky me, I had put some tags in there, they helped the buyer find our Southern, Ohio real estate site.

I had forgotten all about this venue and its potential for posting about real estate in Cincinnati and its suburbs. Not everyone Googles, a lot of house hunters have their favorite forums for finding the right home. Facebook for example. Truth be told, even though I manage our business Facebook page and advertise our client’s homes for sale or market our Cincinnati community pages, I’m not all that social on my personal page. I do answer questions about housing, talk with buyers and sellers, and people wanting to find a good lease in the area.

I took a little break from Facebook and uploaded all the Cincinnati suburbs we have pages for on our site with direct links to their properties and listing information. Added some other pages too, like our mortgage calculator, rent vs buy a home, best home loans and first-time buyer. StumbleUpon is a lot easier than I remember.

So, I did a bunch of posting and then checked the listings and discovered StumbleUpon lets home buyers browse real estate on our website within StumbleUpon without having to leave it. Pretty nifty I think:


I like the fact you can go to town with real estate and community tags here too. I also started using StumbleUpon as a place for curating real estate, housing and mortgage market news for future real estate blog posts.

There’s a lot of great places online for curating content, a lot of new forums you can find real estate information and housing market news. If you’re an agent, you may want to go back and visit some of your “golden-oldies”.

I’m not sure that StumbleUpon can be classified as “social media”, though you can work the “likes” and build an audience. But for real estate agents, whether you choose to get social or not, it’s a great place for your community, housing and real estate blog content.

What are some of your favorite places to find real estate content and develop ideas? It’s so easy to get in housing post rut on sites we typically use. I’m just glad a home buyer stumbled upon our Cincinnati housing site and brought the venue back to my attention.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Scoop.It - Scooping up Real Estate Articles

My newest place for posting about southern Ohio real estate - Scoop.It.

I sometimes get bored with social media channels, lately I've been exploring other places for finding and posting real estate articles. I write a lot of posts about Cincinnati real estate markets, and was time to start find other places. Lo-and-behold, I found out I'm enjoying Scoop.It.

Ohio Real Estate on Scoop.It




So far I just have my short reads about different Cincinnati area communities like Mason, West Chester, Monroe and Indian Hill. But I was browsing and found a ton of great articles on real estate related topics from some major authorities on the subject on there. I'll be a while, but there's some really informative stuff to share on there!

Scooped Southern OH Real Estate

I think it's important as a Realtor into content marketing to sometimes walk away from the usual grinding on social media site that are perhaps too familiar and explore other possibilities. Obviously, no one person can stay on top of growing an audience on every platform. But don't dismiss posting on new venues as back linking correctly can boost your rankings.

I did take several months off of social media and working on our website. Partly due to family issues, but also was way overdue for some healthy rest. Back at it now, and feeling sharper about it too.

In addition to Scoop.It I've started using Storify too to some degree. Maybe it's just the change of screen I like or the format for real estate articles. I just feel like it's new and posting about my local housing markets doesn't feel as tedious.

Got a new .edu back-link too from the Dorm Debate, and an article on college housing not being affordable enough for students. It inspired me to get back in the saddle with creating premium articles with valuable content for readers.

So often, the same old stuff (not just about real estate) is just regurgitated and splattered out there on the web. Social sharing of real estate blog posts and racking up view stats might satisfy the ego, but never forget the purpose of what content marketing is supposed to serve.

It's alright to capitalize on news that affects real estate markets, especially your own. But have you ever noticed a flood of similar articles from different authors hit the social web at the same time?

Anyway, enough of this rant, viewing it as advice would be better. I just want to encourage you to step away from the norm, find some new venues for real estate content. Take some time to write about a real-life situation you experienced in your industry. That makes for awesome content.

Mason Ohio Homes for Sale - Deerfield Township

Homes for Sale, Mason Ohio - Deerfield Township Properties


Wow, been a while since I was on here, took a lovely vacation in Gatlinburg Tennessee, and driving around I noticed some of the homes resembled the homes for sale Deerfield Township Ohio from the very affordable to some of the outstanding luxury real estate.

Deerfield Township surrounds the homes for sale Mason Ohio offers, but one will find more unique and more private properties with thick wooded lots, larger spreads and gorgeous acres. A lucky few will have access to or border small ponds or creeks

Mason and Deerfield Township were Ranked 7th "Best Place to Live" by Money Magazine in 2013, and the proximity to amenities, West Chester and Cincinnati are outstanding.

As of today's posting, there are currently just under 200 amazing properties that include some feature-rich custom home builds. Many of the properties are award-wining former Homearama gems.


One the above community page, you easily sift and sort properties by price range and also check deerfield township homes for lease. The homes for sale in 44411 zip code, (Deerfield Township) are in close proximity to the real estate listings in 45040 which is Mason, OH.

Some of the homes are fine works of residential art by popular and notable home builders like Ryan Homes, Hensley Custom Building Group, Fischer Homes, Classic Living, Wieland Builders or Dixon Builders, just to name a few.

If you find these properties as alluring as I do, but want more choices in the area, check out the homes for sale Mason Ohio offers in the same general vicinity:


Mason has just under 200 homes for sale, and a remarkable market to investigate. Both Mason and Deerfield Township offer fine homes starting at under $200,000 to approaching $2,500,000 and some absolutely intriguing luxury properties.

Enjoy your house hunting, let me know if you'd like some assistance - just click inquire or schedule a showing on any home of interest.