Congratulations to Our McNair Madness Winners
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Countdown 2018 – Top 10 Pages and Posts
Every year at Kimberly Howell Properties, we take a look back through the activity on our website to see what you’ve been looking at on the site and see what’s been on your minds. We try our best to put out content that you will find interesting and relevant to your real estate needs (and we’re always open to suggestions from our readers!). This year has been a great year on our website and we’ve added lots of new content as well as some new features (our latest IDX powering some of our property searches will see a big expansion through 2019). It’s definitely a labor of love – it takes a lot of work to bring you content that isn’t canned, cookie cutter rehashes of the same old recycled content, but it’s something we take great pride in and based on the feedback and compliments we’ve received from you over the years, we know it’s something you have come to expect from us. We promise to continue working to bring you the best content possible.
Here are the Top 10 Pages and Posts from our website through 2018:
10. Closing on a Home While You’re Out of Town? No matter where you are there’s always a solution to getting you closed, no matter where you are.
9. Disclosing Death in Texas We hear this question a lot and we see it’s a very popular Google search as well.
8. Time is of the Essence: What Does it Mean? Tick, tock. The countdown is on – what does this important real estate phrase mean in contracts?
7. Our Agents We’re proud of our agents and we love that you look them up and learn about them before picking up the phone!
6. What If Your Property Survey is Incorrect? It does happen from time to time – so what do you do when it’s discovered?
5. The Option Period: Termination and Timelines Real estate contracts have several important timelines and the option period is one of the most crucial to buyers.
4. Writing Effective Repair Amendments Repair amendments are a critical piece of the contract and writing them well is a skill.
3. What’s a T-47 and Why Do I Need One? Apparently, a lot of people have questions about this form that is used in conjunction with the survey.
2. Search for Homes We’re all here to talk about homes, so it’s no surprise that our search feature is one of the most popular items on our site.
1. Why is My Rental Application Taking So Long? No one likes waiting and we get a lot of questions about the length of time it takes to process applications.
image courtesy of Meno Istorija
Merry Christmas From Kimberly Howell Properties
We wanted to take a moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Regardless of your beliefs or personal traditions, we hope you have a wonderful time and get to spend some time with your families and friends. While the holiday maybe rooted in religious traditions, we find it to be a great time to look around and celebrate with loved ones and share with those who may not be as fortunate. It’s about the spirit of the season and we want you all to have a great day. Kimberly Howell Properties and its family of agent’s will do our best to relax and enjoy a little time off as our offices will be closed Christmas Eve (December 24) and Christmas Day (December 25). We’ll be back on Wednesday and ready to wrap the year up.
image courtesy of nan palmero
We’re on Instagram
We have been saying we’d join Instagram for a long time, but we never wanted to just join and be yet another boring, dull page that gets neglected and just shows the same canned photos of houses you’ve come to expect from so many other real estate Instagram pages. We wanted to make it look beautiful and interesting, even if you’re not in the market for a new home. We wanted to cover design, homes, and the city we call home. And maybe we’ll throw in a few surprises too.
Have a cool Instagram you think we need to follow? Leave your Instagram profile link in the comments below and we’ll check them out!
So head over to the Kimberly Howell Properties Instagram page, start following us, and let us know what you think. We have some ideas for contests that you won’t want to miss and the only way you’ll know about them is to follow us on Instagram.
PS Quite a few of our agents have excellent pages as well and we recommend you check them out too!
Kimberly Howell Properties Training and Mentoring Our Agents
As a brokerage, we at Kimberly Howell Properties are tasked with training and mentoring our agents to teach them the skills and share with them the experiences that will help guide them throughout their career. With real estate changing constantly, this requires us to keep learning and growing ourselves. We’re quite proud of the work our agents put into learning and staying up to date and our training and mentoring program is something we’re very proud of. One of the pillars of our training program is Dave Taylor. Dave is a licensed agent and serves as our trainer and mentor to all of the agents. Awarded Trainer of the Year by Platinum Top 50 San Antonio, Dave also conducted training in the military, so he’s a natural at it. Dave’s focus is teaching agents the “why” of real estate, not just the “how” of fill in the blank contract forms. Our agents learn the theoretics of real estate and are constantly challenged by Dave to learn more.
In addition to our regularly scheduled training classes each week, agents have access to members of staff that are also licensed. With phone, email, and text, staff are available to agents throughout the day and night.
Training is conducted weekly and offers a mix of classes built on real life cases and experiences of our agents to bringing in experts in related fields like title insurance, lending, builders, foundation experts, etc. This allows us not only to train and mentor based on our own real life experiences, but also use the experiences of the experts in other fields.
How does our training and mentoring benefit you?
If you’re an agent looking for a new brokerage, the answer is pretty obvious. We provide you with the skills to grow your business and build the confidence that is one of the most important tools in your real estate tool belt. Want to come see how we do things? Schedule a meeting with us and join one of our weekly meeting or training sessions to see how we do things. We’re proud of our program and our agents love it – it’s not easy and you will be challenging, but you will know more and be prepared for more situations than a lot of other agents out there.
As a homebuyer or seller, the training benefits you clearly too. Better agents means better experiences for you. Real estate is constantly evolving and just when you think you know it all, things change. Our agents also have access to a network of staff and experienced agents who are always there to help, even well after normal office hours (when so much of real estate happens). You’ll find that our agents are eager and willing to learn and have benefited from the focus on hands on training and mentoring that we provide.
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What Are You Looking At? Let’s Dig Into What Matters Most To You
We usually reserve our research into what matters to our visitors most for our end of the year “Top 10” posts, but we were tweaking some things and seeing how well they worked when and decided to look through the pages and posts that you spend the most time on. We like to analyze this information so that we can help bring you the best real estate website in San Antonio, full of information that you want and answers to the questions you have. Have something specific you’d like to see on our website? You can always contact us and let us know – we’re always looking for ways to improve! Let’s take a look at what matters to you most…
Search
This is a real estate website, so it’s no surprise that people come here to look at homes. That’s what we’re all here for, right? We’ve recently added some new search features to our website and we’re busy testing and implementing them throughout the site. While our main map-based search (and its rental search counterpart) are easy to use and look great, we are experimenting with another search version that gives you a bit more control (more criteria that you can search for) and we like the search results pages a bit more. Want to take a look? Take our more detailed search for a spin.
McNair Custom Homes
When we teamed up with McNair Custom Homes, we wanted to make a statement about our strong belief in their homes. For years, Kimberly Howell has been selling their homes and helping people plan and build new homes with them. As the listing agent for all of their properties, we stand by them in their commitment to building incredible homes. “Reputation is everything” has become the motto behind all that the two companies do and we love that our visitors are spending time getting to know them and their homes. Whether reading some of the blog posts about McNair Custom Homes or looking at homes built by McNair Custom Homes, we hope you get to know them better.
Rentals and Applications
We see a lot of traffic to our posts about rentals, particularly about rental applications. The two most popular posts are “Why Is My Rental Application Taking So Long?” and “Why Does a Rental Application Require So Much Personal Info?” It’s clear that people get a little anxious once they’ve applied for a rental and the wait can be a bit frustrating.
Incorrect Surveys
A blog post that generates a lot of interest, “What If Your Property Survey is Incorrect?,” has been an interesting one to watch in the comments section to see what kinds of problems people have faced with their surveys.
The Option Period: Termination and Timelines
The Option Period in Texas real estate contracts gives the buyer a chance to terminate the contract for any reason during a specified period of time. This time period is typically used by buyers to do inspections and negotiate any repairs, but a lot of people, both buyers and sellers, have questions about how it works. This post, “The Option Period: Termination and Timelines,” helps explain the timelines and what happens when they are missed.
image courtesy of Burp Hammie