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Countdown 2018 – Top 10 Pages and Posts

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Countdown 2018

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

Top 10 Posts at Kimberly Howell Properties for 2016

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Top 10 Posts at Kimberly Howell Properties 2016

Every year, we look back to see what the Top 10 Posts of the year were for the website. Some stalwarts always remain, but the old make way for the new and this year, we find quite a few newer posts making the list of the Top 10 Posts at Kimberly Howell Properties for 2016. We encourage you to read some of the posts you may have missed and let us know what your favorite posts were – both on this list and off. Drop by in the comments below or head over to the Kimberly Howell Properties Facebook Page and leave a comment there. In the meantime, we’ll continue seeking out great topics and writing all about real estate in San Antonio and surrounding areas. See you soon…

Top 10 Posts in 2016

#10 – Construction Loans, Lot Loans, and Interim Loans – Written by agent Linda Mosse, this post first appeared back in 2013, but continues to be one that people turn to when they need information about lot, interim, or construction loans.

#9 – Title Commitment vs. Title Policy – Which One is Which? – We found that many people didn’t know the difference between a title policy and a title commitment, so we decided to provide some information on both to help.

#8 – Closing on a Home While You’re Out of Town? – What do you do when the boss tells you that you need to be out of town on the day your home is going to close? This post gives you the answers.

#7 – Buyer Representation Agreement: A Closer Look at Contracts – An older post about the Buyer Representation Agreement, this post helped start our regular feature of breaking down some of the forms we use in real estate to help you understand them before you’re sitting in front of one with a pen in your hand.

#6 – Who Pays For the Survey? – In a residential contract, there are several choices as to who pays for the survey, but there are also some performance items that are tied into some of these…miss a timeline and the survey may be paid for by someone other than who you expected.

#5 – The Option Period: Termination and Timelines – The option period is easily one of the greatest tools for a buyer in a real estate contract and with this post, we show you how it all works.

#4 – Third Party Financing Addendum for Credit Approval – Real Estate Contracts – We have written a newer version of this post, but this one remains popular. It now contains a link to the newer post so that you’re getting the most up to date information.

#3 – Flood Zones and FEMA Mapping – No one likes to hear the dreaded words “flood zone,” but they do exist here in San Antonio and you need to be aware of them and what they mean for you.

#2 – What’s a T-47 and Why Do I Need One? – The T-47 is probably the most misunderstood form in real estate. We break down the form and why it’s used in this post from earlier this year.

#1 – What If Your Property Survey is Incorrect? – This one generated a lot of discussion in the comments and it appears that incorrect surveys are more common than you would think. Know what to do if you suspect your survey is wrong and how you can go about getting it corrected.

So there it is, this year’s Top 10 Posts list. What would you have put on it? What were your favorites? What posts will come along next year to compete with these articles? You’ll have to stick around to find out…

image courtesy of yoppy

Top 10 Neighborhood Searches at Kimberly Howell Properties in 2016

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Top 10 Neighborhood Searches at Kimberly Howell Properties 2016

When it comes to real estate, we all want to know the same thing – what’s the neighborhood like and what’s for sale in the area. We spend countless hours online researching neighborhoods and homes, often long before we ever step foot in a house or speak with a Realtor. It’s the age of the online home search and we at Kimberly Howell Properties have dedicated ourselves to bringing you a website that provides that information and gives you the latest homes for sale so that you can do your research on the neighborhoods and areas that interest you. The following list of neighborhood searches are compiled from data gathered in 2016 and represent the neighborhoods that our visitors had the most interest in throughout the year.

Top 10 Neighborhood Searches in 2016

#10 – Knolls of Woodlake – Just down the road from #9 in our neighborhood searches, it’s easy to see why these two neighborhoods rank so closely.

#9 – Walzem Farms – Coming in from the city’s northeast side, Walzem Farms is right between Fort Sam Houston and Randolph Air Force Base, making it convenient to those needing access to military bases.

#8 – Ridge at Canyon Springs – With a variety of homesites available for new construction and plenty of new homes to choose from, it’s no surprise that Ridge at Canyon Springs made the list. All of the Canyon Springs neighborhoods ranked well throughout 2016 and have been know to take top spots in years past.

#7 – Deerfield – Deerfield will always rank high on neighborhood searches, because of its location and wide selection of homes to choose from.

#6 – Bear Springs Ranch – A bit of a surprise with this one as most of the top neighborhood searches tend to be within San Antonio, but this area of Mico has proven to be popular this year. There is also high interest in the lots for sale in Bear Springs Ranch.

#5 – Encino Park – Encino Park is both a specific subdivision as well as the more widely used term for multiple neighborhoods in the area. We found that more people visited this page, which covers all of the homes for sale in the neighborhoods that make up Encino Park and has information about local businesses, the schools, and living in the area.

#4 – Canyons at Scenic Loop – We also noted a lot of traffic for the page showing just lots for sale in Canyons at Scenic Loop, but it fell just short of making the Top 10 list.

#3 – Shavano Creek – Who wouldn’t want to look at the homes for sale in Shavano Creek? They’re gorgeous homes with incredible landscaping and are always at the top of the list for neighborhood searches.

#2 – Rogers Ranch – Rogers Ranch covers a wide array of neighborhoods all in one master planned community. Community info, school info, and homes for sale can all be found on this page.

#1 – Mesas at Canyon Springs – This neighborhood took the top spot, but we also saw a lot of interest in the more generalized neighborhood of Canyon Springs (which encompasses all of the subdivisions in one page along with information about the area, schools, and local builders involved in the neighborhood).

What neighborhoods did you have an interest in this year? What neighborhoods were top spots for sales? Where do you want to live? We look forward to showing you neighborhoods are across the area through our coverage of neighborhoods as well as the many homes listed throughout the year. If there’s a specific neighborhood that you’d like to learn about and see highlighted on this website, let us know.

image courtesy of Manel

Top 10 Posts At Kimberly Howell Properties

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Top Posts Kimberly Howell Properties

Every year, we take a look back at the top 10 posts for the year here at Kimberly Howell Properties. While we enjoy looking back for the nostalgia, it also gives us a great look at what you have been searching for and what you’ve been reading on our website. This year, since we just went through a relaunch of the site, we thought we’d dig a little deeper into the data and see what posts came out on top since we launched this site back on September 6, 2011. Some of the top 10 posts are about the local San Antonio real estate market, while others focus more on lifestyle and local information. We have big plans for the website heading into 2016 and we hope you’ll come back through the year to learn about real estate, search for homes, and read about some of the things that make living in this part of Texas so great.

Acreage

#10 – Construction Loans, Lot Loans, and Interim Loans

This post by agent Linda Mosse will help you navigate the world of buying a lot and building a home. The lending process on building a home on your own lot differs from that of buying a house that’s already been built, so this post is a great place to start.

Homestead Tax Exemption

#9 – Don’t Forget Your Homestead Tax Exemption!

This post about the homestead tax exemption (which was raised to $25,000 in November 2015) includes information on the exemption, as well as a downloadable form (currently updated) to apply for your exemption. The homestead tax exemption is always a popular topic at the end of the year as you cannot file for one until the year you have lived in the home on January 1st. So if you bought a house on January 2nd through December 31st of 2015, you will be able to file in January of 2016.

Buyer Representation Agreement

#8 – Buyer Representation Agreement: A Closer Look at Contracts

One of our posts that takes an in depth look at a real estate form that we use here in Texas, this look at the Buyer Representation Agreement breaks down the agreement paragraph by paragraph. This form often seem daunting to buyers when they first see it, but is actually quite straightforward.

Disclosing Death in Texas

#7 – Disclosing Death in Texas

When do you need to disclose a death on a property that you’re selling? This post covers the rules as laid out by the Texas Property Code about such disclosure. It’s a question we hear a lot and definitely a topic that many people want answers to based on the traffic to this post.

Parade of Homes 2013 - San Antonio

#6 – Parade of Homes 2013 at Cibolo Canyons

The Parade of Homes is always a popular topic, but this year (2013) has proven to be extra popular on the website. Held at Cibolo Canyons, the Parade of Homes featured some pretty amazing homes that year (sadly, we aren’t allowed to take photos of them at the Realtor events they hold).

Survey Marker

#5 – Who Pays For the Survey?

When buying a home, there may be questions about which party pays for the survey. The seller? The buyer? No one? Ok, we all know it’s not the last answer. This post covers who is required to pay for the survey (the answer is in the contract) and what happens if an existing survey is going to be used (someone may still wind up buying a new one if the contract is not followed).

Money Shirt

#4 – Third Party Financing Addendum for Credit Approval – Real Estate Contracts

A look at the Third Party Financing Addendum for Credit Approval used in residential contracts in Texas, this post breaks down the individual sections of the form and outlines what they mean and when they’re used for each type of loan a buyer may be seeking to obtain.

Flood Waters

#3 – Flood Zones and FEMA Mapping

You can almost see the weather when looking at a graph of the traffic to this post…when we experience a major rainstorm, the popularity of this post spikes. Written by Linda Mosse, the post covers FEMA flood maps and gives some of the resources to find out whether your home or lot is located in a flood zone.

Pumpkin Patch

#2 – Pumpkin Patches and Fall Festivals

While many people wouldn’t associate Texas with typical fall weather and activities, residents of San Antonio can’t get enough of their pumpkin patches. We’ve written several posts about pumpkin patches and fall festivals, but this is the original that started it all.

San Antonio's Most Expensive Homes

#1 – San Antonio’s Most Expensive Homes

SA Scene magazine released their list of most expensive homes in San Antonio in 2012 and our visitors loved it. They still flock to this post about some of the places San Antonio’s rich and famous choose to call home. The homes may get more expensive as time passes, but many of the neighborhoods maintain their status on the list.

Since the site was launched back in 2011, we’ve had a lot of people stop by our site and choose us to be their real estate agents. It’s been a great time building this site and watching it grow and we look forward to many more years in the future. Have a post you’d like to see? Contact us and let us know.

post image courtesy of Bert Kaufmann, all others courtesy of their respective owners as noted in the individual post

Top Ten Real Estate Articles for 2014

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Countdown

Which Real Estate Posts Were Most Popular?

Every year, we like to take a look at our analytics to see what real estate articles were viewed by our visitors the most. On top of satisfying our curiosity, it also helps map out the next year of real estate related content that’s relevant to you. We’d like to thank everyone that stopped by our little corner of the internet to read posts, ask questions, and search for homes. We have some big things planned for 2015 for the website and hope you’ll keep coming back for more.

Top 10 Real Estate Posts 2014

  1. Who pays for the survey? – Surveys are one of the many negotiable parts of a real estate contract, so it’s no wonder that buyers and sellers are searching for information on who should pay for a new survey. The language in the 1-4 Family Residential Contract lays out several options and knowing the difference is crucial to understanding who will wind up paying for the survey.
  2. Third Party Financing Addendum for Credit Approval – Real Estate Contracts – An essential part of the purchase of a home if you plan on getting a loan, this post about the Third Party Financing Addendum was part of our series breaking down different parts of the contract so that people could better understand them long before they ever sat down with their agent to write a contract. These post proved to be rather popular and brought some great discussions with clients and agents.
  3. San Antonio’s Most Expensive Homes – This article was based on SA Scene Magazine’s list of the one hundred most expensive homes in San Antonio. We took the article and broke down the homes by neighborhood to see where the concentrations of San Antonio’s most expensive real estate was located. Every loves beautiful, expensive homes, even if they’re not buying them anytime soon.
  4. Flood Zones and FEMA Mapping – When it comes to flood zones and FEMA maps, people have a lot of questions, particularly when they redraw the flood zone maps. Agent Linda Mosse wrote this post (one of two that appear in our top ten list) utilizing her expertise in lots and land purchases. If you’re looking to buy land, I highly recommend her post, Lots and Land: Do you know what to ask?, as a great starting point.
  5. Disclosing Death in Texas – Whether or not you need to disclose death on a property in Texas is a question we see quite often. We break down when and why you need to disclose death in a real estate transaction.
  6. Buyer Representation Agreement: A Closer Look at Contracts – Another in our series of taking contract forms and breaking them down, paragraph by paragraph, this one takes a look at the importance of a buyer representation agreement and the protections it provides in creating an agent-client relationship when looking to buy a home.
  7. Don’t forget your Homestead Tax Exemption! – If you bought a home in the past year and it is your primary residence, this article is one for you (we typically post a new version every year, but this one is from 2012). The Homestead Tax Exemption helps homebuyers save on their property taxes and is easy to file.
  8. Construction loans, lot loans, and interim loans. – Once again, our resident lot and land expert writes an article in the Top 10. Construction loans and the lot purchases that go with them can be complicated to navigate, so here Linda helps break down some of the info you’ll need to make the right choices.
  9. Inter-what? Intermediary in Texas Real Estate – Intermediary can cause a lot of buyers and sellers to scratch their heads and say “huh?” when they first hear about it. It’s also an often heated debate in real estate circles as to whether it should be allowed or not. In this post, we try to look at both sides of the issue and explain it so you can make informed choices about whether or not to be involved in an intermediary transaction.
  10. New Real Estate Scam Targeting Agents – Any post about real estate scams will always get a lot of attention. This one was a message to fellow agents about a scam we had recently seen in emails asking for information about a property, but instead, it was a phishing scam to get your email account username and password.

We’re looking forward to sharing more great information on real estate in 2015 and bringing you some great new features. If you have questions you’d like answered or things you’d like to see more of on the website, feel free to let us know.

image courtesy of Stéfan

Top 10 Posts on kimberlyhowell.com in 2013

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Number Ten

What Posts Did You Read on kimberlyhowell.com?

Continuing with our 2013 countdown, today we’re looking at the Top 10 posts at kimberlyhowell.com through 2013. We added a lot of content this year and although some of the top spots were easy to guess, the topics were varied. Thank you for being a visitor to our site and we look forward to bringing you more great posts in 2014 and beyond! PS If there’s ever a topic you’d like to see covered, feel free to let us know.

Parade of Homes 2013 at Cibolo Canyons – No surprise here. The annual San Antonio Parade of Homes is always a top contender for most read posts, because people are always searching for info on when the Parade of Homes is, where to get tickets, and photos of the homes themselves.

San Antonio’s Most Expensive Homes – Much like the Parade of Homes, everyone is searching for information on the most expensive homes. There are entire sites dedicated to these homes and every year SA Scene breaks down the homes and neighborhoods of San Antonio’s priciest homes. This post was actually written back in 2012, but still continues to get tons of traffic.

Disclosing Death in Texas – Not exactly the most fun topic to discuss, but time and time again, we hear questions about whether it is necessary to disclose a death in a home.

Who pays for the survey? – An in depth look at surveys and who is required to pay for them when buying a home, including a look at what is expected if an old survey is used.

Flood Zones and FEMA Mapping – Agent Linda Mosse is an expert when it comes to issues regarding land and lots. Her articles about lots and land are a great resource for buyers and we highly recommend them. Look for more great posts from her in 2014!

Choose Your New Home Upgrades Wisely – When having a new home built, it’s always a good idea to think through the upgrades you purchase direct from the builder. You can save a lot of money by knowing what upgrades you can afford to do yourself, as the builder’s markup on items is often steep.

New Real Estate Scam Targeting Agents – No one hates real estate scams more than we do and when we find out about them, we use our website to tell the world, so hopefully one less person will get caught up in that mess. This particular scam targeted real estate agents and was seen by quite a few of our agents, so we wanted to pass it around so that other agents wouldn’t fall for it.

Bexar County Appraisal District (BCAD) and Incorrect Information – Sometimes the information in the Bexar County Appraisal District’s records is flat out wrong. Just recently I had a bank argue with me that the home in question was located in Bexar, Texas – they thought Bexar was the city, because someone had entered in the data without the city name of San Antonio. It caused a huge mess with the bank, but we eventually got it all straightened out. It’s a good idea to check the info from time to time and be sure your records are correct.

Buyer Representation Agreement: A Closer Look at Contracts – A paragraph by paragraph break down of the Buyer Representation Agreement detailing what each section means and how they are filled out by your agent. We’ll be doing more of these breakdowns in 2014, so be on the look out for them!

Who chooses the title company in Texas? – Many people assume it’s the seller’s choice as to what title company to use, but that’s not necessarily true. More often than not, most buyers and sellers are unaware of this fact and we’re here to set the record straight.

So there you have it, the Top 10 Posts on kimberlyhowell.com for 2013. Did you miss our other countdown posts? Check out the Top 5 Neighborhood Pages and the Top 5 Pages of 2013. We look forward to bringing you more great real estate content in 2014…see you soon!

image courtesy of Leo Reynolds