All Forum Posts by: Ika Sargeant

@Greg Houts and @Adrienne Green I want in the triangle. Can you share the zip area for your home. Amazing job.

@Anthony Fanucci Most of the cities you mentioned have metro train nearby and all will offer strong rentals. The one city without a metro nearby is Fairfax but even with that a lot of areas around Fairfax will have a metro connector bus to Vienna or Reston metro. Proximity to Washington DC or access via metro is very important. And the cities you mention sit inside Fairfax county with strong regulation for ADUs. I believe Alexandria was reviewing their rules or may have completed the review. 

@lulu Mpofu I am not in West VA but just wanted to say hello.

@Phil Cecere If your question is purely a real estate question; is the right time to sell? absolutely. But I suspect your real question is; you have 210K equity returning 11.5K annually. Where can you find better returns? Always a more complicated question. Are you going to buy another home? Consider selling costs and buying costs, taxes you have to pay. And if after answering all the questions you have another investment that can return something higher than what you are getting, then by all means go for it. Or perhaps you are tired of been a landlord or may be you think the future condo costs are going to rise faster and eat into your return. Another way to say this is to say; I have no idea if you should sell but if you do, you will catch one of the best real estate market.

@Tousif Rahman I can share title companies with you if you contact me directly.

@Christopher Miller I agree with your point; it is difficult when you start out in this area as a new investor. This market certainly works for long term hold, and hoping your returns will come as the home prices rise. Certainly most new investors do not have a team of contractors that they can use at reasonable costs or the lenders that they may have worked with that structure deals with favorable financing terms. The reality out there is different for new investors who face these hurdles. But I do think you can be creative in finding homes to buy. Sometimes for me it is ok if I can break even but knowing the property might produce good returns over the long run.

@Joe Nguyen I personally do not see how the price jump we are seeing in Washington DC metro  is sustainable. I agree a great part of it is the low rates and of course the inventory levels. Just as an anecdote, I calculated single homes in one area of Maryland priced around 500K were receiving anything from 30K or more over asking price. I have also heard at a higher price point homes are commanding north of 50K over asking price. The difficulty in determining when this market might cool is because I think the demand that is driving this is very strong. Some buyers might decide to drop off but certainly if the rates go up that will cool things off. So where this ends I have no idea. Just hoping the theory that "what goes up must come down" is true.

@Hilary Graves yes it’s customary to show before you make an application.

@Olga Kostrova to me it sounds like this is a case of the agent not doing what they are required to do and putting you the buyer at risk. If you needed an extension and this was not done on time, I would think the agent/broker did not perform. Hopefully you had written down instruction for your agent to request an extension. 

It is true, Virginia is a "Buyer Beware" state.  

@Matthew Koss VA is a bit tough right now but you could try to comb through properties that have sat on the market for a month or more. There not that many but you can still come across a few.