Homeowners getting ready to sell their home will be pleased to know that, in many cases, they will not owe capital gains taxes. If they do, there are large exemptions, as long as the home is their primary home. The following information explores when capital gains tax may be owed when selling a home.

For informational purposes only. Always consult with an attorney, tax, or financial advisor before proceeding with any real estate transaction.

The Ownership and Use Test

In order for homeowners to qualify for a capital gains tax exemption, the home must pass what's known as an ownership and use test. First, the home must be owned at least two years and must be considered a primary home. To qualify as a primary home, the owner must have lived in it for at least two of the past five years.

The two years don't need to be consecutive, however. Someone can purchase a home, live in it for a year, rent it out for three years, then live in it one more. That would add up to two of the past five years, qualifying it for the exclusion.

A home that was purchased as an investment and rental property can be converted to a primary residence and still qualify. It will just take time living in the home to convert it to a primary residence that is exempt from capital gains taxes up to the legal limit....

No matter what you want out of your home sale, you should have options.

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Have you ever noticed how most real estate agents assume they know what you want out of your home sale?

I believe you should have options—options that include:

• Selling quickly for cash and moving out on your time frame (potentially with no commissions or closing costs)

• Having a full market blitz (it will take longer, but you’ll achieve a higher price)

• Allowing us to provide you with the capital to rehab your property and sell it at maximum profit

Which is best for you? Over the years, we’ve noticed that most sellers' agents pigeonhole them into using just one selling process. This is just a case of those agents assuming that they know what their sellers want. Many factors go into a...

Many people are under the impression that the winter is a bad time to list their homes for sale. In reality, the opposite is true here in San Diego County.

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It’s that time of year when people begin to ask us, "Hey, we want to move but holiday season is approaching. Is it a good time to sell? What should we do?" No matter how the market is performing, year in and year out it’s always the same story. People think that spring and summer are the best times of the year for home selling. Many homeowners would ideally like to sell during the winter, but unfortunately they decide to wait because they think it’s not the best time to list.

Every year, sometime between September and October, we see a peak in inventory here in San Diego. This means that if you're planning on selling your home during those months, you're going to have a lot more properties to compete with compared to any other time of year.

The reason for this is that by October, we’re left with the glut of spring...

In today’s message, I’ll address one of the biggest home seller myths in the industry and bring the truth to light on how open houses should (and shouldn’t) be used.

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Often to the detriment of sellers, listing agents will place the open house front and center when it comes to their marketing strategy. Unfortunately, though, the results just aren’t there: In their studies, The National Association of Realtors has revealed that a mere 4% of home sales originate from an open house.

Despite the numbers indicating very modest success, neither the agents nor the public has backed away from this practice and it remains a popular means of real estate marketing today.

Now, I don’t blame the consumer, because agents often tout the open house as an effective tool, but rather than just letting your agent heavily depend on an open house to sell your home, it’s important to press them to lay out a data-driven strategy that will systematically lead to the sale of your home.

SIGN UP: 92127 Free Listing Contest

In our constant effort to give back to the 92127 community, we have decided to unveil the 92127 Free Listing Contest!  In very simple terms, If you are selling your home this year and sign a listing agreement with our team before August 31st, we will sell your home with no listing side commission.  Our team won’t earn a dime for professionally servicing, marketing, negotiating, and successfully closing your home.

Just visit www.92127FreeListingContest.com to enter.  Winner will be announced September 5th at 2:00PM.

Most importantly, the winner will receive our full marketing package, the entire 5 Day Blitz™ program that has led to us being recognized by The Wall Street Journal and Real Trends among the top teams in the nation.  Why?  Because it is the only way to ensure a Full Market Response and net the most money possible.

Free Staging Package

This contest is our THANK YOU to the community for making us the #1 market share holder for 92127 THIS YEAR & LAST (there is a gentlemen in town that reports statistics from years ago  that are no longer true), we are going to also include a FREE STAGING PACKAGE! Let’s turn this into an absolute home run for you.

Triple the Win

As if that weren’t cool enough….

• This year we have averaged...

Today I’m going over some real market numbers to expel the myth that any home will sell in our market.

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There are so many numbers that get thrown out in regards to the market and people make a lot of assumptions based on those. Today I’m going to go over the real numbers to let you know exactly what is happening in our market.

One of the assumptions is that any home will sell. That couldn’t be more wrong. Just in the last 30 days, 688 homes have expired or been cancelled, or in other words, they failed to sell. That’s compared to 3,508 homes that went pending in the same time period. That’s a 19.6% failure rate which means almost one out of every five homes failed to sell in our market.

If you look at any given street, homes will come on the market and sell for one price but on a different street, those same homes with the same floor plan will fail to sell. If you start to buy into the idea that you can work with an amateur, your home will be that one out of five homes that fails to sell. Even in this hot market, you need an expert working for you who has a proven process to sell homes.

If you have any questions about selling your home or the real market numbers, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’m more than happy to help.

These Rancho Bernardo home sellers invested a great deal of their time and money into upgrading this home and so needed an agent who could earn them top dollar.

Extremely motivated to get on the market, they gave us a call interested in knowing more of our Guranteed Sold program that promises our clients we will sell their home at 100% of their asking price within 29 days or we will pay the difference.

After finalizing the renovations and landscaping, their home was ready to be put on the market. Our team implemented the 5 Day Blitz™ program, which in turn brought in dozens of people through the first day of showings creating a competitive environment. 

After just 6 days on the market, the home sold for 102% of the asking price! 

After seeing several Beer Home Team For Sale signs in their neighborhood, these homeowners decided to meet with our team to learn more about our business and how we have become so successful in the community.

The couple was moving out of state for work and so needed to sell their home quickly. While interviewing other agents, Beer Home Team's home selling strategy stuck out to them the most and seemed as if it would being the most value.

With that, we implemented our 5 Day Blitz™ program right away. After a few home improvements, professional staging and top-notch photography, this home was ready to be put on the market.

Over 29 groups of people came to the first day of showings and just 5 days and multiple offers later, the home sold for 104.6% of ask. 

This issue is really the root of all other pricing issues.  Most sellers view the asking price as the future sales price.  But your asking price is not your sales price.  Your asking price is a strategic decision to position your property for what will hopefully be maximum exposure in the market place. 

Very simple proof that your asking price is not your selling price is that some homes sell below the asking price, some sell above the asking price, and yes, some will sell at the asking price.  However, even in those cases, it is important to understand that the asking price was still a marketing price and it is entirely possible that money was left on the table by not creating a more competitive pricing model.  That is especially true if you only received one offer.  That indicates that you most likely disinvited the rest of the market place from participating in your home sale. 

The truth is that if you sold your home 10 times you would most likely get 10 different numbers for the house.  There is no exact to the penny value on any home.  When you truly embrace that reality, you will come to see your asking price as a marketing number and not the sales price.

The purpose of marketing is to draw in the entire market of buyers who could conceivably be interested in the product or service you are selling.  Having said that, is the asking price of your home working for you or against you?  Is it drawing people in or is it pushing them away?

...

After attending our Annual Community Pie Giveaway last year, these homeowners decided to meet with our Head of Listing Department to learn more about our business and we have become so successful in their community. 

The couple was moving to Utah for work and so needed to sell their Del Sur home quickly. While interviewing other agents, Beer Home Team's home selling strategy stuck out to them the most. It was a no brainer. 

After a few home improvements, professional staging and top-notch photography, this home was ready to be put on the market. 

Over 35 groups, close to 100 people, came to the first day of showings! Just 6 days and multiple offers later, the home sold for 102% of ask.

If you are looking to sell your home quickly and for TOP dollar, call us at 858-413-2169 to learn more about our flexible commission and menu of services as well as our Minute-to-Minute Agreement.

by Daniel Beer

The Problem

Stop following the crowd! Like everything else in life, when you are doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you typically will get average results.  That is a law categorically impossible to break.  By definition, if you act average, you will get average.

For home buyers, average takes on the shape of doing what all other buyers are doing.  Looking at the same homes.  Chasing down the latest home to hit Zillow or your favorite website.  Attending the same open houses.  Calling on the same “For Sale” signs. 

The result, much to your chagrin and all too familiar if you are currently on this path, is that you are constantly in a state of frustration as a buyer because the best homes tend to go fast and with multiple offers.

You think you are ahead of the pack because your new listing alert hits and you run out to see the home, but what you find is that the listing alert also prompted dozens of other buyers across the market.  You can’t seem to get ahead.  Always behind.  Always stuck in the crowd.

Sometimes you notice homes that seem to be available without competition.  But they don’t excite you for a wide array of reasons, just like they don’t excite the other buyers.  Could be due to presentation, pricing, staging, photography, or an array of other reasons.   You say no to those homes, just the same way the rest of the market has said no.  Still part of the crowd.

Nearly all buyers in any given market are all going after the same set of homes. That...

Why would an agent take an overpriced listing? At first glance it would be a silly and pretty much stupid thing for an agent to do.  Why would an agent want to spend their time and money marketing a property that they aren’t sure will be able to sell and by most any objective measure is overpriced?

A stream of very logical questions.  Fair questions from home sellers that are simply looking for an honest discussion with somebody they hope is not only a real estate agent, but a professional real estate agent.  Somebody that understands the nature of their fiduciary responsibility to their client.

Nevertheless, we all know that there are some homes out there that are priced beyond the range of reasonable value and will sit indefinitely.  Perhaps you have actually experienced this ugly scenario yourself with a prior home sale.

To understand why an agent would take on an overpriced listing, all you have to do is look at the math.  There are roughly 20,000 real estate agents in San Diego County.  Many get licensed with the promise and allure of million dollar listing after million dollar listing.  TV shows on Bravo and HGTV probably don’t help.   But the reality is that there are only roughly 37,000 homes sales per year in San Diego County.

That’s 20,000 agents for 37,000 home sales.  Now, every home sale has two of what agents call “sides.”  The buyer and the seller side.  So every sale provides two opportunities for an agent to be paid.  That adds up to 74,000 sides.

That may seem like a big number, but when you consider that 74,000 sides divided by 20,000 agents only equals 3.7 sales (or sides) per agent,...

Today I’m discussing the empowered home sale, our trademarked methodology to get you the most money possible for your home sale.

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Today I’ll break down how to achieve the empowered home sale.

Have you ever sold your home and found yourself wondering if you could have had more, even if you got your asking price? Most people would say yes. Subconsciously we understand that all the traditional home selling model ever gives us is an individual opinion on price, and it pins the buyer against you as the seller. The empowered home sale is the process of bringing the market to the home.

You don’t just hire a real estate agent to give you a price. Even in our seller’s market, there are hundreds of homes that go unsold every month, and it’s mostly because most agents fail to enact a strategy that results in an empowered home sale.

The root of the problem is that their goal is typically to find the buyer. When your focus is so narrow, you focus on activities to just bring a buyer. The buyer comes to see the home when they want, and they see it on their own; there’s nobody for them to worry about.

When that buyer makes an offer, how can you be certain that it’s the most money the market will bear for your home? You can’t—all you’ll ever know is that it was that single person’s...

These homeowners were putting an offer on their dream home out of state, contingent upon the sale of their home here in San Diego. Needless to say, they were in desperate need of a quick sale.

They interviewed us to learn more about our strategic 5 Day Blitz™ program they kepy hearing about on Jeff and The Showgram on KyXy. They absolutely loved what they learned as it lined up exactly with their needs and tight deadline and so these eager home sellers decided to put their trust in our hands. 

We put the foundation of our marketing and prospecting in motion right away.

Just 4 days after their home was put on the market, the home sold for 106% of the asking price! Our clients were ecstatic their home sold so quickly and for top dollar, giving them plenty of time to move out and into their new Ohio home.

Are you ready to have a quick home sale and break away from the traditional home selling techniques?

Fill out this form or call 858-465-7913 to learn more about how we can GUARANTEE sell your home quickly and for top dollar! 

This homeowner attended one of our Home Selling Workshops and loved what she heard, so decided to choose Dan Beer as her real estate agent. With a contingent offers out on another home, she needed this home sold fast to close escrow within 60 days.

One week later, the home was staged and photographed to be put on the market. Our team implemented our 5 Day Blitz™ program, which brought over 35 groups of people to the first day of showings. 

Just 6 days and multiple offers later, the home sold for OVER the asking price! 

Your home could be next! Just call us at 858-755-1999 today!

by Daniel Beer

There was very little talk about housing throughout the election, unlike in 2012 when it was a major focus.  Despite that truth, housing is set to be majorly impacted by the new administration. Admittedly, much more than I had considered or believed to be true just a short time ago.

There are major components at play that look to greatly impact our local housing market, especially being a coastal Southern California city.  The way the environment is shaping out is largely driven off of inflationary rhetoric, financial deregulation and uncertainty.  Let’s explore each.

But first, if at any time you want to have a conversation about the housing outlook and how it affects your personal situation, please reach out and we will do so privately. 

Higher interest rates have already begun.  In fact, as of the time I am writing this article on November 15, 2016, interest rates a half point higher than the day prior to the election.  That is a massive change in a short amount of time.  So why is this happening?

There is general sentiment in the equity markets that Trump will establish pro-growth policy that should push equities higher.  So as of the time of this article being written, stocks are up dramatically.  But at the same time, much of the money flowing into stocks has been coming out of the bond market, which has pushed the benchmark 10-year treasury note higher along with...

This Week's Client Success Story

Right off the bat, these Rancho Bernardo homeowners let us know they wanted to work with an agent who could sell their home quickly and for top dollar because they already planning their next chapter in life in Dwight, Illinois. After interviewing multiple other agents, the owners decided to list their home with Beer Home Team because of how much they loved the 5 Day Blitz™ marketing program.

Our unique and iconic program brought in over 45 groups of people to the first day of showings AND multiple offers. The home sold just 4 days later for 104% of the asking price! The owners were ecstatic to find out they could move to their new hometown sooner than they hoped and with more return than they ever expected. 

Call for proof! 

858-465-7913

OR

Email Dan at: Dan@BeerHomeTeam.com

Professional Home Sellers Use a Market Positioning Report - Throw Out the Comps!

By Daniel Beer

Forget about the traditional home valuation, CMA, comps and other basic tools that any agent can provide straight out of real estate school with a couple clicks of a mouse.  This information only looks at the past but does not look at other critical measures of where the market is moving and how to intelligently position your home into that market.

Throw out the Zestimates and other online auto generated nonsense valuations.  Do you really think that Zillow knows what your interior looks like?  If you have a view of the mountains, ocean or a busy road and how those values differ?  Do you think Zillow understands that your property is on a slightly higher elevation than your neighbor so your view line clears the home behind you but your neighbor’s does not?  Do they know about your new kitchen remodel?  Answer is obvious.

Professional home sellers never look at or care for any of these basic tools that are used by the masses.  It is a professional Market Positioning Report that matters and it is the only way to gain a strategic advantage over all your competing neighbor sellers who are only looking at the comps, CMA’s and online valuations.

A Market Positioning Report, which you can request at no charge at all, distinguishes itself from what all the other masses of people use in that it takes into account the direction the market is moving in and focuses...