Does your dog respond when you call?  Is your K-9 loyal?  Does your pooch make you smile?  Does your hound know the difference between the lawn and the living room?

These questions have led me to one conclusion; your dog might actually be able to outsell the average Realtor.

If you were to call your average Realtor and your dog, who would respond the quickest?  Point 1 for Dog!

Wouldn’t your dog stand by your side if you offered him a fat piece of bacon?  Yet, if you offer a fat commission to an average Realtor, they’ll show any home.  Loyalty point for the Dog!

Fido knows that certain business happens on the lawn and not in the living room.  Yet, an Agent makes it a point to note “the yard” and “the living room”… gee thanks!  I’ll call this one a tie.

Although many agents are excellent, and it may seem funny, I stand by my statement that a dog can give the average Realtor a run for their money.

WHY?

The Real Estate Industry is broken.  It just doesn’t make any sense anymore.  The Realtor that drives you around in their Cadillac from home to home is simply a thing that is best left in 2006.  Technology has forever altered how we find and shop for housing; yet large companies that are worth billions are set on keeping things the same. I’m here to shake things up a bit.

The problems are obvious, but no one was really trying to fix them. “Big Money” is stopping innovation.  Realogy is the parent company that owns Century 21, Sotheby’s, ERA, Better Homes and Gardens and many other companies that you know in real estate.  This company accounts for over 25% of all real estate that is sold in the United States, and they have a tremendous share of the market globally.  This is a multi-billion dollar company that is set out to keep the multilevel marketing model that has plagued real estate for years.  The average turnover is close to 70% per year, causing experience levels to fall to all-time lows. When you call an office, there’s a good chance that the person that picks up the phone has limited real estate experience, if anyone actually picks up.

A recent JD Power and Associates survey found that home buyers and sellers satisfaction with Real Estate Brokers is the lowest it’s ever been. I truly believe that a large part of the low sentiment is because the industry has refused to adapt.

Real Estate is no longer local.  We can all go onto our phones, tablets, and computers to find properties that are available for sale or rent in any city in the country, yet we have to wait for some agent to show them to us.

Technology has changed the way we shop, but real estate brokerages have not.

At Marketplace Homes, we have developed a platform that changes the way real estate works.  We did this because we believe in our heart that your dog should not be able to outsell us!

• We do everything over the phone and through the internet.
• We have a team of specialists for each home.
• We are highly tech enabled.
• We guarantee our results.
• We do not “network” market for sales.  People call us because they want to move.

One small step for your family, one giant leap for Real Estate, one small growl for Fido.

The post Would Your Dog Outsell Your Realtor? appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

Summer is almost here and the pending warm weather will soon have us nervous to open our utility bills. But since we are in May, there is still time to position yourself for lower cooling bills during the hot months ahead. Consider these tips to stay cool without blowing your budget:

Keep the sun out. Got curtains? Be diligent about keeping your curtains or blinds closed on windows when the sun is shining in, especially in the morning. If I don’t do this in our family room and kitchen in the morning, the indoor temperature would spike to 85 degrees quickly and the kids would likely be left sweating at the breakfast table.

Plant trees. Trees not only look nice but the shade they provide is fantastic for your comfort and wallet. Several years ago, I planted two Crepe Myrtle trees outside and now the sun is completely blocked all summer long from entering those windows. Trees that drop leaves in the fall are ideal, as they’ll let in sun during the winter and help warm up the rooms.

Use a programmable thermostat. Keep your home at a controlled temperature with a programmable thermostat. The most effective way to use it is to keep your home warmer when you are at work and have it automatically lower the temperature before you get home. When it comes to energy efficiency, the worst thing you can do is leave the A/C off during the day and then turn it on when you get home, burdening it to lower the inside temperature by up to 10 degrees; you will end up using a lot more electricity cooling the home that way. Instead, keep your thermostat at about 80 degrees while you are at work, for example, and then program it to drop back to the mid-70s a half hour before you get home.

Install a whole house fan. If you live in a painstakingly-humid climate, it could be worth investing in a whole house fan (as low as $200), which can pull in the cool air at night as well as in the early morning. Simply open a few windows, turn it on and enjoy the free air conditioner.

Maintain your A/C unit. Your air conditioning will use less electricity if you keep your unit in good running order. Have it tuned up every spring or learn to do it yourself.

Keep the cool air in. Check the weather stripping around your doors and windows to make sure they are properly sealed. Weather stripping works by keeping conditioned air in your home and unconditioned air outside. Also, just because your doors and windows have weather stripping on them doesn’t mean your home is energy efficient.

Over time, stripping can get worn and damaged, and should be inspected every year. The most cost-effective way to test your stripping is by holding a lit candle next to the doors and windows; if the flame moves significantly, closely examine stripping for tears or worn edges and replace if necessary.

The post 6 Easy Ways to Lower Your Summer Cooling Bills appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

Container gardening is HUGE. Just Google it. You’ll see what I mean. Even those that own their own homes are turning to container gardening because of the limitless amount of options in creativity and aesthetic available. There’s only so much you can do with the ground, but the world of containers is monumental.

Since I’m a renter and a wanna be green thumb, I have some ideas to share! First, you can use almost anything as a container. Don’t get swindled into buying the yawn inducing, over priced pots at the big box stores (seriously, it’s as if they want us to be uninspired by their selections). A few of my absolute favorites for this concept are cinder blocks and paint cans (pictured below).

Cinder blocks have an astonishingly streamlined, modern, industrial yet DIY look to them and they couldn’t be cheaper! Check out these ones for sale at Lowes for $1.05! In my book, that’s almost free.  So building one of these striking cinder block planting walls is one of the most unique and affordable solutions.

Paint cans are another really unexpected way to display plants and flowers. Here’s how to make these adorable paint can containers for your garden.

-          Peel off the label (does the idea of all that peeling make you crazy? You can buy shiny new label free paint cans for just $2.97 here).

-          Decide if you want your paint can to coordinate with the flowers/plants your putting in them or if you’ll just be going rogue and getting artsy with it.

-          Buy those cute little paint samples. They’re only about $3.00 and you can get every color custom mixed.

-          Using a paintbrush, drip some of the paint around the outside of the can, up top right at the lid.

-          Start off with a small amount. It’s easy to add more but messy and hard to take away paint.

-          You want drips. You want it to look as though that paint miraculously spilled out of the can into adorable little flower matching drips J

-          Let your newly dripped paint dry

-          Get yourself a nail and a hammer (I don’t think I need to tell you how cheap a nail is). Hammer the nail through the bottom of the can about 5-8 times so that the water can drain – I’ve learned that there IS such a thing as too much water recently. Oops.

-          Plant flowers!

That’s it. Now make a few more of different colors and you have a marvelous DIY container garden set that is unique, affordable and most importantly, portable when you move!

These are just 2 of the countless things that you can turn into a container for plants. Seriously. If you can scoop some dirt into it, you can use it as a container garden. Here are some other cute/unique/awesome/adorable/unexpected items that you could use:

Wagon, watering cans, old boom box, rain boots, synthetic handbags, wood tool box, shoes, sand bucket, baskets, crates, tin cans, old mixing bowls, recyclable shopping bags, dresser drawers and Chinese food carry out containers.

Be creative and unique. Don’t feel that you have to have the same garden as your neighbors. Don’t let the big box stores box you in with typical everyday pots. A pot is just a pot but when you make a pot out of something cool and unexpected, it’s a piece of art.

Thanks for checking out my second Rental Rehab post! If there is a topic that you would like tips or ideas for, please let me know! I’m at jessica.yeager@marketplacehomes.com

The post Rental Rehab : Gardening To Go! appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

Did you move in 2012? Was your reason to find a floor plan that fit your family? Save on energy bill costs? Take a look and let us know in the comments below what category your move fell into.

The post The Reasons People Moved in 2012! appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

While the move between recent peaks and valleys may be more psychological than anything else, the change translates to only about $12.50 per month for a $100,000 30-year fixed-rate mortgage/mortgage rates, even at their yearly high, remain at historically low levels.

The Federal Reserve: Arguably the most influential factor at the moment, the Fed has been instrumental in keeping downward pressure on interest rates. Purchasing up to $45 billion in Treasury bills per month, along with $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month, will allow the central bank to manipulate interest rates for some time to come. How long the Fed will massage mortgage rates is an open question, with some members pushing to reduce this support as early as this summer.

U.S. economy: Whether strong or weak, the economy’s influence over mortgage rates is powerful and constant. A strong economy produces widespread demand for mortgage credit and may create inflation, while a weak economy does the opposite. The Fed’s current programs are an attempt to spur economic growth and even create a little inflation. To the extent that the Fed succeeds and the economy improves, the result will ultimately be higher interest rates. For the moment, the struggling economy is prompting investors to head for the safety of government-backed debt, pushing Treasury yields down and dragging mortgage rates right along.

Foreign concerns: Concerns of all stripes overseas have been another factor keeping U.S. interest rates low. Investors around the world have expressed concern over political issues in North Korea and Syria and financial issues in the Eurozone by stashing their money in the safest place they can find, usually U.S.-backed Treasury debt. Again, this serves to push yields down further than they would otherwise be.

Demand: Mortgage rates also tend to ease when demand tapers off, often the consumer reaction to higher interest rates. Less demand loosens up the mortgage pipeline to a degree, and lenders may need to price loans somewhat more aggressively in order to attract more business. A steady period of rising rates may be followed by a period of more aggressively priced loans, which in turn can help keep mortgage rates from rising as much as they otherwise would, at least for a time.

Inflation: Inflation affects interest rates on mortgages, treasuries and other fixed-income investments by cutting into investor returns. Thus, when inflation is high, lenders must raise rates in order to keep their profit margins in line. The current lack of inflation concerns has helped to keep mortgage rates from rising more than they otherwise would, and more importantly, helps provide them with more room to fall.

These lids won’t stay sealed forever. Should the fiscal or political climate improve, money would tend to move out of these safe-havens in search of greater returns, but to the benefit of mortgage borrowers, the world remains unsteady in the meantime.

Source: USNEWS

The post 5 Factors Keeping a Lid on Mortgage Rates appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

For the past six years, Marketplace Homes has been incredibly adaptable to the marketplace.  We have offered brokerage deals, land contracts, lease options, sandwich leases, guaranteed leases, corporate leases, rent to own, seller buy back, you name it!  Clients would call with housing situations and I knew that ANY and EVERY situation could be solved!

In addition to offering incredible solutions, we adapted the WAY that we offer the solutions.  Instead of driving around town all day, we do everything over the phone and through the internet creating a much more private and more efficient experience for our clients.  Due to this structure, our clients can see a home at any time and in any place! They can even get a solution for the old home while sitting on the couch eating a burrito and drinking a smooth Arnold Palmer.  (I just happen to like Burritos and Arnold Palmer. Insert your favorite food and drink, take a bite and sip. See how delightful that is? ).

So since Marketplace could sell in ANY place we decided that we should expand to EVERY place!  We rapidly grew our model into 20 different states.  We had a mission to make moving FUN and do it in every corner of the globe.  I mean, you have to create a story worth telling right?  Our story is going to be big!

And then something horrible happened. We figured out how to send automated surveys!  As it turns out, our clients told us that they don’t care about our rapid expansion, it was only our egos that did. Our clients didn’t care if we were located in every corner of the earth, they cared about if we could we help in their neighborhood.  Our clients didn’t care about a far flung creative real estate maneuver that we pulled out of the depths of my brain. They cared about what simple solution could solve their problem.

These surveys helped tell us what our clients really wanted. They wanted SAMEness!  Is that possible?  Anyone that knows me probably knows that each day is a unique endeavor into exploring what thing my mind may unearth.  I tend to think that if at least 7.3 people haven’t looked at me a bit odd or said the phrase “That seems a bit crazy” then I’m not thinking enough.  How could I focus on creating SAME?

Let me explain what I mean.  When you buy a Ford, you might choose the color or a couple of options, but basically you are getting the same car as everyone else.  As a result, Ford has built a couple million of the same car and it runs great, doesn’t have issues, and simply starts when you turn the key.  See what I mean. You want an innovative car, that is the same.  SAMEness is actually a measure of quality.

Then it hit me, since we had never tried to be the SAME, the most un-SAME thing I could do, was layout things that would be the SAME at Marketplace Homes, every time!

We can engineer new technology and incredible programs; however our clients need a few things that are always the SAME!  So I decided to radically keep things the SAME:

1. We will answer the phone.
2. We will call you back.
3. We will show a home at any time in any place.
4. We will find your dream home.
5. We will create custom solutions for your old home, even if it means NOT selling it.
6. We will do things privately over the phone.
7. We will have the best tech enabled solutions in real estate.
8. We will GUARANTEE our results.
9. We will work as a team, giving each customer many brains, instead of just one.

So, I think that gives us some things to count on in the world!

Now that I have exhausted SAME, I’m off to figure out how to virtually show homes that are controlled by your phone.  Phew, that feels better.

If you are craving a company that is revolutionary (with a new set of sensible SAMEness) then perhaps Marketplace Homes is the answer.

-Mike Kalis

The post When SAME is Revolutionary! appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

Q. What is your title and when did you begin working at Marketplace Homes?

I started at Marketplace Homes in May of 2011 in the call center. I moved over to Marketing shortly after and my current title is Campaigns Coordinator.

Q. What is your job description?

I actually do a lot of different things here at Marketplace Homes. I oversee our Property Management marketing and I also help create, plan, execute and optimize our marketing campaigns.

Q. What is your favorite project that you’ve worked on – or – what was a benchmark that was reached that you were particularly proud of?

I am extremely proud that our marketing team was able to completely improve the process of marketing our clients’ homes for rent. We took a process that was mediocre, and turned it into an efficient and effective method to find quality tenants that will love these homes as much as our clients do!

Q. What’s your favorite movie?

My favorite movie is Dog Day Afternoon! Crime, drama, humor…it’ doesn’t get better than that!

Q. When you’re not working what are you most likely doing?

If I’m not working I am probably spending time with my husband, Mike, and our 7 year old son, Noah.

Q: If you could pick one celebrity to work at Marketplace Homes, who would it be and why?

Easily, Dwight Howard. I think he would have us laughing constantly!

The post Employee Spotlight- Bailey Schmidt appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

Having a home that is both pet and people friendly may seem like a challenge, but with a little knowledge and the right items in place, you can create a comfortable, visually appealing, and easier-to-clean home.

The first thing to keep in mind is that creating a safe home for your pets is actually very similar to child-proofing. For example, you wouldn’t display a family heirloom like a standing lamp in the most active room of your home if you have little ones for the same reason you shouldn’t if you have pets.

That being said, here are four tips for creating a pet friendly home:

Opt for hardwood or laminate instead of wall-to-wall carpeting
Carpet is difficult to keep clean because it acts like a magnet for pet hair and dander, allergens, and the “accident” your pets may have from time to time. While the surface appears clean, not even the best vacuum can rid carpet of what pets leave behind.

Area rugs
If you absolutely must have a rug, choose inexpensive area rugs that can ultimately be thrown out instead of being cleaned. Of course you can toss them in the washing machine a few times first, but depending on the quality, they will probably end up falling apart. A good tip to keep in mind is to try to match the area rug to the color of your pets fur!

Keep fragile out of the equation
Just as you wouldn’t decorate with expensive items if you had children, the same goes for pets. If you have items that are expensive or irreplaceable, keep them limited to high shelves that wagging tails can’t get to. If you have a larger dog that stands on his hind legs to do the happy dance, keep that in mind when deciding how high a shelf is high enough! Cabinets with glass doors are not considered pet friendly. Instead, choose to display decorative items in rooms that are off limits to pets.

Prevent drool spots with the right paint
Using semi-gloss paint on your walls will help keep the drool spots to a minimum because it is easier to clean. Just use a wet sponge and dry with a towel!

Having a pet friendly home will allow for a happier, less stressful life for both pets and owner. What additional tips do you have?

The post 4 Steps to Create a Pet Friendly Home appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

-Mike Kalis

“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.”

-Mother Teresa

The post Open Mike: Strength Always Beats Fear appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.

1.  Plant an herb garden.  It’s good to have a reminder around of where our food originates, and this one is super easy.

2.  Switch all your lightbulbs to CFLs (or at least switch a few).

3.  Create a homemade compost bin for $15.

4.  Switch one appliance to an energy efficient model (look for the “energy star” label).

5.  Stop using disposable bags. Order some reusable bags or make your own—they’re insanely easy.

6.  Buy an inexpensive reusable water bottle, and stop buying plastic disposable bottles.

7.  Wash laundry in cold water instead of hot.

8.  Turn off lights when you leave the room.

9.  Don’t turn on lights at all for as long as you can—open your curtains and enjoy natural light.

10.  Drive the speed limit, and combine all your errands for the week in one trip.

11.  Better yet, walk or ride a bike to your errands that are two miles or closer.

12.  Support your local economy and shop at your farmer’s market.

13.  Turn off your computer completely at night.

14.  Research whether you can sign up for green power from your utility company.

15.  Pay your bills online. Not only is it greener, it’s a sanity saver.

16.  Put a stop to unsolicited mail — sign up to opt out of pre-screened credit card offers.  While you’re at it, go ahead and make sure you’re on the “do not call” list, just to make your life more peaceful.

17.  Reuse scrap paper.  Print on two sides, or let your kids color on the back side of used paper.

18.  Conduct a quick energy audit of your home.

19.  Before buying anything new, first check your local Craigslist or Freecycle.

20.  Fix leaky faucets.

21.  Make your own household cleaners.

22.  Line dry your laundry.

23.  Lower the temperature on your hot water heater.

24.  Unplug unused chargers and appliances.

25.  Re-purpose something. It’s fun.

26.  Collect rainwater, and use it to water your houseplants and garden.

27.  Use cloth instead of paper to clean your kitchen. Be frugal, and make these rags out of old towels and t-shirts.

28.  Use cloth napkins daily instead of paper.

29.  Re-purpose glass jars as leftover containers and bulk storage, especially in the kitchen.

30.  Donate to—and shop at—thrift stores.  You’ll be recycling perfectly usable items, you’ll be supporting your local economy, and you’ll be saving money.

Which of these do you already do?  Which ones are you going to focus on this next year?  And what can you add to the list?

The post 30 Easy Ways to Go Green at Home appeared first on MarketPlace Homes.