As I've been remodeling my website over the last several months I spent quite a bit of time looking for some truly special photos to show off the best of Vancouver and Clark county. It didn't take me long to find that all the photos that I loved on the web were created by Duane and Shirleen Hymas of Hymas Images. I gave Duane a call and asked him if he had some photos that I could feature on my website. We've been emailing back and forth for months, and couple of weeks ago, we finally met for coffee.
Duane and Shirleen, AKA "Team Hymas", have become renowned for their unique perspective and photos of the Southwest Washington and Clark county. Their photos have been featured on the Washington state tourism website and featured in books about the Northwest. The Columbian newspaper has featured their photos and also wrote an article about them.
Here on my website you can find many of...
FHA recently announced updated guidelines for borrowers that experienced a "economic event" and can document the situation per FHA guidelines. It's called the "Back to Work" Program. FHA allows for the consideration of borrowers who have experienced a defined "economic event" and can document that certain credit imparements where the result of loss of employment, a significant loss of household income beyond the borrower's control occurred, the borrower has demonstrated full recovery from the event and has or will be completing a housing counseling as part of the loan process. Contact me today for more information or to apply!
...
Before you make any major improvements in your Vancouver WA home it's a good idea to consult a Realtor to make sure your investment will add to the value of your home. Nothing is worse than spending money on remodeling only to find you are not getting a good return on your investment.
I often see Vancouver homeowners make improvements that don't add value to their home. One of the most common mistakes is throwing good money after bad, like putting granite countertops on top of older cabinets, adding a bath or shower to a bathroom that is too small to accommodate the fixture, or converting a garage to a family room.
Take the time to figure out what your true motivation is for a remodel, if you want a more open floor plan, consider knocking down some walls to get rid of that seldom used formal living room rather than adding space to a smaller family room. And if you live in the Pacific Northwest, don't add a pool unless you never plan to sell your home. A home with a swimming...
I'm still experimenting, trying to make it easier for my clients to quickly do a home search. One of the features I have added is the ability to search by Price Range.
For example, if you are on the Area Home page for Camas, just below the picture of downtown Camas and the informational paragraph, are price range links. The links are for
200,000-300,000,
300,000-400,000 going up to
over a million.
Every city page on my website now has a pre-defined search by price range.
As always, if you have any questions please give us a call.
Roianne Cox
...
After you have entered all the search parameters that are important to you, be sure not to miss any of the  information available in the Home Detail page.
There is so much to go through it is easy to overlook some of the most important data.
Under "Essential Information" you will find most of the home stats, price, number of bedrooms, baths and year built. A couple of things to notice in this area, year built is most important if it is the current year. New homes are often listed as "To be built" which means they are not even started. So if you see artist renderings in the photos, it is likely this home is not yet built. That might not be a problem, but it can take 4-6 months or longer for construction to be completed. Good to know.
Number of levels and Master bedroom level are both things to consider, as well as the Sub-type, which might be attached or detached. Townhouses and condos are most often attached. Single family detached homes share no walls...
It's easy to use any one of the myriad of home search tools online, isn't it? Nope. Sure, anyone can plug in the price range and number of bedrooms and hit the "Search" button. But the results you get might not be accurate, and they might not truly reflect what you are searching for.
First, and most important get on the right website. If you are looking for homes in Vancouver WA, hopefully it's mine:). Seriously, do a search on Google, Bing or your favorite search engine for "your city homes for sale" when you get to the results page, skip over the ads at the top and the national websites like Zillow and Trulia. Most people don't realize those large National websites do not have accurate results, they don't even have all the homes listed on their websites! That's a whole other blog post topic:). And you may want to skip over even the local results, in my market many of those are property management companies. Look for a local Realtor website.
Once you have found...
