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Wonderfully private – your own backyard oasis featuring an inground pool and a newly renovated kitchen! Beautifully situated on 3 magnificent acres and convenient to everything! Generously sized living and dining rooms. Finished lower level is walkout – offering a separate entrance, perfect for a home office or aupair suite. Every room has terrific views. The breakfast room opens to a tiered deck ringed with evergreens. This home is a perfect luxury townhome alternative…live here as it is or consider expanding as there is plenty of space and lots of potential!

Four bedrooms (3 bedroom septic), three full baths, two car garage, almost three acres, in-ground pool…and more!

Offered at $825,000 – SOLD for $777,500

A new study by Yahoo! Real Estate shows that people still value homeownership. In fact, 81 percent of the current and prospective homeowners surveyed said that owning a home is still a part of the American dream. In addition, buyers are now more confident that their dream home is within reach due to today’s low mortgage rates and affordable home prices. Of those surveyed, 72 percent said they already live in their dream home, or will own it someday.

Additional findings from the Yahoo! Real Estate Home Horizons study include:

• Half of all respondents are looking for “green” or energy-efficient features in their dream home, as they aspire to reduce their carbon footprint. This was the most popularly cited feature.
• 57 percent of respondents said they were very satisfied with where they live, while 35 percent were somewhat satisfied and 8 percent were unsatisfied.
• When asked why they want to move, 45 percent of buyers said they want to live in a larger space. Other popular reasons were a desire to live in a home that better suited their lifestyle (42 percent) and to live in a better neighborhood (30 percent).

Based on the results of the study, Yahoo! Real Estate expects 2012 to be the year in which demand for green homes, energy-efficient appliances and lowcarbon impact home building materials really take off.  Are you ready for the
change?

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Search for Basking Ridge homes for sale.

Search Basking Ridge townhouses for sale.

Search Bedminster homes for sale.

See what has sold in Basking Ridge

Down to $854,900

I need to shout this from the roof tops!  This is another great price adjustment for this property.  This home sits on just over three acres and is convenient to everything!  Offering four full bathrooms, a renovated kitchen and a lovely sun room – this home is not to be missed!

Visit Basking Ridge Real Estate to search homes for sale and to review what has sold each month for the recent past.

Only one closing so far in Basking Ridge since December 1st.  10 Springfield Lane in Amherst Mews sold for $885,000.  This was my transaction!  There have been fourteen contract sales – so the market isn’t dead, but I am sure we will see a little bit of a slow down for the holiday season.

If you are considering putting your house on the market this spring, it might make sense for you to list it sooner rather than later.  Buyers are typically ready before sellers and if you get on the market early you will have less competition from other properties.

Take a moment to review this list of items commonly found during home inspections – buyers are being particularly picky with their home inspection requests.  It isn’t uncommon for a buyer to request several follow-up inspections after the initial structural. This can include an evaluation of the heating system, a roofer, a level II chimney inspection and more.  Try to stay patient and accommodating and I will do what I can to help keep it easy.

This is a repeat of an old post – - because, well, because it’s come up again.  Twice for me in recent transactions: M O L D has reared it’s ugly head.  This disappoints buyers and often blindsides sellers.

The inspection part of any real estate transaction can be very stressful.  It is hard enough for many sellers to have people traipsing through their homes, then (especially in today’s market), negotiating a price which is probably lower than they wanted and finally, having a home inpsector examine every nook and cranny and producing what is most often a very lengthy report.  There are several inspection issue which as a seller you really need to remediate – regardless of cost, because if you don’t do it for this buyer, you will have to do it for the next buyer.  Structural issues and hazardous situations fall into this category.

So does Mold.  Mold sneaks up on you, most of my clients who had mold had no idea that it was in their home.  In two of the homes it was in the attic, in the three others it was in the basement.  Sometimes it is obvious once you know it’s there but at least in one case it was still hard to see even after the mold expert pointed it out.

As a seller you really don’t have a choice but to clean up mold that is found in your home.

Dan Harkins from NJ Mold recommends that every house in NJ should have a dehumidifier in it – period, end of discussion.  If you don’t have one, go get one!  They make them bucketless now!  You can have it drain right into the slop sink or the sump pump pit (but NOT in your sewer drain – that’s against the rules!).  They also make them specific for crawlspaces.  This small thing may save you from a big expense when you decide it’s time to sell your home.

If you have a question about a home inspection issue, feel free to contact me directly and  I will see what I can do!

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Search for Basking Ridge homes for sale.

Search Basking Ridge townhouses for sale.

Search Bedminster homes for sale.

See what has sold in Basking Ridge

Twelve closed sales in Basking Ridge since I last posted a market update on 11/16/11:

• 340 Penns Way closed for $215,000 – Society Hill
• 147 Jamestown Road closed for $232,500 – Spring Ridge
• 58 Alexandria closed for $273,500 – Spring Ridge
• 141 Village Drive closed for $$355,000 – Lord Stirling Village
• 65 S. Alward Ave closed for $549,900 – my listing!  multiple offers!
• 215 Patriot Hill Drive closed for $557,500 – Patriot Hill in the Hills
• 117 Goltra Drive closed for $592,000
• 23 Forest Trail closed for $573,000
• 128 Patriot Hill Drive closed for $630,000 – Patriot Hill in the Hills
• 68 LibertyRidge Road closed for $764,000 – Liberty Ridge in the Hills
• 37 Chimney Ash Farm Road closed for $770,000
• 267 English Place is closing TODAY! – my listing!

There were 10 new listings in this time period and there were 13 contract sales – not bad for the last two weeks of November, traditionally the end of the Fall market.  I am still very busy – writing a contract today, I have a listing appointment this week and another appointment with move-up buyers on Sunday.  My partner Gerry is also out with clients this week…Maybe the Fall market will carry us right through to Spring!

In the Bedminster Hills –

• 3 bedroom
• 2 ½ bath
• Living room and a family room
• 1 or 2 car garage
• Basement preferred but not a must, finished even better
• High ceilings are not desired
• Up to $500,000

The Basking Ridge Real Estate team from Weichert (Jennifer Blanchard, Judi Jensen and Gerry Light) are working with qualified buyers who are looking for homes in the following locations:

• Bedminster: Stone Run and Edgewood up to about $500,000
• Bedminster: Autumn Ridge up to about $700,000
• Basking Ridge: any four bedroom single family home in the Hills specifically including the Carlisle and Liberty Ridge sections up to about $750,000

Seven sales in Basking Ridge since the first of November:

• 118 Conkling Street, list price: $359000, sale price: $275000
• 26 Cedar Street, list price: $797000, sale price: $768000
• 171 Jamestown Road, list price: $234000, sale price: $215000
• 128 Patriot Hill Drive, list price: $645000, sale price: $630000
• 67 Vanderveer Drive, list price: $1069900, sale price: $1060000
• 84 Highland Avenue, list price: $453800, sale price: $425000
• 75 Landau Road, list price: $814900, sale price $815000

Additional Basking Ridge market information:

Ten contract sales since the first of November: two condos, three townhouses and five single family homes.  Price point ranges from $229,000 to $1,495,000 and average days on market for these ten listings was 49.5 days.

There are 168 active listings in Basking Ridge (search here for listing details). With 19 sales in the last thirty days, Basking Ridge market absorption rate is 8.8 months.

On the state level – The Garden State Rocks!

New Jersey Association of REALTORS® (NJAR®) Chief Executive Officer Jarrod C. Grasso today issued the following
statement:

“For the third quarter of 2011, New Jersey existing home sales outperformed sales in the northeast. The resiliency of Garden State infrastructure and industry, plus our location between the New York City and Philadelphia markets, places us in a strong position for employment and stability.

“Compared to New Jersey’s other metro areas, one particular bright spot that displayed a slight median home price increase from the third quarter of 2010 was Newark, N.J. With a revived commercial real estate market, this shows the correlation that improving accessibility to employment can help preserve property values.

“General economic concerns continue to affect consumer confidence, which is in turn affecting home sales. Tight lending restrictions are also keeping creditworthy buyers from capitalizing on the current opportunity to purchase a home. It is more important now than ever to recognize the benefit of working with a REALTOR®. Whether a first-time or repeat buyer, investor or a family exploring their options, it pays to work with a professional who is educated in local markets and specialized transactions, such as short sales and investment properties.”

Necessary Blog Housekeeping

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“DPW crews will be coming through all neighborhoods in the coming weeks to pickup and chip street tree debris in the public right of way. They will also perform limited hazardous branch removal. Please be patient: this pickup will take weeks to accomplish with our limited manpower.”

The above paragraph was posted on the Bernards Township website. Running through and driving through many neighborhoods here in town, I’m thinking that this may have been misinterpreted.  There is SO MUCH tree debris along our curbs and sidewalks – clearly NOT there as a result of “street trees”, but from yard trees….  The township is not going to pick up the limbs and branches that have been dragged to the curb.  The Pill Hill recycling center/dump has been extending their hours to accommodate the clean up from this crazy storm.