Bal Harbour Homes / A Guide for Buyers and Sellers

Qualifying the Buyer for your Bal Harbour Property


Either you or your agent will want to weed out potential buyers who cannot afford to purchase your Bal Harbour home. Items to investigate include the buyer’s debt and credit history, current income and employment, the availability of cash for a down payment, the time the buyer needs before closing on the home and the buyer’s level of interest in your home as compared to other properties.


Bal Harbour Home Buying Pitfalls


Buying your Bal Harbour home whether you are a first time buyer or an ‘Old Pro’ involves legal, financial and emotional considerations. The more you know about the most common buyer mistakes in Bal Harbour, the more likely you are to avoid them.

Make sure that when you put in an offer on any Bal Harbour home that you have spent time narrowing down just what you are looking for. When the sellers accept your offer, you are involved in a binding contract that could cost you your deposit and other damages should you decide to back out. The opposite scenario, waiting for the 100 % perfect home can be an exercise in futility. With the thousands of variables available in housing, including location, style, size, amenities and condition, perfection is almost always an unreasonable goal.


Bal Harbour Real Estate Contract Options


The most common type of listing agreement used between sellers and the real estate broker is known as “The Exclusive Right to Sell” Agreement. In this agreement the agent agrees to include the home in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The details of a Bal Harbour real estate listed in the MLS are available to all agents and brokers and with the advent of the Internet, MLS listings are shown on the World Wide Web.


Bal Harbour Real Estate Cycles


What makes most sense is the "buy and hold" strategy. Buy a home you expect to remain in for at least seven years or more. Bal Harbour is no different than most, although the Bal Harbour market does have it's own special circumstances.

Want to get a clear and up-to-date picture of the Bal Harbour real estate market? Call me at any time. I am happy to share my knowledge of the real estate market with homeowners and prospective homeowners who want to take advantage of market trends to buy and/or sell wisely.


Choosing Your Bal Harbour Neighborhood


The fact is that much of the value of Bal Harbour and real estate in general rests in its surrounding economic and social environment, which means it’s neighborhood. In addition to being located in the right neighborhood, the Bal Harbour that you buy must not clash with its surroundings. To picture what we mean here, visualize the most expensive home you can imagine and then place it in the middle of a run down neighborhood. Not so desirable is it?

To sum up, the Bal Harbour that you buy gets its value from a combination of the home’s location and its size, style, age and amenities. You can change the home’s size, style and amenities but you are stuck with the location.

Rent or Buy Bal Harbour


In the early years of your Bal Harbour mortgage, nearly all of every monthly payment is interest. This means you are only paying off a tiny bit of the loan principal, but it is good news in terms of tax savings.

The monthly payment for a $100,000, 30-year, 8% mortgage on your Bal Harbour would be about $734. In the first year of your mortgage, $7,970 of your $8,805 payment or 91% would be deductible as mortgage interest. Even in the tenth year, almost 81% of your payments would be deductible. What this is worth to you depends on your tax bracket but this tax savings built into the home-buying equation is why you can afford to make higher mortgage payments than your current rent payments without squeezing your budget. There is no similar tax subsidy for renters.