Cleveland Magazine Article

WHO´S WHO

in Real Estate

Outstanding customer service is the

Key to home buying and selling success

Northeast Ohio´s Top Realtors

and Builders as selected by

Sun News Readers

The Sun News February 15, 2007

Holly Pratt, RE/MAX Crossroads Realty

"Anyone would be hard pressed to find a Realtor as professional, honest, committed, dedicated and thorough as Holly Pratt. Those were the exact words from Kim and Chris Elgin of Strongsville, two very satisfied clients who began working with Pratt over five years ago and are now her friends.

" Holly genuinely cares about the people she works with, which meant more to us than anything else," said the Elgins.

Call (440) 846-0077 or visit www.Cleveland-Home-Finder.com.

Excerpted from Cleveland Magazine

March 2006 Issue

What I Learned

For the first time homeowners describe their forays into

the tangled task of purchasing a new home, and share

their best advice to help you find your perfect new home.

by Chrissy Kadleck

Kim Niro, 32, looked at a total of eight houses during her six-month home search in 2003.

"My Realtor [Holly Pratt] was so good at weeding things out for me," Niro says. "Her goal was to keep me under 10 houses; she didn't want me to waste my time looking at properties that weren't right for me."

Niro was clear about what she wanted. "First of all, affordability - something that I could do on my own as a young professional and something that wasn't going to require a lot of fixing up but still had the old charm of the older homes in those quaint little neighborhoods," she says.

She found the perfect mix of price and content in Cleveland's Old Brooklyn neighborhood in August 2003.

"I knew it the minute I walked in the door," she says. "The kitchen and bathroom had been remodeled. It had a full bath in the basement. It had hardwood floors that I loved; built-in cabinets in the dining room. It had a big front porch, which I loved, and a fenced-in back yard. It felt like the right size for me."

KIM'S TIPS FOR FINDING THE RIGHT HOUSE IN YOUR BUDGET:

1| Be wary of looking at houses in a higher price range just because you're offered a big loan. The bank may look at your strong credit rating and approve you for a $160,000 mortgage loan. But, "they are not taking into consideration a lot of things that you have to pay for on a monthly basis," Niro says.

To counteract that problem, Niro carefully laid out her budget. "I wrote out all of my bills, what I had to spend each month and where I wanted to be ? I did not want to be in a position where I couldn't afford to pay for other things outside of my mortgage." Not wanting to be strapped by a house payment, Niro set her sights much lower than the amount she pre-approved for and her monthly mortgage ended up being cheaper than her previous rent of $900. She now pays less than $800 for her mortgage, taxes and insurance combined.

2| Never look at homes out of your price range. "You'll see something that has more square footage or a newer kitchen, and then the stuff [in your range] that you end up looking at - you feel like you are settling. So don't even tempt yourself."

3| Be ready to negotiate, be willing to walk away. "Some people aren't very fair in their asking price," Niro says. "Find out what the owner of the house paid for the house." She notes that homebuyers can access the info on Cuyahoga County's Web site for free. "Even if you love the house, those are the houses that you have to walk away from if they are not willing to come down in price, because you may never see the return on that investment."

4| Check out the neighborhood. Drive through the community at different hours - at night and during the day. If the neighbors are outside, don't be afraid to ask them questions about the area.

One of the biggest reasons Lydia Bishara, 31, wanted to make the leap to homeownership was to take advantage of the tax write-off. She was single and had been living in an apartment for four years. "I wanted to buy a house so I was putting my money toward an investment instead of wasting it on rent," she says. Bishara opted for a four-bedroom home in West Park in July 2005.

"When I walked through the house there was absolutely nothing that I had to do," she says. "The windows were newer and the carpeting was newer. It was remodeled before I moved in and there was only one room that I had to paint and that was it."

Even though her mortgage payment is double what her rent was, she is glad she took the leap.

"I love having the house and I love being able to do my own thing with it," she says.

LYDIA'S TIPS FOR AN EFFECTIVE SEARCH:

1| Take it one step at a time. "It was kind of scary and at times it was overwhelming. There is so much you don't know and it seems like when you start the process there is just that much more that you don't know," Bishara says. "My Realtor [Holly Pratt] was really great. She took me step-by-step through everything, and my financial person was the same way. That was a big part of it."

2| You're not always as ready as you think you are. This was the second time around for Bishara; she looked for houses three years ago and never found the right place. "I looked for about a year the first time but honestly I think that I wasn't ready, so I nitpicked," she says. "There were plenty of decent houses - but I just kept finding some reason to not want it."

3| Keep an open mind. Bishara ended up buying a bungalow instead of the ranch she desired originally. "What I wanted was a ranch with a finished basement or a partially finished basement; I ended up with slab bungalow - and bungalows were my least favorite houses," she says. "This house was so well put together, I just really liked it."

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