Archive for January, 2009
Meet Karen McHale, Winner of the ($1.2 million) Fifty Dollar House in Edgewater
January 28th, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, The Fifty Dollar "Raffle" House
(Update: The winner of the Fifty Dollar House, whom you’ll meet here, has decided to sell. You can read all about it by clicking here.)
We’ve all driven by it dozens of times along Route 2, vowing that we’d plunk down $50 for a raffle ticket…and maybe, just maybe get lucky.
But a Colorado woman who never did drive by – indeed, who has never even visited the Annapolis area – turned out to be the lucky winner of the 6 bedroom, 4 1/2 bath, 6,000+ square foot home known locally as the Fifty Dollar House.
Karen McHale, a chemical engineer from Idaho Springs, Colorado, claims she’s never won a thing in her life. But when she heard about the raffle on the news and learned that ticket sales would help support a good cause – We Care and Friends - she said, “Why not? Even if I don’t win, I’ll be helping out.”
Married and a mother of two, McHale promptly put the raffle out of her head. Then out of the blue she received a phone call this past Friday afternoon from Tom Walters, the home’s owner, informing her that she held the winning ticket. “At first I thought it was a joke! I was excited, and a little in shock. Then I wondered – what am I going to do with it?”
Her friends tell her she should keep it – “so they have a vacation home!” But she may decide to sell the home.
If so, chances are she’ll use some of her windfall to help fund a self-publishing venture she’s launched.
A volunteer firefighter, McHale has created a team of fictional characters she calls Fire Station Buddies - Flash, Scout, Tundra and others – as a way to teach children about safety, science, engineering and problem solving.
The first in a series of Fire Buddies books – The Legend – is already on sale. A portion of her book earnings will go into a fund McHale has started to help support volunteer fire departments across the country.
We hope you sell a million!
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Rx For a Withdrawn Listing: How To Tune Up Your Annapolis Real Estate
January 24th, 2009 Categories: Sellers
So, Your Home WAS Listed, It Just Sat There Gathering Dust, and Then the Holidays Rolled Around
So you withdrew it from the market. Too much hassle…not enough action. Now what?
First, let’s look at the reasons it probably didn’t sell.
1. Condition – Your home has issues that turned buyers off – you know, peeling Formica, paint colors from the ’50’s, dings in the walls.
2. Marketing – Your home wasn’t presented well enough or widely enough to the marketplace.
3. Price – The market didn’t like your asking price. Maybe agents/their buyers didn’t come right out and say so. But they said so when they bought something else – a better value – somewhere else.
4. This Really Screwed Up Economy We’re All In Right Now.
Well, the good news is – other than the economy – you can fix all these things. The bad news is, you may not be willing to. You may not even want to. Which leads us to:
5. You’re just not that into it – selling your home, that is.
#5 Explained: A Little Story About One Annapolis Home That Never Did Sell
It was a nice condo, wonderful location, pretty well priced. But when the condo didn’t sell – and the owners kept resisting our advice for remedying certain problems that needed attention – we knew something was up. Read the rest of this entry »
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