- Check Out My New Look! Bringing you Real Estate News Each Month!

My Website

My Listings

Property Search

My Sales

Testimonials

In and Around Sewickley

Ask Kathe

What's New in Real Estate - February

Greetings!

At long last I have re-templated my newsletter and hope you enjoy the new look! This should be much more user friendly than my prior newsletter and you will be able to read it on your phone! As always, I will include past Ask Kathe articles so you can stay up to date on what is interesting in real estate, and you can easily link to portions of my website to check out homes for sale and sold!

The spring market is starting to wake up, and in the middle and lower market segments, we are seeing multiple offers! If you are considering selling, give me a call so I can help you take advantage of this incredibly strong market!

Best Regards,

CHECK YOUR SEWER BEFORE YOU LIST!

Our neighbor just had to replace their sewer line – is that a common home inspection repair?

Sewer lines have become as radon was 20 years ago – today’s hot button for home buyers. In some boroughs (Mt Lebanon, for example) the borough now requires that before a home seller can transfer ownership, the sewer line must be scoped and must be without issues. Here in the Sewickley area, we do not have any boroughs imposing any such requirement on home sellers, but many buyers today do have a scope performed of the sewer line as part of their home inspection. And yes, ...

Click Here to Read More...

DON'T GET LEFT OUT IN THE COLD

The polar vortex has left us wondering if there is anything we should be doing to our home to help it survive these cold snaps?

Last week’s incredibly low temperatures left many homeowners in the region with unexpected frozen pipes. It seems in Pittsburgh we may not build with as much attention to cold air defense as they do in historically colder regions of our country, and these unusually low temperatures catch us off guard. As we rebound a bit from the extreme cold, however, it is a great time to think about how your home responds to super cold temperatures. If ...

Click Here to Read More...

BETTER NOT WAIT 'TIL SPRING

We’ve been thinking about starting our search for a new home but were wondering if we should wait until more homes come on the market this spring?

The spring market is here (although with the forecasted low temps for this week it may slow things down a bit)! Buyers are definitely buying right now, so if you think a move is in your future, despite the cold temperatures, the time to get started is now! We have seen...

Click Here to Read More...

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF MORTGAGE RATES

I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but what do you think about mortgage rates right now?

The short answer: I think they will only go up! We just had a slight drop in the rates this past week, but that is not expected to hold. If you are considering buying, now is definitely the very best time to take out a loan – by next month rates could have bounced back up again! There is really only one problem I see ...