Tips on Keeping Your Home Safe this Summer

There are a variety of opportunities in the South Florida real estate market for both buyers and sellers. If you're a prospective buyer click here for a full home search, or if you're considering placing your home on the market, get a free home value report, right here.

Summer time is here. This is the time of the year when the weather is warm and vacations are plentiful. If you are planning on taking a vacation this summer, you will want to keep your home safe while you are away. By following these 4 simple steps, your home will be much safer and less vulnerable to crime while you are away.

1. Get a friend or neighbor to watch your house
• Ask somebody that you trust to either stay in your house while you are gone, or come by and check on it a couple times during the day. Have them take your garbage to the curb, water your plants, and hold your mail so your home will give the appearance that somebody is there, even if nobody is.
2. Use timers for your lights
• Invest in some timers to turn your lights on and off. Keeping some lights on during the day and at night will also give the appearance that somebody is home and make your home that much safer.
3. Don't "Board Up" your house
• What we mean by this is don't shut all the blinds and curtains to your home or do anything extra to lock up your home. These things are all dead giveaways to criminals that nobody is home.
4. Stay off social media
• One of the biggest challenges for many vacationers is staying off of social media to post about their trip. It might be a good idea to just wait to post pictures of your trip until you get home. Criminals are lurking everywhere today, and may even be on your friend or follower list. 

Thanks for checking our video blog out today. We hope these tips were informative to you. If you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call. We would be happy to help you out in any way we can.

How we helped Jake buy a home by being able to narrow down what they were looking for

"We had excellent results with John. We were only in Jupiter for a short period of time so he scheduled us a large number of viewings. He was able to narrow it down in a very little amount of time to find the final property that we ended up purchasing after one day of checking out properties."

Get the Most up-to-date Listings with The Simmonds Team

There are a variety of opportunities in the South Florida real estate market for both buyers and sellers. If you're a prospective buyer click here for a full home search, or if you're considering placing your home on the market, get a free home value report, right here.

When searching for a new home, time is of the essence. You don't have time to wait when searching for the perfect home. Websites like Trulia and Zillow are great tools for figuring out what you want in a home, but their listings are anything but accurate. When a home closes, it can take weeks and even months for it to show up as sold on these sites. Did you know that about 30% of properties on Zillow are no longer on the market?

This can be devastating for prospective home buyers and can put you out of your dream house before you even have a chance to put an offer on it. We want to make sure that this never happens to you. We set up automated updates for all of our clients and give them access to our Multiple Listing Service. Our MLS sends immediate updates to us when an agent puts a home up for sale. With Trulia or Zillow, it may take up to 9 days for that same listing to be posted and depending on the property, it may be sold at that point. Our MLS is the most accurate and up to date and gives you a competitive advantage over all that using a different listing service to find their home.

Another problem with these real estate websites is  their estimates. They don't take into account many different variables that factor into a homes listing such as home improvements needed, location, view, and exposure. All of these factors are important in understanding why a property is listed as it is, and how much money you may have to put in it upon purchase. 61% of their estimates are over 10% off of the closing price.

If you are looking to buy a house and looking for the most current information, we will give you direct access to our MLS database and you will see immediately when a home goes up for sale. This will give you the edge over your competitors on any great property and will make it easier for you to purchase your ideal home.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by phone or e-mail. We would love to talk to you and help you land your dream home!