There have been many headlines decrying an “affordability crisis” in the residential real estate market. While it is true that buying a home is less affordable than it had been over the last ten years, we need to understand why and what that means.
On a monthly basis, the National Association of Realtors (NAR), produces a Housing Affordability Index. According to NAR, the index…

“…measures whether or not a typical family earns enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a typical home at the national and regional levels based on the most recent price and income data.”

Their methodology states:

“To interpret the indices, a value of 100 means that a family with the median income has exactly enough income to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home. An index above 100 signifies that family earning the median income has more than enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a median-priced home, assumin ...

The Fall buying season is officially upon us. School has started, the weather has begun to cool off. People aren’t spending all their time on the lake and real estate lookers have become real estate buyers. There is nothing we want more than to be sure our clients have the best chance to see the area and buy the property they want. To make sure your Lake of the Ozarks dream home becomes a reality, here are some tips to help you prepare for your home search. Being prepared will help make the process smooth and successful for you and all parties involved.

Before Arrival 

Let us know your schedule: Your plans are made, your vacation housing is secured and you're ready for some fun in the sun but you also plan to make time to do some house hunting. Just as you wouldn't book your condo or hotel days before your arrival, it's not an ideal strategy to wait on letting your Realtor know you'll be in town. Right now are busy months for a Realtor and their schedules tend to fil. ...

On our real estate team, we work with the latest, greatest technology to make your job as a homebuyer or seller much easier. 


One brand-new tool we started using is a 3-D camera. This camera can build virtual tours of your home. We have done a few open houses with this technology, hosted 3-D tours on Facebook, and shared these images with potential buyers. 


There are several different ways to look at these 3-D images. You can use your computer, phone, or products like Google Cardboard to get a true 3-D experience. Buyers can feel like they are in your home without having to leave the comfort of their own. 


Unfortunately, as a real estate agent, it’s common to hear buyers say that they are disappointed when they come to see a house in person. With 3-D images, you cannot hide anything. These 3-D tools help save you time as a buyer because you won’t waste time looking at disappointing properties. 


If you list your home with us, we us! ...

Looking to buy in Lake Ozark? Get a full Home Search 
Looking to sell in Lake Ozark? Get a free Home Price Evaluation

Fall is gorgeous down here at the lake with the weather cooling down and the leaves starting to change colors. We wanted to take this time to talk to you a little bit about our new website and some of the cool new features on it.

Our website, searchlakeozarkshomes.com is pretty simple to use, but we wanted to give you an overview of some of the features that it has. For starters, the entire active MLS is on our website and is updated in real time.

The many different menus on our site have pages for buyers, sellers, and featured listings. In addition to those, we also have a few different home search functions. The first is the “search for homes” page that allows you to do an advanced search of our MLS. There are a lot of different filters you can add to your search to give you the homes you want to see. In addition to searching by the nu! ...