St. Thomas Real Estate Trends

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Carnival on St. Thomas, and the committee is pulling out all the stops to make it a memorable month-long party.

The theme for Carnival 2012 - submitted by Karen Blyden - says it all: "A Celebration for the World to See, St. Thomas Carnival's 60th Anniversary!"

The 2012 Carnival activities begin March 31 and end April 28.

WANT TO MAKE 2012 DIFFERENT ? How about something unorthodox for a real estate site?

Today I want to share the concept of "Inner Identity" and how it can “make or break” your new year’s resolutions or any goal you may set!

It's a really simple concept, yet most of us go through life never really understanding it. But when you do, you'll realize why resolutions break, goals stay unrealized.

You, just like everyone else on the planet, harbor a persona inside you.

This persona is shaped by everything you've learned from the influences around you.

Like your parents, teachers, preachers, the media and the government.

Once you connect with this persona, or "Inner Identity", you'll begin to understand exactly how to set and achieve any goal you set for yourself - New Year resolution or otherwise.

There are 3 steps to doing this.

But first you should realize - Your Inner Identity influences every aspect of your life.

Like your self-confidence. Your success at work. Your intelligence. Your beliefs about life. Your wealth, weight, relationships, goals... everything.

The problem with most people is they set goals and resolutions on a conscious level - without first checking whether these goals resonate with their Inner Identity.

Here's an example.

Let's say you make the conscious resolution to grow your income by 10% in 2012.

You write down an action plan. You make it a point to work harder. To get closer to your boss. Yet despite your valiant conscious efforts, your subconscious Inner Identity might just be sabotaging you with negative beliefs and thought patterns in relation to wealth.

It could be something you were told as a child, like "money is the root of all evil".

Or it could be a hidden belief that you're not smart enough, or good-looking enough, or lucky enough to ever make it big.

How do you pick up these beliefs? Like I said earlier, they can come from anywhere...

From your high-school teachers, your best friend, TV shows, right down to well-meaning parents who just didn't know any better.

Often, you'd be surprised at how deeply rooted these ideas are - to the point where even if you know they're there, you just can't do anything to stop them from affecting you!

The only solution?

Shift your Inner Identity to a more positive state.

The key to shifting your Inner Identity is to gain EXPERIENCES that affirm the new Positive belief or thought pattern that you're trying to create.

For instance if you want your Inner Identity to believe that money is a tool for good, you should meet and talk to people who embody that belief.

Once your belief starts to shift, your mind will automatically begin to shape beliefs and thoughts that support it.

In other words, your experience shifts your inner identity of WHO YOU ARE.

But this is where it gets interesting:

Your subconscious mind, as powerful as it is, CANNOT different an imaginary experience from a real experience.

Which means you can create experiences in your mind that simulate a real physical experience.

How's that for a handy shortcut?

This is where the art of Creative Visualization comes into play. Here's how you can use Creative Visualization to shift your Inner Identity in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: Get into a relaxed state of mind.

First, Meditate or lie in bed (without falling asleep of course). The idea here is to slow down your brain waves to the Alpha level of mind, the level suitable for mental programming.

Step 2: Imagine a screen in front of you.

Once you're in the Alpha level, think of a movie screen.See it at least 6 feet in front of you, big and wide as if you're in a cinema. On this scene, imagine your current situation. See the pain, feel the discomfort, see how your current unwanted situation is causing unhappiness in your life. The important part here is to feel the discomfort of this situation. Tell yourself mentally that this is not ideal and that you no longer wish this in your reality.

Step 3: Imagine yourself wiping the screen clean.

Move the screen 15 degrees to the left (because your subconscious associates the "left" with your future.)

Now imagine the ideal situation: your life with money, or health, or perfect relationships. Feel the positive emotions associated with this image, because a thought without emotions is powerless. Now bring in your other senses. Feel the wind blowing in your face. Imagine texture and temperature. The more senses you involve, the more real the image becomes to your conscious mind.

Spend between 5 - 10 minutes experiencing this positive scene in your mind.

You may not see results immediately - but keep doing this, and over time your belief patterns will start to shift.

And you'll be surprised at how this shift shows itself.

You may catch yourself thinking more positive thoughts, or intuitively making better decisions in relation to the belief you were trying to fix. I've seen people make dramatic changes in their personalities, careers, love lives and health using this one simple technique.

Learn more about how POWERFUL Creative Visualization can be when done right at http://www.silvamethodseminars.com

All the best with your 2012 goals,

justine

Excellent Information from www.trulia.com

With a transaction as large in dollar amount and life-changing impact as the purchase or sale of a home, experiencing some level of remorse - second-guessing your decision, or even wishing you hadn’t made it - is par for the course. 

Contrary to popular belief, real estate remorse is not strictly the province of buyers. Experience has taught me that on bed the night the contract is signed, the buyer lies awake thinking they could have gotten the place for less - while the seller does the same exact thing across town, thinking they could have gotten more. (Both tend to ring up their agents; that’s how I know this is true!)

But there’s a deeper flavor of real estate remorse that doesn’t go away. It can even haunt a buyer or seller years down the road as they wake up every single day for years on end, regretting their choice of home or mortgage - or the choice to sell or walk away. Whether you’re already suffering from it, or you’re still in active buying or selling mode and want to avoid falling victim, here are my eight cures for real estate remorse.

1.  Before you get started, write out your vision of the life you want to live after you close the deal. It’s easy to get distracted once you’re in the weeds of the actual transaction, losing sight of what’s really important to you - what motivated you to start the process in the first place.  So, before you get started, put pen to paper and write out exactly what sort of lifestyle you are trying to create - financially and otherwise - by taking this path. 

Make sure you include your wants, needs, deal-makers and deal-breakers. 

Then, take that notebook or printout with you into meetings with agents and mortgage pros, and even return to it throughout the process to course-correct your decisions, if necessary.  For example, buyers should revisit their vision document and compare it against the home they are in contract to buy before removing contingencies. This is the easiest way to avoid buying a home you could have predicted would not fulfill your needs.

2.  Ask yourself: how does this decision make you feel? We tend to approach real estate decisions from a place of reason and logic, but sometimes that means we can reason our way right into agreeing to something because it’s easier than sorting out our differences with our mate, or because we’ve been underwater for so long that walking away seems like the only option we still have. The neuroscientists say that the cells in our bodies - and especially our gut - might actually be ‘smarter’ than those in our brains when it comes to making good decisions, as they haven’t been reading the paper or influenced by that guy that shouts all the time on the cable business channels. 

So, before you make a decision, weigh your alternatives and see how they make you feel.  Does the idea of living in this home, even though it’s a fixer beyond anything you expected to buy, make you feel peaceful, expansive or secure?  Does the idea of living in the gated community of your wife’s dreams make you feel constricted, anxious or burdened? Does the prospect of short selling vs. staying put and getting a second job make you feel excited and free or on edge?  Often, your intuition and physical senses provide the best clues to the right decision - the decision that will not result in remorse after the fact. 

3.  Manage your own mindset. Don’t fall into the trap of constant discontent. You might have absolutely hated everything about renting, from your landlord to your neighbors, and used that as motivation to save up to buy your own home.  But if you did, and now every single thing about owning (lenders, lawnmowers and such) makes you crazy, you might just be falling into that too-common fallacy of always thinking the grass is greener on the other side.  

So cut it out. If you truly want to change the way you feel, stop bonding with others over your collective, perceived miseries and, instead, practice feeling gratitude for 10 things a day. I’m trying to list 10 things I’m grateful for every day for a full month without repeating a single thing!  When you practice gratitude intensively, it is much more difficult to dwell in regret and discontent.

4.  Recognize hypotheticals as hallucinations. Hypotheticals, by definition, are the opposite of what is real. So living in a hypothetical world of how much you probably could have gotten the place for, or how much more you might have been able to squeeze out of the buyer if you’d bargained harder after the deal has been done is nothing but fantasy and crazy-making, all wrapped up in an efficient little depressing package. 

Even more crazy-making: wondering what you could have offered for that house that would have beaten the other 20 offers. If you are a buyer who has repeatedly been outbid, the wiser practice is to ask your agent to go back and pull the actual sale prices of the homes you lost after they close escrow, to give yourself a good reality check and leverage the experience to help you have a smarter, more successful house hunt going forward.

5.  Be open and willing to have difficult conversations during the deal. Real estate transactions make some milquetoast types morph into wheeler-dealers, but more often they turn gregarious people pleasers into anxiety-ridden, fear-driven eggshell steppers. Some people who are happy to overshare about virtually anything on Facebook will do everything possible to avoid confrontation - especially when it comes to money matters. 

If you’re the type that finds negotiating excruciating and will do anything to avoid having a conversation about money, do yourself and your household finances a huge favor and just suspend that during this deal. If something doesn’t look right on your contract or you don’t understand something in the loan paperwork, ask and keep asking until it is fixed or you do understand. If you agree to buy a place as-is and as-disclosed (with contingencies, of course), but the inspections and repair bids are overwhelming and you’re afraid you might be getting in over your head, don’t let the fear of losing the place stop you from discussing potential compromises with the seller or even talk with your agent or co-buyer about the possibility of backing out of the deal.
 
6.  Sit still before you start the demolition.  One of the most common forms of remorse I’ve seen is the remorse homeowners have when they start remodeling a place too soon.  The best practice is to live in a place for a few months first, observing patterns in the natural light, traffic, noise and even how your family uses the various areas of space in the home before you start tearing walls down and turning windows into french doors.

7.  Do your own numbers first.  Homeowners who have remorse about getting in over their heads, financially, often end up in that spot because they took someone else’s word about what they could afford, rather than running their own household financials first, then telling their professionals what their maximum spend would be, monthly and otherwise.  Make sure you go into the home buying process clear on what is a sustainable range of monthly housing costs for you and your family based on the total picture of your income and expenses (including your future plans and expenses banks don’t consider, like private school tuition, travel, etc.), rather than expecting someone else to figure this out for you.

8.  Get systematic about your options for resolving the remorse. If you find yourself in a position where you’re experiencing deep remorse for having bought a particular home, it’s time to stop wallowing and start acting to improve your experience in the home. Systematically list the things that make you crazy about the place. I’ve seen the most long-term buyer’s remorse result from (a) unexpected neighborhood nuisances like noise levels and being located on a street that is busier than the buyer originally thought, and (b) a home with features and condition problems that are worse or more costly to repair than the buyer expected, like the flights of stairs are too numerous or the windows too drafty.

So, make a list of the things that are causing you remorse, then get clear on all your options - and don’t limit your thinking about what those options might be. Maybe you need to plan out the fixes you need, and budget for them, for the next few years out, and start tackling one every month.  I love my home and my neighborhood, but was driven to distraction for months by the fact that I could hear the subway at night. I’d already installed dual paned windows!  My sanity and sleep have been saved by the investment of $10 every couple of months in - you guessed it - earplugs from the drug store.  

On the other end of the spectrum, I knew a woman who insisted she could afford to neither sell nor fix her home, she was so upside down, and so stayed remorsefully put in her leaky, fixer-upper home for years before she finally talked with an agent, who was able to get the bank to green light a short sale lickety split

Ny favorite beach on the island - one blissful hour on this beach and you'll know why! it's small, it's lovely, it's not crowded - there's a beach bar and restaurant and maybe a vacant hammock if you're lucky. there are studios, one bedrooms and a small number of 2 bedrooms - a rare offering of a renovated 2 bedroom just came on the market for $719,000 - ideal for someone looking for a place to vacation and receive rental income from the very well run rental managment.

Exclusive Waterpoint neighborhood on St. Thomas. Gated and Exquisite! This beautiful home has it all - pool, beach access where you can moor your boat for lovely outings on the Caribbean Sea, Guest bedrooms, cottage, garage, gourmet kitchen - all for fabulous island entertaining! Truly a dream come true!

Make This Your New Years Resolution - Enjoy Life In Paradise 2012!

Christmas just seems more special in the Caribbean - yeah - no snow, no cold - yep - they're 4 letter words ya know! We do have white sandy beaches, crystal clear blue waters and tropical breezes. I wanted to share a Christmas song with you performed by Denise and Pipe Dreams - island style of course!

check out this link for some island style Christmas music

http://www.stthomas-vacationrentals.com/Postcards-from-Paradise.html

happy holidays

justine

HUGE PRICE DROP on this meticulously maintained home with two bedrooms in main house and two on lower level, accessed from exterior stairs. Granite counters, vessel sinks. Wonderful touches! Carport, solar hot water, low-flush toilets, lush grounds, flat access to home. Very private home with spectacular down-island views. Centrally located! Poured concrete. Hurricane shutters throughout.

NOW IS THE TIME TO START YOUR PLAN!

Think of this

“Twenty years from now you will be more  disappointed by the things you

didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw  off the bowlines. Sail away

from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your  sails. Explore. Dream.

Discover.”  ~ Mark Twain.

Planning for the New Year?  If selling your home is part of your resolution list for next year, there’s plenty of prep work you can do to set yourself up for home selling success.

Here are 5 things you can and should start working on without further ado, if you want to get your home sold - smoothly and for top dollar - in 2012.

1. Put your intentions in writing. The first step to any real estate transaction -  to anything important in life! - is to get clear on your goals. Unexpected challenges and situations might very well come up in the course of selling your home. Have a clear idea of your ultimate goals at the outset  - this will help you make the right decisions along the way and to remind you when you might need to correct your course.

Be specific. Be clear.
What are your priorities? Speed or dollars?

Getting as clear as possible from the very beginning on your priorities and ultimate life objectives for the sale will allow you to communicate these crucial things clearly to your agent, and will power your decisions on issues like:

which home improvement projects, if any, to complete before you sell;

whether to accept a particular offer; and

how aggressively to negotiate counter-offers, and on which points to push back against a buyer’s offer.

2. Study the local market. The most successful home sales are the listings that are priced right from day one.
In order to position yourself and your property at the point of pricing nirvana, you’ll need to do some leg work ASAP! You don’t need to pick an exact price this moment, unless you’re planning to list your home super soon, but you can get started by:

visiting open houses,

studying nearby listings, and

talking with local agents.

3. Gather your paperwork. In planning for your sale next year, you can get a great head start by pulling together the necessary paperwork now. Keep in mind that the specific requirements vary by state, so this is not an exhaustive list. In general, you’ll need to have these ready: Disclosure documents, Compliance certificates, Mortgage statements, Financials, Property Tax Receipts

4. Prep your listing plan and timeline. - decluttering, staging and any repairs or cosmetic power-tweaks you plan to make; Discuss showing arrangements  so that local agents can get prospective buyers into your house.

5. Get a head start on your ‘home’work. 
Spend some time during your holiday vacation  to: 
     (a) obtain any advance inspections your real estate agent recommends, 
     (b) have any reasonable repairs completed, 
     (c) pre-pack and de-clutter your place, and 
     (d) add to your home’s curb appeal - painting the shutters and sprucing the landscaping goes a long way