Student Housing in the White Coat Neighborhood

Last week it was 70 degrees out and today there is more than 2 feet of snow on the ground.  That is typical March in Rochester, NY.  And while the weather is not predictable, one thing you can count on..... a new crop of smart, young doctors canvassing the Rochester area looking for a place to live while they complete their residency at the Strong Medical Center.

Many of them end up in the Rochester's White Coat Village, which is named for the many medical professionals that choose to live there to be close enough to walk to the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Besides being close to the hospital, this neighborhood is bordered to the south by the Erie Canal that features a great walking and biking path and is less than a mile to City Gate, a brand new shopping and dining center.  To the west, there is the Genesee River that boast the River Walk Trail that offers a biking and walking trail to the north through downtown Rochester, past several gorgeous waterfalls and ends up at Lake Ontario.  Across the River is the Genesee Waterways Center that offers canoe and kayak rentals.  

Just north of the neighborhood is College Town, a mixed use district with loft apartments, fine dining, puts and shopping.  During the summer months, College Town provides free live concerts and outdoor movies.

Also close by are two beautiful parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.  To the west, Genesee Valley Park has two golf courses, soccer fields, baseball diamonds and picnic shelters.  Highland Park, located to the east, is home to more than 1,200 lilac bushes, plus Warner Castle with a sunken garden and Lamberton Conservatory.  

With so much to do, it is no wonder that the White Coat Neighborhood is a very popular place to live.  There is great demand on the local real estate market.  For more information about living in the White Coat Village, contact Mary Shelsby with ReMax Realty Group at 585-414-5513.

Match Day 2014. Welcoming New Residents to Rochester, NY

Match Day is the annual event where medical students around the country learn where they will spend the next four to seven years of their lives completing residencies.  And so this morning, dozens of new, young doctors learned that they will call Rochester, NY home for the short term and the University of Rochester Medical Center will be their place of both employment and learning.

These young doctors and their families will need to find a new home and there are many excellent choices in a wide variety of price brackets, all close to the U of R Medical Center.  Here is a breakdown of a few options, but every hour it seems something new is listed and something else goes pending.  Feel free to register with my website to receive e-mail alerts:  www.RochestersBestHomes.com



If you are looking for an excellent school district plus a carefree lifestyle (i.e., someone else cuts the grass and plows the snow) maybe a townhouse is a good choice for you.  200 Lac Kine Drive is offered at $164,000 and it is in excellent condition with a stunning interior.  The home has 2 bedrooms plus a loft, and an attached 2 car garage.  All kitchen appliances are included.  For photos and details, chick here:  www.200LacKine.com.


If you prefer to be in quick walking distance to the medical center, 950 Mt. Hope Avenue offers 3 bedrooms, one bath plus a one car garage. This home is located directly across from the historic Mt. Hope Cemetery.  More information can be found at  www.950MtHope.com .


There are more economical options for medical students willing to travel across the Genesee River.  Rochester's 19th Ward is located less than a half mile from the medical center and features beautiful yet remarkably affordable homes.  As an example, 118 Virginia Ave, a 3 bedroom colonial with one bath, fenced back yard with a deck and garage, is being offered for less than $70,000.  Complete details at  www.118Virginia.com.

To schedule an appointment at any of these or other properties near the University of Rochester, don't hesitate to give me a call at 585-414-5513 or visit my site at www.RochestersBestHomes.com

Mary Shelsby
Licensed Real Estate Sales Person
ReMax Realty Group

Rochester's High-Tech Innovation

With Kodak in bankruptcy, the experts expected Rochester to crumble into urban decay.  Instead, it has thrived and this week was named one of the ten most unexpected cities of high tech innovation by Techie.com.    According to the article, there are 65,650 techies in the Rochester workforce, which rivals San Francisco and San Diego.  You can check out the article in its entirety here:  http://techie.com/techie-coms-ten-most-unexpected-cities-for-high-tech-innovation/

It's Hot around Park Ave Especially for Investment Property!

The temperatures may be falling but the real estate climate around Park Ave is super hot, especially for multi-family investment property.  In the past six weeks or more, I've heard from many investors and want-to-be investors and when we secure an appointment to view these properties, there are usually two or more other investors looking at the same time.

A little free advice here for new and want-to-be investors.  There are three primary ways to loose money on your investment.   

The first is financing.  I meet many investors that want to buy the property as a primary residence simply so they can put a minimum down and mortgage the property to the hilt.  With interest rates so low that is tempting to do but all interest is front loaded, and so this strategy will only work if the investor is committed to a long term investment. 

Next comes maintenance.  Even if you purchase a property in perfect condition, tenants cause wear and tear.  If you can't tell a hammer from a screw-driver and the thought of getting on a ladder breaks you out in a sweat, you will need to hire someone to take care of your property.  So that is profit out of your pocket and into someone else's.

The last biggie is managing your property.  You will only make money if you screen and select good tenants and then collect the rent.  Some investors hire that job out and as a result a good chunk of their income is given a way.

The bottom line, is that there is a lot more work to being an investor than depositing rent checks.  If you need to mortgage the property, hire a handy man plus a property manager, make pretty darn sure that the return on the investment is great enough to cover these expenses. 

Starter Home Extraordinaire

I remember buying my first home like it was yesterday. It was a fixer upper, which is all I could afford at the time. The only reason the roof didn’t leak was it was the bottom floor of a condo building. The windows did leak, and not just air. One morning I woke up to find a small pile of snow in my kitchen. But this was a great investment for me. Located on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., I sold it four years later at twice what I paid for it and moved to western New York.

Starter homes have come a long way. Today I have a perfect little starter home in the town of Greece which has a newer roof, windows, furnace and even central air. It sits on a beautiful park-like lot that is nearly a third of an acre and has a 2 car garage. The kitchen and bath have been upgraded with tile and granite. The living room is large and has a stunning stone fireplace (wood burning). The home is located at 126 Alpine and you can check out more details and photos at: www.RochestersBestHomes.com/R152267 or give me a call at 756-7457.

$5,000 Over Asking Is Not Enough!!!

I like it where I live and apparently so do some other people. Last weekend I wrote an offer for $5000 over asking and I’m sorry to say the house went to another bidder! Why did we offer so much? Well, we lost a house the week before by writing only a thousand over asking. That’s pretty amazing considering there are parts of the Rochester area where houses sit on the market for weeks and months, sometime without even a showing.

The Ellwanger Barry neighborhood, also known as the Highland neighborhood, provides a nice stock of classic American Foursquare homes along tree-lined city streets. It is convenient to the U of R as well as Strong and Highland Hospitals and since last week was Match Day (the day when medical students find out where they will train as residents) the competition for housing is fierce.

Fortunately, my clients are not young doctors. Instead, they are a professional family that wants to leave the suburbs for the convenience of city living. They are not on the rigid timeframe although they are anxious to start their new life. Hopefully, the next house we write on will be the one. But if not, it may be the next.



Neighborhood of the Arts - A Great Place to Live and Play

Rochester has many great neighborhoods but one of my favorites has to be the Neighborhood of the Arts. Jammed packed with culture, the NotA features the Memorial Art Gallery, George Eastman House, Village Gate and ARTWalk. The neighborhood also offers great shopping, restaurants and drinking holes.

If you've not checked it out, ARTWalk is a permanent urban art trail that connects the art centers and public spaces. An expansion to the ARTWalk has been approved and funded through federal stimulus money and so there is a lot of anticipation that a good thing is going to get even better.

The Neighborhood of the Arts encompasses University Avenue, Atlantic Avenue and East Ave and features many high-end residential streets such as Granger Drive and Portsmouth Terr. The area offers many investor opportunities with multi-family dwellings and apartment buildings coming on the market on a pretty regular basis. Medium priced single family homes are a rarity and tend to sell very quick.

If you'd like more information about real estate in the Neighborhood of the Arts, don't hesitate to give me a call.

Mary Shelsby

ReMax First

585-756-7457

Tortuous Weekend!

There is absolutely nothing more fun in real estate than calling your buyers and saying, “Congratulations! Your offer was accepted!”


And there is almost nothing worse than calling buyers and having to tell them their offer was out-bided.

My weekend started off marvelously when I showed a house in Brighton to a young family that had been looking most of this year. We were the very first to get to see the house and it was lovely. The buyers loved it and so we got together that evening and wrote an offer, a generous offer more than $2000 over asking price. And we made the offer good until Sunday at 1, which is when their open house was scheduled to start.

Well, Sunday at 1 came and went with no call from the listing agent. 3pm and the end of the end of the open house came and still no word. By 5 pm, I was getting steamed and called the listing agent. Of course all I got was voice mail. Finally, at 7 pm I received a call from him to say that he still had not been able to reach the sellers to tell them about our offer and by the way, there are now two additional offers on the table.

It was not until Monday morning that we learned that a total of three additional offers came in. Since ours was first, they did give us an opportunity to match the highest offer, which was $11,100 over asking and a cash deal. And so, I have emotionally drained and heartbroken clients that are still looking to buy a house in Brighton, which has to be hottest market around!

In between phone calls and property showings, I took a nice walk through Linear Park (also known as Philbrick Park) in Penfield. That’s where the photos were taken. It was a great escape from the stress and burned more calories than chewing my nails.

Rochester Best Buy: 1165 Bay Street

Here's a house that definitely should be sale pending! This 3 bedroom colonial with finished basement needs painting and other cosmetics but is a steal at the current list price of $63,000. Details and inside photos at Bay St .

What makes this such a good deal? Similar properties in this neighborhood have sold for prices in the $73,000 to $83,000 range. Here are the recent sales: Customer Full Report

For an appointment, give me a call at 585-756-7457.

Mary

Hot Areas! South Wedge & Highland Park Area

It was reminiscent of 2005!

I had an appointment to show a property at 8:30 last night in the Ellwanger Berry/Highland Park neighborhood and when I arrived, there were people lined up on the street to get in. It wasn't too big of a surprise since the last three properties I tried to show in this neighborhood sold before I could get in.

In a similar fashion, I put a "for rent" sign up on my South Wedge property Saturday and it took exactly 12 minutes before someone knocked on the door to see it. My phone has been ringing off the hook ever since and I have appointment to show it to 8 different tenants and I have one offer on the table to buy it.

I've written three purchase offers this week and it is only Wednesday at 8:15 am. At the moment, we are not having a housing slump in Rochester!

Last Chance for 2008 City Living Sundays

City Living Sunday Part 3 will take place this Sunday, April 13, 2008 at Aquinas Institute, located at 1127 Dewey Ave. Festivities will run from noon to 4 and feature affordability counseling, loan details and how to buy seminars plus approximately 50 open houses in the Northwest quadrant. Click here to see a list of open houses scheduled for Sunday: Open House Report

768-770 Grand Ave, Rochester - Open Sunday, 1 to 4

Come on by Sunday afternoon, 1 to 4 pm, to see this very nice 2-family located in Rochester's Culver-Winton neighborhood. Lots of charm remains with gum-wood trim and hardwood floors. Both kitchens and baths have been recently remodeled and the attic has been finished. Newer roof, plumbing and electric! Gas and electric are on separate meters for each unit.


Currently, both apartments are rented, with a monthly income of $1425, but the downstairs tenant has a month-to-month lease so this would make an awesome owner occupant home or investment property. Asking price: $99,500. For more details, click: www.RochestersBestHomes.com/808231

I hope to see you on Sunday!

City Living Sundays

With gas prices hitting outrageous numbers, it seems more and more people are considering the convenience and economic feasibility of moving to the City of Rochester. If you fall in that category, I suggest you check out City Living Sundays during the next three weekends.

Each weekend will focus on a different section of the city. The festivities start each Saturday at 2 pm with a FREE Landmark Society Bus Tour of the featured neighborhood. Reservations are required and can be made by calling 585-546-7029 Ext. 10. Each tour starts at the Home Room at the Landmark Society of WNY, 133 S. Fitzhugh St.



Then on each Sunday there is a wide variety of educational programs on how to by a house and apply for financing. In addition, there will be city school and neighborhood information as well as a large number of houses currently on the market will be open for viewing. OF SPECIAL NOTE, FIRST TIME HOME BUYERS MAY QUALIFY FOR UP TO $3000 IN CLOSING COST GRANTS on homes that are open during these special weekends! City Living Sundays activies will run from noon till 4 pm each Sunday.

The South region of Rochester will be featured during the first week. The bus tour will be held Saturday, March 29th and the educational programs will be held the 30th at Wilson Foundation Academy, located at 200 Genesee St. (I'm scheduled to work this event, so if you attend, please look me up!) For a list of this weeks open houses, click here: Open House Report and to see photos and other details, go to http://www.rochestersbesthomes.com/ .

The Northeast region of the city will be the focus on April 6 with festivities being held at East High School, 1801 E. Main St. On April 13, the Northwest area will be highlighted with programs being held at Aquinas Institute, located at 1127 Dewey Ave.

A Temptation

It's bound to happen. I spend many of my days dashing in and out of homes, most staged to make a visitor fall in love, so it should come as no surprise that from time to time I get urge to move. Well it happened again. But when I mentioned it to my husband, he gave me one of those stern looks and said it's to close to golf season to even kid about moving.

I didn't have the nerve to tell him I wasn't kidding, so instead I spent my weekend implementing my marketing plan for my newest client. This 4 bedroom, 2 bath home is located in the Ellwanger-Barry neighborhood (a couple of blocks from Highland Hospital). I'm not disclosing the address yet, but I will tell you that it has been nicely maintained, has a one car garage and the back yard has been professionally landscaped. It will go on the market this Thursday morning with an asking price of $164,900.

The market is unusually slow for March and so I've planned an extensive campaign to try to maximize exposure. This house will be featured on the Rochester Real Estate Show next Sunday morning on channel 13, as well as Saturday's real estate section of the Democrat and Chronicle. I'll be putting the finishing touches on a virtual tour in the morning and a direct mail piece will go out on Tuesday. Wish me luck in getting this sold quickly and at a good price! And if you want to be the first to see it, give me a call or shoot me an e-mail.

Rochester Public Market

"Location, Location, Location," is what it is all about when you are thinking about investing in real estate. Investors and want-to-be investors are often asking me what's the current "hot spot" for investing. Usually, once it is a "hot spot" property values have started going up and there are no real bargains to be found.

So how do you find a hot spot before it's a hot spot? Generally, you need to pay close attention to the news so you know where new projects are planned. Then you need a ton of guts and a lot of luck as you scope out what is on the market.

In recent weeks, there have been numerous articles about the Rochester Public Market area and the newly opened Station 55. I went exploring this morning to try to figure out if this might become the next Rochester Hot Spot.

First stop was the Public Market, all decked out for the holidays, llama included. It was cold, but a lot of fun, with great food and plenty of hand-made holiday decorations.

Then we stopped at Station 55, and was glad we did. It's located on Railroad Ave, just down the street from the public market. Downstairs, the old warehouse has been tastefully converted into an indoor market and they had a holiday sale going on. Future plans are for the market to be open Thursday through Sunday mornings. Upstairs are loft apartments. I didn't get to tour the apartments but I saw some photos and they look very nice. I'm rooting for this endeavor to become a huge success.

Then, we drove the neighborhood, up and down the streets that surround the Public Market. It's a very, very poor neighborhood. I lost count of the houses in poor repair as well as deserted and boarded up structures. Back home at the computer, I found nearly 30 houses for sale in this area, many in the $30,000 to $50,000 range, some of which were two family units with decent rent coming in.

So, is this the next South Wedge? I'd say it is worth watching this area. If you want a list of what is currently on the market in this area, send an e-mail to MShelsby@rochester.rr.com.

Mary Shelsby

ReMax First

Culv-Wint - Another Hot Rochester Neighborhood

It's been a couple of crazy real estate days.....typical real estate feast or famine. It started Sunday evening when I received a call from an agent saying she was very excited to be faxing an offer for one of my listings. I was excited too until I learned that it was $19,000 less than asking. My sellers were not too excited either and refused to respond to the offer.

Then Monday morning I got two offers in on a multi-family listing located near Rochester's Public Market. One was a low ball offer from an out-of-town investor that has never visited the property and the other was a decent offer from local investors. I'm pleased to report that the hometown boys got the deal!

Monday afternoon featured a long anticipated offer on a listing in Livingston County. Shocks of all shocks, this offer was $30,000 under asking and contingent on a rehab loan! This is not a rehab house. It was built in the 1960 and is dated but it is not a rehab house. Needless to say, this house is still on the market.

Monday ended with writing an offer on a new listing for a single family home in the Culv-Wint (northeast Rochester) neighborhood. Unfortunately, two other agents also wrote offers and one was significantly over asking (not ours!) We were lucky to even get in to see this home. Three others that we called about were all sold within 48 hours of listing.