Posts by : Gwen Fowler

I made a u-turn to take this picture.  This is the biggest oak tree I have ever seen in the upstate area. I know there are bigger ones in the low country, but this one took my breath away.

Can you imagine what this tree has seen?

Have you been dreaming of a home on the lake?  Mountain getaway? but you did not want to get into a 30-50% down payment and 6% interest?  

Good rates and down payments are back.  If you have a credit score of at least 640 and a 10% down payment I have a lender who will do less than 4% on 2nd homes, 50 miles or more from your primary residence.  So all you buyers from Greenville to Charleston...I have lake houses and mountain cottages priced good...no great.  Now is the time to buy. Don't wait as the inventory is shrinking as everyone finds out about our good deals!!

Simple Check List for Land Purchase

1. Will your house site perk for a septic system?  Get a permit from SCDHEC before you close.
   
   
2. Have a survey done.  Property lines do not move; the seller’s memory is not always correct.  A new survey will mark the lines; a plat will be a drawing showing landlines as well as improvements. All the corners will be marked.  After closing remark the lines with white oil-based paint.  It will stay on the trees for years and you will know where the property boundaries are.  White PVC pipe over the pins is a good idea too.
   
   
3. Title Search is also a must.  Checking the title back 60 years ensures that the party selling the property has the right to sell as we...

The Importance of a Buyer’s Agent

In South Carolina we are required to follow assigned “Rules of Agency” and when an agent “lists” a property the seller becomes that agent’s (and the company’s) “client”. By signing the listing contract they have made a commitment to each other. By definition, an agent (and their company) must give their client the following:

1. Obedience
2. Loyalty
3. Disclosure
4. Confidentiality
5. Accountability
6. Reasonable care & skill

If a buyer comes along and asks that agent to show them a property “listed” by that agent or with that company, they are a customer.  That agent must give customer care:

1. Present all offers in a timely manner
2. Account for money or other p...

You must create a plan, if you want to have an easy home purchase.  Just looking at houses will not get you a home.  You need to know where you are going and how to get there.

You first must decide when you want to purchase. You can look at homes, go to open houses, look at the websites, and look and look.  Once you make a decision to buy you must decide what your time frame will be. Do you want to buy it before school starts? Before Memorial Day so you can use the lake all summer? Before the 4th of July, so you can use the lake and get a good deal? 

Then you must talk with a loan officer, you do not want to look at homes you cannot afford.  You also do not want to have to move again in...

 Fiddler's Cove Fisherman, Bill Warther, Guest Poster.

As you can see the fish are biting at Fiddler’s Cove Lake.  Kraig (my son) and I drug a few out of this hole last August. We caught & released.  You can tell it pays to release because this one was 19". A buck without eggs but I returned him. He happens to be #13 for the year for black bass. I caught three fish on the first 3 casts of the year:  2 small bass and a blue gill that was 11.25' long 9.5" wide and 1.25 thick. She was full of eggs and as bright orange as I have ever seen bluegill. I checked her nose and tongue and she was a true blue gill. Not a shell cracker. What a brood fish !!!! The other 12 bass I caught were 16” or un...

Just got back from the Live South Show in Falls Church VA.  This was a great show of gated communities in the South.  The exhibitors showed how different the tax base is and how the cost of living in the South is much less than having the same size home & property in the North.

There was one community in Florida just outside Orlando that was all solar.  I was amazed to think no more power bills, lower taxes & insurance and a cheaper heating bill.

I visited booths from Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, the Beach area of South Carolina, Montana, West Virginia and Delaware.  I know I missed a couple of them, but really enjoyed meeting reps from other areas and seeing what they had to of...

Winter is a great time to look at lake property. Lake houses in the winter are cold and view is not so good or is it?  In the winter when the lakes are drawn down so that you can build a sea wall, dock or do your general lake access clean up.   You can see how deep the water is and whether you are on a channel or a cove.  You can fix up your fish bed, clean up and spread out some sand along the shore and you can build the dock you have always wanted.  Winter allows you to see what you are getting without having to imagine what you are seeing through the water.

There are 3 things you need to do every time the water is drawn down at the lake:

1) check the supports of your dock, make sure ...

OK, the mortgage application is finished and forwarded to the mortgage agent.  What comes next?  While you wait on the appraiser to be named, have the home inspected.  This should also be a contingency in the purchase contract.

The home inspection will take about 2 hours.  The inspector will climb up on the roof, in the crawl space, he will check out outlets, and take the cover off the panel box.  He will make sure the heating system heats and the cooling system cools.  Check out the plumbing and make sure the floor does not have any soft spots.  He will look for termite damage from past infestations.  He will find problems and give you some solutions.  The home inspection report will ha...

Well, you have looked at houses and looked at houses. You found one that meets your needs. Your agent wrote up the contract and it was accepted so what is next?

The first thing you should do is make a calendar with all the major dates circled so that you do not miss any deadlines.

Home Inspection:  you need to do this first as there is no reason to look for insurance or set up utility accounts till you are sure this house does not have any hidden problems.  This should be completed within 5 days of the contract acceptance.

• Choose a home inspector from a list given by your agent and friends who have recently bought. 
• Call all the inspectors on the list.
• Ask what they charge and what...

We have been previewing houses all week for people coming in over the next 3 weeks.  I have been to gated communities and lake communities and vacant houses near the university.  Shocked is a harsh word, but I have been shocked at the condition of the properties we have looked at.

When you are looking to find a good deal, the first thing I look at is the days on the market and the number of times the property has been reduced.  Today most of the properties were in a gated community, on the market for more than 400 days and have been reduced by at least 10%.

I loved the first house.  People were still living there and everything was fresh and in excellent condition.  The price was droppe...

Summer is here, school is out, graduations are over.  Now  is time to buy your summer home or to move up.  Our real estate selection is the greatest it has been in over 20 years.  Great values, lots of selection and interest rates lower than they were in the 60's.

We have all heard how hard it is to get money, but not so. 

• If you have 2 months of pay stubs and have been at the same job for over a year you get a gold star. 
• If you do not have 2 new car payments, you get another gold star.  Add another if you just paid off your car.
• If you do not have any credit card debt, you get another gold star.
• If you are current on your student loans and other bills, another gold star.
• If you ...

First weekend in June is always the beginning of the summer season and also the family reunion season.  Yellow Branch Falls and Park is a forgotten jewel in our area.  This is a park with several hiking trails, less than 5 miles west of Walhalla and is very seldom crowded.

Wear long pants as the Forest Service is not servicing the trails, but they are still worth the effort.  I am adding pictures of the falls that I took during the winter.   I love frozen falls.  Something like being able to stop time for a moment.  Enjoy and if you make the 45-minute walk to the falls you will be glad you did.

Oconee County has been revamped, updated and looks really good.  The website can be found at Oconeesc.com.

You can look at your tax bill there (or look up your neighbors to see if they pay as much as you do), look up your deed and apply for a county job.  The website also includes info on the different projects the county is now involved with i.e. county-wide INTERNET... high-speed internet.

The GIS department has now got maps for the area online with overlays for roads and tax map numbers.  You can see an aerial photo of your property.

This is a much-improved site, call me if you have questions and I will walk you through the different places you can visit.

Last weekend we had a call from our friend Dwight Malphrus.  He had been up at his log cabin at Bear Track for a week, working on plumbing and getting the place ready for spring. He had fixed all the broken pipes.  He had done some cleaning up around the place.  Put up the bird feeders and filled them. He could feel spring in the air. After a week of this, he was tired of being alone.  Dwight is a people person and there was too much quiet at Bear Track.

So he called Henry and Gwen, pick a place to eat and let's go.  He picked us up and we started over the mountain from Walhalla to Brasstown.  I had been hearing about the restaurant there...great food, wonderful service, great food.  E...

Each time you hear the news that the interest rates are climbing you should think about why you are waiting.  A point it really doesn't matter, right????

Yes, it matters.  The new lending rules have gotten stricter on the ratios you can have for debt to income, 38% Max.  When you factor in taxes and insurance sometimes a point can be the difference between you getting the property you want or having to settle for your second choice.

At a purchase price of $100,000 at 4.875% (today's rate) your payment would be $529.21 before taxes and insurance are added.  If the rates were 5.875% your payment would be $591.54.  This is based on a 30-year fixed conventional rate.  If your credit score i...