October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and today is my birthday so I'm going to be a little self indulgent and share a personal story.  1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. That's a statistic most women are familiar with.   What most do not know is that an irregular mammogram only comes with a 20% chance or cancer. In fact, only about 2% of irregular mammograms lead to a biopsy, because most can be addressed with an ultrasound to make sure it's a false positive, dense breast tissue or some other common anomoly. If you do the math (which you know I love to do), you realize that about 10% of mammograms come back irregular  every year! But somehow the fear of an irregular mammogram can keep some women from getting tested.  It's a shame, because once you know the statistics, you know that an irregular mammogram is nothing to be afraid of! No, I do not have breast cancer. And for that I am thankful. But like most women will at some point in their life, I d...

You may have noticed some changes around here and on my  Facebook and  Instagram  pages.  It's because I've moved! Having grown up in Deaborn County and lived in Southeast Indiana all my live, I have strong connections to the community and love helping others develop the same. My husband and I recently moved to Batesville and I'm finding it even more important to make strong ties in my community. As such, we made the difficult decision for me to leave Sibcy Cline to find a brokerage better suited to myselve and my Indiana clients. It is with great pleasure that I announce I have found my new Real Estate home and have transferred my license to Lohmiller Real Estate. Not only is LRE an Indiana based, family owned company, they will allow me to cultivate my business in my new town, as well as even futher west and north. I am excited to see how my business, my experience and my expertise will grow with this new opportunity. My primary goal is to ensure that each client h...

I have relatively consistent set of closing gifts I plan for my clients but when I received notice on Thursday that a house was closing on Tuesday I didn't have time for my standard personalized seller's gift.  I took to the internet for inspiration and ended up coming across the coolest lists of gift ideas! One thing I saw that I had never considered - people buy closing gifts for their Realtor?  Is this really a thing?  Sure, who wouldn't love a personalized coffee mug or an engraved business card case?  But to be completely frank... As a Realtor, I'm here to tell you: a referral or a positive (and honest!) review is the absolute best gift you can give your Realtor!   Some friends of mine are buying a home that is for sale by owner.  Yes, they wanted to use me as their Realtor and we had even looked at a few houses.  But they came across this house through an old friend and the seller specifically doesn't want to work with a Realtor.  I ful...

I have wonderful childhood memories of camping every summer with my extended family.  We all met in the middle of nowhere at my mom's cousin's farm.  They had a lake with zip lines, paddle boats, a floating dock, a water slide and the biggest firepit I'd ever seen.  It was truly a magical place.  After a long weekend of late nights under the stars and bathing in the lake, we'd all pack up our tents and campers and head back home.  The drive was so long, the whole family - aunts, uncles, cousins and friends alike - would stop at this wonderful fried chicken place for one last dinner together before we parted ways. Of course, when I grew up and realized this otherworldly gathering place was just on the other side of Oldenburg, Indiana, the drive didn't seem so long.  It lost a little bit of its magic, but that fried chicken place no longer has to be just a summer stop! Wagner's Village Inn opened their doors in 1968  and as of January, they are now...

When you move into a new home there are always unknown adventures awaiting. Most are wonderful and exciting, and such a happy bonus to homeownership. Others...well, others make you thankful for family and friends who come to the rescue to help you through! Sometimes when you pull the kitchen cabinet doors off and lay them out on the floor to paint, your dog decides to walk across them and decorate your floor with pretty little painted paw prints. That was my first home, and thankfully that carpet was coming out anyway! Sometimes it's the basement flooding because the sump pump that worked perfectly well during the inspection suddently went out right after you moved in. This was our current home, but it's also why you ask your sellers to give you a home warranty! And sometimes, like yesterday, you invite your parents out to celebrate Mother's Day but then 2 trees you knew were going to have to come down unexpectedly falling. Thankfully your parents still come for dinn...

Remember last week when I shared my opinion of what Coronavirus is going to do to the market ? First, let me tell you I still fully believe everything I said. Second, let me tell you that doesn't mean I don't still have my moments of despair. Truth time - I'm feeling it today. I'm over this quarantine, I'm over my business taking such a hit, I'm over the "funny" memes of people making light of something that sucks so bad. I'm just over Coronavirus. I had a couple showings scheduled for this afternoon that got cancelled because my client isn't feeling wel, cue me panicking because I just saw her last week and she isn't giving me any details on her illness. I needed to stop and collect myself, so I started going through a few pages I follow and found this: Just what the doctor ordered, I'm breathing again. When we moved back in October, the house needed so much work we didn't take the time to get to kn...

I see so many people looking for ways to fill the time during the quarantine, so I've created a virtual scavenger hunt! The first three people to complete the scavenger hunt will get a free Competitive Market Analysis (CMA) of your home once the threat of COVID-19 has passed. If you're interested in listing your home in the future, this will help you know where your home stands and what you can do to add value. If you're not interested in listing, it's still fun to know. Plus, I've done these for people who ended up using it to get a BIG cut in their property taxes! If you're not local, I can still do a virtual CMA, but it's less likely to hold up in a tax dispute. If you're interested in that service, I can connect you with an agent who's local to you, so still play along! And if you're not currently a home owner and a CMA can't help you, there are plenty of other services I provide, so still play and we'll find a great ...

Disclaimer: if you're a first time home buyer, do not read this!  Even those of us who LOVE homeownership, homebuying, homeselling, homes, homes, homes (!!) need to vent every now and then.  If you do chose to read, don't let it scare you.  Stuff happens. Friday morning I woke up intending to throw in a load of laundry before getting started for the day.  I gathered up my hamper and baskets and headed downstairs, only to stop dead in my tracks.  I saw water.  And not just a little moisture like you'd expect in a 50 year old home when you've had this much rain.  Standing water.  I headed back upstairs, dropped my laundry and pulled on my boots and went to the basement to assess the damage. Yes, that is the reflection of my overhead light on the rug.  How, you ask, does a rug reflect light so perfectly?  When it's covered in an inch of water, that's how. I spent most of the rest of the day getting everything off the floor and tryin...

In these times of uncertainty and social distancing, my usual lighthearted tone feels a little flip and disrespectful.  That said, we're hearing about Coronavirus everywhere  and I don't need to be one more person reminding you to wash your hands.  What I will do, though, is take this opportunity to talk about community. Real Estate is a social industry.  We bring in business by getting our name out there, building relationships and earning trust.  Our clients become friends, our friends become family and everyone becomes a potential client.  We go to local businesses.  We forge partnerships.  We blog about those businesses and they share our blog for a type of cross promotion.  We have a deep respect for small businesses, because we are one. I have been working with Susan Knabe of Haus & Home , an online magazine, for several weeks now to get my Feature Friday posts published with their magazine.  It has been a long, educational...