Rent v. Buy

Renting vs. Buying a Home: Making an Informed Decision

When it comes to finding a place to call home, one of the most critical decisions you'll face is whether to rent or buy. Both options have their advantages and considerations, and as REALTORS®, it's our job to help our clients through this decision-making process. In this blog post, we'll delve into the pros and cons of renting and buying a home, helping potential homeowners understand the factors that should influence your choice.

The Advantages of Renting:

  1. Flexibility and Mobility: One of the significant advantages of renting is the flexibility it offers. Renting allows individuals to move more freely, whether for career opportunities or personal reasons. Lease agreements are…

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I’ve lived in Grand Rapids my whole life. It has been very interesting to live in a place it experiences growth and get to benefit from all of the exciting new things that come with a growing city. One of the major things that has changed over the years is the food and dining options available. In recent years, it has felt like new restaurants and food joints are popping up all over the place. This is wonderful because it gives folks lots of choices, but if you’re new to the city, scrolling through Yelp can get old in the quest for finding the best food in town. I have tried many of the restaurants in Grand Rapids, and I wanted to share what my favorite places are to have a sit-down dining experience.

MDRD

MDRD is one of the more expensive…

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Deciding you are ready to purchase a home can be an exciting and overwhelming time. Although homeownership is one of the cornerstones of the “American Dream”, not much information about the process is made available, often leaving folks overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. I know from personal experience, when I was looking for rental properties, I often used online platforms like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com. I feel as though this is why many people take to these online platforms as their first step when deciding they're ready to purchase a home. However, renting and buying are two very different things with varying levels of financial investment and commitment. 

I like to think of real estate in dating analogies. Renting a home is kind of…

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What comes to mind when you think of the real estate industry? Is it reality shows like Selling Sunset? Shows like House Hunters where all they do is see three houses and magically always get their first pick? The annoying person you’re friends with on Facebook who won’t stop posting about the “grind” and “building an empire”? 

Before I knew much about the real estate industry, all these things came to mind. All these misconceptions made me certain I would never want to be a real estate agent. I never considered myself someone who would be good at a sales job. I’ve never had a clear idea of what I wanted to do for a career, but I have always known I wanted to help people and be in service of others. Being a real estate agent didn’t seem like…

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Download the May Data PDF

Video Transcript (auto generated)

 Hey, I'm Steve Volkers, and this is the Steve Volkers report of the Grand Rapids Real Estate Market Data using this fancy booklet that Big Kev puts together for us each month. This is gonna be talking about the month of April. I don't even know how to say that, Kev. It can't be. It can't be May, but it is, and the sun's out today and it's 70, so we're loving it.

So this month's data, there's gonna be a couple of themes that I'm gonna, that I'm gonna talk about. Ultimately, it is all over the place in my mind, just based on offers and what I'm doing with clients, but then also trying to figure out what the data tells us. So, My word of the week is fickle.

I should probably…

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Download the November PDF

Hey, I'm Steve, and this is a Steve Volkers group in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and this is market data update. We are in December, obviously we're talking in arrears, so we're talking about November's data. And passed, and it has been eventful this year. Kevin, I, uh, I just wanna say thank you behind the camera. I gotta take a picture of you, big guy, because this has been fun.

We started this at the beginning of the year just with the idea that things were gonna change. We could see a shift coming or something was gonna adjust. I noticed a lot of agents were just publishing stuff saying, oh, this is never gonna end. This is gonna be amazing. Um, and then we saw a correction, so we want to talk about that.

Um, and…

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Download the October PDF

The real estate market lags what is happening now in the financial markets...it's time to focus on your goals.

Hey, I'm Steve Volkers with obviously the Steve Volkers group in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and this is our market update. It is now November, and we just got done talking about Christmas. I am a Christmas guy. I really like the holidays. So you know, just for anybody that wants to. Christmas music is out and it's okay for me at least.

We have some, you know, scrooges in the office that don't agree with me this morning, but that's okay. Let's get into the market data. So market data. November, and obviously we're talking about the data for October that came out, that big Kev behind the camera put together for…

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(Video transcript - auto-generated)

Hey, I'm Steve Volkers and this is a Steve Volkers group, and this is our October update on the data that big Kevin puts together for us on the market, the residential real estate market in West Michigan. Uh, it's October, mid-October, right? So we got a little bit delayed on this because.

Behind the camera got engaged. Congrats Kev. And was in Europe for the last three weeks and just enjoying life, which we love that he could do. So we're gonna go through that. Obviously, the data is September's data, right? And then we're reviewing it in October. And with anything, stuff can change quickly, but it.

It's a good time all of a sudden. Right? It's an interesting time. The sentiment out there is people are…

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Video transcript:

Hey guys, I'm Steve. And this is the Steve Volkers Group, and this is September's market data update dump. I'm gonna try to keep it at 10 minutes. We'll see Kev. I don't know. I might be able to do it this this month. I feel like some of it might be possible, but we're using obviously August data Kev puts together this big book for us from our association, and then he chops it all up and we get lots of great.

Feel free to put a comment below in the video. If you want a copy of this, if you don't have a copy, we're welcome to send it to you each month. But this month I, I got this fancy new notebook, so I'm gonna use it cab, but. The topic of this month is don't chase the market. That’s what we talked about in our meeting…

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Video Transcript:

Hey, I'm Steve Volkers and we're the Steve Volkers Group. I think it's like a lair now. I feel like this is our like, like secret sauce lair but we are doing the July numbers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is basically Kent county. The data that we get from our association each month, big cab behind the camera puts together.

This booklet of information. It is data that is, is accessible by agents, but Kev puts all of his fancy spins on it, adds all kinds of math to it. And so then I get to spill out the information that Kev does with real life stories, working with buyers and sellers. So we have been talking about the market shift or last month, if you played along all the verbs or all the nouns or whatever, I'm not good…

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