Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Finding Rentals in Johnson City, TN and Tri-Cities

As the ONLY Exclusive Buyer Agents in Johnson City and the Tri-Cities Area of NE Tennessee, we are often called to assist RELO's, retirees, transferring families to our area. Some transferees want to purchase before relocating, but others decide to rent first before buying. A Buyer's Best Choice Realty prides itself on assisting the relocating individuals and families, whether they are renting or purchasing.

One of the hardest rentals to find are units that can be rented short term, with a minimum of 2-3 months, NO SMOKING, and PET FRIENDLY.

That is why Dr. Dean Wilson and wife, Broker Janine J. Wilson, have purchased several area properties for rental purposes. All of the rental properties are currently rented, except for the duplex, which they have just completed renovating. New tile has been installed throughout the unfurnished Unit #1 and new carpet in the 2 bedrooms of Unit 1. This like new unit has approzimately 1200 sq ft, 2 BR and 1 bath with washer/dryer hookups. Out of season storage is available above the oversized carport, and a carport closet. It rents for $750/month including water/sewer/trash pickup fees. And best yet, NO SMOKING INSIDE either unit, and Pets are allowed with prior approval and refundable deposit with no damage.

The other half of the DUPLEX is coming back on the rental market as a fully furnished unit (linens, towels, pots and pans, EVERYTHING!) The furnished unit has been extremely popular for SHORT TERM rentals, such as travel nurses coming for 13-26 weeks at the highly touted Johnson City Medical Center Hospital or individuals/couples relocating to the area, who want to rent before purchasing, etc. The fully furnished unit #2 rents for $785.00 including water/sewer/trash pick-up and has a separate yard and parking area from Unit 1. Minimum rental time on this unit is 1-3 months. NO INSIDE SMOKING, Pet okay with refundable pet deposit separate from security deposit (also refundable).

This property is within a block of the Indian Trail Middle School, is in the LakeRidge School District, and Science Hill High School district.

And individuals wanting a month or longer rental, can also go to the guest suite website at http://www.tnbuyerbroker.com/suites/suites.htm and check out the Ashley Ryan Guest Suite(NO SMOKING and unfortunately NO PETS at guest suite)

And for those relos looking for something other than these units, our Exclusive Buyer Agents are always happy to assist in finding comfortable and reasonably priced rentals for short or longer terms. Buyers are not our ONLY specialty...we pride ourselves on assisting with all of the needs of individuals and famillies wanting to make the Tri-Cities TN area their home.

Give us a call or send an e-mail: 877-693-0533 toll free or abuyerschoice@earthlink.net
http://www.tnbuyerbroker.com/

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Travel Nurses Love Working the Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol TN , Tri-Cities Area

Johnson City, TN is a popular location for travel nurses to work 13-26 weeks. Over the past 4 years, Dr. G. Dean Wilson (founder of Tri-State Mountain Neurology Associates) and Janine J. Wilson (Founder of A Buyer’s Best Choice Realty® and Ashley Academy) have hosted many travel nurses, in their furnished rental properties.

Some of the traveling nurses have extended their stays; others have returned to the Tri-Cities for a second or third time. And now a travel nurse has decided to move to the Tri-Cities to live and work.

When asked what drew these travel nurses to the Tri Cities, TN area, responses include: (1) the outstanding medical facilities and ease of travel between Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol, TN ; (2) hiking, camping, biking, and lakes surrounding the Tri-Cities TN area; (3) the beautiful mountains, with 4 distinct seasons; (4) the high quality of medical care in NE Tennessee with Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health Systems setting such high standards of care; (5) the nationally ranked Quillen College of Medicine, the new School of Pharmacy at ETSU, the new School of Public Health adding notoriety to an area conscious of it’s contributions nation-wide to training outstanding medical specialists and support personnel.

Dr. and Mrs. Wilson also provide free area tours and information packages to physicians, medical residents, nurses, students, retirees, and other individuals and families contemplating living, working or visiting the Tri-Cities area of TN.

For more information Dr. Dean Wilson and Janine Wilson can be reached at 423-737-4040, e-mailed at abuyerschoice@earthlink.net, or visited on the web at http://TNBuyerBroker.com .


Or a link to the Guest Suites and rentals: http://tnbuyerbroker.com/suites/suites.htm

Friday, February 13, 2009

East Tennessee To See Relief From TVA Rate Cuts

Although TVA is a large reason that the East Tennessee region is one of the lowest areas for cost of energy in the country, the increases over the past year have hit many pockets harder than the local population would like to see. In an effort to help the community, The Johnson City Power Board had absorbed a small portion of those rate hikes, but there still was a large percentage to swallow. Thankfully, the Tennessee Valley Authority, in light of recent figures, has cut rates back, not just once this year, but has announced a second cut in April 2009.
It is nice to see companies that not only care about the "bottom line", but can see how it may affect their customers. If the customer is having trouble, eventually they will, also.
Thanks to both organizations for your concern for your communities and markets!

Please see link below for a link to a short article with more figures:
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=9833891

If you would like to visit our website, (The ONLY Certified Exclusive Buyer Agents in the area), Please visit: http://www.TNBuyerBroker.com

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Carbon Monoxide Press Release - The Silent Killer

Our agency (A Buyer's Best Choice Realty) has been giving Carbon Monoxide Alarms to clients for over 10 years. It has saved 2 families already!!! Definitely a valid concern for new clients and current home owners!! See local release, below:

Carbon Monoxide — The Silent Killer

The winter months are here. As the mercury begins to dip, some families, struggling to pay their heating bills, will turn on the kitchen stove burners and the oven in an effort to take the chill off their home. What these families don’t realize is how dangerous this practice can be. A gas oven or range top should never be used for heating. A fire could start and poisonous carbon monoxide (CO) fumes could fill the home. Any fuel-burning heating equipment (fireplaces, furnaces, water heaters, space or portable heaters), generators and chimneys can produce carbon monoxide.

Often called a silent killer, CO is an invisible, odorless, colorless gas created when fuels, such as gasoline, wood, coal, natural gas, propane, oil and methane, burn incompletely.

CO enters the body through breathing. CO poisoning can be confused with flu symptoms, food poisoning and other illnesses. Some symptoms include shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, light headedness or headaches.

Everyone is at risk for CO poisoning, but infants, pregnant women and people with physical conditions that limit their ability to use oxygen, such as emphysema, asthma or heart disease, can be more severely affected by low concentrations of CO than healthy adults. High levels of CO can be fatal for anyone, causing death within minutes.

The goal of the Johnson City Fire Department is to reduce the number of carbon monoxide incidents in Johnson City and discourage anyone from using the range or oven to heat their home. Install CO alarms inside your home to provide early warning of accumulating CO. Chief Paul Greene recommends that your heating equipment be inspected by a professional every year before cold weather sets in.

• CO alarms are not substitutes for smoke alarms. Know the difference between the sound of smoke alarms and CO alarms.
• Test CO alarms at least once a month.
• If your CO alarm sounds, immediately move to a fresh air location and call for help. Remain at the fresh air location until emergency personnel say it is okay.
• If the audible trouble signal sounds, check for low batteries or other trouble indicators.

The Johnson City Fire Department wants everyone to be warm and safe this winter. Make sure your home has carbon monoxide alarms.

01/27/09

For Immediate Release: January 21, 2009
From: The Office of Fire Chief Paul Greene
Contact: Assistant Fire Marshal Sam McLain (434-6182)

Posted here, courtesy of: ABuyer's Best Choice Realty

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Local artist's work on exhibit at Fossil Site-Yet another reason to visit or relocate to Johnson City/Tri-Cities TN area!

Local artist's work on exhibit at Fossil Site

By Allison Alfonso

Press Tempo Writer

What a surprise to discover Suzanne Stryk is exhibiting work at the East Tennessee State University and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum at the Gray Fossil Site. She's exhibited a lot of places, but few where it seems as appropriate.


Stryk has a master of arts degree in painting and bachelor's degree in art history. She's done medical illustration, illustrated her husband Dan's poetry and exhibited her nature and science-inspired paintings while taking occasional teaching jobs and workshops. Her color palette has evolved from muted greens to shining blues and more as she painted dragon flies, beetles, snakes, birds, antelopes, butterflies, nests, monkeys, seashells and ocean life. Her journals of images and fragmentary sentences suggest a scientist at work, and her works portray in format and substance man's need to categorize and make sense of the wild world.


As a child, she'd fill the bathtub with wild animals she'd found. Stryk told me she thanked her mother for never saying "no." She and Dan recently went to the Western coast and studied the shore life there: he wrote poetry and she painted pictures. What a life.


Suzanne's "Keeping An Eye On Things" is on display through April 12 at the fossil site and features paintings, sketches and drawings from 2001-08, journals, animal skulls and insect specimens. Some of the work was inspired by bones and materials found at the fossil site and the Smithsonian Institution and some by the insect collections of others.


Stryk's imagery is increasingly complex and her paintings more physically layered. Trying to understand is increasingly challenging. I can define the imagery, but there's no overall clarity, just mystery. Perhaps that's a point. Time is long and the world too vast to make sense of. Man is small: That's the feeling I left with.


Jessica Evans, fossil site exhibitions and marketing coordinator, walked through Stryk's second floor exhibit with me one recent Monday. We talked about interesting elements of each work while researchers and other site workers worked behind closed doors and open windows on fossils they've unearthed. Those fossils will someday tell us something new and definitive. No such luck with art, but then, we don't expect that. If it opens a small window of knowledge and curiosity for us, we're lucky.


"The artist listens, keeps a close eye, and attempts to translate the voice of nature so that others may hear," Stryk said in Evans' exhibit essay "The Natural Connection." "But the artist, also, sometimes resembles a scientist: collecting evidence, investigating what the subject can tell us, and interpreting this data to the rest of the world. Yet, in turn, the scientist at times resembles the artist: gathering specimens, arranging them in a fitting order, deliberating, then telling the story."


If that's not enough richness for you, visit the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Feb. 7-May 3 to see "River of Gold: PreColumbian Treasures from Sitio Conte." The exhibit of Panamanian gold circa AD 700-1100 by master artisans includes hammered repousse plaques, gold-sheathed ear rods, pendants, bells and precious and semi-precious stone, ivory and bone objects. Animals that reflect the diversity of species and animal-human composites are recurring themes.


The exhibit provides archaeological and cultural context, ethnohistorical information, excavation drawings and videotaped segments from the 1940 film footage of the excavations by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The cemetery and artifacts were overlooked by gold-seeking Spaniards in the 16th century and rediscovered when the Rio Grande de Cocle shifted its bed. The Peabody Museum at Harvard University carried out the first expeditions in the 1930s.





Allison Alfonso is a Tempo writer for the Johnson City Press. Reach her at aalfonso@johnsoncitypress.com.



For more stories, please visit http://www.johnsoncitypress.com. Thank you!

Reposted courtesy of ABuyer's Best Choice Realty: http://www.TNBuyerBroker.com

Thursday, January 15, 2009

#1 Question Homebuyers ask Exclusive Buyer Agents

Almost all Home Buyers have learned that they need a Buyer’s Agent.
But NOT all Buyer’s Agents are created equally!

The NUMBER ONE (1) QUESTION that we are asked is:

“What is the DIFFERENCE between a BUYER AGENT and an “EXCLUSIVE BUYER AGENT” ???

There is a big difference between a Buyer Agent and an Exclusive Buyer Agent!

For example, the State of Tennessee requires all licensed Realtors® to give potential buyers a Disclosure Form that explains the various types of agency available in TN. This Document also ‘explains’ or describes each agency type and describes their responsibilities.

The problem with this requirement is that “EXCLUSIVE Buyer Agents” were omitted from the Disclosure Form altogether as a separate “Agency Option”! Here is where the Conflict of Interest arises.

There are Buyer Agents and Designated Buyer Agents in TN. The ‘designated’ means that one person in the firm is designated to represent the buyer and another represents the seller. But the Seller’s agent could be in the same firm, if you buy a firm listed property. That is one conflict.

Another is when a ‘Buyer Agent’ of a firm that lists properties asks you to sign an agency agreement. They most often ask you to “understand that (s)he will have to ‘default agency to a lesser form of representation, if you choose an in-house listing to purchase.” Since the word ‘default’ has received a negative response with buyers, the word has been changed in various states to ‘transfer, step up, shift, evolve, progress, advance, reassign, etc.” Attorneys are even suggesting terms to use in real estate teaching seminars, that have less negative connotations than what they are doing: ‘defaulting agency’!

While there are only a few Exclusive Buyer Agents in the state of Tennessee, that does not excuse TN (or any state) from recognizing a type of agency (‘Agency Choice’) that the National Association of Realtors® (NAR®) recognized and defined in their 1993 publication, “Agency Choices, Challenges, Opportunities,” (p. 25).

In the NAR® publication, Exclusive Buyer Agency is defined as follows:

“Exclusive buyer agency – The practice of representing only buyers and never sellers
in a transaction. The company never lists a seller's property and thus never has a seller as a
client.”® NAR® 1993

In 1995, EBA’s founded the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents® (NAEBA®) based upon NAR®’s definition of Exclusive Buyer Agency.

Internet savvy buyers, retirees, and former buyers may question, before or after a sale, if there is, or might have been, a ‘conflict of interest’ with their representation. Those buyers now call an EBA, an EXCLUSIVE Buyer Agent, to represent them. Many buyers know that a Buyer’s Agent is NOT an EXCLUSIVE Buyer’s Agent, unless (s)he is affiliated with a company that does NOT LIST properties!
That is the real difference between a ‘Buyer’s Agent’ and an ‘Exclusive Buyer’s Agent’! www.TNBuyerBroker.com -> see Video of a Client testimonial

or go directly to our MLS page http://www.tnbuyerbroker.com/mlsdata/mlslistings.htm
Search Homes for FREE +++ No Registration Required +++ read more testimonials at website +++ TN Taxes

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol TN New Year News Update

1) Today's the day that Johnson City's Science Hill High School is performing at the Rose Bowl! Only six (6) bands throughout the nation were chosen for this special honor. See previous blog on DEC 28th, 2008, for more in depth information.
And for Real Estate BUYERS and relocation info for Tri-Cities TN, contact Janine or Ashley Wilson, Buyer Brokers: A Buyer's Best Choice Realty: Buyer Representation Exclusively.

2) News From Airfare Watchdog.com, check out the bargain airfare prices for travel from Tri-Cities TN airport to Seattle WA. Reported TODAY, flights are $275.00. Flights are limited, must be bought 7 days ahead, are on United, U.S.Air and last until April 9, 2009.

SUBMITTED BY: Janine Wilson, Buyer Broker/Founder, and Ashley Dean Wilson, Broker/Manager, A Buyer's Best Choice Realty: Buyer Representation Exclusively

http://www.TNBuyerBroker.com