Articles
- Selling your home - make it shine!
- Three good things to do to prepare your home for sale
- Why should a seller hire an appraiser?
- Four serious secrets for investors in real estate
Selling Your Home - Make It Shine!
When you are trying to sell your home, it is very important to do everything you can to make your home shine to prospective buyers. Make sure that your home is in superb condition, inside and out, when you list it for sale.
The Home's Exterior Makes the First Impression
When prospective buyers first see your home, they will have an instant reaction to it, based on the way it looks from the outside. This first impression will determine whether or not they even want to bother with liking at the interior. When prospective buyers look at your property from the outside, they need to be so impressed that the desire to see what the inside looks like is overwhelming.
Here are some simple and important steps you should take in order to make sure that your home is making a great first impression on prospective buyers.
Thorough Cleaning
The first thing that you need to do when you want to sell your home is to clean it, inside and out. Of course, the condition of the outside will impact whether or not buyers ever see the inside, so start with the exterior of your home.
Make sure that there are no discarded objects, trash, or any other type of clutter in your front or back yard. Power wash the home itself, as well as the patio, porch, deck, fence, and sidewalks in front of the house. Clean out the gutters, drains, and eaves on the home. Make sure there are no leaves or other debris built up on the roof of your home.
Touch Up With Paint
It is amazing how much of a difference fresh paint can make on the appearance of your home. Take a look at your shutters, doors, window sills, and other areas that might have faded or chipped paint. Freshening up these areas can make a huge impact on the overall impression that your home makes on prospective buyers.
Take Care of Exterior Repairs
While you are checking around the house for areas that need to be painted, look at the entire structure with a very critical eye. If you have any cracked window panes, now is the time to replace them. Look at the condition of your door knobs and other exterior hardware. Polish or replace those that have seen better days.
Landscaping
Buyers love homes that are nicely landscaped and look like they require little effort for proper maintenance. While your home is for sale, keep the grass cut, shrubbery trimmed, and leaves raked. It is also a good idea to fill in any flower beds with annuals as appropriate for the season and your climate.
These techniques will help you make sure the outside of your home is attractive and appealing to prospective buyers. When the outside looks great, buyers are much more likely to want to see the inside. Of course, it is important to make sure that your home looks great inside as well. As soon as you have your home shining on the outside, it's time to get started on the interior.
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Three good things to do to prepare your home for sale
Putting your home up for sale can be quite stressful. The prep work is usually rushed, troublesome, and typically require a lot of hard work. That's especially so if you're like most people and prepare your home for sale the weekend before putting it on the market.
Plan ahead
Attempting to do everything at once immediately prior to placing the house up for sale is an invitation for disaster (or at least a lot of unnecessary hassles and expense). Make a list of things around the house that need to be fixed now, and deal with them one by one every few months. By taking a little time to do a few tasks in the year or two before placing your home on the market, you will be saving yourself a lot of unnecessary stress when it comes time to put that sign in the yard. Not only will you feel more prepared, but you won't be as hasty in trying to get things working, and you'll do a far better job. If you hire someone, you'll also save some money by hiring them during their slow times, rather than waiting until the middle of the summer when most contractors will have more expensive rates. Painters are not as busy in the winter so negotiating a painting contract in the winter months will allow you to get the work done for a better price. The same goes for heating & air conditioning contractors and renting storage space.
What buyers see from the curb
If you know in the fall that you might be selling in the spring, be sure to plant bulbs in September/October so your buyers can see a beautiful flower garden when they visit your home. Many homeowners focus so much on the inside of the home that they forget that the yard will be the first thing that potential buyers will see when they come to view the home. Some pretty flowers, and maybe a porch swing will go a long way towards convincing potential buyers that your house is the right house for them.
Getting a good listing photo
In the online age, buyers can instantly view all the details of innumerable homes for sale. With all this instant information, reading it all can tend to zone them out. They like pictures. One thing you can do is to keep a camera handy for getting just the right shot in the optimum lighting conditions. After a rain, under clearing skies see if you can get a dramatic picture with fluffy clouds in the background. Another good time is in the morning or evening light. One sure thing is that if you wait until the last minute to take a picture for your home, it will be gloomy weather when your agent comes to take the listing shot. Have your own all ready, and save the worry.
With just a little advance planning, you can get as much as possible done with the least amount of effort in preparing your home for sale.
Content contributed by Colorado real estate experts -- Automated Homefinder.
Why should a seller hire an appraiser?
Whether selling property on a Palm Springs area golf community, a home on the other side of the world in Seville, or Galveston Texas real estate, you'll see the same basic rule: Buyers are going to second-guess your asking price, regardless of how confident you are in the value of your home. That's just the plain truth -- like it or not. For most people, it's the biggest investment of their lives. You can't blame them for being careful.
Buyers can't get much better assurance than an uninterested third party validating the value of your home.
Because real estate involves such serious financial decisions, sellers can boost their home's odds of selling by getting the professional opinion of real estate appraisers. Appraisers are third party real estate experts with no vested interest in the deal. Their job is to provide an impartial estimate of the value, considering the condition and quality, of the home. By getting an appraisal in advance you ensure that you get the higest value possible for your home because of how that appraisal will give the buyer a better feeling about the home's true value.
While evaluating the home, the real estate appraiser judges how sound the construction of the home is, the condition of the total property, and how outdated the home may be compared to other homes that have sold. They research the entire property by making notes and searching public records for the details of other properties, past sales and leases, and any other transactions.
Negotiate with the appraiser in advance for a transfer of the appraisal to the new purchaser.
If used properly, an advance home appraisal is a tangible asset that is part of the home, but it loses its value to the seller as soon as the home is sold. Why not offer that appraisal to the buyer? The borrower would save $250 to $500 (or even more), which, in turn, can help you increase your odds of actually having a meeting of the minds to begin with. In addition to reassuring the purchaser of your home's worth, you can for all practical purposes get some of your appraisal cost reimbursed by simply transferring it to the buyer. In addition to saving the buyer money, you also guarantee that the loan won't fall through because of a different (lower) appraisal, because if the borrower hires their own appraiser, there's a risk of that appraiser won't think the home is worth what they're paying.
For a nominal fee, usually $25 to $50, the appraiser will transfer the appraisal to the buyer. In today's highly competitive real estate market, sellers must use every tool available. This is a nice, inexpensive amenity you can put on the table to show your good faith and cooperative spirit as a seller. It not only raises the purchaser's level of trust in your interaction with him or her, but it could very well improve the numbers on your side of the closing ledger as well.
4 Serious Secrets for Investors in Real Estate
One of the most successful ways of making a living, as long as anyone can remember, has been in real estate. People not only buy places to live, but also as an investment. There has been a trend toward "flipping," which is buying a house to remodel and sell for a profit. Keeping in mind that an investment may be sought either for monetary gain or for your own personal living space, behaving as an investor would can be a good technique either way. Regardless of your motive behind the investment, treating it as an investment and having a sound plan is essential. In the case of real estate, particularly when you need a place to live, this will often be the most important element of the whole investment scenario. In order to be effective at all, planning must be completely done and double-checked before you even begin the buying process.
1. Allow Enough Time
You have to get started on the search well in advance of needing to make your move. Give yourself several months before you would like to move to begin looking. Sign up with multiple home-search Internet sites. Check out different realty firms to find out what their listings are and what is on the market. Sticking with just one could limit your options. A home purchase requires significant time, financial resources and follow-through whether you plan to use it as an investment, and doing it in a hurry could damage you financially.
2. Prequalification Is Important
Another thing you should do prior to beginning the search is to get a lender to prequalify you up to a certain maximum amount. Your lender should be located in the community and should have a good reputation. This will play a major role in deciding a range of prices for the transaction. A lender should be able to help you figure out a reasonable amount to spend, considering your income and obligations. Also, knowing that you have a lender that is willing to lend you that predetermined amount can boost your confidence. Having that information at hand as you shop is a genuine advantage.
3. Decide What You Really Want
Think about what you want. You have to really think about it until the idea is crystal clear. Set the highest standards you can think of. If you shoot high, you can always adjust if you need to. You shouldn't have a bare minimum mentality in the serious matter of buying a home. You should aim for what will make you feel gloriously satisfied, taking your budget into account of course. There is no real catastrophe in bringing it down a bit to be more realistic. Sometimes, certain things just are not realistic in the area where you are looking.
4. Work with a Realtor to Represent You as the Buyer
Speak with Realtors who are buyer agents. Don't just rely on whoever is selling the home because that agent is already obligated to favor the seller. Choosing an agent you can work with is something you have to do with careful attention. You have to do it carefully. It may or may not be a good choice to go to a friend who happens to be in the business, unless you are sure that friend has a solid professional standing outside of the relationship.
See? That's not as difficult as you thought. Don't hurry through it, determine how much you will be able to afford, set a high and achievable standard, and get yourself a reliable agent. Following these four steps will get you into the right home, whether as a financial investment or as an investment in your own happiness.
This article was provided by Automated Homefinder, the Denver real estate specialists in Colorado.
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