Posts Tagged ‘house’

Having an open house requires advertising the home, placing signs and balloons out front, keeping the door open and gathering names and email addresses upon entry. Offer contact information to potential buyers during an open house withadvice from an experienced real estate broker in this free video on real estate. Expert: Penny Smith Contact: www.liveoakgroup.com Bio: Penny Smith has been in real estate for more than 14 years. Filmmaker: Reel Media LLC

If increasing the value of your home is a main consideration when remodeling, there are a few things to consider. First, consider whether or not the scale of he project you are considering will generate enough profit-potential for your area.

Most kitchens remodels these days cost between $15,000 and $50,000. While putting in high-end appliances, granite counter tops and custom tiled floors can often be redeemed when selling in higher-priced neighborhoods, in some areas the costs of such a project will never be redeemed.

It doesn’t matter how gorgeous your house is, or how much you paid to have it remodeled – if your neighborhood is full of $135,000 homes, a $75,000 kitchen isn’t going to yield a $350,000 selling price!

So, what projects are the best to consider when trying to increase the value of your home? Here are a few basic projects that almost any neighborhood can sustain:

New Windows.

New double paned windows are always a good investment since they help lower energy costs for the new owner and virtually maintenance free for decades!

Fresh Paint.

A new paint job in both the interior and exterior of your home can make it much more appealing to potential buyers and give them a sense that the home has been well cared for and easy to maintain which can help boost its selling price.

Layout Reconfiguration.

It is all in the layout these days. People want big airy spaces to live in, and that sometimes means opening a wall between a living area and the kitchen or tearing out a closet to expand an otherwise cramped space. Although more expensive than some remodeling jobs, reconfiguring your layout may mean the difference between selling for one price and another $10,000, #20,000 or more higher.

Kitchens and Bathrooms.

It is said that kitchens and bathrooms sell a house these days. They need to feature modern amenities and luxury like never before. While most kitchen and bathroom remodeling projects cost over $15,000 these days, they can usually be recouped in the selling price as long as you stay within your area’s ability to pay the higher price.

As you can see, there are a lot of inexpensive (and not inexpensive) ways to increase the value of your property. But which ones are best? According to a recent cost vs. value report released by the home selling industry these were projects yielded the most profit in 2006:

-Bathrooms: 75%

-Deck: 77%

-Master Suite Additions: 73%

-Sunrooms: 66%

-Attic Bedrooms: 88%

-Kitchen Upgrades: 84%

-New Roofing: 80%

-Siding Replacement: 87%

-Window Replacement: 84%

Christa and Lane knew they wanted a home with character. Maybe an historic Columbus home in a neighborhood not too far from Downtown Columbus. They looked at a good amount of homes for sale in Columbus from Merion Village to the Brewery District to Olde Towne East and almost fell for some grand old fixer uppers. They didn’t think that their budget would allow them to be looking in Bexley but the home they ended up purchasing was in Bexley, was among the first homes they had seen and was purchased for a significant discount from the list price. It was the right home in the right place at the right time. They love their new home and they love the guidance and support they received from their Realtor, Joe Peffer with Delicious Real Estate.

House flipping is the act of purchasing a home at a low price, fixing any problems and updating the cosmetic features and then selling it for a profit. Understand the art of flipping withinformation from a Massachusetts Realtor in this free video on real estate. Expert: Beau Sasser Contact: www.northamptonrealtor.com Bio: Beau Sasser has been at Goggins Real Estate in Northampton, Mass. for many years, previously working for Sasser Properties in Aspen, Colo. and EcoFriendly Properties in Destin, Fla. Filmmaker: David Pakman

It’s time to put your house on the market and you want it to sell fast. What’s the best way to get a reasonable offer quickly? Try these important selling tips by the nation’s leading home selling authorities:

Price It Right.

You can’t sell your home if you can’t get people in to see it. Sure, it may be worth thousands more than others in your neighborhood, but if you price it, much higher than others on the market, no one will even show up to see why. Make sure your real estate agent checks to see what similar properties in your area are listed (and selling for) and price your home accordingly. And, if you can, list it a few thousand under the others in order to generate more traffic flow and interest. This strategy often results in several buyers eager to outbid each other (thus raising the selling price), in order to get it for themselves.

Fixer Up.

It isn’t usually necessary to do any major remodeling or repairs in order to sell a home, but you do need to be sure that everything is in sound working order. Have a hole in the screen door? Make sure it gets fixed. Be sure no faucets or toilets are leaking (they make a potential buyer think there are bigger, more expensive plumbing woes in their future); and be sure to replace old and tattered window coverings, switch plates and lights. These are simple and inexpensive fixes that can mean a lot when selling a home.

Clean, Clean, Clean.

Clutter and dirt have no place in a home that is for sale. Too much furniture and “stuff” lying around can make rooms look smaller. Make sure you put every non-essential piece of furniture and personal object into storage before opening up your home to potential buyers. Clean out cupboards, closets, and storage areas. Bring in a cleaning crew to get everything spick and span. An unkempt, unclean home makes buyer’s think that you’ve neglected all areas of your home and its maintenance.

Repaint.

Painting is a cheap and easy way to make a house look fresh and new. Neutral colors are best. Lightening a room can make it look and feel roomier.

Concentrate on Curb Appeal.

First impressions really do count when selling a home. Make sure that yours looks inviting from the outside. Keep the yard neatly landscaped. Add colorful plants and shrubs to make a home look cozier. Afresh coat of paint on the exterior can add a lot to a home’s curb appeal. Even if you can’t repaint the entire house, consider adding a fresh coat to the front door, porch and trim. A fresh seal coat on the driveway costs very little and can also make a home look well cared for.

Learn why it is important to redecorate the master bedroom toget maximum value for your house in this free video clip. Expert: Frank Clarke Contact: www.oliver-and-associates.com Bio: Frank Clarke is a Real Estate Agent with Oliver and Associates in London, ON. He has lived in and around the Province of Ontario, with a brief but rewarding few years in the province of Alberta. Filmmaker: Melissa Schenk

Even though you are selling your home without a real estate agent, the assistance of a real estate professional is still needed at various steps in the home selling process.

Follow these tips and you will find the process goes smoothly:

The requirement of a real estate attorney depends on the laws in your state. Even if you live in a state where a real estate attorney is not needed, as a for sale by owner seller, it will still be beneficial for you to use one.

A real estate attorney can serve many purposes in the housing transaction.

When you hire an attorney that specialized in real estate, that attorney is responsible for seeing that your best interests are met in the housing transaction.

A real estate attorney can act as the escrow agent by holding down payments, documentation, and earnest money deposits. Not only that, the attorney can help you decipher and evaluate complicated offers you might receive from a buyer.

In the event that the lender’s attorney does not handle the closing, your real estate attorney will host and handle the closing. If the lender’s attorney does handle the closing, then your real attorney will represent you in the process.

Your primary concern should be to find a real estate attorney that will provide you with assistance you need in the housing transaction.

You can use a local or internet directory to find the names of some attorneys in your area. Asking friends or family who have recently sold homes for references is another way that you can find an attorney to assist you.

If there are neighbors with “for sale” signs in their yards, you can casually inquire about the real estate attorney they are using. Hiring an attorney that comes as a reference is often better than cold calling attorneys.

As you look for a real estate attorney to hire, you should choose one that works primarily with real estate transactions. Avoid choosing a criminal or family law attorney that handles real estate transaction on the side.

Your interests will not be best served by an attorney that does not spend a significant part of his or her time in real estate transactions. Certainly do not hire an attorney that has never worked in real estate.

Along with experience in real estate transactions, price will be the other factor you use to choose a real estate attorney.

The attorney you hire will have two major responsibilities: reading and advising you on documents and representing you at closing.

Get a price quote from prospective real estate attorneys on those two tasks. You can get a discount from the attorney by letting him or her know that you will be preparing and filling out some of the documentation.

Shop around among several real estate attorneys to get a feel for experience level and price charged.

The most important thing is that you have a real estate professional available to assist you through the transaction. Even if you have successfully sold a for sale by owner home before, it is better to have legal assistance than to attempt to complete the process on your own.

Home selling is a very good way of ensuring your profitability especially in terms of investing in home ownership. Several home owners see the importance of wisely augmenting their finances by maximizing their available resources and selling their property is one of the most attractive ventures to take. It is however a dreaded reality that in the midst of the economic fluctuations and financial disaster, more and more properties stay idle in the market with zero percent chances of getting sold. If you are unfortunately one of those with this drastic fate, then you ought to face the dreaded truth and re-assess your move to know what causes the problem.

It is the seller’s utmost responsibility to take care of the salient information needed that greatly influences the outcome of his home selling project. For instance, you need to basically analyze the current situation in the real estate market before you put up your property in the market list. It is still a buyer’s market out there hence it means that the supply or number of properties for sale is definitely overwhelming that it is not proportioned to the ratio or number of people who are considered actual or sure buyers. Thus, there is a greater supply of houses than potential buyers which leave most properties untouched and not considered for purchase. Buyer’s market is one of the most influential components that affect the current selling trend in the real estate industry.

Next in line is the overpricing of the property which is one of the most fatal mistakes that home sellers tend to commit. Giving an asking price for the property does not depend on your choice or what amount you want to impose on your house. You have to conform to the result of the home inspection and base your price on whatever is indicated in the report. If there are noted repairs and fixtures which are necessarily needed to be addressed, it is your responsibility to comply. After home inspections, potential home buyers also resort to negotiations which will surely mark a great difference in the price you set for your property. If you do not want to lose a potential buyer and taint your credibility, you have to price your house just right.

Another important factor that determines your inability to sell a house or property is when your house is located in an undesirable and depreciating location. In real estate, location is a must and everything that determines the soundness of your investment or if it is highly capable of more profits and productivity. Never choose to invest in a property that has no chances of appreciating or being developed in the future. Look for a house that is situated in a place where everyone wants to live. Even if you have invested everything in the house, if it has a bad location, your efforts, time and money are all doomed.

Have a great investment ahead of you and make sure you are in the right track by knowing the salient components that influence the profitability of your ventures.

To make a more informed house buying decision, get involved with a Realtor who is knowledgeable about the area, research the registry of deeds to get a history of the property and become familiar with the neighborhood before making an offer. Make smart home buying decisions withinformation from a Massachusetts Realtor in this free video on real estate. Expert: Beau Sasser Contact: www.northamptonrealtor.com Bio: Beau Sasser has been at Goggins Real Estate in Northampton, Mass. for many years, previously working for Sasser Properties in Aspen, Colo. and EcoFriendly Properties in Destin, Fla. Filmmaker: David Pakman

 Whether you are looking for a top Realtor in Maryland, an experienced Baltimore County Realtor or the best  Realtor in Harford County, other than knowledge and the ability to represent your best interest, there is one very important skill that your home listing agent must have to sell your home fast, for the most money and with the least amount of headaches.

That skill is to be an expert marketer and to be more specific an expert at marketing your home on the internet. More than 85% of home buyers search for their home on the internet (according to the National Association of REALTORS). So if the real estate agent representing you does not know how to put your home where home buyers are looking, chances are they are not going to find it.

Value of anything is determined by supply and demand. As a home selling realtor our job is to create the demand by marketing your home to as many potential home buyers as possible. If almost 9 of 10 are searching on the internet, how do we locate the ones that are motivated and qualified to buy your home.

Needless to say it is not enough to stick a sign in the yard, post an ad and put your home in the multiple list. It is also not enough to just place your home on the internet. Most mls systems automatically upload home listings to popular sites like realtor.com, zillow.com and others that are very popular and effective, but is it really enough and the best we can do?

There are a ton of great looking websites that get little or no visits. It is all about traffic, getting people to actually see your home information, pics and virtual tour. Look at it this way, if you only had enough money to put up one billboard to advertise your home, would you want it on a road that ten vehicles pass per day or a major highway with a consistent flow of vehicles 24/7.

How do we find the right location? For a billboard we would do a traffic analysis. On the internet it is a little easier to find a high traffic website. We visit alexa.com which ranks websites by the amount of visitors. Here are the top four:

Top Sites
The sites in the top sites lists are ordered by their 1 month alexa traffic rank. The 1 month rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.

1. Google

google.com
Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company’s focus is developing search technology.

2. Facebook

facebook.com
A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.

3. YouTube – Broadcast yourself

youtube.com
YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!

4. Yahoo!

yahoo.com
Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.

Now we know where the traffic is, but where there is more traffic, there is more competition. Therefore it takes special skills to get your message seen. If you or your agent can accomplish this, you are on your way to accomplishing your home selling goals.

Are you selling your home? If so, there are several things to consider when a potential buyer comes through the door.

1) Is cleaning the home good enough? In short, NO …being clean does not remove the clutter. To elaborate:

We all love our “stuff” and think our stuff makes the home feel comfortable. But guess what? The potential buyers who visit your home will most likely think it is cluttered, messy, and uninviting. Buyers need to see a home in “model perfect” condition and they should be able to picture themselves living in your home. That means a minimum number of pictures of your family, no personal items like golf clubs or back packs, and no papers or mail sitting around. You want the house to look like they could bring all their “stuff” and move right in. When people see your collectibles, your kid’s toys, etc., they focus on that and forget about the house. Give them a reason to see your home as their home.

2) Should you stage the home? In short, ABSOLUTELY.

There is a special mindset associated with “staging” your home to sell.  Staging refers simply to the act of improving your home’s appearance in order to appeal to the widest segment of potential buyers. The approach you must adopt is to see your home with an objective eye. Since you may have a strong emotional attachment to your home, you may not fully appreciate hearing about a better way to show it, but try to recognize that the way you decorate to SELL may be quite different from the way you decorate to dwell.  The appearance of a space often trumps its functionality when impressing buyers.

3) Is it still your home? In short, YES and NO.

You are obviously still the owner and live in the home, but when listed for sale it quickly becomes inventory and should be viewed as a house not a home. Start visualizing it as the “product” to sell, like a car or another commodity. The better the packaging and price, the easier it is to sell. Both a real estate agent and a professional home stager can help to market your product successfully by highlighting positive features and downplaying less attractive aspects.

Overall, your goal is to sell quickly at a fair price. A survey by a large national real estate brokerage showed that staged homes sell in half the time, and another survey of REALTORS® showed that a $500 “staging” investment recouped 343% of that cost.  So be prepared to swallow a little pride, move some furniture, and field better offers on the road to your successful sale.

To learn more about the Houston real estate market, selling your home, staging your home, or Houston homes for sale, please visit our website at www.2Mrealty.com.

www.QuickHouseBuyer.com Quick House Buyer – Your Local Home Buying Service. We are an investment company that purchases single-family and multi-family homes. We have the very BEST purchase program available for a home owner to sell their house quickly! Visit our Site for a FREE, confidential, no obligation consultation to learn How You Can Sell Your House in as Little as 9 Days or Less!

Got A House That You Need To Sell Fast In Hattiesburg Mississippi?

You’d have to be living in a cave not to know what’s going on in our country. Financial, mortgage, and credit markets at an all time low – some even believe close to collapse. Unemployment is at an all time high. The housing bubble of the last few years has burst. Foreclosures are at an all time high, many neighborhoods decimated by the number of foreclosed homes. The sub-prime market is all but gone and for those people that are able to buy a home, many can’t get a mortgage because of the increased credit requirements or no credit available at all. Everywhere you turn there’s negative news.

Even with the $800+ billion stimulus package, and the latest measures to help the current foreclosure crisis like Obama’s “Making Home Affordable Program” and the “Foreclosures Alternative Plan (FAP),” declining property values and a huge housing inventory have made if difficult, if not impossible for people to sell their homes.

With the current state of the economy, many home sellers are asking themselves, “How can I sell my house in Hattiesburg Mississippi?”

Here are 20 situations that can cause you or someone you know to have to sell your home fast. Some are created by the state of the economy, some aren’t. Either way there is a solution.

If you are experiencing one of these situations and need to sell your house fast, you probably need to contact a local Hattiesburg real estate investor.

Real estate investors buy houses; they’re don’t want to list them like a Realtor would. They won’t put a sign in the yard, list the house for sale in MLS and wait for the phone to ring. They usually want to purchase your home now! In most cases, for a fast home sale you’ll have your house under contract in less that a week.

In the time it takes to have your house sit on the market while you continue to make mortgage payments, an investor could have already bought the house. You might have to make some price concessions to sell the home fast, but in most cases they’ll provide an answer to your question, “How can I sell my house?”

All situations vary, but here are some of the most common reasons you or someone you know may need to sell your house fast:

Pending foreclosure Lost job and can’t afford mortgage payments Behind on mortgage payments Listing expired with real estate agent Job relocation Two mortgage payments Listed with a realtor for months and won’t sell Divorce Medical Bills Want to purchase another home but can’t sell the old one Landlord tired of dealing with evictions and deadbeat tenants House in need of repairs but no money to do them Vacant house receiving violations from local government Trying to sell For Sale By Owner (FSBO) but won’t sell Want to retire and downsize Failing health Can’t afford tax bills Need debt relief Bankruptcy Administrator/Executor of an estate

If you’re sick and tired of waiting for your house to sell in Hattiesburg Mississippi, perhaps examining other options is a good idea. Local investors usually purchase many houses each month in your area. When you deal with your local real estate investor, you’ll get a free no-obligation written offer, a fast close and a smooth transaction. In most cases there will be multiple offers that cater to your situation for you to choose from.

Learn how to sell your house fast and forget about waiting any longer.

Visit www.MSHomeSolutions.com and fill out a questionnaire to see if your home qualifies for a fast home sale so you can sell your Hattiesburg MS home fast.

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You may have bought a house for yourself recently or you have had it for many years. If it is the latter case, and you have not got your home insurance policy in place as yet, you ought to consider yourself rather lucky. This is because you have not really faced the hassles that unseen circumstances bring upon your house. But this may not go on forever. Who can vouch for the future? Who can vouch for the climactic conditions which can be forever uncertain?

And if you have a house recently built or bought, it is essential to get home insurance as soon as you can. It is your responsibility to protect your house. Hostile nature conditions can refer to earthquake, lightning, flood etc., which pose a bad threat to your house. And this is the possibility apart from the usual wear-and-tear that a house undergoes, whereby the repair costs can be high. This can happen unless you have got all the corners of your house covered appropriately. One also cannot ignore threats from human agencies such as arson and burglary. This can lead to ‘targeted’ loss of your most precious belongings.

These things can happen if you don’t have a home insurance policy in place. This policy can take care of the losses you face. It will ensure that you do not have to spend a penny out of your pockets. So the homeowners, especially the middle class families, can rest assured that they would not be thrown up with a bagful of expenditure which could be real heart-breakers.

Furthermore, the home insurance quotes are available online as well, which helps you with further options. You can compare the quotes at your end. You can help yourself get these quotes with simple filling-up of application forms online. And you can actually go for the one which suits you best.

SoldMagic.com Proven Home Selling Systems Sell Your House In 2 Weeks Or Less Colorado wholesale. Sold Magic has created the Proven Home Selling System(tm) and the Pick Your Price System(tm) to sell your home in a matter of weeks not months or years like the old way. Don’t waist your time with Realtors who are just looking for another real estate listing (just in case your house sells someday), work with us and we will have multiple offers in a matter of weeks. We use the real power of the internet along with our in house Army of buyers. We also use other creative Marketing techniques that our team has created over the years. Many Realtors will HATE us for being different, but times have changed and it is time to serve the customer and give them what they want (ie – To Sell The House NOW!).