Real Estate Tips Blog

As we welcome the new year, we list down some of the worst but most common mistakes we make in buying your selling your home:

Not making enhancements to showcase your home better

If you are selling your home you should think of how house hunters will be seeing your property. Minor enhancements are necessary and you can hire a professional to help you with this. You can have your furniture re-arrange so it will look more pleasing to the buyers. Stage your home right and you can increase its potential in the real estate market.

Sky high selling price

You need to do your research well so you can put the right tag price on your home. You have to compare it with nearby homes and see how you can price your home. You can have a sale price just in the middle of the going on prices in your neighborhood rather that start high and bring it down after which might put an impression on buyers that something is wrong with the property.

Buying what you want

There is a big difference with what you want and what you need. If you buy according to your wants, then there is something wrong and you may be wasting a good portion of your hard earned money. Shop for a house which will answer your needs. Make a list of your needs that you want to see in your new home and look for features that will address them as you shop around for a real estate property.

Visiting the property only once

If you are buying a home, you may want to schedule multiple visits to the property. The community it is in may be different depending on the time and day of your visit. It is also good to think things carefully and not falling in love at first sight.

Not having a realistic budget

If a bank pre-qualifies you for a few hundred thousand dollars, it does not necessarily mean that you can really afford to pay it. Do the math and see if how much you can afford for amortization for a new home. Make sure that you will be comfortable taking into account your monthly spending and any potential emergency costs.

Some people do not see winter as an ideal time to sell your house. There are advantages though when you sell your home during these cooler months.

Winter does not have the selling frenzy that comes during home selling in Spring. Buyers can actually give their decisions a more serious thought before committing to anything. The number of competition is also a lot less, and it is a great time to stage your property as a family-friendly, cozy place to live in.

Taking care of the exterior

Selling your home during any season requires that your property appears to be well maintained. Make sure the surroundings are clean and needed repairs are done. You may not be able to paint during winter time but you can wash the paintwork and also clean the siding with water and soap. You can also wash the windows so they will be fresh in case a potential buyer views your home.

Trim the foliage

Trim down branches or shrubs which may be blocking entrances or getting into pathways. Prune the plans as necessary. Make sure that your walkway is ice-free every time you hold an open house. This is a sign of courtesy and also avoid any injuries to a person occurring in your property, for which you will be responsible.

Decorate the entrance

Some sets of Christmas lights, wreath on the door, or some garlands will make the house very welcoming.

First impression

When a potential buyer visits to see your home, you need to make most of the first fifteen minutes to make a good and lasting impression. Also make sure that the heater is turned on to make the place warm enough.

Light candles and the fireplace

Create some ambiance by lighting some candles and burn some wood in the fireplace. You can also make use of flowers like poinsettias for the main rooms.

A few years ago, anything that you put into improving your home is well worth it because you were assured that you can get the investment back. Today, replace a toilet seat and you might just be throwing your money away. You will not even feel the value of your project. Here are some tips so you can maximize what you spend:

Focus on essential repairs

Although your potential buyers will appreciate a nice Jacuzzi, they will not tolerate any leaks on the roof and really old plumbing. If your house has issues like these, buyers will not even spend a minute checking it out.

Go for some remodeling

Now the name of the game is quality coming over quantity. So adding on is not as important as remodeling to make the house better. Try to reconfigure the floor plan so the spaces will be more functional and useful.

Greener upgrades save you money

Environment friendly upgrades may get you some tax credit from the government. You can install extra wall insulations and other energy efficient elements to somehow lower your monthly energy bills.

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Let’s have a little chat about vacation rentals shall we?  For one – vacations rentals are something that many, many people think about, especially if they live near the ocean.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to have their own place right near the ocean that they can visit anytime they want.

Well, that is what layaway plans can do for you.  To be honest, a lot of renters that are looking to buy a vacation place are actually putting their place on layaway and renting versus buying … why?  It’s cheaper!

So if you have a place that you have been trying to sell, why not rent it out to some new prospects?

Making your home pretty is something that a heck of a lot of people overlook.  Did you know that people constantly are looking at homes and I can tell you for sure that curb appeal is something that everyone is looking at.  A garden is a fantastic way to ensure that you get some curb appeal.

There are a few steps that you will need to take whenever you are looking to plant a garden and one of them is to decide exactly what you are going to plant.  This is where deciding on veggies or flowers is very important.

Both of them can have some incredible affects, you just want to make sure that the garden is in good shape whenever you have buyers coming to look at the house.

Before buying a home, make sure to have an idea of your home insurance rates. You don't want any surprises involved with the biggest purchase of your life!

Selling your home is a difficult task – to be honestly, it is actually extremely hard, especially in these conditions of the economy right now.  If you are one of the many people that are selling their home right now and you have no idea go to really go about it, well, that is what I am here for … to help you figure out how to sell your home and get it off the market!

To be perfectly honest, selling your home is something that should be left up to the real estate agents.  That is what their job is and that is certainly what you should be hiring.  Finding the right real estate agent can be hard though.

You want to find someone that has a lot of passion, that way you can make sure that they actually are passionate about getting your house off of the market!

Renters in this generation are getting so picky about where they are going to live, it is so bad that landlords actually need to find a way to sweeten the pot a little bit and that is by the landlords adding in furniture.  Furnishing your rental apartment or home is a great way to attract any potential renters.

If you are a pack rat like me, then you probably have double of everything.  Like couches, chairs, dining room sets – I have double of all of these and what I did was put them into my rental house and it was rented within just a matter of months.

Honestly – this is one fantastic way to ensure that your house or apartment is going to get rented.

Whenever you are looking to switch up your renters, you want to make sure that you understand exactly what screening your tenants mean.  Landlords are generally the ones that are taking a huge risk whenever they allow someone to live in their home without really and truly knowing the person.  Well – I can tell you for sure that there are a few things that you want to make sure that you are doing before you sign a lease.

Firstly, you always want to make sure that you keep it legal.  If you do not have a lawyer, make sure that you get one, that way you can make sure that everything that goes into the lease or even what a qualified tenant looks like.  Also, it is a great way to prove that you are not discriminating against anyone.

Next, make sure that you check with the previous landlords – if they treated those landlords badly, odds are they are going to do the same to you.  Do not over read the credit report.  While we know there might be some mistakes, do not read too much into it.  Finally, do not settle for just anyone, find the right tenant for you.

Home buyers: although we are coming up on a brand new year, that does not mean that all of our past problems in the housing industry will be laid to rest.  You still need to be extremely careful.  Consider why you are buying a home in the first place.  Do you intend to flip it, as it were, and then sell it for a larger profit?

If so, it is enormously important that you make absolutely sure that you can truly get a profit.  It is a buyer’s market only in some instances.

For those of you who are selling your home, you need to be careful as well.  It is more important than ever to make a good impression.  Doing what home improvements you can is absolutely essential.

In this day and age it seems that everyone is renting simply because it is so expensive to buy anything.  Did you know that when you rent something, when something goes wrong in the apartment, you – as a tenant is not responsible to fix it or pay for it to be fixed?

Over the weekend, our hot water went out and our landlord was out of town.  What do you do in a situation like that?  Well, that is what we are going to talk about in this blog.  One of the first things that we did was attempt to contact the real estate agent, as they are the ones that I thought to go to first.

Next – I e-mailed the landlord, just so that there was a paper trail.  Finally, I called them – you always want to make sure that you have a witness around whenever you are discussing repair problems, that way there is someone on your side.