Real Estate Tips Blog

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

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.

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.

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!

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.

When it comes to home insurance, I can promise that many people are attempting to think of ways that they can cost their costs and save some money.  Home insurance is not all that cheap — heck, most of the time, the insurance premium is by far the most expensive bill that you have and that is just because of everything that home insurance covers.

However … there are a ton of different ways that you can save money on your home insurance.  For example, did you know that upping your deductible can actually really help lower your insurance premium?  Also, installing things like a brand new roof and also making your home secure are great and easy ways to make your home insurance premium go down.

Saving money on home insurance is pretty easy — you just have to make sure that you know exactly what you are doing.

Some may say that if you are paying rent, you have the right to do whatever you want to do to the property, in regards to painting and things of that nature — as long as you leave it in a condition that pleases your landlords.  Personally, I agree with that, but it is not the way things go all the time.  Still, if you move into an apartment where the paint and wallpwper on the walls does not suit your personality or your design aesthetic (as I just experienced: beautiful place, but walls decorated in oranges, yellows … and the most heinous floral wallpaper imaginable) and your landlord is wary of letting you do anything (even though former tenants were allowed to paint the walls orange and yellow, and put up the most heinous floral wallpaper imaginable), there are ways to get around that dictate.

Sheets.  That’s right — flat bed sheets, not the fitted ones.  You can choose them in a color you like, or pick white sheets and paint them.  You can tack them up in a way that will not harm the underlying wall, or use special adhesives that will not harm the paint or paper beneath.  Stretched tightly, this idea is safe, economical, stylish, and beautiful.

Want wallpaper?  Stencil your sheets.  In any design you like.  Nor do you have to pay an arm and a leg for the stencils.  Print out the ones you like and use an Xacto knife to cut out the patterns on the appropriate material.