Staging your home for a quick sale

When you are selling your home you need to properly represent or stage your home.  Staging a home creates a feel for your house that potential buyers will appreciate the first time they view your house (whether in pictures or in person).  In today's market, it's important to take the time to set the stage for a quick, full-price sale.  Selling a house is not an easy task and you have to devote some time to get ready for it. 

Here are some tips for staging your house:

Boost The Appeal

In order to attract a buyer to come through the front door, you have to pay attention to your curb appeal.  Power wash the walkways, driveway and house siding to create a cleaner look.  In our area, you also need to pay attention to any moss on your roof.  A mossy roof, or mildew/green patches on the house or driveway give a dingy/dull appearance and make the potential buyer wonder what other parts of the house have been neglected.  Cracks on a concrete driveway should be repaired.  Worn away paint or stain on your front steps needs to be spruced up too.  

Outside the house hang some easy-to-read house numbers and keep some blooming flowers in your flower beds and in pots (hanging or otherwise) out front.  Wash the front windows and if there are any stains repaint it. All these will accentuate the look of your house.

The Home Should be Neat and Tidy

A neat and tidy house attracts buyers.  If they are unable to look past your clutter to picture themselves living there, then you've lost a potential buyer.  Make sure that the house is sparkling clean with neat and clean closet, bedroom, kitchen and clean bathrooms.  

Clean the Clutter

If you have kids or children at house then a heap of toys or a clutter of clothes over the bed or floor is quite common.  Pets can also create their own messes of toys and equipment.  Even adults can keep large volumes of personal items laying around.  Yes, the potential buyer recognizes that a person still lives in the house... but they still want to walk into a model home.  Remove half the items in your closet - a large closet begins to look like a small closet when you have it operating at max capacity.  A potential buyer will envision more storage space when it appears that you were unable to even utilize all the space available while living there.

In the kitchen, remove all items from your refrigerator (time to pack up you're child's A+ on the spelling test and recent art creation).  Remove all items from your countertop as well (if possible).  The less items on the counter, the more potential counter space available and you can never present too much cooking space.  Yes, we recognize you still live there, but it is an easy step to remove your favorite toaster, canisters, cooking equipment and even coffee maker.  If your counter space is limited, remove it all.

Rearrange Your Furniture

Before the buyers pay a visit to your house, make sure that all the pieces of furniture are at their right places. Rearranging the furniture neatly is very important.  If your dining room is large, accentuate this with a large table and chairs.  If it's cramped, remove any extra table leaves and remove some of the chairs to not show how cramped the situation can be.  Decorate the top of the table with a vase and flowers as well as decorative plates, napkins and glassware that you might use for entertaining. 

In your living areas, accentuate focal features by positioning the furniture properly.  For example, do not block a fireplace with your coach, instead re-position the coach so that someone sitting in it would be facing the fireplace.  Remove over-sized furniture and opt for smaller pieces.  While the large furniture might show that you can fit big pieces in the room, it also takes up a lot of space and can make the room appear smaller.  Set the stage with decorative items like throw pillows and soft blankets to make potential buyers feel at home.

Beware The Odor

Staging a home doesn't just stop when things look good, it also needs to smell good.  The use of air fresheners can help with this.  You could opt to turn on a wax tart burner for a few hours before showing your house.  If you don't happen to have that much time, add a couple cinnamon sticks to boiling water for a few minutes as this scent seems to over power a lot of other common household odors.

You want to sell your home for top-dollar, and setting up an environment that is welcoming to many people is the best way to do this.  So take the time to remove some of your personal items and rearrange things to make it more inviting to others.  Although it may not be the easiest home to live in for a week or so, it will help you to quickly move on to your next home.

Foreclosure Property Pros and Cons Analyzed

Buying foreclosure property is slightly different from buying a typical resale or constructing one from scratch. You need to be extra careful when approaching such an offer because the "good deal" on paper may not necessarily translate to savings on your part at the end of the day. The only way to determine if it is really a nice offer is to compare the foreclosure property pros and cons before making any decision. 

Pros

-The obvious benefit to buying a foreclosed home is that you can get it at the lowest possible market price (that is if you do your homework). Actually, sometimes you could get a house for 50% or less than the market price. 

-If you’re lucky to find a short-sale property, you may be in a position to capitalize on the seller’s sense of urgency to negotiate for a much better deal. Also, if the property is not bank-owned, you can take your time to perform inspections when the property is still pre-foreclosure. 

-If recent past trends are anything to go by, buying through foreclosure can save you about 15% off traditional sales as the homes are priced with the cost of repair and rehabilitation in mind. In fact, you can buy a foreclosed home, rehabilitate it and then wait for property prices to rise and re-sell it for profit. 

-The best thing about buying a foreclosure home is that all transactions are done in business-like fashion. No emotional issues are involved and the buyer, seller and lender only need to agree or disagree to the terms of the transaction. 

While there are many pros to buying foreclosure property, there are still a few cons to it. 

Cons

-The main disadvantage with this method of owning property is that you buy the home “as is where is”. Yes you may perform an extra-thorough inspection on the home but this might not always give you a clear picture on what to expect once you’re the owner. In the end, the discount that attracted you to the deal might wind up costing more than building from scratch. 

-In some cases, you may receive a Special Warranty Deed instead of the Buyer’s Title (especially if the foreclosure is still under review). In such a situation you need to invest in a good title insurance policy to protect your interest just in case the foreclosure is overturned and the house goes back to the original owner. This of course means additional cost burden.

Bottom Line

Investing in a foreclosure property has its fair share of pros and cons. And while the merits might heavily out-weigh the demerits in some cases, it is always advisable to cross-examine the deal before accepting any offer. 

Yes there are many good deals out there, but there are also quite a few albatrosses to watch out for! 

Fixer Upper Pro's and Con's

Ahh the joys of purchasing a fixer upper. This can be a wonderful dream come true, or one of the worst nightmares ever.

There are a million and one fixer upper pro's and con's, and this can make the new home owner a little nervous.  Some of the fixer upper pro's and con's consist of questions such as:

• Is the property worth the money needed to be rehabbed and then resold?
• How quickly can the fixer upper be rehabbed, and should the property be sold or rented out? 

Well I am here to tell you that firstly, yes. Just about any home, rather it needs a lot of work, or just minor repairs, can be fixed as long as the investor possesses the cash flow, the time and the experience to do what is needed.

Now lets suppose that the fixer upper was purchased to be the individuals personal home.  In this case, the fixer upper pro's and con's really does come into play.  Now the buyer has to decide if the repair needed is really some thing they can afford, will they be living in the home while they are repairing it, or will they be remaining in their own home and just spending the weekends at the fixer upper.  All of this needs to be considered, as well as the actual cost of the on-going repairs and cleaning.

However, putting the pro's and con's behind you, purchasing a fixer upper can be a lot of fun. The real pro's of buying a fixer upper is the fact that you can do whatever you want to the home, to make it reflect your own personality and taste. If you want pink and green striped walls, well then you can have pink and green striped walls.  What if the home has a large yard?  Well now you get to plant all those pretty rose bushes that you have always wanted.  Or perhaps you wanted to have a large daycare; now is your time.  As long as you know the city code, concerning the fixer upper you just bought, the sky is the limit!

However, most people dream of making money off the fixer upper they had just bought. This can be a wonderful opportunity for you, this could be the way to make you're dream come true. What ever reason might be that you have purchased the fixer upper, with a the proper experience, cash and time, this can be a great experience.