Three Things You Can Do Year Round to Prepare Your Home for Sale
Preparing your home to be put on the real estate market can be an intimidating task. The preparations are stressful, difficult, and typically require a large amount of manual labor.
Plan Ahead
Attempting to do everything at once immediately prior to placing the house up for sale is an invitation to annoyance, frustration, and most likely a poorly prepared residence. By taking a little time to do a few tasks in the year or two before placing your home on the real estate market, you will be saving yourself a lot of headaches when it comes time to hand over the keys to your home. Here are three things that you can do easily in a casual extended time frame, but could be big problems if they are delayed to the last minute.
Listing Photos
One of the best things you can do to prepare to put your home on the market is to keep a camera handy for taking listing photos. The listing photo is the first items that many potential homeowners look at and can either cause the potential homeowner to dismiss your home from contention or will cause them to take another look and possibly call about the property. From Murphy’s Law, which states that anything that can go wrong will, we can expect that if you wait until the last moment to take the listing photo for your home, it will be a bad turn of weather or something else that will show your home in an unattractive light. Taking photographs of your home throughout the year will also help potential homeowners to see what the home looks like during all seasons and may help them decide that they would like to see more of the home.
Landscaping
Another tip for preparing your home well before the home is placed on the market is to keep up with the landscaping and to plant flowers in the fall that will bloom into a beautiful garden by spring. Many homeowners focus so much on preparing the house that they forget that the yard will be the first thing that potential buyers will see when they come to view the home. A well manicured and landscaped yard will go a long way towards convincing potential buyers that your house is the right house for them. Use an attractive mulch such as bark or wood chips liberally around the base of plants and in flower beds.
Service and Repairs
Any service providers that need to be hired to do work on the home can be hired in the off season with a little careful planning. Interior 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 individuals that repair air conditioning units and movers that may be needed to move items into storage. Any plumbing or furnace issues should be taken care of in the summer months, when these individuals have less work to keep them busy. Hiring these professionals in their off season can save you a great deal of money and your repairs will be completed in a more timely manner because the contractors may only have your home on their schedule. By simple pre-planning, homeowners can take a great deal of stress out of preparing their home for sale.
This information was provided by the Denver real estate specialist, Automated Homefinder.
How to Repair Your Credit When Buying a Home
Many individuals do not realize just how damaging a bad credit report can be. Although circumstances do occur which are out of our control, a history of late payments, non-payments, and accumulated debts can destroy your ability to obtain financial help when needed.
Implications of Negative Credit
A negative credit report can impact your ability to obtain a loan, buy a car, or get approved for a home mortgage. It also will skyrocket the interest rate you will have to pay to obtain any type of loan. Because lenders look at the overall financial history of the individual requesting the loan, paying off the debts just before submitting a mortgage application will do you no good. There are, however, several important things you can do to improve your credit before purchasing a home.
Start With Your Credit Report
The first step to improving your credit rating is to obtain your credit information from each of the three credit bureaus that hold credit information in the United States. These three credit reporting agencies are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Not all creditors report to all three agencies, so it is important to obtain all three to ensure that all of your bases are covered.
Verify Credit Report Data
Once you have obtained all three credit reports, you will need to go over them carefully for any discrepancies. Finding mistakes on a credit report is more common than you would think and there is always the possibility that someone has fraudulently opened credit in your name.
The credit bureau that the report was obtained from should be alerted to any questionable credit actions on your credit report as soon as possible. They can look into the matter (due diligence) to determine the validity of the action. If it is found to be a mistake, they will correct it.
Any credit accounts that are not yours will need to be removed from your credit report and any accounts that have been paid that are still showing on you credit report will also need to be fixed. Completing this step may make your credit report look a great deal better to potential lenders.
Request Corrections
Most creditors are willing to remove the negative actions on your credit report once you have brought their attention to the fact that the debts have been paid. If any creditor refuses to cooperate and remove debts that have been paid from your credit report, the individual has the ability to file a dispute and let the credit bureau know that there are mistakes in their credit history. The credit bureau will investigate these claims and correct any information that they feel is incorrect.
Debt Reduction
Once the credit report has been corrected, it is time to start paying off debts, starting with the highest interest ones first. Although paying off the debts will not give you a sparkling credit report, it will go a long way towards showing the lenders that you are a responsible individual who is taking care of business. Fully repairing your credit will take a long time. In the meantime your interest rates will be much higher than for individuals with good credit. By repairing your credit, you will be opening opportunities for the future.
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The Crucial Importance of Setting the Right Price
In today's Palm Springs real estate market, the biggest mistake made by many sellers is demanding too high a price. The higher your price, the longer the process will take, and the delay costs you in many ways. This can be particularly distressing if you have become emotionally attached to a new home, or even just the idea of moving.
You Have to Be Competitive
If you want a quick deal you have to list your home just a little less than similar homes on the market in the vicinity. Getting a professional market analysis, which involves a lot more than just looking at what other homes are for sale in the area, is something best done by a Palm Springs Realtor if you are working with one on the sale. A good Realtor knows the market and can help you set a realistic price that can be to your advantage to get the sale made.
Move It or Keep It?
Consider the process of buying an item for your home. You would probably not spend months making a decision between an item available for sale nearby and one that costs less but had to be brought in from far away. Your time is valuable as is the money you have to keep investing in your house while it is being sold. Looking at it this way makes the matter look different. A further danger, if you are in a slow period of the market or "buyer's market," is that having to drop your price after a time of inactivity it communicates the idea to buyers that you might be in a vulnerable position. They tend to respond more than you like to any indications that you might be under pressure.
Market Momentum Can Be an Advantage
If, after looking at the case for not going for the maximum possible price you still have that goal in mind, you may have to be willing to wait until you can achieve the higher target; in other words, pay attention the market. Now might not be the time to be selling, so you may have to give some on the idea of selling it quickly -- but still, when the market shifts you might need to go quickly. This may mean selling the home before you decide on another one. Unless you have relatives or spectacularly good friends with whom you can stay, you may defeat the purpose of getting extra profit from the sale by having to move into temporary rental housing until you find a place. In some cases, the buyers may be willing to wait to take possession, especially if they can stay in their current home a little longer. But in most cases, once they know their new loan is approved they will be anxious to close pretty quickly.
A Final Point: If You Want to Sell It, Price Is Not the Only Consideration
It is just too easy to not think about differences when you are setting the price on your home and see others in the area selling at good prices. If you have not maintained your home in excellent shape, you will not be able to sell it at the same good price as the other homes even if they are similar. In this case you may be successful in pricing it to sell quickly anyway, by offsetting the price of any repairs that will be left to the new homeowner. This would result in a lower selling price but, offsetting it, less bother and expense for you. You will have to decide, after all, what is your personal attention and effort worth? Repairs of a serious nature such as structural items, roofing, and heating/cooling systems may not be eligible for this kind of treatment, although you can do it for problems that only affect appearance. Projects such as improving tired landscaping, replacing old gutters and shutters, and fresh new paint can possibly be overlooked in exchange for a break in the price as long as the buyers understand they will be taking on some physical labor in exchange for the price break they're getting. The big thing to remember is this: if you consider both the value of your time and having the house sit too long with the "For Sale" sign up, the smartest approach is truly to be smart by pricing right from the beginning. Price it right if you want to sell it without a lot of hassle.
Be especially aware of this if your home is not clearly the most attractive of all the available homes in the neighborhood. There are people who like to buy a home that needs some work so they can make it their own, and if your home is in need of any work at all then overpricing will leave you completely at a loss. Even if your home is the best one around, though, unrealistic expectations have a way of hurting when they fall. From the time you decide to sell, your best bet is to price it right.
This content was provided by Automated Homefinder, the Colorado real estate specialists.
