Real Estate Tips

Buyer/ Seller Tips:

Seller

 Selling a house is more work than buying a house. Just ask anyone who has done it. If you’ve never sold a home before, you may be surprised at how complex it can be. From determining the correct listing price, to navigating contractual agreements; it’s an exhausting process. The best place to start is by choosing a good Realtor who you trust and enjoy working with. Ask their advice through each step of the process and leverage their experience. A good Realtor will keep you focused on the things that will help you sell your home fast and for top dollar. Below is a list of items that most Realtors will advise you to work on before listing your home for sale.

    1.  Remove Personal Decorations:

 There will be many different types of people looking at your home when it is listed for sale. To encourage the most positive feedback, it’s best to create a neutral environment. The best way to do this is to remove any objects that reflect your personal choices and lifestyle. Some buyers have a hard time emotionally attaching to a home when sellers lifestyle choices are front and center. Take out all evidence that you even live there and you will be on the right track. You will want your house to look staged and appear inviting to the buyer.  You want the buyer to be able to visualize them living there.  This will also help you to emotionally detach from your home and to start thinking of it as someone else’s.

    2.  Hire A Home Inspector:

 Once you have an executed a sales contract with a buyer, the first thing the buyer is going to do is hire a home inspector to inspect your house. Why not beat them to it? An inspection usually costs a couple hundred dollars. That’s pennies in the grand scheme of things. Tackle all of the repairs upfront and you will not be surprised by buyers who supply a list of problems to take care of.  Inspections are the #1 deal killer in this industry. You can eliminate the whole problem by dealing with the issue right up front. Sure, it may cost you some money out of pocket, but that is money that you will most likely be spending anyway. Buyers will second guess a house if the inspection report is loaded with issues. In my experience, when buyers know that there has been a previous inspection and all repairs have been made, they are more willing to pay top dollar.

    3.  Clean Everything Thoroughly:

 Everyone has a different definition of “clean”.  If you can, hire a professional cleaning crew to spend a whole day doing a deep clean.  It’s well worth the money.  It’s an interesting irony that many home buyers expect the house they buy to be cleaner than the one they currently live in. This is a reality that must be accounted for. A clean house gives them the impression that the property has been well maintained and is easy to move into.

    4.  Remove Evidence of Pets and/Kids:

 To sell your home quickly and for the most money, you want to appeal to every possible buyer. Not everyone is a fan of kids and/or pets. Your house may be the perfect layout, price, and design but if it smells like animals or has toys stuffed in every corner, you may have just lost your buyer.  Don’t forget the fact that you can never experience your home as a buyer would, because you live there and are used to it.

Statistically, pet odors are one of the most common reasons for a home to stay on the market for a long time. A home that has been ravaged by children can be equally unappealing though. Be sure that any evidence of your kids’ presence in your home is kept to a “staging” like quality.  You want buyers to be able to picture their own kids and family living there, but you also want to appeal to buyers who don’t have children.

    5.  Replace Outdated Fixtures:

This is an easy fix that can have a huge impact. If you have brass door handles and brass chandeliers, you should consider replacing them. If you are appealing to higher end buyers, spend some money for designer door handles. If you have old outdated light switch covers, replace them all. You’ll be surprised by how much of a difference it will make. Walk through your house and try to identify every fixture that reveals the date of the home. Replace as many of them as possible.  This is something simple that makes a huge difference in the way your home looks.

    6.  Shampoo and/or Replace Carpets:

 Carpets show more damage than almost any part of your home. If you have carpet in your house, it’s probably going to be a problem. If the carpets are not stained and are newer, you can get away with simply getting a deep clean from a professional carpet cleaning company. If cleaning will not restore them, you’ll need to replace them.

Almost any Realtor will tell you that a home with worn out dirty carpets is hard to sell. If the property is a foreclosure, or priced under market value, it’s not as big of an issue. However, if you want to compete for top dollar, you’ll need to tackle this objection right away. Carpets hold a lot of dirt and odor. It’s important that they look and smell clean for your showings.

    7.  Touch Up and/or Re-Paint:

 If it’s been more than a year since the interior of your house has been painted, then it’s time for some touching up. If you have paint left over from the last time you painted, use this to touch up areas when there are nail holes, scrapes, hand prints, etc. Touching up existing paint is very easy and makes your home look new again. If you do not have any touch up paint, you can try to peel off existing paint, or cut a small section of sheetrock (which you can repair later). Just do it in an area where it’s not very noticeable, like in a closet or behind a door. Take the sample to a local paint store and have them color match it. You may need to do this 2 or 3 times to get the color right. Once you have a close match, use it to make your walls look new again.  The smell of fresh paint also gives a home that “new” like impression.

If you have any strong colors in your house (purple, burgundy, lime green, etc.), it would be wise to paint over them with a neutral color. I tell clients that they should not have more than 3 neutral colors in their home. The more colors, the more chance you have for objections. You can’t take it personally if someone else does not share your affection for orange. Remember, there are many different types of people and you’re trying to appeal to as many as possible. Neutral colors are the only way to appeal to the greatest amount of buyers. Even those who like strong colors are not always going to like your choices. Then you have to consider that their furnishings and drapes have to match as well. When you look at it this way it's easy to see that the probability of your strong color choices working for most buyers is quite slim. For this reason, most good Realtors will recommend painting with neutral colors. People will rarely object to buying a home with neutral colors, but will often object to a home with strong colors.

If you have exterior paint that is in need of restoration, take the time to work on it as well. This includes: mailbox posts, fences, storage sheds, house siding, and trim work. The exterior of your home needs to look well maintained to encourage a good offer from a buyer.

    8.  Get a Storage Unit:

 If you actually live in your house like most people do, then your closets are full and your garage is packed from floor to ceiling. This is normal. The problem is that some of the homes you will be competing with are either vacant, or almost vacant. These homes show much better and buyers can visualize themselves moving in much easier.

To stay competitive, it is wise to rent a storage unit and start loading it with everything that you are not going to need while your house is on the market. Start with all of your memorabilia and pack the unit with the items that you are least likely to need in the back. The more you put in storage, the better. If you have to question, “Should I store this?” the answer is, “Yes!”  Start packing as though your house is sold and you only have a month left in it. The more you put in storage, the less you will need, because your home will sell much faster! Buyer’s love homes that look move in ready!

    9.  Freshen Up Landscaping:

 Statistically, landscaping is the biggest bang for your buck when listing your house for sale. We’ve all heard about the importance of “curb appeal”, and know that first impressions are HUGE in real estate. The fastest way to freshen up your landscaping is new mulch. Spread a layer of it all throughout your landscaped areas. This is inexpensive and requires very little time commitment.

If you’d like to make an even better first impression, plant some colorful flowers which will make your new mulch stand out even more. Trim any over grown plants and bushes and clean up your outdoor spaces to look new again. In a city with weather as beautiful as ours we spend a lot of time outside, so it’s likely to have a big impact on your buyer’s decision to purchase your home.

    Final Thought:

 As you read through the list above, don’t be intimidated by the scope of work. Make a list of things that you feel are important for your home sale and then plan them out accordingly. Tackle one item at a time and before you know it, your list is done. Once your house is ready to put on the market, it will most likely get an offer before your competition does. Many sellers will try to avoid some of the steps mentioned above. If you take the time and expense to tackle these issues, your house should outshine the others and sell for the highest sales price possible. When it comes to selling your home, the adage “you get out what you put in” rings exceptionally true. Your efforts will be well rewarded!

Buyer

    1.  Buying a Home Is One Of The Best Investments You Can Make:

Home equity remains the largest single savings vehicle for most Americans. In addition to the tax incentives of home ownership, and the ability to tap into your home equity if the need arises, buying a home is a wise and prudent investment for most people.

    2. It Is Very Important To Buy A Home That Will Go Up In Value:
Slow, steady home appreciation has been the rule over most of the nation’s history, and many real estate investors became quite wealthy in that environment. They did so by very carefully analyzing the appreciation potential of their investment, and they invested for the long term. You should too. Even if you plan on living in your home just a few years, you will want it to have gone up in value when you put it back on the market.

    3. Use A Buyers Agent:

 
If you’re going to work with a real estate agent, contract with a buyer's agent rather than with a subagent. A buyer's agent is paid by you and has a duty to represent your interests, while the subagent is paid by the seller and represents the seller’s interests. The subagent, which has been the traditional relationship between a buyer and an agent, is ethically required to disclose all relevant information (such as the fact that you’ll be willing to raise your offer if necessary) to the seller. Try as you might, it’s difficult to avoid saying things you shouldn’t to a subagent. While you are responsible for paying the buyer's agent, the net cost can be zero if you put in your offer that the seller is to pay buyer agent’s commission (which the seller would have had to pay anyway if the offer had come from a subagent). An exception is if you’re buying from a self-selle)r. They often did not plan on allowing for a real estate commission. In those circumstances you face a subjective decision as to whether a buyer's agent’s negotiating skills are sufficiently better than yours to justify the commission you will owe them.

    4. Current Home Prices Are a Less Important Consideration Than Interest Rates:

 
Try to buy and/or sell when interest rates are low. The amount of mortgage you can afford (and thus the price of the home you will consider) will change as the interest rates rise or fall. A certain asking price may sound expensive to you, but at a lower interest rate you might be able to afford it. You may own several homes over your lifetime, and the factors that will limit or increase the value of the home you will be selling will similarly affect the price of its replacement. Since those factors largely wash each other out, interest rates remain the most important factor.

    5.  Always Have a Home Inspection Contingency:

 
In your offer, always hire a professional home inspector to provide you a written report, along with "ball park" estimates or ranges of repair costs. If the inspection turns up problems that weren’t readily noticeable, you can use it and the ball park estimates for negotiating leverage to get the seller to make the repairs or provide you a commensurate price reduction.

    6. Learn As Much As Possible about The Seller’s Circumstances:

There may be mutually beneficial opportunities. For example if you might face difficulty qualifying for a big enough mortgage, and the seller is worried about college costs for his or her sixth grader, then maybe the seller might be interested in accepting a second trust for part of the purchase price if the interest rate is above what they could otherwise earn and the loan is paid off the summer before the child's freshman college year. From your perspective the rate will likely be less than you could get from a traditional lender.

    7. Research Your Mortgage Options Well Before You Make An Offer:

You won’t have enough time in the five days sellers normally allow to get all of your paperwork together.  Consider getting a contingent letter of approval for a loan, or an actual loan commitment prior to making an offer.  Preferably prior to showings so you will know exactly what you want your budget to be. While it has relatively little enforceable value, it nevertheless can impress a seller, who might be more willing to accept a lower offer because of the perceived financial capabilities of the seller. It's also possible to get approved by a lender with a longer term "lock" on the interest rate in order to protect you from subsequent rate increases. While this should substantially increase your negotiating leverage, keep in mind that you pay more directly or indirectly for the longer commitment, either in terms of the rate and/or points.

    8. Learn How To Negotiate Like A Pro:

There’s more money involved in this negotiation than just about any other area you’ll encounter. Even if you’re using a buyer’s agent, you’re part of the team, and you’ll have to make the ultimate decisions about how much to offer and how much to compromise on a counter offer.

    Final Thought:

The tips in this brochure are only the beginning. You’ll need to learn a lot more if you want to get the best possible deal. Read as much as you can on home buying, negotiating, neighborhoods in your area that might fit your needs, and on factors that impact long term appreciation like schools, infrastructure, major new business expansions or closing etc. Keep copies of everything you send the lender and everything the lender sends you.  It is recommended to speak with a lender prior to starting your home search.