Tag: selling

Top-Notch Property: Tips to Prepare for an Open House

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

You only get one chance to make a good first impression, and an open house is a moment to make your home shine. Dozens of people will walk through your home, check out the layout, and even peek in your closets to see if it meets their needs. During this time you will want your house to look as amazing as it possibly can. Get your home ready for an open house in a few simple ways.

Clean Everything

Cleaning is the most important thing that you can do before an open house. Sweep and vacuum, mop the floors, clean out the cabinets, get rid of clutter, and spray the house with an air freshener. Some staging experts recommend baking cookies, or another sweet snack to fill the house with the scent of vanilla, which appeals to almost all buyers. When cleaning, make sure that you are clean from top to bottom, removing spiderwebs, dirt, dust, and even the scent of your pets.

Take Care of Pests

Regardless of where you live, the odds are good that you have a few pests scattered around. If you live in the Midwest, and other cooler climates, you might find mice sneaking into your house to escape the winter. Other pests that can gain access to your home include rats, squirrels, bats, and even raccoons. You’ll hear those animals scurrying around inside your walls, find feces left behind, and see signs of their nests.

Do a Walk-Through

You can spend months cleaning and staging your home without getting a single offer. This often occurs because you think your house looks good, but others don’t agree. Before the date of your open house, ask some friends and family to come over and walk through the property. Ask them for an honest opinion about what works, and what doesn’t. You might find that they don’t like the darkness of a specific room, they notice a scent you can’t smell, or they think you have too much clutter. Use their advice to make your home look appealing to potential buyers.

When you can’t afford to work with a staging company, you can still get your home ready for an open house. Cleaning, getting rid of rodents, and asking for advice from those you trust can make your house look appealing to everyone who walks through the door during an open house.

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Need to Get Your House Sold Quickly? A Few Tips to Help it Sell in a Flash

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Do you need to get your house sold quickly? Whether you need to get rid of the house due to a short sale, downsizing, or because you found a job in another location, there are a few strategies that you can use to sell your home quickly and at a reasonable price. Selling a house requires a lot of work on behalf of the seller, and it can be stressful if you are crunched for time. Try a few of these tricks to help you get your home sold in time, and still get a reasonable amount for it.

Price the Home Below Market Value

The easiest way to sell your home is to sell it for less than market value. By looking at other homes in your area and asking for 10 percent less than that amount, your house looks a great value in a great part of town. In many cases, you will start a bidding war between buyers who want to snap up the best deal on the market before it goes away. Obviously, you still want to get a reasonable amount for the home, but you’ll be surprised at how much it helps to set your price at a little below market value—it will surely draw plenty of buyers in for you.

Hire a Cleaning Crew

If you’re in a rush to get your home sold, it will be worth the investment to hire a cleaning crew to come in and get the home ready for showings. You’ll be much to busy with preparing other things for the move to clean it yourself, and you’ll be surprised how much better your home will look if you leave the cleaning up to the pros. Let cleaners and movers clear the home so that you’re prepared for when people come to look at it. Getting professionals to do things like clean the carpets, spray for bugs, or fix broken window panes will truly go a long way with potential buyers. If the move is a bit unexpected, your home might be a disaster zone, and this definitely won’t help you find a buyer any faster. Presenting a clean, sanitized, and organized home for those who come to look at it gives you a much greater chance of finding a buyer quickly.

Sell When Others Are Selling

Do your best to sell the house at a time when others in the neighborhood are selling. This takes advantage of extra traffic that will be driving by your house due to the other sales in the area. If your home is priced less than the others, your home will be among the first to be sold. You may not have much of a choice if you’re pressed for time, however, if you can start looking for buyers around the same time as others in the neighborhood, you’re more likely to find interested buyers to come take a look at the house while they’re in the area.

Keep the Appliances With the House

For many buyers, furnishings and other appliances can be a huge selling point. By keeping the new refrigerator in the home or offering to leave behind some of your furniture, you sweeten the deal for a prospective buyer. You also benefit because you won’t have as much to take with you if you have a long move ahead of you. Although this may seem like a small thing, for some buyers it could really help seal the deal. If your appliances are still in good condition, consider leaving them in the home in order to draw interest from prospective buyers.

Offer Closing Cost Assistance

Coming up with the money for closing costs and a down payment is the biggest hurdle for a potential home buyer. Offering assistance with the down payment and closing costs could help you sell your home with ease. Typically, a seller is allowed to offer a rebate of up to 6 percent to help with closing costs and other fees. This could save a home buyer as much as $6,000 for each $100,000 being spent on the home. This can help if you find a buyer who isn’t in as much of a rush as you are. If you’re trying to get the home sold as soon as possible, helping with closing costs could help you find the perfect buyer.

When you need to sell your home quickly, you need to be willing to entice buyers and negotiate whenever possible. By offering closing cost assistance, pricing the house below market value and timing the sale just right, you could have an offer on your home within 24 hours of showing the property. While selling a home is stressful (especially when you’re constrained by time), if you put in a little extra effort, you’ll have the home sold in no time—allowing you to focus on moving to your next destination.

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House Flipping: 5 Things You Need to Know Before You Try It

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Many think of house-flipping as an ideal way to invest money and make a profit. With shows on television in recent years showing people flipping houses and finding success in it, it’s no wonder that people are finding the idea of flipping houses so appealing. However, there are several factors that someone should take into consideration before flipping houses.

Know What You’re Getting Into

Research everything that is involved with buying and selling a house. Get to know property laws and building codes involved with renovating a house. Be aware of any permits that may be needed before you jump in and go looking for places. If possible, talk to a friend or family member who has done it before to get their take on it. Having a mentor or someone to go to for advice will really help you know what you are getting into before you start.

Buy Low

Flipping a house can involve spending a lot of money to renovate the house so that someone will want to buy it. Profit is made when buying the house, rather than reselling it. If someone buys a house for just under the house’s market value, then spends thousands of dollars fixing it up, there will be no room for profit when they finally sell the house. Buying a house at a low price gives more margin for the flipper to work with.

Search Carefully

If the key to making a profit on flipping a house is buying low, then it’s vitally important to search for houses that sell at an extremely low price. Ask around, drive around, browse real estate ads, and look at foreclosure listings, but be sure to do the work needed to find the right house at the right price. Don’t take the first ugly house you see. Look around and even look at different house types in different areas. Compare prices as well as renovation needs and you’ll end up getting a home that you can actually make money off of. When it comes to flipping houses doing research is critical.

Know How Much a House Will Cost to Rehab Before Buying

It’s important to consider all the costs it will take to bring a house into selling condition again before buying. Getting a house inspection before buying ensures the flipper that they know exactly what is wrong with the house and what needs to be fixed. The home professionals who specialize in windows in Orlando suggest that you pay attention to problems with the exterior as well as the interior. Look for things like broken windows, damaged siding, roof issues, and more expensive projects like a crumbling chimney or cracked tile on the kitchen floor. If the renovation costs will be too much to make a profit, then move on to another house.

Utilize a Realtor to Actively Market a Flipped House

Realtors have access to MLS listings, and they know how to market a house to potential buyers. A house flipper could choose to see the house on their own, but they won’t have the resources that a realtor has. You may have the ability to turn an average house into a great home, but that doesn’t mean you will have an easy time selling. Hire someone who knows what they are doing so that you don’t lose out on money while the house sits on the market.

Flipping houses can be a great way to make a profit, but it’s important to approach it cautiously. It’s not as easy as it looks, and learning from others can go a long way. The key will be preparation… Many people jump into this business without knowing exactly what to do and they end up losing money. If you plan to make money flipping houses do all the necessary research and be cautious about all of your choices.

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