Ever seller wants to make sure that his or her home gets top dollar. Careful planning and making your home presentable is the key to make buyers rush to your front porch with their checkbooks at hand. To prepare your home for the big sale, remove all personal belongings like photographs and heirlooms – you want your buyer to imagine THEIR stuff on your walls. De-clutter and throw out any junk you won’t need; this will make moving out easier too. Make minor repairs on things like leaky faucets, doors that don’t close properly, and holes in the wall. Finally, make your house sparkle by cleaning off cobwebs, vacuuming daily, and waxing the floors.
One of the biggest mistakes a seller can make is putting the wrong price tag on his or her home. Sellers tend to put a very high value on their property out of fear of losing profit, but buyers won’t even look at homes that are priced too high. There’s no fixed formula to pricing a home. Usually the market value of a house is based on comparable sales, but there are other factors that should be considered like location, market movement, demand, and the house’s condition. Don’t listen to your agent when he or she overstates your house’s value and makes you sign an overpriced listing. As a seller you will lose your competitive edge if you change your mind and reduce the price later on.
When selling a house, you have to consider HOW you are going to sell it. You have two options: either you go through a real estate agent or you find your own buyer. It is actually more convenient if you go through an agent since they have all the means and resources when it comes to buyers. They have this so called network wherein they can hoard people who are in the look out of for sale houses. This convenience actually has a price to pay though. Normally they get 4 to 7 (or perhaps more!) commission on your sale. If you don’t want to spend that much money on your agent then might as well gather your own pool of interested parties. Warning: it might be tiring to do this though.
If you’re a first-time homebuyer, don’t listen to all those rumors that say you must have a squeaky-clean credit record and need to make an exorbitant down payment before you can buy your own home. Today’s lenders are more financially-friendly to first time home buyers. These days, it’s now normal to make a 10% down payment and a credit score of at least 700. Of course lenders want to make sure that buyers don’t overextend themselves, so they will still be strict when examining your proof of income. And while it still helps to have a decent credit record, there are now agencies like the Federal Housing Administration that gives spotty credit holders a second chance.
In the previous article, we mentioned the benefits of hiring a real estate agent to help you buy your new home. When it comes to negotiation, you may be able to use the assistance of an agent because of their skills and because they can easily remove themselves from the emotional aspect of the transaction. Real estate agents can also handle any questions that may have been overlooked during the excitement of the closing. Finally, real estate agents will go out of their way to satisfy their clients. If you establish good relations with your agent, he or she will be there for you for future business and will even send you market updates to keep you informed.
Do you have a live in partner? Or perhaps a cool bunch of friends that has been with you through the years (way back in High School or in College)? And the time came when somebody from your group or your live in partner came up with an idea: “Why don’t we buy our own house to lessen our expenses (aggregated funds and resources)?” True, this set up is quite popular nowadays.
But the truth is, having this kind of set up might make you face deed problems in the future. Be sure that everyone has a consensus… and remember: whenever you guys split up, everyone has the right to everything.
With so much information available on the internet today, you might be wondering why there’s still a need to hire a real estate agent to mediate the transaction. There are a lot of reasons why you should consider the help of a professional agent. First of all, it saves you time since you won’t have to educate yourself about the ins and outs of the real estate industry. Agents also possess extensive knowledge of the neighborhood of your choice and can identify comparable sales to you. They can also help you make your price offer and assist in the negotiation process by providing information that you need about the market supply, conditions, and the demand.
The larger your down payment is, the easier it will be for you to obtain a mortgage. If you don’t have enough cash at hand, here are some sources where you can obtain your down payment. Parents usually help their children buy their first home but if your parents won’t give you the money, you can ask for an unsecured loan and then pay it back at a better rate than what your parents got. If you’ve got too much stuff you don’t need, sell them on eBay or hold a garage sale; you never know how much people are willing to pay for your “junk”. Finally, the secret to making a savings account grow is by putting in a fixed amount of money. Deposit an X amount of your earnings into a savings account every month.
