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Selling Your House
Top House Selling Articles:
Staging your house for top dollar
Staging your house just before it goes on the market can make a dramatic improvement in your sales. Staging's goal is to highlight the home's strengths and downplay its weaknesses. House staging is the biggest house-effect out there and for good reason: it works!
Setting a fair price
Over-pricing your house is one of the biggest mistakes homeowners make. Real estate is a highly competitive business and knowing how to price your product for top-dollar AND a fast sale is critical. Learn the tips professionals use to establish a fair price for a fast sale.
Latest Home Mortgage Rates
Many Lenders Eliminating No Money Down Mortgage Products
In the wake of a meltdown in the subprime mortgage market, many lenders have stopped offering no money down mortgage products. Now, more than ever, is the time for Congress to act by passing FHA reform legislation, which would provide consumers with a safe, and valuable no money down mortgage option. Federally backed home loans by the FHA have decreased consistently in recent years due to stringent down payment requirements and low loan limits. As a result, many consumers have been pushed into the subprime market, with attractive teaser rates and no or negative money down financing options. As housing prices have stagnated, and interest rates on these exotic mortgage products have readjusted, many of these loans have resulted in foreclosure, which harms the consumer, the lender, and the economy in general. Just last week American Home Mortgage which had over 7,000 employees joined New Century Financial, by declaring bankruptcy and closing it's doors as a result of offering too many loans that resulted in delinquency.
Don't go into debt trying
to fix up the house
If you are moving to another property and have a mortgage on that property, don't go into debt trying to fix up your existing property. Taking on extra debt could drastically alter your financial picture as seen by lenders. Even if you plan on paying for the repairs out of the house sale, your lender sees it as part of your debt load and may throw out your loan.
Needless to say you also shouldn't buy new cars, furniture, or other major purchases that require credit during the selling process.
2009 Color Trends
With the sluggish housing sales expected to continue well into 2009, neutral colors are expected to be dominant. They represent safety. Especially dominant will be earth inspired neutrals.
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Selling your house faster
and for top dollar
Why do homes on the market have to look so great? Because sales sagged dramatically in 2008, and time on market for homes is about 120 days, with many sitting stagnant for 160 days or more.
The market's excess inventory - and its excessive competition - means the old methods of selling no longer apply. House sellers are discovering they need to update their methods if they hope to get an offer. Today, real estate is in a "buyer's market." Buyers are in the drivers seat and sellers have to do everything possible to attract qualified buyers.
"Because today's buyers have much more to choose from in the way of inventory, any home for sale must make a positive first impression," said National Association of Realtors® President Charles McMillan, a broker with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Dallas-Fort Worth. "As a trusted source for real estate information, Realtors® understand what attracts and motivates their buyer clients, which is why the results of this year's 'Cost vs. Value' report underscores the importance of curb appeal in the buyer's eye."
Tips to help you sell your house faster
If you’ve ever talked with a real estate agent, you’ll notice that if you’re looking to buy a property, they refer to it as your new home. If you’re trying to sell your property, the same agent refers to it as the house.
A home is where you live and raise your family. A house is just a structure.
You can never sell your home—that is where you live. If you’re not living under one roof, then you’re living under another roof. Your home is really a state of mind. Once you decide to sell your property and move on, that building is no longer your home. Not thinking of the house as your home helps remove your emotional ties to the property and allows you to make rational decisions in the pre-selling and the selling phase.
When your house is viewed by strangers during the selling process, they don't really care about you or your life-style. In fact, the less they know about you (from your house and the furnishings) the better the selling process moves along.
I once consulted with a woman about selling her house. We did an initial walk through. Needless to say, it was shocking. She had 100s of stuffed rabbits all over the house. When I laid it on the line for her in as polite a way as possible that she needed to remove the rabbits, she went ballistic. She told me these were part of her and she wasn't going to hide them. She just couldn't! She wasn't willing to separate her personality from the home. She felt that people that she didn't know, had never met before, should view these stuffed rabbits as part of her and her house.
The point is that you have to pull yourself out of your house. Remove your personality and do so with enthusiasm. People won't think anything negative about you or the way you keep house if it's clean, and fits their needs. So with that said, lets move on.
Major steps for selling your house
Prepare the house for selling. This process can take weeks, months, or even a year in advance of it going on the market. Hopefully, you'll have the time to do this. The less prep time you have, the fewer things you'll accomplish. One thing you can not do is procrastinate. Get things done, even if it's a little at a time.
Selling a house is usually done 1 to 1. You have 1 house owner and 1 home buyer. Thus the name of this web site. The selling process of course involves exposing your house for sale to as many potential buyers as possible, but what you are really doing is looking for that 1 buyer who absolutely loves your house and can reasonably afford to buy your house.
That means getting your house in top shape so that when that 1 buyer comes along, they WILL love it immediately. Do this first and they won't have to imagine what they need to do to your house to love it. Here are the basics you need:
Remove the clutter:That means renting a storage locker nearby. Place as much of the extra furniture you've accumulated over the years as possible. Pack up all of the knickknacks, vacation mementos, antiques, hobby items, extra clothes and shoes. Empty out your closets everything except what you'll need to wear over the next few weeks. Label the boxes carefully.
Hire a home inspector: For about $200 - $300 you can get a written report on the condition of your home by a trained professional. Most real estate contracts are contingent upon a home inspection. When you get to contract time, you don't want any surprises when the prospects have their home inspector coming in and finding anything that could spoil the deal.
Select a real estate agent: Interview several agents from different companies that work in your neighborhood. Avoid agents suggesting your property is significantly worth more than what you have researched. It's unlikely this super agent will get that price. Meanwhile, you've lost valuable time trying to sell it at this higher price and your property becomes what is known as "shop worn" meaning that it's been on the market too long. This translates into there being something wrong with the house. Not good. Better to set the price at a reasonable level and sell soon instead of much later and having to drop the price.
FSBO: If you decide to sell your house yourself, then you have develop a marketing plan. That means developing a plan for advertising your house in as many cost-effective ways as possible; setting up a way of handling prospects; and having a plan for closing the sale.
Open House: some agents prefer open houses and others do not. I personally think they're good for most situations. The secret is advance preparation. Create some magic. This article highlights some important steps in how to prepare for an open house and how to conduct an open house.
Set a fair price: This is where your real estate agent can really help out. An agent should provide comparable home sales in your neighborhood over the past year. In this comparison look for homes of similar size, bedrooms, lot size, and quality. Walk by these homes and compare them with your property. Of course, you won't see the inside unless you visited them earlier during an open house. Then adjust your asking price accordingly. One tip: visit as many open houses in your neighborhood as you can so you'll know more about what others are doing. Look at comparables within a 1/4 - 1/2 mile radius of your house.
Fix up minor repairs: Begin by making a list of every room in the house (top to bottom) of things needing fixed or repaired. Prioritize these items. Following the home inspection, you'll have a good idea of the major areas that need to be fixed before listing your house for sale. Start with the major items, and then work down the list. These items need to be repaired BEFORE listing unless you're prepared to greatly reduce your asking price.
Stage the property: Just before the first open house you want to stage the property. You may want to hire a professional to help with this. The basic idea is to create small vignettes by arranging the sparse furniture that you have left after removing most of the excess into comfortable seating patterns that encourage people to sit down and hold a conversation. Very few accessories are required for this.
Photograph the property: once the property has been staged to your liking, photograph it thoroughly. Use these photographs on the house fact sheet. Some realtors provide this service, but if you're handy with camera and some basic graphics software, do it yourself. These fact sheets are for visitors during open houses. You'll also use these photographs to show your property on a web site devoted to showing real estate properties for sale.
Faster house sales
Showing your house tips
Whenever your house is being shown either during an open house or a private showing by a professional agent, keep this tips in mind:
Turn on all the lights
Open the curtains and blinds (unless you have a window with a bad view)
Make sure all toilet are flushed and the lids are closed
Hide all the wastebaskets
Close the garage door
Call your agent after the house has been shown by another agent and inform them of the showing.
Selling in a tight market
When the real estate market tightens up or more correctly, slows down get more aggressive in your marketing and selling techniques. That means just putting up a sign or running an advertisement is not enough.
Many of the tips we give here should apply to almost every property that goes up for sale. As a house seller, you need every trick in the book to move your property just because of the strong competition from all of the other house sellers trying to sell their property.
Not only are there more houses on the market, but it's also harder to get a loan which removes more house buyers from the buying pool.
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