Late Nights....

Well it's been a long week.....or two!! Late nights are becoming a regular activity for me as a Realtor! Showing homes, writing offers and now embarking on a great new adventure!!

Here is some mortgage news:

Rates in the 3%'s have gone bye bye. From what I have heard from my trusty mortgage sidekicks, we will be sticking around the mid to upper 4%'s from here on out. Not a HUGE deal, we just need to make sure we find you a home within your comfort range for monthly payment.

Secondly, sellers are having a HAY DAY. I cannot begin to explain how *awesome* it is when you list a home for sale and you have an offer (or two) within the first couple days. Buyers are smart, and so are their Realtors. Everybody knows that when something good comes on the market, you've got to jump on it IMMEDIATELY!!

Here are some excellent tips if you are preparing to sell your home!!

Putting your home up for sale can be an exhausting, stressful experience. But there are several things you can do to improve your home's marketability. By expending a bit of effort before it goes on the market, you can ensure that your home presents well, stands out from the crowd and doesn’t turn off potential buyers so that you can sell quickly…and at the best price. 

Tone Down Personality

Your bookshelves may be filled with Pulitzer-Prize winners and your collection of Americana figurines may reflect your personal interests, but to home buyers, it looks busy and cluttered, and may distract them from truly seeing your home’s unique architectural features and spacious rooms. Also consider whether family pictures help or hinder a sale; future home owners may not be able to look past your kids’ smiling faces plastered all over the walls and see themselves building their own future in your home.

Since you hope to move soon anyway, go ahead and box them up and put them in storage in advance of the open house or showing.

While that red accent wall opposite the lime green fireplace perfectly ties in with your ultra modern furniture, a potential buyer at your open house may be turned off immediately and decide that the entire house doesn’t reflect their style. Consider painting walls a neutral color such as beige or taupe. The interior paint job should be fresh and clean and in a single, neutral color throughout.

The same goes for the exterior. Don't forget shutters and windows. If your home has vinyl or aluminum siding, be sure it's clean. Moldy, dirty siding will tell a buyer that your home has not been taken care of properly.

Old, matted carpeting will be a detriment to your home selling. Real estate agents all have a dozen stories of a home that sat and sat on the market until the old carpeting was replaced. Then, it sold immediately. If you have hardwood floors under old carpet, tear up the carpet to expose them; today's buyers love hardwood floors.

First Impressions Count

Clean your house top to bottom including walls, floors, furniture and tabletops. Everything should be sparkling clean when a buyer makes that all-important first visit. Don't leave dirty dishes in the sink, crumbs on the counter or laundry stacked in the bedroom.

Take a long, hard look at your home from the street. Does it have curb appeal? Is it warm, inviting and well-kept? Make sure by mowing the lawn, weeding garden areas, trimming unruly bushes, resealing the driveway and sweeping the porch.

Pay particular attention to your front door. Repaint it if necessary. Polish the doorknob and knocker and clean the glass and screen door. When a buyer waits at the front door to enter, make sure he or she sees that your home was cared for lovingly.

Don’t Burden the Buyer with Repairs

If there are problem areas in your home, get them fixed before the showing. When prospective buyers tour the house and see leak stains on the ceiling or peeling paint, they will also see future work and assume that bigger maintenance and repair issues are lurking behind those small problems. 

This is particularly true in kitchens and bathrooms, which are often the two rooms that make or break a sale. The expenses you incur on the front end sprucing up your home will be cheaper than the profits you could lose by having to lower the price to meet buyer demand.

If your home's appliances, like the dishwasher, oven, refrigerator and washer and dryer, are old and outdated, it could pay to replace them. Buyers do not want to be faced with the possibility of having to replace appliances upon moving in to a new house. Shiny, new appliances already in place will be a big selling point.

Maximize Exposure

Lastly, take advantage of new technology to find unique ways to market your house. Use YouTube, a video sharing website, to introduce yourself and your house for free. Take home shoppers on a virtual tour and tell them about its uniqueness and strengths from a first-person point of view. 

Use Internet social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter to create a Web link with a profile of your home. Include pictures and a description of your home’s features. Email the link to your friends and ask them to forward it on to their network of contacts. 

Get your home listed on real estate websites. There are some that are national in scope and others focus on your specific markets. Examples include Redfin and Zillow.

Be sure that you are using traditional marketing techniques to your best advantage. When photographing your home for promotional purposes, invest in a wide-angle lens for your camera so that rooms appear bigger and in proportion when they are displayed on Internet home listing sites or in marketing flyers. If you decide to create a virtual tour, look for professionals who will be able to film and upload your video using the best techniques and technology.

 

Content found @ http://www.nahb.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=123&genericContentID=91803

Project Pics

I was just reading back to previous blog posts and I had promised project pics. I am so bad at remembering things. Sorry. Here they are:

"If you price it low enough, they will come"

Sorry I have slacked on my blog duties. It's been a hectic few weeks in Real Estate Land. 

Sold my project house in one day, pretty sweet. 

You know what's really making my blood boil right now? Multiple offers. 

Unreal. That is the only word that doesn't contain naughty language that I can use to describe the feeling when you have a buyer who writes an offer and all the sudden there are multiple offers. I had a guy write an offer on a home that had been on the market for 7 months, yes, 7 MONTHS. All the sudden, the same day I submitted our offer- another offer comes in? Give me a break! I just about ripped my hair out. But.....it's the nature of the beast. I like to say, "If you price it low enough, they will come" and it must be a tactic banks use because it works. Don't be discouraged. If you love the home, pay for it and give it your best offer. If you don't get it, I can find you a better one :-)

On a lighter note, my little brother is building a new home. It's awesome, and I think it is going to be exactly what he wanted. He switched out the rod iron spindles for more modern wood ones and picked a really rich golden brown stain...what do you think!? Nice huh!?

I'll ramble some more later, I have a home inspection tomorrow (should be interesting) and a rather large life event to dish about sometime soon :-)

Well Hello out there!

It's been a couple weeks, but I'm still here. Busy as ever and not complaining one bit. My project will be complete this week and I will have lots of photos to share. It's no longer a labor of love but a pain in my neck and I cannot wait for it to be finished. 

In between the countless hours working I have managed to plant a few new perennials this year, I had a few not return because a certain little puppy named STEVE got to them. Little bugger. And my usual spring display of annuals in the front yard is on hold until my project is done. I am trying to fix the pee spots in the front yard from the dogs all winter but it isn't working. Any suggestions are welcome. 

I have been living off coffee, ginger ale and cookies for the past couple weeks....so bad but so delicious, but my goal of becoming more organized is going well!! I swear I should hire an assistant, especially coming up in June. 

In June I will be participating in a new program with Chase Bank for short sales. I am a certified and trained short sale expert with Chase and they have an excellent new program for home owners to have more options when it comes to getting out of their homes in which they are waaaaay upside down on. It's quite nice to see a mortgage company offer families some sense of relief and help take the stress of selling their home off their shoulders. Short sales are tricky and time consuming so you need someone to help you through the process.....in walks Ashley Hauf, an awesome Realtor :-)

Be back soon, should have pics of the project Friday. 

A new month

Well tomorrow marks May 1st, and it is almost time to start up the gardens!!

I spent the weekend staining cabinets, writing offers, taking listing photos and rocking out at the Fleetwood Mac concert! Very fun!

I will be doing more and more photos in the coming months, the market is so hot right now sellers can't get their homes on the market fast enough. Multiple offers on EVERYTHING. As a buyers agent, it is the most gut wrenching and frustrating and irritating thing ever to submit an offer and suddenly, multiple offers. As a sellers agent it's the most exciting and fruitful feeling, but multiple offers need to be handled correctly.

On another note, road restrictions are off soon so everyone who built this winter will get their driveways and pretty landscaping! I can't wait to see it all!!

Here's a snapshot of the home in Zimmerman I shot photos of this weekend;

Fun home project

Are you just going Spring crazy like I am? And are you addicted to Pinterest like I am? Don't deny it....Pinterest is a time sucking obsession of mine and I am not afraid to admit it :-)

So, I figured I would give a paint technique I found a shot! HERE IS MY PIN to the project I tried. I love the stripes with an unhealthy passion. They look so awesome!! I really like the size of the ones in the pin however, I decided I wanted bigger (thicker) stripes for my project.

I have an 8 foot high wall so I decided to do 1 foot stripes....because well, it was easy math.

My awesome and helpful neighbor Becky is demonstrating how to tape off the lines. Remember to put the tape above the top and below the bottom so you get even equal sized lines. 

Then we painted over the tape on the inside of the lines we were going to paint with the existing wall color to "seal" the tape because the walls have a texture to them. We used this brush:

It was easier because of the texture on the walls, we had to get the paint in all the little spots.

 

I let the brown paint over the tape dry overnight just to be sure!! Then, rolled my stripe color on pretty thick. 

TA DAAAAA!!!!

I am pretty pleased :-)

And it was easy!

And my lines were *crisp*

Yay!!

Hugs and Short Sales

Happy Spring!?

Yeah right....

My neighbors have a pond behind their home and every morning I can see the poor little ducks sitting on the ice just wondering why they came back already. I am wondering why the snow and cold had to come back too. Here it is middle of April and I have a cold and am miserable. 

This is a big week for me though! My project is coming along well, except for the roto rooter guy I am meeting with today. Apparently something is clogging the main sewer line....pray for no tree roots, please!

I am also embarking on another project of sorts, I have become Short Sale and Foreclosure Certified and will be working with a very big name local bank to be a resource for homeowners who need to list their homes as a short sale. More on that at the end of the week :-)

I will leave you with a warm cuddly photo to help start your Monday morning, because sometimes we all just need a hug.