What are you looking for? Do you have a specific timeframe in mind? These are good questions to discuss with your REALTOR.

1. Are you financially Ready? Do you have good credit ? Have you paid your all bills on time for at least one year prior to purchasing a home? Since you most likely will need to get a mortgage to buy a house, you must make sure your credit history is as clean as possible. Before you start house hunting, you may want to get copies of your credit report, make sure the facts are correct, and fix any problems you discover.

2. Before you start house hunting, get pre-approved. Getting pre-approved will you save yourself the grief of looking at houses you can’t afford and put you in a better position to make a serious offer when you do find the right house. Not to be confused with pre-qualification, which is based on a cursory review of your finances, pre-approval from a lender is based on your actual income, debt and credit history.

(more…)

All real estate licensees are not the same. Only real estate licensees who are members of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® are properly called REALTORS®. They proudly display the REALTOR “®” logo on the business card or other marketing and sales literature. REALTORS® are committed to treat all parties to a transaction honestly. REALTORS® subscribe to a strict code of ethics and are expected to maintain a higher level of knowledge of the process of buying and selling real estate. An independent survey reports that 84% of home buyers would use the same REALTOR® again.

(more…)

Buying a home is the biggest purchase most people will ever make, yet many go into it blind. Here are the 6 most common — and costly — mistakes homebuyers make.

1. Not knowing your credit score

If you’re even toying with the idea of buying a home, you must find out exactly what your FICO score is. If you find it is less than ideal, wage a systematic campaign to raise it. Too many borrowers ignore this step and get surprised when they get interest rate quotes.

Once you’ve pored over your credit history and corrected any errors, your next step is to pay down revolving debt balances to no more than 30% usage. That will help raise your score significantly.

(more…)

Sabrina Soto, Get It Sold host and home-staging expert, shares her tips on what to do before putting a house on the market. Print out this handy checklist.

• Use “home wash” (a hose attachment that is available at any home improvement store) to clean the outside of the house.
• Clean rain gutters as well as outside windows and screens.
• Make sure the front door is inviting. Paint it if needed. Also, replace any outdated outdoor lighting fixtures.
• Buy new house numbers if the old ones are dated or faded. Be sure buyers can see the new ones from the curb.
• Buy a new Welcome mat.
• Eliminate half of your belongings – clutter can cost in a sale. Rent a storage unit or portable pod for extraneous pieces of furniture or knickknacks. Another idea is to ask a friend if you can borrow some space in his or her garage.
• Organize all closets and drawers. Buyers might look there.

(more…)

Price is the No. 1 culprit!

If your answer is price, you’ll be right a good majority of the time. If your home isn’t selling, buyers think the value of your house is less than the price you want.

For all the time and effort that goes into buying and selling, the economics of the process is relatively simple. Anything is only worth what a buyer is willing to pay and a seller willing to accept. This is the same whether it’s a pack of baseball cards or a $1 million house.

Although the economics may be simple, arriving at that magic price is difficult. Just think of the cost, time and energy that companies put into pricing a product so it succeeds in the marketplace. It’s no different in real estate.

(more…)

If you think home maintenance is an unavoidable series of weekend-eating chores, remember the age-old advice of Benjamin Franklin: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The fact is, proactive maintenance is essential to preserving the value of your home—without it, your home could lose 10% of its value. Regular, routine maintenance enhances curb appeal, ensures safety, and prevents neglected upkeep from turning into costly major repairs.

“It’s the little things that tend to trip up people,” says Frank Lesh, former president of the American Society of Home Inspectors and owner of Home Sweet Home Inspection Co. in Chicago. “Some cracked caulk around the windows, or maybe a furnace filter that hasn’t been changed in awhile. It may not seem like much, but behind that caulk, water could get into your sheathing, causing mold and rot. Before you know it, you’re looking at a $5,000 repair that could have been prevented by a $4 tube of caulk and a half hour of your time.”

(more…)

1. Build a clothesline

Next to your refrigerator, your dryer is likely the biggest energy-guzzling appliance in your house. And while we wouldn’t ask you to store your food in a vintage icebox, an old-fashioned clothesline is actually a pretty good idea. (If that sounds too retro, think of it as a “solar dryer” instead.)

You can buy a pulley kit like the one pictured above at the hardware store. Or you can order the components online—clotheslineshop.com for instance, will ship you two Ts made of metal pipe, plus the fittings and rope. But it’s easy to make a traditional clothesline yourself, using 4×4 or 6×6 pressure-treated posts for the uprights and 2x8s for the cross arms (which don’t need to be pressure-treated). Simply notch the posts to receive the cross arms, set them in concrete, and run the lines on eye hooks between them. A 4- or 5-foot cross arm should give you enough room for five lengths of line, nicely spaced.

(more…)