View Top Choices a Second Time Before Buying That First Home

According to a recent report from Trulia.com, it is tempting to many sellers to take a few percentage points onto the price of their home to “leave room to negotiate.” This temptation should be avoided, let’s take a look at the seven deadly sins of overpricing:

1. Appraisal Problems: Even if you do find a buyer willing to pay an inflated price, the fact is over 90% of buyers use some kind of financing to pay for their home purchase. If your home won’t appraise for the purchase pric,e the sale will likey fail.
2. No Showings: Today’s sophisticated home buyers are well elected about the real estate market. If your home is overpriced they won’t bother looking at it, let alone make you an offer. 
3. Branding Problems: When a new listing hits the market, eery agent quickly check the property out to see if it’s a good fit for their clients. If your home is branded as “overpriced”, reigniting interest may take drastic measures.
4. Selling the Competition: Overpricing helps your competition. How? You make their lower prices seem like bargains. Nothing is worse than watching your neighbors put up a sold sign.
5. Stagnation: The longer your home sits on the market, the more likely it is to become stigmatized or stale. Have you ever seen a property that seems to be perpetually for sale? Do you ever wonder – What’s wrong with that house?
6. Tougher Negotiations: Buyers who do view your home may negotiate harder because the home has been on the market for a longer period of time and because it is overpriced compared to the competition.
7. Lost Opportunites: You will lose a percentage of buyers who are outside of your price point. These are buyers who are looking in the price range that the home will eventually sell for but don’t see the home because the price is above their pre-set budget.

Most buyers look at 10 -15 homes before making a buying decision. Because of this, setting a competitive price relative to the competition is an essential component to a successful marketing strategy.

Learn more at Trulia.com

According to Trulia.com, here are 5 steps that will help you avoid buying a money pit.

1. Attend Inspections. When you’re there in person, the inspector is able to physically show you the items that may need repair, and give you their professional opinion of how serious and large needed repairs may actually be at a level of clarity a written report may lack. Sometimes, written inspection reports convey minor items (like reversed hot and cold faucets) as a red-flagged health and safety issue, and more major items (like a problematic foundation) as something that needs further inspection. If you are at the inspection in the flesh, you can brief the inspector on what level of cost and effort you consider major (and vice versa), and ask them to help you understand roughly where the property overall and any individual repairs needed fall, from that perspective.
2. Read the Reports and Disclosures. Reading the inspectors’ reports is critical to avoiding a money pit. Things to watch for and investigate further in the sellers’ reports and disclosures include:  repairs the seller completed themselves, repeated repairs to the same home system, water and leakage issues, and any reports of non-functionaing mechanical or other systems in the home. In your inspectors’ reports, make sure to notice: repair estimates they offer, items that seem like they will have to be completed soon (versus upgrades you can do over the long run), items that seem like they might run into big ticket dollar amounts, and especially watch for any recommendations that you get a specialist to look at something. Follow up on your reading of reports and disclosures by working with your agent to: list your questions and concerns, ask the inspector and seller any follow-up questions you have, and obtaingin reliable repair estimates.
3. Get Multiple Repair Bids. Money pits often occur when buyers take a place knowoing it needs what they thought was a little work, that actually turns out to be a much more costly or involved repair once the actual repiar contractor takes a look or starts the work. Get multiple repair bids from reputable contractors while you are still within the inspection contingency time frame of your contract. These repair estimates can also provider the basis for any renogotiation you and your agent choose to initiate with the seller for price reduction, repairs or increased closing cost credits.
4. Stop Overconfidence In Its Tracks. Even if you expect to cut costs by doing some work yourself, I urge you to contact and obtain bids on the repairs and upgrades you plan from actual professionals, so you can at least be armed with the information about what it will cost to get them done if you can’t complete them for any reason.
5. Prioritize Price Reductions and Credits over Seller Repairs. For the most part, buyers will select their own materials and repair contractors with more care and are generally more deeply invested in ensuring that repairs are completed to their satisfaction than an outgoing seller. If you are negotiating with your home’s seller over repairs that need to happen, discuss with your agent whether it might make sense to ask for a price reduction or a closing cost credit to offset the cost of the repairs so you can have them completed to your standards, and with the materials and by the contractors of your choice, after clsoing.                       

Before you get too attached to a certain property, make sure that you have thought through the issues that are most important to you and what you want out of this new home. Consider using the Key Features Wanted in New Home worksheet provided here by dummies.com (homebuying) as a guideline and think through the issues that are most important when comparing properties.

Distance to employment __________________________________
Proximity to family __________________________________ 

Proximity to child care __________________________________

School district __________________________________

Access to public transportation __________________________________

Proximity to airport, train station, and so on __________________________________

Desired amenities nearby (parks, walking or bike trails, and so on) __________________________________

How does this property compare to others in the neighborhood? __________________________________

Are home values in the neighborhood stable? __________________________________

Is the neighborhood undergoing revitalization? __________________________________

Are there any special assessments or taxes for this neighborhood? __________________________________

What other issues involving location are important to you? __________________________________

Features of property:

Number of bedrooms __________________________________

Number of bathrooms __________________________________

Garage capacity __________________________________

Style of home __________________________________

Master bedroom on first floor __________________________________

Master bathroom __________________________________

Laundry facilities on first floor __________________________________

Handicap accessible __________________________________

Washer and dryer __________________________________

Formal dining room __________________________________

Dine-in kitchen __________________________________

Built-in dishwasher __________________________________

Formal livng room __________________________________

Seperate space for home office ________________________________

Basement ____________________________________

Ample stoarage space ____________________________________

Fireplace __________________________________________

Deck or patio ___________________________________________

Fenced in yard ___________________________________________

Shade trees ___________________________________________

Level driveway _________________________________________

Ample space for gardening or outdoor activities ________________________________________

Home association dues __________________________________

Amount of initial repairs or remodeling required _________________________________________

Other critical features you’d like in your new home ____________________________________________

One of the true joys of homeownership is your ability to truly make your home yours - customizing and personalizing it to suit your tastes, your family, and your lifestyle to a t. According to a recent article from trulia.com, Here are four smart strategies for customizing your new home.

1. Paint to create that feel you want, inside and out. Studies show that color choices can have a massive impact on the mood and even the happiness of a home’s residents, so get to painting!
   Exterior: Consider your dream home, what color was it? Repainting your home can make a massive change to its look and curb appeal, and can turn a home you can afford into the home you’ve always dreamed of.
   Front door, shutters, and fences: If you bought a home that has a relatively fresh coat of paint job or an overall color you like, consider painting just the front doo to inject some color and your personal touch. Painting shutters, fences, and other exterior accents a contrasting color of your choice are additional quick and inexpensive - but powerful – tweeks that can also make your home look buttoned up and , well, yours.
   Interior: Aim to match colors to a room’s purpose, so that bedrooms have a sense of restful santuary, bathroom walls read “clean,” and common living areas are warm or energizing, as you wish!
2. Inventory your space and your stuff before you unpack. Moving in presents an opportunity to truly customize your living spaces for the activites you want to do and things you want to “live” in them. Make a chart that divides all your home’s spaces – all of them, including any seemingly wasted spaces or nook-ey areas under the stairs or in the garage, before you move in.  Then decide what you want to do and what you want to store in each area. This approach empowers you to make sure every person, activity and thing in your home has the right amount and type of space.
3. Build organization in. Built-ins make a world of difference. It’s relatively low-cost and low-effort to build in items like:
   a. clost organizers,
   b. window seats,
   c. desktops and bookshelves,
   d. pantry-optimizing shelves, spinners and drawers, and
   e. medicine and linen cabinets
4. Match your furniture to your space, your activites and your stuff. Remember the space issues you couldn’t stand in your last place? Anticipate them, and as you plan to buy your furniture, look for things that offrer extra organizational or storage features.
   Also, if your space inventory (see #2 on the list) showed up lots of stuff with no place to go , make an effort to buy armoires, storage closets and sheds to give your home a polished look that reflects your organized and personal style.

Visit trulia.com for more tips.

According to a recent article from trulia.com, here are four need-to-knows for those who want to sell their current home and buy a new one, at the same time.

1. Meet with a local agent who actively sells homes in your neighborhood, far in advance of listing or house hunting.  You need them to brief you on items like how long you should expect your home to take to sell on today’s market, what you can do to move it faster, as well as get their professional opinion as to what price you can expect to get for your home. This will impact whether or not you need to consider a short sale.  This is all information you will need to provide your mortgage pro with, so collect it as early as possible in the process. A year before you need to move is not too soon to have your first meeting with your agent.
2. Meet with your mortage broker before you start looking for homes or put your own home on the market. It’s essential that you have them walk with you through both your sell and your plans to buy, before you do either. Why? A good local mortgage broker can work with you and your agent to help you do the math on what you’ll net from your home sale, help you know how much you (a) can qualify to buy, and (b) will need to come up with for your purchase, understand whether the sale will impact your credit at all and by how much, and help time your sale with your purchase.
3. Know your options for staying in after closing – or moving in early.  Many homeowners try to buy and sell at precisely the simultaneous moment, with very little overlap, because they don’t want to throw money away on rentals. The reality of today’s market is that very, very few sales close precisely when they are expected to, mostly for reasons entirely out of the control of either party. In any event, if you are selling your home, before your purchase will be complete, know that it’s okay to ask for a “rent-back” where you can stay in the property for as long as a month or more after the sale closes by agreement with the buyer to pay them rent on the property in the amount of their mortgage payment, taxes and insurance for the time you remain in the home. On the other hand, if you are buying after your sale closes, some sellers will alow you to move in before closing on a similar arrangement. Before you start to freak out at the thought that your ‘buy’ won’t close when you need it to, know that this option might be available, and talk with your home’s seller to see if they’ll consider it.
4. Plan for gaps – and for overlaps.  There is very little in this world we can be sure of, except the high probablility of your escrow closing date. Having a back up plan in place just in case you close one or both transactions off-schedule is essential to avoiding the surprise-induced panic attacks. So, if you want or need to buy before you sell, build a cash cushion that can cover double payments for a couple of months. If that’s not in the budget, or if you’d like to try out your new neighborhood or town before you buy, close your home’s sale, then plan on renting a place during your house hunt.