Category Archives: Real Estate

6 things to do to get your home ready for sale

declutter

Declutter.  You need someone to walk into your home and be able to imagine themselves living there, says stylist Andrea Jones of O’Meara Jones. And they won’t be able to do that if there are personal ornaments crowding every surface inside, and the garden full of gnomes.

“Clutter looks messy and makes people feel it might be dirty underneath,” she says.

“So just get rid of all those bitty ornaments you’ve collected over the years and anything frilly or busy. Replace it all with a couple of colourful vases artfully placed to the side.”

Deep clean.  Morton Real Estate agent Etienne West advises all his vendors to hire professionals for a deep clean. “You need your property to look absolutely spotless,” he says.

“That means the kitchen, cooker, bathroom tiles, floors, windows, doors, walls … everything.  They’ll remove all the marks on walls, wipe inside the cupboards and drawers – you often see buyers opening them to check – and make sure it looks as fresh as possible.”

Fix the small stuff.  Give it a fresh coat of light, neutral-coloured paint which will immediately make a house look brighter, lighter and cleaner, says Jones. “Also, people can imagine their furniture against those blank walls much more easily than if they’re a wild colour or dark. You can always introduce colour with a lovely rug or cushions.”

West also likes to recommend a handyman comes in to do small jobs like regrouting, fixing dripping taps, or laying new carpet in rooms where it’s needed.

read more at: http://www.domain.com.au/news/six-ways-to-get-the-best-price-when-selling-your-home-20160609-gpctba/

US homes sell at strongest pace since ’07

WASHINGTON – Americans snapped up houses in May almost as soon as properties were listed, fueling the strongest sales rate in nearly a decade.

The sales gains have failed to convince more current homeowners to list their properties. Many are still recovering equity lost during the crash. For some of them, a sale would fail to generate enough of a profit to cover the expense of buying a new home. The number of listings has fallen 5.7 per cent from a year ago, meaning homebuyers have fewer and fewer options.

Sales of existing homes rose 1.8 per cent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.53 million, the highest level since February 2007, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

Order an appraisal today www.scappraisals.com to determine if the value has increased.

People remain intent on buying homes, despite the low inventory of properties on the market that has caused prices to rise. The elevated demand likely stems from low mortgage rates and a relatively healthy jobs picture with unemployment at 4.7 per cent, even with a recent slowdown in hiring.

“May’s existing home sales numbers suggest that healthy demand continues to support a recovering housing market, but that inventory woes are preventing a full recovery to pre-recession levels,” said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist at online real estate firm Trulia.

Homes sold in May after just 32 days on the market, the fastest pace ever measured by the Realtors since they began tracking the figure in 2011. Homes stayed on the market on average for 40 days a year ago.

Sales rose in the Northeast, South and West last month but fell in the Midwest where real estate is generally considered more affordable.

The median home sales price was $239,700 in April, a 4.7 per cent increase over the past 12 months.

The sales gains have failed to convince more current homeowners to list their properties. Many are still recovering equity lost during the crash. For some of them, a sale would fail to generate enough of a profit to cover the expense of buying a new home. The number of listings has fallen 5.7 per cent from a year ago, meaning homebuyers have fewer and fewer options.

http://www.lillooetnews.net/us-homes-sell-at-strongest-pace-since-2007-1.2284392

disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only

To buy or rent a home? Which is better?

More American households are renting, across all income levels and generations, for different reasons. But when homeownership is the centerpiece of the American dream, most of us have internalized certain ideals: Buying a home builds equity, putting you on the fast track to building wealth. Renting, by contrast, is essentially throwing money to the wind.

But with renters now accounting for 37 percent of all households, the highest level since the mid-1960s, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, more people may be renting for longer. Does that mean people who rent for extended periods, perhaps decades — even a lifetime — are forever at a disadvantage?

“Arguing about whether rent versus buy is a better financial decision is like debating active versus passive investment strategies, hedge funds versus mutual funds, Apple versus Google,” said Milo M. Benningfield, a financial planner in San Francisco. “Somebody’s going to be right in terms of higher returns in the future, but we can’t know in advance who that will be — and it will be tough to quantify how much risk was taken along the way.”

The arguments in favor of ownership are persuasive, particularly for people who expect to stay in place for at least five to seven years but probably more. A mortgage acts like a forced savings plan, even if you’re paying the bank hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest for the privilege of building equity. Call it the cost of enforcing a positive behavior.

read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/your-money/to-buy-or-rent-a-home-weighing-which-is-better.html?_r=0

disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes