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8 Easy Low Cost Fixes to Help Your Home Sell Fast

June 8, 2020 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Selling a home is not fun. You have to pack, clean, and list your home for sale. This process can be more stressful if you have to sell your home quickly because you have a new job in another area of the country or you’re buying a new home and don’t want to pay two mortgages. Thankfully, there are 8 easy low cost fixes to help your home sell fast.

Declutter

Before you do anything, declutter, declutter, declutter. Kitchen counters should be bare. You should put extra furniture in storage. Make your home look like a minimalist lives there. By doing this, your house will look bigger, which can help buyers feel that the house is big enough for them and their possessions.

8 Easy Low Cost Fixes to Help Your Home Sell Fast — Photo by Lindy Baker on Unsplash

Besides decluttering, you also want to remove personal photos and decorations. Buyers have a hard time imagining the house as theirs if you have to many of your own personal items. Plus, your home will be photographed and listed on the internet. Do you really want all of your personal family photos on the internet for anyone to see? I know I don’t!

Deep Clean

After you’ve decluttered, deep clean. If you’re not going to repaint, take a Magic Eraser, and make sure all of the scuff marks are off the trim and walls. Clean the grout, power wash the deck, wipe down all of the walls and cabinets. Dust and wash light fixtures. If you have a neat freak friend, now is the time to invite her over so she can point out all the areas that need to be cleaned that you don’t notice because you live in the house. If you have the money, consider hiring a cleaning team to do a spring clean of your house so that it’s pristine when potential buyers walk through.

Get Advice from the Realtor First

After you’ve done the basics of decluttering and cleaning, consider getting advice from a realtor. The realtor will know your local market and can help guide you in any minor and major changes that you should make.

Paint Walls a Neutral Color

If you are going to paint the walls, and I recommend it because it makes the whole house look fresh, consider going with neutral colors like egg shell, beige or light gray. Avoid dark colors or unique designs.

When my husband and I were searching for homes online, I didn’t even want to go look at the house that we ended up buying because the living room looked like it had ugly, old fashioned wallpaper on it. When we did look at the house, we discovered it wasn’t really wallpaper, but instead a bad sponge painting job using tan, orange and brown. If the living room would have been painted a neutral color, it would have looked much better online.

Make Minor Repairs

If you’ve lived in your house long enough, you likely have several minor repairs that need to be made. In our house, we have some dry wall that needs to be patched, places where the paint is coming off, a doorbell that doesn’t work, etc. Take all of those small repairs and have them fixed. Your home will look better when you list it, and potential buyers will feel that you’ve done a good job taking care of your home.

Buy a Home Warranty Now

If you don’t have a home warranty, consider buying one now. Then, when you have a potential buyer and a home inspection, if anything major is found, you’ll be able to offset the cost to repair or fix with the home warranty. When you close, the new homeowners can buy the warranty from you if they’d like.

Price to Sell

If you’re in a hurry to sell your home, make sure you price it competitively. Now is not the time to price it a little bit high to see if you can get a greater profit. If time is of the essence, price it around the same price of comparable properties in your area or even price it a little bit lower. Sure, you won’t make as much money. However, in the long run, you can save money overall because you won’t have to pay the mortgage for a house you no longer live in that is still on the market.

My husband and I were in the housing market about five years ago. We saw many houses that were priced too high. Those houses had had numerous price reductions. I immediately thought the sellers were desperate and that I could negotiate with them even further. Other buyers might think something is wrong with the property.

It is better to start with a competitive price and garner interest than to start too high and keep reducing the price.

Allow All of the Showings

8 Easy Low Cost Fixes to Help You Sell Your House Fast — Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash

One of the most difficult parts of selling a house, especially if you have kids, is to leave your home so real estate agents can show it. However, if you can try to keep your home show ready, you’ll be able to leave at a moment’s notice. Try to be flexible and agree to showings with only an hour’s notice. The more people you can get through your front door, the more potential buyers you have.

A family friend recently had to sell her home quickly because her husband had gotten a job in another state. They only had one month to sell. Even though they had three young children, they were determined to sell quickly. They left the house sometimes two to four times a day for showings. However, they sold the house in just two short weeks!

Final Thoughts

These 8 easy low cost fixes to help your home sell fast tasks don’t cost much money. However, they can have a serious impact on how long your house is on the market and how much it will sell for.

If you’ve recently sold or bought your home, what else would you add to this list?

Now Is the Perfect Time to Increase Your Pantry

June 1, 2020 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

In the first few months into the global pandemic, you might have had trouble finding the food you prefer to eat. However, now that the supply chain issue seems to have eased, finding the particular food you want to eat is easier. That means now is the perfect time to increase your pantry.

Why Now Is the Perfect Time to Increase Your Pantry

There are several reasons why you might want to consider increasing your pantry goods now.

You Should Have at Least a Two-Week Supply of Food

If you do happen to get COVID-19 or get exposed to it, you will likely either be unable to leave the house or need to quarantine for 14 days. That means you should have at least that many days of food in your home because you won’t be able to go to the store.

Keep a Stock of Specialty Foods

If you have food allergies or intolerances, having an ample pantry is even more important. For instance, if you can’t have gluten or dairy, there are many items you can’t eat. You can’t go to the store and buy whatever foods you may find on the shelf as other people can.

Take the time now to stock up in case there is a supply shortage later.

The Supply Chain May Be Broken

Now Is the Perfect Time to Increase Your Pantry — Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In our city, the local UPS hub has nearly 50 cases of coronavirus, and the union wants to temporarily shut down the hub. Like many people, I’m trying to avoid going to the store by buying items online. Now, if our UPS hub closes for a few weeks, I won’t be able to get many of my orders. Having a pantry and freezer full with enough items to feed my family for a few weeks or a month gives me peace of mind.

States May Shut Down Again

No one knows what will happen in the future. If cases of the virus continue to climb, government officials may have no choice but to shut down the states again. If that happens, there may be another run on groceries as there was the first time the states started to shut down. You don’t want to be in the same position you were in March when there were very limited groceries to buy and the shelves were bare.

How to Stock Up

Of course, you don’t want to be a hoarder. Be prudent and fill your pantry and freezer with enough food to last for a few weeks.

If you don’t have a lot of extra money in your grocery budget (and who does right now as the price of groceries continues to rise?), stock up little by little. Maybe one week buy a few extra pounds of beans. The next week, buy a few extra cans of veggies and fruit. Each week that you do this, you’ll be expanding your pantry. In addition, you won’t feel the financial hit as much as if you bought everything in one week.

Final Thoughts

Having a full stocked pantry is always a good choice, even in normal times. In the time of a pandemic, which we currently face, now is the perfect time to increase your pantry.

How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist

May 4, 2020 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

If you’re looking to refinance your home, you will likely need to have an appraisal as it’s the first step to putting an official price value on your home. You may not know where to start, but learning how to make a refinance appraisal checklist is the perfect place. Once you do this, you can work on improving your property for the appraisal.

How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist

My husband and I recently called our real estate agent because we wanted to refinance our house. She gave us several pieces of advice to prepare for an appraisal.

Get Rid of the Clutter

How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist — Photo by Minh Pham on Unsplash

Most Americans have at least some clutter. Your job is to get rid of the clutter in preparation for the appraisal, much the same way you would if you were preparing your home for sale. Our real estate agent specifically said, “Make your house show ready.” However, she also added that in general we didn’t have to make places like closets pristine for an appraisal.

Make a List of Improvements to the Home

Since you’ve lived in your home, what improvements have you made? Make sure you have a list of what you’ve done and when you did it. Since we moved in, we’ve replaced the water heater, the HVAC, and two bedrooms’ flooring. Big ticket items like replacing the HVAC system help the appraiser increase the value of your home.

Make Easy Cosmetic Fixes

When you’re in your house every day, you tend not to notice the little things like the paint that is chipped off your kitchen cabinets or the hole in the dry wall where your child’s bedroom door handle hit the wall. You might not notice dingy floorboards or dusty door hinges, but the appraiser will.

These items don’t cost much to fix, but they can increase the value of your home by creating the appearance that you care for your home and that it is well-maintained.

Look at the Curb Appeal

How does your house look on the outside? Is the paint fresh or the siding clean? Is the lawn mowed? Nicely landscaped? Or, do you have piles of clutter outside?

A tree fell in our backyard during a windstorm, and while we had taken care of most of it, the trunk of it still lay across our backyard. The real estate agent was adamant that we must take care of that before the appraiser came.

Get Comps for the Neighborhood

How much do comparable houses in your neighborhood sell for? Having this information gives you an idea of how much your house would likely sell for. Making this information easily accessible to the appraiser also gives him a starting point.

Our real estate agent offered to put together a list of comps for us. However, we didn’t need her to. When we put in our application for refinance, the comps in our area were high enough and our mortgage low enough, that the bank didn’t even require an appraisal.

Final Thoughts

Now is a good time to consider a refinance based on the market. If you’re wondering how to get started, hopefully this helps you learn how to make a refinance appraisal checklist.