home warranty Archives — Beating Broke

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?

If you recently bought your first home let me congratulate you. This is possibly the very best time to buy real estate that you’ll ever see in your lifetime. You made a smart move. And because you are a smart real estate investor, I know you’ll be interested in taking advantage of the following 3 ways young homeowners can save even more “moolah”.

1. Home Warranty

I owned a home warranty program for years and it was a waste of money. Of course it felt great not to have to worry about running into major unexpected expenses, but the cost just didn’t justify it. First of all, you are stuck with any repair person the home protection company sends out. Next, the deductible you have to pay is often pretty close to the amount you’d have to pay to a contractor of your own choosing. Last, when you do have a major repair, you are stuck (again) with whoever the company sends out unless you are willing to go through a great deal of red tape.

You’re always responsible for upgrades, code changes and any problems associated with misuse or poor maintenance. I cancelled my home protection plan several years ago and it turned out to be a fantastic decision. If you follow my lead on this, you’ll save at least $600 a year.

2. Life Insurance

If you are a young homeowner you might have a young family or plan on having one. As a result, you definitely need life insurance. But when it comes to term life vs. whole life – play it smart. Term life is your best friend. It’s cheap and it does the job. It’s true that at some point (20 or 30 years down the road) your term insurance will expire. But by that time, you may not need life insurance anyway. Term life is so much cheaper than whole life that you can take that savings and invest it. This way probably you’ll have much more than the whole life promises.

One of the biggest problems with whole life (and I feel it’s criminal) is that agents sell you the whole life you can afford because it pays them a whole lot more commission. (Maybe that’s why they call it “whole” life.) And because it buys a great deal less insurance than term, people end up dangerously under-insured. You could save several thousands of dollars each year and have better coverage just by having term instead of whole life insurance. Look into this ASAP.

3. Good Credit Score

Because you are a young homeowner, you’ll be using your credit for a very long time. And you might have to lean on that plastic a lot right now to pay for all that new furniture and appliances. If you able to get even a slightly better credit score, you might end up savings a bundle every month. That’s because a higher credit score will help you get lower interest rates on credit cards and mortgages.

Find out what your score is and make sure there are no errors. If there are mistakes, fix them. You can easily do most of this without paying a cent. You can even get your credit score for free and sign up for services that provide updates whenever there is a change to your rating. This has helped me a great deal.

As a young homeowner you might be facing some pretty hefty expenses and that can be daunting. Take these 3 steps. Dump the home protection plan. Get rid of your whole life insurance and buy term instead. Finally make sure your credit score is as high as possible.

Will you save $3745? I don’t know. You could save a lot more. You’ll never know until you start taking action.

What are the biggest expenses you face as a young homeowner? What have you done to reduce those costs?

This was a guest post written by Neal Frankle. He is a Certified Financial Planner ® and owns Wealth Pilgrim – a great personal finance blog. He writes extensively about ways to help people make smart financial decisions. One of his most in-depth posts was his review of CIT Bank.