Jun 18, 2014 | Real Estate Tips
With the prices for everything skyrocketing these days, every penny counts. This includes your homeowner’s insurance costs. If you’re thinking of buying a home and need homeowner’s insurance, here are a few tips on getting quality insurance for a fair price:
Tip #1: Shop Around
Ask family and friends about their homeowner’s insurance. Check the Yellow Pages, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the state insurance department.
Other places to shop for insurance include consumer guides, insurance agents and online insurance quote services. Don’t just look for lower prices, however. You need a fair price for the services you need.
Tip #2: Raise Your Deductible
The deductible is how much you have to pay before the insurance company starts to pay a claim on your home. The higher the deductible, the lower the premiums. If you live in a disaster-prone area, your policy may have a separate deductible for specific types of damages.
Make sure, when reading the policy, you carefully go over damage-specific information.
Tip #3: Use The Same Insurer
Some companies will take five to fifteen percent off your premium if you buy more than one policy from them. If the insurer offers homeowner’s, auto and liability coverage, you stand a chance of having a lower premium than if they only offer one or the other.
The key is to make sure that the combined price is lower than the price would be if you had purchased them separately.
Tip #4: Improve Home Security
By installing a sophisticated fire sprinkler system and a fire/burglar alarm that rings the monitoring stations, some companies will cut your premium as much as fifteen or twenty percent.
For a smoke detector, burglar alarm or deadbolt locks, you can usually get at least a five percent discount. Check with your insurer to make sure that the system you’re installing will lower your premiums, though; the systems aren’t cheap and not all of them qualify for a discount.
Read everything carefully before you sign, to make sure the policy covers your insurance needs without adding on hidden fees. Even a little money saved can go a long way toward making it easier to live within your budget.
Ready to buy a home? Let me help you find the perfect home and get it at the best terms and price. Call or email your trusted real estate professional.
Jun 13, 2014 | Home Selling Tips
Many home owners putting up their home for sale on the market don’t have a lot of available cash to spruce it up. While staging houses is a definite plus, it can cost a fair amount of money, as do many of the other suggested “to-dos.” Here are a few inexpensive and easy ways to make your home look more inviting to buyers.
Put Up Your Personal Stuff
Not every buyer looking at a home for sale appreciates the fact that someone still lives there. Putting away the your personal things can help the buyers’ see themselves in the home.
You will want to put your pet’s things (toys, litter box, bowls) away and out of sight. The same goes for your medications, toothbrushes and toilet accessories.
Clean up your kids’ rooms and put away any toys around the house. Minimize or put away knick-knacks and personal pictures. Remember that you want the buyer to imagine themselves in the home.
Create More Space
Small, closed-in spaces are major turnoffs for buyers. Create the illusion of more space by putting up out-of-season clothes or clothes you don’t wear very often to make your closets look bigger. A good way to make your bedrooms look bigger is by taking one piece of furniture out of each bedroom.
Packing up the small appliances in your kitchen is a great way to make your countertops seem larger. You can also take out all but four chairs in your dining room, as well as extra table leaves to give that illusion of space.
Touch On The Trends
Chances are that some of the buyers are paying attention to celebrity trends. Feng shui is a big one, and you can do your part with just a few touches like adding a fresh bowl of fruit to the kitchen. Put a comfortable couch or chair on the east side of your living room or den. Place a green welcome mat on your porch to symbolize opportunity. Go through your house and get rid of reds.
Whether you see or feel a difference doesn’t matter. Keep in mind that you’re trying to appeal to potential buyers of your home, not make the home more livable for you. If it helps, pretend that you’re the buyer, seeing the house for the first time.
If you’re trying to get your home ready to sell, I can help. Get in touch with me for more information.
Jun 5, 2014 | Home Seller Tips
Selling your home or property in a slow real estate market isn’t easy, but it can be done. Pricing your property right is the key to selling it within a reasonable amount of time.
Sometimes this means lowering your price while it’s on the market. Of course, you want to get as much money as possible, so how do you know when it’s time to lower your asking price?
No One Is Looking At Your Home
If you expect your home to sell, you need to have people look inside it. Most buyers search for homes within a certain price range. If you aren’t getting any showings, chances are it’s because your home is overpriced compared to other homes in the area. In this case, you may need to lower your price so buyers will look at your home.
Comparable Homes Are Selling For Less
Your home will sell for whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. If the homes around you are selling for less than your asking price, it may be time to lower it. No one is going to pay more for your home when they can get the same thing for less.
Pay attention to what homes are selling for in your community and adjust your price accordingly.
You Are Getting A Lot Of Negative Feedback
Buyers are a great source of information about other homes in your price range. After all, they’re spending their free time looking at countless homes similar to yours.
Your real estate agent can find out exactly what buyers think of your home. Perhaps homes comparable to yours have updated kitchens or more attractive landscaping. With this knowledge, you can choose to either remodel or lower your price.
Call or email me if you have any questions. I can help you sell your home or property in any real estate market.
May 29, 2014 | Homeowner Tips
Each year around April, we can find ourselves becoming a little more tense at the thought of what is about to occur: tax time.
Instead of falling into the trap of procrastinating your taxes, however, it’s much more beneficial to face tax time head-on and do your research on your applicable deductions well in advance.
Your home is good for many things, but using your home to reduce your tax burden may be one benefit you haven’t thought of.
Here are some tax benefits that can be leveraged with your home, and some ways to lower your tax bill in 2014.
Deduct Interest On Home Loans
Though interest paid on personal loans isn’t deductible on your tax return, interest paid on mortgages is.
Home mortgage interest, for both your primary residence and a second home such as an investment property, can account for a large bill near the end of the year, and can significantly decrease your tax bill for 2014.
Interest paid on a line of credit for your home or a home equity loan is also usually deductible, and you may also qualify to deduct the insurance premiums on your private mortgage if this was a requirement from your lender. Ensure you keep your Form 1098 from you lender, and be sure not to miss each of your interest deductions.
Deducting Points Paid For A Better Rate
If you paid points in order to get a better interest rate on your home mortgage, the IRS will allow you to deduct these, too. If you meet the requirements for this deduction, one of which is that you paid the points in the same year that you purchased your primary residence, be sure to add the points to your list of deductions.
Deduct Property Taxes
Property taxes are also deductible on your tax return, and since they make up a significant portion of your home expenses each year, they certainly shouldn’t be excluded from your list of deductions in 2014.
As an annual deduction for the entire period you own your home, ensure you don’t forget about your first year in your home. If you’ve just purchased your home, the property taxes would have been split between the seller, the previous homeowner, and you, the buyer, at the time of the property transfer. Your portion of your first year’s property taxes for the home is also fully deductible.
Tax-Free Sales Gain
If you’ve owned and lived in your home for a minimum of two years and are ready to sell, you likely qualify for up to $250,000 dollars of tax-free profit, or up to $500,000 for married couples.
If the sale falls short of the two year mark, the IRS provides some tax relief if the sale is due to a list of unforeseen circumstances, such as changes in employment or health. Be sure to see where you qualify, and leverage the sale of your home for tax-free sales gain.
Having the ability to leverage your home in order to lower your tax burden is, of course, another benefit of being a homeowner. Often, reaping the full benefits of tax deductions is a simple matter of doing your research or speaking with a professional to get the information applicable to you.
May 23, 2014 | Uncategorized
Homeowners who want to increase the appeal of their residence before putting it up for sale can, within a few hours and with a little elbow grease, perform some do-it-yourself (DIY) kitchen upgrades that are sure to pique the interest of would-be buyers.
Many people either have or are in the process of listing their home, so it makes sense to do as much as possible to attract the interest of prospective purchasers.
It need not cost a proverbial arm and a leg to boost the selling price of a home. Here are three DIY kitchen upgrades that will help homeowners gain a competitive advantage in the real estate market and get attractive offers for their residence.
On-The-Cheap Cabinet Upgrades
For a DIY upgrade project that won’t cost much money and won’t take much time, homeowners should consider revamping their cabinetry, as long as the cabinets are structurally sound. After cleaning them and, if necessary, sanding down any rough spots, homeowners can apply a coat or two of paint and, after the paint dries, install new knobs or handles to finish off the project.
The end result will be a totally transformed kitchen that likely won’t require more than a can of paint, sandpaper, some cleaner and some knobs or handles.
Upgrade Your Countertops
It’s amazing how much of a difference an upgraded countertop can make to the overall look of a kitchen. Homeowners who believe that a new countertop would definitely transform their kitchen have a number of options at their disposal such as buying a new one, tiling over the existing one or repainting the existing one.
Often the easiest of the three options is repainting, since this simply involves sanding the surface, priming it, applying the paint and then applying numerous coats of polyurethane to safeguard the finish.
Transform Your Kitchen Backsplash
While a nice-looking kitchen backsplash can be a plus for would-be home buyers, the fact of the matter is that an ugly backsplash will definitely turn off prospective purchasers.
A cheap and relatively quick way to give a backsplash a new lease on life is to use so-called tile decals that, because of the adhesive they contain, can be pasted over top of existing backsplash tiles. There many different options in terms of styles, colors and concepts, so homeowners will be able to find the perfect option to make their backsplash look as good as new.
Preparing to list a home and get acceptable offers involves ensuring that your home will stack up nicely compared to other homes up for sale in the area. As it turns out, doing some quick and relatively simple kitchen upgrades will help to attract prospective buyers. Tips for performing any of these DIY upgrades can be found either at neighborhood big-box stores or online.
For more information on the real estate market or to get more information on any related topics, call your trusted real estate professional today for a no-obligation consultation.
