Top 5 Home Improvement Projects to Increase Your Home Value (home equity loans)
No commentsBy JT Miller
If your home has been on the market for a while then you know how rough today’s housing market is. Home prices are dropping, there are many more houses for sale and everyone is in competition for the same number of potential home buyers. The key to increasing your home’s value and then selling your house quickly is to set it apart from other homes in the area. You need to give your home more features and make it more appealing than the other homes in your neighborhood.
These sort of home improvements are not necessarily cheap, but by spending a little money to fix up your house you could end up making a lot of money in a potential home sale. If you’re going to do these home improvements in order to sell your home then you should strongly consider hiring professionals and not doing them yourself. Professional contractors will do the work quicker and will more than likely do a better job than you could yourself. That extra step between professional and amateur home improvement will show when you put your house on the market.
Here are the top five home improvement projects to consider:
Professional Landscaping and Updated Exterior: With the increased number of homes on the market buyers are able to be more choosy and many are initially judging homes with a simple “drive by” look. If your home doesn’t have that curb appeal then it’s time to spend some money having the front yard professionally landscaped and maybe updating the exterior siding, windows and doors. Make sure your home can be seen from the road and looks freshly updated. A first impression can make all the difference between selling your home and having it on the market for months or years at a time.
Updated Bathrooms: The last twenty years have brought a lot of modern designs and updates to the bathroom and buyers are looking for that. Don’t go overboard but new cabinets, flooring, sinks and showers are almost a must. Whirlpool tubs and electric towel dryers are almost becoming standard bathroom equipment in many newer homes, so you may want to consider doing the same to your bathrooms.
Kitchen Remodel: Kitchens are tricky because you can very easily spend a lot of money updating a kitchen only to to have the kitchen not meet someone else’s taste. Try to stick with neutral and light colors in the kitchen. Modern appliances that stay with the home will always garner more interest and consider spending the extra money on stainless steel appliances which are still very popular.
Updated Flooring: Floors are often overlooked in home remodelling but there are a lot of new affordable and durable flooring options that can change the look and feel of a room as much as a fresh coat of paint. Consider replacing any vinyl flooring with tile or some sort of laminate replacement floor and definitely clean or replace any worn or dated carpeting.
Additional Rooms: Putting an addition on a home is always a great way to increase buyer interest and your home’s value because more space warrants a higher price most of the time. If your home is just like all the other homes for sale in your neighborhood but your home has an extra bedroom or entertainment area then your home will obviously be more appealing.
The one thing to remember is that you should not go overboard and improve your home right out of your price range. Only consider improving your home with about 10% of your home’s selling price. So if your home is worth about $200,000 then you might want to consider spending no more than $20,000 on home improvements. If you spend more than that then you may not be able to recoup your expenditure when you sell your home.
How do can you pay for all these home improvements? Many people are turning to home improvement loans to pay for these sort of projects in order to sell their homes. Banks, mortgage companies, lending companies and even large hardware stores all offer various home improvement loan and financing options to consider. These types of loans are becoming popular and competitive as more and more people realize that they need to improve their home in order to sell their home.
Visit the HomeImprovementFinancingSite.com for more information about obtaining home improvement financing even if you have bad credit and to learn how you can get a zero percent home improvement loan.
Online Real Estate Property Listings
By Kristi Ambrose
If your one of the many people that look for real estate properties among other properties online, then your in luck. There are tons of sites online that offer these options and tons more such as Services, Featured Ads, Insurance Comparison offers as well as Mortgage and Refinancing quotes. These sites are spectacular when your looking for a “one-stop-shop” type of deal and dont want to have to visit ten different sites for 10 different things.
For the real estate option these sites are most likely compared to sites like classifieds and craigslist. They offer different categories of properties such as commercial, single-family, condos, rentals, vacation rentals, land, new construction, and multi-family. With in these categories you can choose different properties. For example, on the site Im looking at right now, if I click vacation rentals these sorts of properties come up:
Beautiful House On The Lake (Catskills, New York)
Vacationing Apartments and Villas in Orlando, Florida (Orlando Florida, Florida)
Nightly Apartment Rentals In NYC (Manhattan, New York).
These properties also offer a detailed description, as well as prices, URLs and contact information as well as the date the post was put up. Services section, include items such as appraisers, construction cleaning services, financial, inspections, home improvement, movers, and wanted ads. For example, if I choose home improvement the following choices come up:
Featured Reasonable Prices On Home Improvements (tri-state, New York)
Structural Engineer ABC Consulting Engineers LLC (Monroe, Connecticut)
NYC Rubbish Removal (Manhattan, New York)
Efficient Home Repairs (Brooklyn, New York)
I try to make life as easy as I possibly can. When it comes to any sort of math I get lost in a quick hurry, so these mortgage calculators workout great. These purchasing and financing calculators include options such as sale price of home, percentage down, length of mortgage, and annual interest rate! Obviously these can be used very efficiently and easily.
As said above, another great thing about sites like these are tools such as Insurance Comparison offers as well as Mortgage and Refinancing quotes. As far as insurance goes sites such as this offer, auto, business, health, home, life, renters, and motorcycle insurance. Again this is terrific for you because everything is all in one place. Once you click the insurance that your looking for, you will be taken to a page to enter in the state you are located in. Once you enter the state your located in a new page will come up and provide you with different rates for different insurance companies such as Geico, esurance, Allstate, progressive, liberty mutual, etc. As you can see there are many uses for sites like this and visiting them would definitely be worth your while.
This author is a huge fan of DiscoverRealty.com a social real estate website where you can add a link to your ads and websites.
Your Source For Home Loan Consultation
Wholesaling Properties: 7 Costly Mistakes of Newbie Investors
By Iman Yusef-Yahya
How did you first learn about the business of wholesaling real estate? Did you read a book? Or hear it on a 2AM infomercial? Or perhaps you know someone in the business. No matter how you learned about it, you quickly caught on that there was money to be made in the business. You may have seen incredible examples of people who found bargain properties, purchased them for pennies on the dollar, turned around and made a nifty profit.
Of course all that is true. Wholesaling properties is a lucrative business, but there are a number of pitfalls and dangers to be aware of. Remember the old saying “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” The highway to real estate fortunes is littered with well-intentioned people those who did not heed good advice. Let that not be said of you. Here are seven of the most common newbie mistakes to avoid.
1. No Cash Reserve
To jump into real estate investing with no cash reserves is pretty much a ticket to quick failure. I know - you’ve listened to all the infomercials and heard the gurus say “no money down,” “you need no cash,” and similar amazing claims. It sounds great, but the truth is you will have to have access to some cash. This may be your great credit (and your credit cards), it may be a partner who has cash reserves, it may be someone who believes in you who is willing to invest in your business. Somehow, some way, there must be available cash. Think about it - you can’t even buy a stack of bandit signs if you have no cash.
2. Lack of Knowledge and Expertise
Some people love to learn and soak up knowledge and instruction. Others feel that taking time to study (seminars, teaching CDs, books, webinars, etc.) is a waste of time. “Who needs it? I just want to jump in and get rolling.” Can that person become successful? Perhaps. But the chances are slim. Do you want your car tuned up by someone who has never been trained? Not me. There is so much good instruction available, it would be foolish not to take advantage of it. Whatever knowledge and training you can acquire - your future clients will thank you for it.
3. Failure to Market
In order to succeed in real estate investing you will need sellers who want to sell and buyers who want to buy. The only way you can find these people is by marketing. Yes, you can hire bird dogs (people to scour neighborhoods to find properties for you), but that is not all sufficient. The lack of a marketing plan and a marketing budget is a mistake that can be fatal to your new business. You must let people know you are in business, and you must let them know what you can do for them.
4. Ignoring the Internet
Closely related to marketing is the use of the Internet. In this day and age, there is no excuse for not taking advantage of all that is available on the Net. You can find simple do-it-yourself website programs with which you can set up a website and feature your properties. Learn about such things as email campaigns and autoresponders. Use free ad services such as CraigsList. Much of what is offered on the Internet is free for the taking. Not using these tools leaves a gaping hole in your marketing plan.
5. Paying Too Much
Another mistake that often puts newbies out of the game is the lack of ability to make a clear price analysis. This is an art that is learned over time. If you are flipping to a rehabber, you must factor in such items as repairs and holding costs. Failure to understand how to price will equal out to slim or no profits. No profits means no business.
6. Falling in Love with the Property
If you latch on to a beautiful piece of real estate, it’s difficult to keep emotions at bay. But that is the key to becoming a good investor. Emotions must not play a part in the decision making. If they do, it’s likely that unwise decisions will be made. The best advice is to hold all properties at arm’s length and remain as objective as possible.
7. Doing Nothing
Procrastination is a demon that will not only kill your enthusiasm; it will kill your entire business. If it is to become your source of income, treat it like a real business and not some hobby you’ve picked up. If you have determined that you want to make money in the real estate game, you must set up a work plan and follow it. If you do nothing - believe me, nothing is what will happen.
Conclusion
If you are new to the world of real estate and real estate investing, you will have enough of a learning curve without adding to your headaches. Any and all of the mistakes listed above can be easily avoided. Let these be seven headaches you will eliminate at the outset. Consider yourself forewarned!
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Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 7:05 pm and is filed under realestate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
