Don’t Wait – Increase Your Home’s Value Now

In today’s climate of dwindling home values, I am often asked, “How do I make my home worth more without spending a lot?”

To elevate the value of your home, a detailed and specific assessment of your home, and the homes against which it will compete in the market, is necessary. A professional home inspection—especially for those who are not planning to sell their home soon—can go a long way towards increasing the value and creating demand for your home, and can help you plan for expenses if there is work to be done.

As a Member of the Top 5 in Real Estate Network®, I am committed to maximizing the potential of my clients’ homes. Having your home professionally inspected well before putting it on the market—or when you’re not even planning to put it on the market—has a number of advantages:

1. For a relatively minor investment, you will have the opportunity to review an objectively prepared assessment of the condition of your home’s structure, systems and amenities.

2. Everything else being equal, your inspection report should be consistent with the report prepared by your buyer’s inspector, virtually eliminating stressful surprises when your home is on the market one day.

3. You will have the opportunity to decide whether to do the work yourself or to have the work contracted while time is on your side.

4. The greatest value of proactive inspection is that the decision to repair vs. replace will be yours alone. A buyer may use the replacement of the air conditioner or the roof as a negotiating gambit when a proactive, high quality repair would have been completely satisfactory. Armed with the facts, you have the alternative of making a completely professional and perfectly functional repair of the roof rather than deducting the expense of replacement from the price. This places you in a much stronger negotiating position.

5. Finally, you will be able to enjoy the new roof, live worry free with the new water heater or use your new air conditioner and enjoy its higher energy efficiency. When you and your family are ready to move up, relocate, downsize or retire, you can put your home on the market with peace of mind, and concentrate on moving forward rather than looking back upon the costly repairs that you should have made.

Not only will buyers associate a specific value based on your home’s “move-in” condition, but by addressing major repair/replacement issues, you will diminish competition from newer and better maintained homes on the market. Also, you will not have to worry about inspection issues arising at the last minute that could stop your transaction cold…especially when this stress could have been avoided. For more information about home inspection, visit www.ashi.org, the website of the American Society of Home Inspectors, or, in Canada, www.cahpi.ca, the Canadian Association of Home & Property Inspectors.

If you would like my recommendation for an experienced, local home inspector, I would be glad to help. Just e-mail me. And if you have a relative, friend or colleague who would also find this information valuable, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them.

Sincerely,
Andee

Andee Hausman
RE/MAX Experts
Top 5 in Real Estate Member
AHaus@AndeeHausman.com
www.andeehausman.com

As a leader in real estate, I am repeatedly asked specific questions about today's market - especially in today's economy. In an effort to provide more information to my community, I am sending you this Top 5 Real Estate Social Networking System^sm “e-Article,” in which I provide useful real estate information to my real estate networks. If you find the enclosed information beneficial to your family and friends, I encourage you to forward it to your “social network" as well.

Is Your Home Merchandised to Sell? Top 5 Ways to Find Out

You have probably noticed that it is taking most homes a lot longer to sell in today’s buyer’s market. As a Member of the Top 5 in Real Estate Network®, I am constantly asked, “What can I do to make my home sell faster and at a better price?” The answer? Proper merchandising.

The right merchandising is critical to the effective sale of your home—in a reasonable time frame and at a price point you are happy with. Merchandising is often referred to as property preparation or staging—but true merchandising goes far beyond that. If the agent you are considering working with can only offer obvious suggestions like, “empty the closets, de-clutter, paint the front door, cut the grass, and remove personal items,” then it’s all the more important that you ask any agent you are interviewing the following questions:

1. Please explain the difference between marketing and merchandising. (If they say they’re the same thing, that’s a red flag).

2. What are the things we can do, at no additional expense, to add greater value to our home?

3. What investments in merchandising could we make that would generate a significantly greater return?

4. Are we in a marketplace that - because of the supply-and-demand ratios, how the market is trending and the number of days on the market - lends itself to merchandising our home?

5. What concerns might prospective buyers have about our home? Is there anything that can be done to address these concerns through effective merchandising?

Also be sure to ask the agent for examples of other properties in your area that he or she helped merchandise and how that merchandising influenced the results. Asking these questions will allow you to determine if the agent you are considering has a deeper understanding of merchandising in order to secure a successful outcome for the sale of your home. These questions will also provide insight as to the agent’s own feelings about your property.

If you—or any of your friends and family—would like more information on how to select the best possible real estate agent to handle the sale of your home, please e-mail me for a free copy of the Top 5 publication, What Every Home Seller Should Demand…of Their Real Estate Agent.

Remember, your home only has one chance to make a first impression, so it is crucial that your real estate agent possesses the techniques to get your home looking its best. If you believe that this information can be beneficial to others, please forward this e-mail to them.

Sincerely,

Andee

Andee Hausman
RE/MAX Experts
Top 5 in Real Estate Member
AHaus@AndeeHausman.com
www.andeehausman.com

When you are trying to sell a home in this market it needs to look picture perfect!

When people are looking at your home online they only have a picture to decide whether or not they are going to go see it. So to beat the competition you need to get your home looking clean and updated. In the past few months the number of homes selling are going two ways. Either for a more reasonable price if they are updated, or for a much lower price if there is work to be done. Why lose more money on your home when you can fix it up for a reasonable price, and quick! The "Haus" Team has gotten together with a great family remodeling and repair company that has done some amazing work for us and our past clients. They get the job done fast and for very reasonable prices. Its amazing what this family can do to get your home ready to sell! Leah and Scott Woodcock have been working on homes in the area for years, and have an impeccable reputation for their great craftsmanship. They go all over the Buffalo Grove, Long Grove, Lake Forest, and other surrounding North West Suburbs in the area.


Please contact Leah Woodcock for more information!

Leah's Cell: 847-3727554

Great New Buffalo Grove Home Listed!

FHA-approved lenders received the go-ahead to develop bridge-loan products that enable first-time buyers to use the benefits of the federal tax credit upfront, according to eagerly awaited guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on so-called home buyer tax credit loans that was released today.

Under the guidance, FHA-approved lenders can develop bridge loans that home buyers can use to help cover their closing costs, buy down their interest rate, or put down more than the minimum 3.5 percent.

The loans can't be used to cover the minimum 3.5 percent, senior HUD officials told reporters on a conference call Friday morning.

Thus, buyers applying for FHA-backed financing with an FHA-approved lender that offers a bridge-loan program can get a bridge loan to bring down the upfront costs of buying a home significantly but would still have to come up with the minimum 3.5 percent downpayment.

There remain many sources of assistance for buyers needing help with the 3.5 percent downpayment, including many state and local government instrumentalities and nonprofit lenders.

In addition, some state housing finance agencies have developed their own tax credit bridge loan programs, so buyers in states whose HFAs offer such programs can monetize the tax credit upfront to cover all or part of their downpayment. These programs are separate from what HUD announced today.

The first-time homebuyer tax credit was enacted last year--and improved upon earlier this year--to help encourage households to enter the housing market while interest rates are low and affordability is high. The credit is worth up to $8,000 and is available to households that haven't owned a home in at least three years. The credit does not have to be repaid, and is fully reimbursable, so households can get their credit returned to them in the form of a payment.

Learn more about the credit, including how to apply for it this year even if you've already filed your taxes, at REALTOR.org.

Source: Robert Freedman, REALTOR® Magazine Online