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Here’s a tip for anyone selling a home in Nassau or Suffolk County. While this information can apply to homes in other areas, the density of housing in Nassau and Suffolk means that there will probably be many homes on the market at any point in time, all competing with each other.

Staged Homes sell faster and/or for more money!

Now that you know this, here are some steps to take to prepare your home for sale. They are all quite easy:

Clear all unnecessary objects from furniture throughout the house. Keep decorative objects on the furniture restricted to groups of 1, 3, or 5 items. In general, a sparsely decorated home helps the buyer mentally move in with their own things.

Rearrange or remove some of the furniture in your home, if necessary. Many times home owners have too much furniture in a room. When it comes to selling your home, thin out overcrowded rooms to make the rooms appear larger. If you need room to store extra possessions use the garage or rent a storage unit

Clear all unnecessary objects from the kitchen countertops. If it has not been used for three months, put it away! Clear refrigerator fronts of messages, magnets, pictures, etc.

In the bathroom, remove any unnecessary items from the countertops, tub, shower stall and commode top. Keep only the most necessary cosmetics, brushes, perfumes, etc., in one small group on the counter. Coordinate towels in one or two colors only.

Take down, reduce, or rearrange pictures and objects on walls. Patch and paint all walls, if necessary.

Review the house interior, room by room, and:
1. Paint any room needing paint.
2. Clean carpet and draperies that need it.
3. Clean the windows.

When buyers visit the home:
Leave on certain lights during the day (your agent will show you which ones). During showings, turn on ALL lights and lamps.
Play light FM music every day in the house, for all viewings.
Make sure the home smells wonderful – try baking some fresh cookies.

Certain home improvements that are useful to almost everyone have proven to add value or speed the sale of houses. These include adding central air conditioning to the heating system; building a deck or patio; finishing the basement; doing some kitchen remodeling (updating colors on cabinets, counter tops, appliances, panels, etc.); and adding new floor and/or wall coverings, especially in bathrooms.

On the other hand, improvements that return less than what they cost are generally ones that appeal to personal tastes that not everyone may share, like adding fireplaces, wet bars and swimming pools, or converting the garage into an extra room.

The challenge that comes with any home improvement designed to help sell your house is recouping your investment. There’s always the risk of over-improving your house – that is, putting more money into it than neighborhood prices will support.

So how much is too much? Professional renovators have found that, no matter how much you improve any given house, you’re unlikely to sell it for more than 15 percent above the median price of other houses in the neighborhood, whether you do $1,000 worth of work or $50,000.

Real Estate Selling – Top Tips

If you house has been on the market for sale for the last day or the last year, chances are that you are just as excruciatingly anxious for it to finally sell. To make things easier for you, there are ten tips that you can follow to make your home sell faster. Let’s take a look at them.

Most potential buyers will do what we call a drive by, before actually asking to see the house. They will ride by the house to see what it looks like, and to see what the neighborhood is like. This is the first impression the buyer gets of your house, and you want it to be a good one. So, clean the siding, give the house a new coat of paint, add some bushes or potted flowers and keep your grass trimmed. This is called curb appeal.

Now that you have the owner’s attention, you must concentrate on the inside. Complete any unfinished projects, as well as, make any repairs, which are necessary. The buyer will be more interested if they don’t have to do any work before moving in. As part of this step, give the walls a fresh coat of neutral paint. You may be a fan of bright colors, but a neutral color will match anything the owner has.

It is very important to clean the house thoroughly. No buyer is going to get a good feeling if they find a cobweb on the ceiling or dust in the corners. They will associate dirt with the house. This is not the impression you want to give.

Along the lines of cleaning, exterminate your house. If you have a bug problem, you don’t want the buyer to see this. Go to your home improvement store and pick up some items to eliminate the bugs, or hire an exterminator. No one wants to cohabitate with ants or spiders.

If your carpets are old, shampoo them. If they are worn, remove them. Wood floors will be more appealing than stained, beat up carpets. You want your floor to appealing also.

Next, remove all clutter. Clutter has a way of making a space look small and non-appealing. People will think the house has no storage space if everything is piled around.

You want the buyers to be able to picture themselves in this house, so remove all pictures of you and your family. This will be distracting to them, and they won’t be able to look at it as their home. In addition, pack up any personal mementos and items. Also, take the pets to a friend’s house.

Next, lighten things up. Pull back curtains and drapes and let the natural light in. Add extra lamps or use the highest watt bulbs allowed in existing ones. You want the house to be warm and inviting, not dark and dingy.

Pay particular attention to the kitchen and baths, because the buyer will. Make sure they are spotless and well lit. White is an ideal color for the walls, because it will look clean. If you don’t have the money to do big renovations, you can add new lighting or change hardware. In the bathroom, add a new shower curtain and plush towels. These are two rooms that are important to buyers today.

Keep furniture in the house, if you can. It will be hard for the buyer to picture what the house will look like furnished, if it’s empty. Also, an empty house will look cold and uninviting. You want to give the owner a warm, welcoming feeling.

You can’t make someone buy your house, but you can make it appealing. By following the suggestions listed, you can make your house more marketable. If people are drawn to your house, they will want to buy it.

Whether someone shopping for a home is a seasoned veteran of home buying or out looking at their very first home, finance home tips are something that everyone can make use of before making their purchase. Things may be much different since the last purchase and there are now new sources of information that may not have been around or that buyers may not be familiar with or have changed one of the most commonly used financial measures in real estate.

There was a time when people that wanted to buy a home or that were trying to sell a home would contact the neighborhood agent and trust them with every detail. That is no longer the case as agents are in much heavier competition and making the sale is now is sometimes more important than what either the seller or buyer want. The internet presents a viable option as both a tool for selling and for research for real estate investment.

When searching on the Internet, make note of sites that offer live chat. This is a great benefit as many issues can be answered right there on the spot. If live chat or a phone number is not available, there should be some sort of email form that can be filled out with an expected wait time.

If this is the first home that is being purchased, there are probably more questions than answers at this point. Write them all down and make sure that they all get answered. Never fear asking any question as this is a sizeable and often lifelong financial commitment. That being the case, the buyer will want to be absolutely sure about everything before signing on the dotted line. There may be some costs that the new buyer is unaware of that can also catch them off guard and putting out more money than they had initially planned.

Some of these costs are not things that are usually mentioned and may not have to be covered by the buyer. Experienced sellers may try and take advantage of a new buyer and make it appear as though it was assumed that they will be covering the costs of closing. In a struggling market, the buyer is the one that can do the talking and either negotiate some of these costs down with the seller or have them cover them outright. When faced with the possibility of starting over from scratch, they may just break and pay them to make sure the sale goes through.

When looking at the various mortgage rates that are available, buyers will often find that the rates are very close. This is really where the Internet comes in handy as rates can be looked at literally side by side. Don’t discount even the slightest variance as a portion of a percentage point can lead to an enormous amount of savings over the lifetime of the mortgage. Some real estate agencies can help you to respond about it.

Finance home tips are also available for free from some government and real estate agencies and various affiliate sites on the internet. By talking to an experienced representative, many of the answers that the realtor gives that are not exactly what the buyer was looking for can be looked into. This advice is usually free and may be the best and most honest advice that is received.

Shopping for a new home is never easy and there are a lot of questions that have to be answered before making a final decision. A home is the biggest real estate investment that people usually make and finalizing things should not be done until the buyer and seller are both 100% sure and happy with the deal that is brokered by the real estate agent.