5 Home Improvement Projects that Will Get You Top Dollar For Your Home

..5 Home Improvement Projects that Will Get You Top Dollar For Your Home

.It’s a highly competitive market for home sellers right now. More homes to compete with means that the impression your homes makes - from the curb, and on the inside - matter now more than ever. You can increase your chances of selling faster - and at today’s top dollar - by investing in a select few home improvement projects that have been shown to make a big impact on buyers.

Bad news alert: it might cost you a little time, effort and cash. The good news, though, is that the best projects for quickly increasing your home’s resale value tend to be cosmetic and fairly simple and inexpensive to do. Here are five projects with big-time return on investment for home sellers-to-be, in terms of their power to attract buyers, and to attract dollars from those buyers.

1. Painting: Adding a fresh coat of paint to ceilings and walls is a tried and true way to increase your home’s appeal to buyers. Go for white or neutral tones that help lighten your rooms. (Now is not the time to show off your fascination with fuschia and lime green.) Buyers will have an easier time envisioning how they will infuse their own personalities into your home if they’re looking at a relatively blank slate.

Painting lightens and brightens rooms, instantly removes scuffs and dings and gives every room a fresh, polished feel.

Fresh exterior paint - even if your time or cash budget limits your efforts to accents like eaves, shutters, doors and trims - is also a quick, inexpensive way to polish the look of your home from the curb.

2. Landscaping: Everything you’ve heard about curb appeal is true. First impressions matter - especially if your house is one of eight or nine a buyer has seen in one day. Buyers will be more excited to look at the inside your home if the outside looks clean, charming and inviting. Mow the lawn, trim the hedges, pull the weeds and plant some flowers, bushes or shrubs for the biggest impact - and be diligent about keeping your landscaping very well-manicured throughout the time your home is on the market.

Be sure to keep it low-key, relatively low maintenance and neutral, though. This is not the time to indulge your personal fantasies of living in an exotic paradise, unless that matches the existing look and feel of your home, nor is it the time to install a time-intensive English garden that buyers will love, but not want to take on. Think clean, simple and elegant for the biggest boost in value.

3. Cleaning and de-cluttering: Start by removing all your family photos from the walls and all sorts of tchochkes and clutter from the tops of tables, desks, dressers and counters. Buyers want to be able to envision their lives in the house, not yours. Personal items - and the visual clutter they create - have been shown time and time again to block buyers’ ability to create this vision.

Also, remember that buyers are coming to see the house and evaluate its space, not to bear witness to all the fabulous furniture that means so much to you (no matter how amazing your personal taste). Remove furniture that takes up too much space and fills up rooms. Get rid of clutter such as clothes, boxes, piles of mail and other items.

And then clean - and keep cleaning obsessively, the entire time your place is on the market. Kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms should look unlived in when they are shown. And don't forget to clean less obvious places like windows, walls, doors and and floors, to dust off shelves and furniture, and to polish appliances.

4. Plumbing repairs and water stain/damage repair: Paying a plumber to make a few stops throughout your home can be well worth the investment. Leaky faucet in the master bathroom? Get it fixed. Does the space under your kitchen sink look like a science experiment? Leaks and water stains definitely provoke disgust and exasperation on the part of the buyers you want and need to impress. And they can be pretty cost effective to fix - ask your agent for a referral, if you need one.

5. Staging: Staging your home can make a dramatic difference in the price for which your home sells. Good staging is equal parts:

(a) removing your personal belongings and replacing it with more artwork, decor and cleaner-looking furniture,

(b) and tweaking the home’s paint, wall coverings and even landscaping to show the place in its very best light.


When done well, staging can convert your home from just another listing on a buyer’s list to the setting for a fresh, new start to the fresh, new life of their dreams. Professional stagers, in particular, have special skills and materials they use, from convincing you to get rid of a bunch of things you value (but read: junk to a buyer), to items like mirrors, plants, art work, lamps, pillows and even furniture that tells a visual story of the life buyers can fantasize about living in your home.

Talk to your agent about staging - some agents have the skill to do this on their own, while others might have a professional stager they frequently work with.

In some cases, you might want to take on even larger projects. Before you go that route, talk with a local real estate agent; they are well-positioned to know what sort of updates and features will make the most impact on local buyers. Not all major, non-cosmetic upgrades to your home will create a significant difference in the price it commands, so take advantage of your agent’s expertise as you make decisions about whichproperty preparation investments to make (and which to forego).

Thanks to my Tara in San Francisco!

How will Fed decision affect home loan rates?

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke — AP file photo

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced it's changing its investment strategy, which could translate into lower mortgage rates down the road, market watchers say.


Related: Fed to shift $400B in holdings to boost economy

Related: What's Operation Twist?

The committee's words:

To help support conditions in mortgage markets, the Committee will now reinvest principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities. In addition, the Committee will maintain its existing policy of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction.

What does that all mean?

Michael Lea, director of SDSU's real estate center, said officials are basically selling off shorter-term Treasury holdings for longer-term ones and mortgage-backed securities.

"They're changing the composition of their balance sheet," said Lea, a past chief economist of mortgage giant Freddie Mac. "This isn't a new round of quantitative easing. They're reinvesting, not injecting more money into the economy."

The decision could push down long-term interest rates, and in turn, mortgage rates.

Why is this needed when home-loan rates are historically low?

"Mortgage rates are not the problem," Lea said. At issue, is weak demand for mortgages because of income uncertainty and unemployment coupled with tight lending guidelines.

"This will have very little impact on the average person," Lea said. "It's meant to signal to markets that the Feds are still trying to do something."

Greg McBride, of financial site bankrate.com, also weighed in on Twitter.

"What will Fed's Operation Twist do?," wrote McBride, referring to Wednesday's plan. "It might push down mortgage rates. But it will also squeeze bank margins, leading to lower savings yields."




Written by Lily Leung

Five Must-Haves For a Fab First Home

Reuters

These days, the term "starter home" is a little misleading. It implies a highly temporary home soon to be traded in for a bigger, fancier model. But because of a troubled real estate market with no end in sight, moving up to a new home won't be easy or quick, says Ken Shuman, spokesman for real estate website Trulia.com.

"We tell people right now that they should plan on staying in a home seven to 10 years," Shuman says.

What constitutes a good first home is more important now because first-time homebuyers have become an increasingly larger share of the market. In 2010, first-time buyers made up about 50 percent of the total homebuyers in the U.S. market, says Paul Bishop, vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors.

Related Stories Now the Time to Invest in REITs? Finding the Right Balance Between Work and Family Life What You Need to Know Before Buying Foreign Property

Related Video



Should Mortgage Lending be More Conservative?

Reforming the mortgage lending system



"Just on a dollars-and-cents basis, a lot of first-time buyers made the decision to stop renting and buy a home because it seemed to be the better financial decision," he says.

The expiration of the federal government's first-time homebuyer tax credit last year may make the decision to buy a little tougher than it was in 2010. But if you decide the time is right, here are some key things to look for in your starter home to make it the right decision for your family and to maximize your resale value when it comes time to sell.

An Affordable Price Tag

An affordable price on a first home is one of the biggest priorities for first-time homebuyers, and with good reason, Bishop says.

"Unlike a trade-up buyer, they don't have any equity to roll into the purchase of their next home, so coming up with a down payment and the financial aspects of buying a home is the first concern," he says.

Coming up with a firm price target for a first home and sticking to it is the key for first-time buyers, says Scott MacDonald, president of RE/Max Gateway in Chantilly, Va.

"Make sure the house is within your budget. A lot of people try to push it and go for the maximum dollar amount they qualify for, trying to keep up with the Joneses. Stay within a reasonable budget so that you don't overextend yourself and get yourself into trouble," MacDonald says.

To be sure, Bishop says, high home affordability is making things easier on first-time buyers because so many markets have stagnated or declined in price in recent years. Also helping first-time homebuyers stay within their budget is the wide selection of housing options. The U.S. housing inventory is still larger than normal. As of March 2011, it would take more than eight months to work through.

A House For the Next 10 Years

Because you'll probably be there longer than you think, Shuman says it pays to buy a first home that accommodates not only the family you have now but the one you plan to have over 10 years.

"Have that conversation. If you're just getting married, ask, 'Do we plan to have kids? How many kids do we plan to have? How many bedrooms are we going to need?'" he says. "The biggest bit of advice I can give for a starter home is to really think about what your future looks like."

Shuman says because many first-time homebuyers do have growing families, space is probably a higher priority than fancy features such as granite countertops.

"Because a starter home is usually a smaller home, in today's market especially you don't want to overpay for features and amenities, or remodels, that you're not going to be able to recoup later on," he says.

Quality of space is also important, MacDonald says. While you want to have at least two bedrooms, a lot of bedrooms aren't going to be much help if they're too small to be useful.

Location, Location, Location

Everyone's heard the old cliche "location, location, location," but what does it really mean for first-time homebuyers? Three years after the implosion of the housing market, the keyword is "stability," MacDonald says.

"Find a neighborhood that's stable -- where yards are maintained, where there's not a lot of 'for sale' signs, where there's not a lot of 'for rent' signs, where you have longer-term people living in that neighborhood -- because those are the ones that are going to get you the best return later," McDonald says.

If you're looking at potential first homes in a housing development governed by a homeowners association, or HOA, one way to assess a neighborhood's stability is to learn the number of delinquencies for HOA dues. A high rate of delinquencies can mean a neighborhood is headed for hard times, MacDonald says.

Beyond that, Bishop says first-time homebuyers should seek the same characteristics of a prime location that all homebuyers seek.
A neighborhood with well-maintained, attractive homes.
A location convenient to local amenities.
Close proximity to work.
A quality school district, especially for first-time homebuyers who plan to have children.

A History of Proper Maintenance

Whether a first home has been properly maintained can have a huge effect on your housing costs in the future, MacDonald says.

MacDonald says there are a few key areas of the home that can give you a general idea of whether the previous homeowner was diligent about home maintenance. If you see these issues, consider looking elsewhere.
Rotten trim on the exterior.
Dirty air-return ducts or a dirty filter in the HVAC system.
A crumbling roof or damaged gutters.

But while a spot check of these features can be a useful guide for narrowing down prospective first homes, a thorough inspection is essential before closing, Shuman says.

"It's pretty important that you have (an appraiser) who you really trust -- who you know is going to do a thorough job, who's going to get up on the roof, who's going to run all the water, who's going to look at the electricity," Shuman says. "Do a very in-depth walk-through with them and understand exactly what you're buying."

Recent Updates in Key Areas of The Home



First-time homebuyers on a limited budget may not get a home that's a totally finished product in terms of recent updates and features. If you have to choose, Shuman says, make sure you prioritize updates to the following.
Energy-efficient windows.
Updated electrical wiring with sufficient outlets.
A new roof.
A new water heater.

"When a lot of folks go into a starter home, they don't want to have to put a lot of money into it because they know it's not their home for life," Shuman says. "If you look at what the big budget items are that may come up during the next seven to 10 years and know that you're in good shape on some of those, that's definitely part of the checklist."

MacDonald says there also are some rooms in a prospective first home where recent renovations are more valuable in terms of resale value.

"Bathrooms and kitchens are the most important pieces of the puzzle when buying a house," MacDonald says. "If they have those renovated, or if the house is new or been updated by the previous owner, those are things that give it the most attraction when you go to sell your house later."




Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/07/26/5-must-haves-for-fab-first-home/#ixzz1XVFVbhgV