Curb Appeal!
What is curb appeal? While this term encompasses a variety of aspects it is essentially the way a home is seen from the street. A home’s curb appeal will either help or hinder its value, and therefore needs to be handled and cared for carefully and correctly. The right curb appeal embraces everything from your front door to your mailbox and with a little faith these following tips will transform your curb appeal and improve the value of your home. 1.) Freshen Up Your Front Door: A great place to start when it comes to improving your home’s curb appeal is to freshen up your front door. Your front door will say a lot about your home and you want to be sure that it is making a great impression. However, you don’t necessarily need to go out and buy a new one sometimes a fresh pant job can have a similar effect. 2.) Decorate Your Entry In Seasonal Style: Another great idea for improving your curb appeal is to decorate and design your entry in seasonal style. This will help you create a very warm and welcoming feeling around your entry which will develop some really desirable curb appeal for your home. 3.) Try Utilizing Planters And Containers: When your landscaping needs some upgrading consider utilizing a few planters and containers to really deliver a punch. With some...
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Preventative Home Maintenance Tips!
Most likely owning a home is by far going to be one of the most important and expensive investments you will ever make during your lifetime. Therefore, it is imperative that you protect this investment as much as you possibly can. So we have developed the top five home maintenance tips that will help ensure the investment you have made in your home is preserved. 1.) Get Your Home Inspected: One of the most effective preventative measures that you can do when it comes to home maintenance is to have your home inspected by a professional every few years. Due to the fact that your home is probably the biggest investment you will ever make you want to be sure and stay on top of any potential issues. 2.) Be Sure To Maintain Your Gutters: One of the most important things that you can do for the maintenance of your home is to clean out and maintain the gutters of your home. Clogged gutters are bound to progress into moisture build up which will develop mold and rot. Eventually leading to extensive damage to your home and its value. 3.) Patch Any Cracks In Your Foundation: It is very important that you keep up with and maintain any cracks in the foundation of your home. A minor crack can be okay for a little while, but for any significant...
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Should You Hire A Real Estate Attorney?
It doesn’t matter whether you are buying or selling a home it is important to include a real estate attorney in your team of consultants and advisers. Your realtor can do a lot of things when it comes to advising you on market conditions and helping with finding the right home or buyer for your home and will be key during negotiations. But a real estate lawyer can help ensure that your rights are protected through every step of the buying or selling process. When dealing with the sale or purchase of something so big, expensive, and complicated like a home complex legal situations are bound to pop up and it is important to protect your self with a real estate attorney. You are probably wondering at this point how much a real estate attorney’s fee would cost you. Well, typically their legal fees will be a bit higher if you are a buyer rather than a seller due to the fact that as a buyer’s attorney their responsibilities will be much more extensive. However, generally most fees will run you between $500 and $1,500 for a typical transaction whether you are the buyer or the seller. Usually, a real estate attorney can easily provide you with an estimate of their costs related to an average real estate transaction but if things go wrong you can expect their fees...
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Environmentally Friendly Home Upgrades “Go Green”!
Whether you are looking to sell your home or just cut down on your energy consumption going green is a fabulous option for you. Environmentally friendly upgrades not only improve the value and appeal of your home, they are also the best way to cut down on your energy bills. Saving you money in the long term while also doing your part to help the environment by conserving on energy and water consumption. So we have developed a list of the top environmentally friendly home upgrades to help you go green. 1.) Get An Energy-Efficiency Audit: It is important that before you go jumping into any energy efficiency project that you consult an expert. Getting an energy efficiency audit by a professional energy inspector will help determine where your homes strengths and weaknesses are. The worst thing you can do is go throw money at an issue that doesn’t exist. Be sure you get an energy efficiency audit to help you build a game plan. 2.) Programmable Thermostats: One of the simplest and most effective ways to save on energy consumption is by installing programmable thermostats. No matter how energy efficient your home is programmable thermostats will boost it even more. You will be able to program your thermostat so that your heat and A/C only kicks on when the interior of your home gets to certain temperatures. Increasing...
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Top Mortgage Advice For 2014!
As you may or may not know the clock is ticking for potential homebuyers who wish to obtain a low mortgage rate this year. However as long as you remain on the top of your game, act as quickly as you can, and maintain your finances correctly. You can still get your hands on a very appealing mortgage deal. In order to help you with this we have gathered the top advice for mortgage borrowers during 2014. 1.) Be Sure To Maintain Good Credit: It is imperative that you maintain good credit if you want a mortgage because it is basically impossible to obtain a mortgage without a decent credit score. This will be especially so during 2014 so if you want that low rate be sure to maintain good credit. The best rates go to borrowers with a credit score of 720 and higher. 2.) Be Sure To Document All Your Finances: It is very important that you document any and all of your financial information. There are lots of new rules this year that are going to put extra pressure on lenders to ensure you have the ability to pay back your loans. So during 2014 lenders are going to be extremely meticulous when it comes to underwriting mortgages. 3.) Be Sure To Shop Around: Be sure you shop around for your lender because as rates have...
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Pre-Approval Vs. Pre-Qualification!
Getting a financial frame of reference for your home search is extremely important to the success of your home buying experience. However, it has come to our attention that more and more people don’t fully understand what being pre-qualified and pre-approved means and the difference between the two. These two terms have very different meanings and have different impacts when it comes time to make an offer. Pre-Approval: Getting a pre-approval from a lender means that the lender has done some extensive and significant research into your financial history and they have agreed to loan you a certain amount. This carries much more weight than pre-qualification and sellers love seeing that a potential buyer has already been approved for an amount equal to the sales price. Pre-approval conveys very clearly to sellers that all of your finances are in order and you are truly ready to buy. Pre-Qualification: In contrast to being pre-approved, being pre-qualified for a loan is seen as more of a rough draft of what a potential buyer might be able to afford. It really says nothing about what you can afford, and it basically means that you may be able to afford that amount and that you probably could obtain a loan for that amount. When a seller sees a pre-qualification letter in an offer it will hold some type of credibility just not the...
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