HomeKeepr Blog

If you’re planning to sell your house, proper staging can make a huge difference. It’s important to keep in mind that tastes change over time, though, and the staging techniques that were popular when you bought the home might not impress buyers today. If you really want to get the most value out of your home when you sell, it helps to employ staging that will appeal to buyers in the current housing market. Fortunately, there are many ways you can stage your home so that it draws in modern buyers. The goal is to help them see your home as a place they could inhabit and fill with their own style, and these suggestions will help you to achieve this even if tastes have changed since you last decorated your home.

As Robert Frost (somewhat facetiously) said, “Good fences make good neighbors.” While many people have much better relationships with their neighbors than the saying implies, there is something to be said for a good fence on your property. Not only can fences add some visual appeal to the property, but they can also be functional. Fences are often a godsend if you own animals and don’t want to keep them chained up outside, and a fence around your backyard can afford you some privacy with your family or friends as well.

Depending on the condition of the house, renovation can be a major expense. However, this can also present real estate investors with significant opportunities. For those with the right know-how and a good eye for investment properties, homes in need of renovation can be reworked and then flipped for a profit. Some investors actually make a very good living doing just that.

By now, you’ve likely seen the ads, gotten the emails and maybe even hung up on a few robocalls going on and on about the benefits of a home warranty. Are they actually worth getting, though? Let’s take a closer look at home warranties and what they really have to offer. This will help you to decide if a home warranty is right for you or if it would just be a waste of your money.

When it comes to selling your house, it’s important to get everything as close to perfect as possible before showing off the house. Not only will this let potential home buyers see the property at its best, but it will also help to justify a higher cost than a messy house might. There are a few things that can make this a bit harder to achieve, though. One of the big hurdles that you might need to plan around is if you have pets that live in the home.

Selling your home isn’t always easy. While there’s always a buyer out there somewhere, connecting with that buyer and agreeing on a price sometimes takes a little effort. There are a lot of little things that you can do to make this a lot easier, though. Many of these solutions are fairly easy on the budget and can also be added on short notice – and some of them may only take an hour or two to implement!

Spring and summer are traditionally seen as the best times to sell your house. Research has actually shown that homes sold during the first half of May tend to sell faster and sell for a higher average price than house sales at any other time of the year. Once you get into fall and winter, buyer competition doesn’t seem as fierce and average prices start to drop. This doesn’t mean you can’t sell during the off season, of course; it just means that you need to maximize the value of your home to get the most out of your property.

Inspections are an important part of the home-selling process. The home inspector will locate any potential problems with the property, making sure that all involved know what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed. What happens then, though? Whose responsibility is it to fix the issues that the home inspector discovered?

Real estate can be a tricky business. You put your home on the market, people make offers and there’s a lot of back-and-forth to make sure that everyone gets what they believe is the best deal. There are a lot of gray areas that make things more confusing, too. What if you’re selling your home to one of your own children or another relative and don’t want them to have to pay a bunch of fees and down payments? Maybe you don’t even want to profit off the sale at all… you just want them to be able to cover the remainder of the mortgage. Depending on the situation, using a gift of equity may be a better option to help make the sale happen.