Paying down the mortgage rate

You can offer to pay “points” to reduce the rate of your buyers mortage. This can be an attractive offer as rates continue to rise, but you must remember that rates are already historically low, and buyers have already figured out how much they can afford.

Paying closing costs

Well, chances are, if you have your home on the market, you’ll be getting offers than stipulate that you pay closing costs. This is a much better offer to give to potential buyers, as it reduces the amount of “up-front” cash they need to have. Paying down “points” makes a miniscule effect on buyers potential monthly payment, so offering to pay closing costs is a better option.

Pay association fees

This may be better than paying points, but paying your association fees is another “spiff” you can offer to attract potential buyers.

A Home Warranty

A home warranty is a well-tested method of attracting potential buyers. You basically buy a policy that guarantees the structural integrity of your house for a specified period of time (usually 1-2 years).

Clean / de-clutter – 973% Average Return on Investment

I completely agree with this one. Eliminating clutter will:

1. Make your home look bigger
2. Hide anything that potential buyers would find tacky (more on this in staging)

Lighten and brighten – 865% Average Return on Investment

Lightening and brightening your home will help make your home look larger, and are less offensive to a majority of buyers. Opening windows and shades and letting light and breezes into the home will create a more postive aura in the home for potential buyers.

Yard – 426% Average Return on Investment

I completely agree that curb appeal does affect the price of a home. Improving your landscaping and lawn will make you house look more presentable. Remember what they say about first impressions!

Staging – 251% Average Return on Investment

Now that it is a buyers market, sellers need to do things to get an edge on the comparable properties on their block, to stand out.

I think home staging may be a solution. Although you could update all your furniture to help your home sell, its probably the last thing you need to be spending money on at this point, plus why buy furniture if you know you’re going to have to move it soon anyways?

The fact is, although people do try to zone out the furniture and see a room for what it can be, I believe that tacky coffee table has a subconscious effect on potential buyers.

So why not try a home stager? It will place the newest, latest and greatest furniture in your house, and create a better impression of the house.

Paint interior – 148% Average Return on Investment

Now that you are updating via staging, lightening and brightening, and doing the little things to help your home look better, don’t forget to patch up the interior paint jobs and repair small cracks and holes.

I have no problem with these search engines (we’ve had success selling things on craigslist, and we usually advertise listings on at the owners permission), but you should remember:

1. A great majority of these properties are most likely already on the MLS
2. By exclusively searching for homes with these sites, you won’t see all the homes available
3. By posting on these sites, even if you manage these multiple listings on different sites, and struggle to provide info for potential sellers and keep your listing fresh, you still aren’t getting the exposure you would get from the MLS
4. Although the integrated google maps feature is pretty cool on some of these sites, the search engines aren’t nearly as powerful as the ones available to me

I don’t oppose buyers utilizing the internet for searching for homes for sale, and don’t oppose sellers trying to sell their homes on these sites. I do think you should use a Realtor® for your transactions. Many brokers such as IBR offer a free MLS search right on their website, and I can automatically set you up to receive listings within your criteria. In addition, I can manage and market your homes on these same sites.

Remember that Realtors® provide many more services than finding and advertising homes.

The site doesn’t claim to be 100% accurate, and states that in the Twin Cities metropolitan area they have a selling price median error of 6.5%. This means that half of the homes listed are within 6.5% inaccurate, and half of the homes listed are over 6.5% accurate. Doing a quick math, that means if you have $200,000 house, there is a 50/50 chance zillow.com will be off in their estimate by $13,000.

I did a quick search of my house, and since it has been over a year since we bought it, I decided to compare it against the county’s most recent assessed value of the home. Zillow.com’s price was lower by 15%. Digging deeper, I looked at the details for the home, and noticed that the site failed to note a bathroom the house contains, as well as the second story, cutting in half my finished square feet.
Although zillow.com has promise, and collaborative tools that may make information more accurate in the future, I wouldn’t use it as a pricing tool to sell your home just yet. Especially in today’s “buyers market”, it is important to price your home correctly as soon as you put it on the market.

Important to remember

Now is the time to remember how much value a licensed Realtor® can bring when you decide to sell your house. Pricing is more important than ever, so getting a professional real estate agent to perform an analysis of the surrounding area and provide you with a CMA (Competitive Market Analysis) so you can price your home right the first time.

Its important to be realistic about what your home is worth, and even more important to have an experienced professional assist you in negotiating offers to purchase your home. Oftentimes, the buyers will have an agent, and coming up against a “for sale by owner” listing, these professionals can normally smell desperation, and you may end up giving up much more than you planned to.

Mirrored anything

Mirrored ceilings, closet doors, and kitchen backsplashes give your home a look that hearkens back to the 70′s and 80′s. Mirrors have long been a trick used to make a space look larger, but they are a pain in the butt to clean, and look tacky. As the sizes of homes continue to expand, a heavily-mirrored abode screaming ‘aging bachelor’.

There are exceptions. A nicely-framed mirror in a dining room or living room is still a great accent for the dining room or living room.

Uniform Design

This look is starting to look outdated, buying matching living room or bedroom sets. Matching furniture styles to architectural styles is not necessary anymore as newer designers are adopting a fusion style of decorating homes.

I believe that these mismatched collections of furniture in rooms give the house are more inviting a cozy atmosphere. Be careful to coordinate colors and don’t go too crazy, so it looks like a work in progress though. If you have a ‘vision’ for a room, then finish that look before you put it on the market.

Stainless steel

Its a pain to clean, but buyers love the look. You can either spend all your time attempting to keep these clean by constantly wiping away fingerprints, or go with the newer ‘brushed metal’ variation on stainless steel, or go with nickel, a personal favorite of mine. Some trendsetters indicate that the new look with include the ‘full overlay’ look, where a refrigerator or dishwasher front with match the cabinets surrounding it.

Conclusion

Well, there you have it. A few ideas of what I think trends in home decorating trends are moving away from. Remember that quality trumps all, and if a look is extremely bold and popular, it will probably be dated in no time.

While it is important to remember that your house is your house and you can decorate it as you see fit, you also have to consider that you will most likely want to or have to sell your house eventually. If you are worried that your home improvement look will look dated in the near future, remember that quality and durability are more important that being “trendy”.

Below are a few things I believe you should avoid when redecorating in 2006, but remember, this is my opinion.

Bold-colored appliances

Are they out yet? I hope so, because a rehash of this terrible idea is the last thing anybody needs. Maybe I’m biased because I was tortured by my parents’ “harvest yellow” kitchen appliances for the first decade of my life, but buying a bright orange dishwasher limits your future decorating options, and will look dated in no time.

Oh yeah, same goes for bold-colored rooms (they often make a room look smaller, require many coats for a good finish, and few will share your opinion of the particular hue you’ve chosen), but repainting a room is much easier than buying new appliances when you want to sell your home.

Above-counter or “vessel sinks”

As the price of these sinks continue to decline, many more people are starting to install these trendy glass bowl sinks that sit atop countertops. They look great, but are hard to keep clean because of their transparency. Some shallow models splash, and since they sit on top of the counter instead of in it, it may be difficult for small children to wash their hands. Leave these trendy sinks where they belong: in trendy bars and restaurants, where they can afford to have some clean them constantly, and where no one will be leaving their toothpaste stains in them.

Built-in flat panel TVs

TVs mounted to walls and in many cases “framed” to look like a picture present a lot of commitment. Sometimes placing a TV in a place where it looks good; say, above a fireplace, doesn’t mean its the best place to watch a TV. Mounting your flat-panel like a piece of art makes it harder to move, and then you have to deal with covering up whatver you placed on the wall to mount the TV with.

Awnings

Of course, this is a no-brainer, but if you have awnings, I’d remove them sooner rather than later. Just get a nice set of blinds or some sort of window treatments.

My brother recently bought a house and sent me pics, and I noticed he had awnings. By the time I got there to see the house, the awnings were gone. Removing them was the first thing he did.

To be continued…

Replace small fixtures

Kitchen looking outdated, but don’t have the time to remodel? Think of replacing smaller things like light switch and outlet covers, and cabinet handles and knobs. If you have more of a budget, try replacing your kitchen faucet, or replacing and updating some appliances.

Ditto goes for other rooms, but none is more important than the kitchen. For other rooms, in addition to simply replacing switch and outlet covers, think of replacing old light fixtures, installing ceiling fans, tearing down track lighting. Take down outdated window dressings, you might be better off with simple blind verus kitchen that bring back memories of past decades.

Remove Wallpaper

Its a big task, but it might just be enough to turn off a buyer. Chances are, they won’t like your taste in wallpaper, and see wallpaper removal as a dauting and unattractive task.

Avoid certain HG Network tips

Although bright and bold colors are fashionable, again, chances are, they won’t share your taste in the vivid color you chose to paint the bedroom. Improve your chances by painting in neutral light colors. This will not only make your home seem bigger, it won’t turn as many buyers off as the thought of how many coats of paint it will take to cover up the bright orange they dislike so much.

Eliminate outdated furniture

Put away furniture that looks painfully old, especially “sets” of look-alike furniture.

Get rid of the carpet

Tear up your carpet and buff and shine the hardwood floors beneath. Although this isn’t a very cost-effective or quick solution, it definitely helps the house look more updated and larger.