Home Selling, Real Estate (Residential)

Items You Should Never Leave Out During a Home Showing

1. Your personal documents

Let’s start with the obvious, mostly because it needs repeating. Something that lists your full name and a bunch of numbers (e.g., your Social Security card, checkbook, or credit cards) is an identity thief’s dream haul.

Put them in another location like an office desk or a little safe.  Another place would be in an attic or basement because most people do not look into these areas much.  A wannabe criminal would never think of looking under your cat’s litter box, for instance. Gross.

2. Mail addressed in your name

What’s so wrong about leaving out your Dish or Verizon bill, still in a sealed envelope unless you want people googling your name and knowing all about you.

3. Space heaters, fans, and more

Some items that you use in your daily life might unwittingly give prospective buyers the wrong idea. (“Wrong” as in “You don’t want to live here.”)

Before your showing, hide the following things: a space heater (the house is too cold!); multiple fans (the house is too hot!); the baseball bat next to your bed (the neighborhood is sketchy!); and even those tiny foam earplugs next to your bed, which might suggest that your home is too loud at night. The same goes for an eye mask or books with telling titles such as “How to Survive Noisy Neighbors You Hate.”

4. An empty ashtray on your patio table

Cigarettes, even if not smoked inside, are a huge turnoff. The mere presence of even one ashtray (even an aesthetically pleasing one) on your backyard patio could send your deal up in smoke.

5. Your pet snake, noisy dog, or moody cat

Some people aren’t big on pets, so you might want to put them in an area where they are no running the house.  And don’t stop there. You should also pick up your pet’s dishes and toys.

6. Your ‘Make America Great’ or ‘I’m With Her’ sign

Even if it’s not proudly taped to your fridge, perhaps it’s halfway buried under other papers on your office desk and you have yet to file it away, it doesn’t matter. Buyers will zero in on political endorsements.

A simple campaign sign, no matter which side you are on, can turn off half your potential buyers. Keep your home neutral, and make it welcoming to individuals of every political persuasion to maximize your chances of a quick sale.

Funny Garden Moments

Do What I Say, Not What I Do

It is winter, so I’m constantly reminded of good garden practices that I fail to follow through on. Maybe a public confession here, of what I know I should be doing. “What I should have done” is my garden motto.

I love my garden enough to spend almost all my free time looking for new blooms, or watching leaves unfold, smelling the flowers or just dreaming of what to plant next. The one thing I don’t do much of in the garden is WORK. Some of the basic good practices that should be second nature to me are the first things I ignore. Confession is said to be good for the soul. People ask me so many questions but do not pay attention to what I do.  Or maybe I am like everyone else!

Biggest thing is I don’t add enough organic matter to the soil

I couldn’t believe the growth boost I saw after adding the first few buckets of compost to the garden or flowerbed. I could see and feel the difference in soil texture in that bed months later. Unless you garden in a former peat bog, your plants would practically kill for more organic matter in the soil. Building the soil’s organic content is an ongoing process, as organic matter also breaks down throughout the growing season. You can buy peat moss, find an OLD manure pile, or make compost. Any added organic content benefits almost any soil by improving the fertility, pH, water holding and drainage characteristics.

I ignore problems

What degree of laziness keeps me from taking quick action when I see sick plants? Ignoring them only has two possible outcomes. Either insects or disease persist, and spread, in my garden, or I advertise my ineptness as a gardener. To a real pro, every yellow leaf is a neon sign blinking “Neglected!” I guess I want to think that a shriveled stem on a potted plant will “heal” like a minor scratch on my arm, and turn green again, but it just doesn’t work that way.

Yellowed leaves, distorted stems or entire ailing specimens are a sign that something has gone wrong. The sad news is that damaged plant parts never get better looking even if that problem is corrected. The good news is that once you ease their suffering, most plants have an amazing ability to regenerate all the parts of a healthy complete plant. Removing a sick plant in the flowerbed or garden should really be done.  It is hard yanking out that shriveling cucumber plant or the wilting tomato plant. Prompt correction of problems lessens the plant’s suffering and hastens its recovery.

I don’t harvest all my ripe produce

How many pounds of summer squash is laid off to the side from my garden just because I wasn’t ready to eat it? In the disorganized meanderings that are my daily normal state, I’d go to the garden for one reason, notice a few ripe berries or perfect lettuce leaves, and leave them to pick later, only to forget them later. It just seems downright wrong to waste good homegrown produce.

A May to September rule might be “Don’t go out to the vegetable garden without a small knife and a colander.” Five spinach leaves? That’s enough to stuff an extra healthy sandwich. A dozen zucchini ? Leave them on all the neighbor’s doorsteps that night. (Only one perfect asparagus spear? Eat it right in the garden and don’t tell anybody.) You are more likely to use garden gatherings when they are in the kitchen before mealtime, rather than down and dirty in the veggie patch.

I forget fertilizer

I bet my plants are hungrier than I imagine and starving them is going to lead to poor growth. I need to educate myself about the needs of plants, and what is available in my garden. Then I need to plan a menu and go grocery shopping for my plants.

Early last spring I yanked a weedling that I too late recognized as a Cleome seedling. Oh, the humanity, err, botany! I forgot I had planted the seed because that Cleome had been sown a year earlier. And I wasted a precious plot of flowerbed and suffered many fruitless searches last year for those Spider flower seedlings, all because I didn’t know what the Cleome needed to sprout.

Those gorgeous specimens at the nursery or in the catalog are at their peak, but what will they look like at other times of the year, and under the conditions they’ll find in your garden? Making educated plant selections can prevent disappointment and save money. Unusual perennials may thrill experienced gardeners, yet sorely disappoint the novice with innocent misconceptions of short blooming season. With modern merchandising, a literal world of plant choices need to be carefully weeded through to find the ones that really meet our expectations.

I don’t prune properly

Persistent trial, and my fair share of error, has given me many chances to see the results of my pruning and learn what works. As I said earlier, most plants have an amazing ability to grow new parts when given half a chance. Still I hesitate to prune. I felt faint when I read instructions to reduce my new apple’s canopy by almost half!

Pruning questions plague many gardeners. Don’t let fear of hurting the plant keep you from pruning when it’s needed. Good pruning can prevent injury or disease. Good pruning does not damage a plant, any more than a haircut damages you. Proper pruning is just a management technique that allows us to grow a wider variety of specimens, or that modifies a plants natural growth to achieve results more pleasing to the gardener or farmer. Deadheading flowers is though and time consuming.

Can I remember 7 rules?

Read about new plants

Build the soil

Prune when needed

Treat problems before they become problems

Feed the hungry

Harvest (maybe learn to process) when ready

Do my best

Home Selling, Real Estate (Residential)

7 Tips In Pricing a Home

7 Pricing Myths to Stop Believing If You Ever Hope to Sell Your House (also in selling land and business)

  1. You always make money when you sell a home

Sure, real estate tends to appreciate over time: The National Association of Realtors® estimates that home prices will jump 5% by the end of 2017 and continue rising 3.5% in 2018. But selling your home for more than you paid is by no means a given, and your return on investment can vary greatly based on where you live. This always depends on if it is a seller’s market or buyer’s market.

  1. Price your house high to make big bucks

I know what you’re thinking: “Hey, it’s worth a shot!” But if you start with some sky-high asking price, you’ll soon come back to Earth when you realize that an overpriced home just won’t sell.

While the payday might sound appealing, you’re actually sacrificing your best marketing time in exchange for the remote possibility that someone will overpay for your home.  And this can lead to problems down the road (as our next myth indicates).

  1. If your home’s overpriced, it’s no big deal to lower it later

Sorry, but overpricing your home isn’t easily fixed just by lowering it later on. The reason: Homes that have lingered on the market for months—or that have undergone one or more price reductions—make buyers presume that something must be wrong with it. As such, they might still steer clear, or offer even less than the price you’re now asking.

Price your home appropriately from the beginning for your best shot at having a quick and easy sale.

  1. Pricing your home low means you won’t make as much money

Similarly, sellers are often leery of pricing their homes at market value. But as counterintuitive as this seems, this strategy can often pay off big-time. Here’s why: Low-priced homes drum up tons of interest, which could result in contingencies in favor of the seller.

  1. You can add the cost of any renovations you’ve made

Let’s say you overhauled your kitchen or added a deck. It stands to reason that whatever money you paid for these improvements will be recouped in full once you sell—after all, your home’s new owners are inheriting all your hard work.

The reality: While your renovations might see some return on investment, you’ll rarely recoup the whole amount. On average, you can expect to get back 64% of every dollar you spend on home improvements. Plus that profit can vary greatly based on which renovation you do. It all depends if you are adding to the original value of the home or if it is maintenance (like if I were fixing kitchen countertops that needed to be fixed).

  1. A past appraisal will help you pinpoint the right price

If you have an appraisal in hand, from when you bought or refinanced your house, you might think that’s a logical place to start to price your home. It’s not!

An appraisal assigns your home a value based on market conditions at a specific date, so it becomes old news very quickly. In fact, lenders typically won’t accept appraisals that are more than 60 days old.

  1. Your agent might overprice the house to make a bigger commission

Don’t even go there, while it’s true that an agent’s commission is based on the selling price of a house, the disparity will end up being negligible.  For example, the difference in commission between a $200,000 house and one that’s $210,000 is about $150. No Realtor is going to lose a sale for the sake of a couple hundred dollars.