Prep Your Home for Sale - Position Your Furniture

You probably have your couch and Lazy boy positioned perfectly to see your flat screen TV, don't you? Yep, we all do! But that may not be the most inviting position for them if you plan to sell your home. "Why not?" you might ask.

Because you want your home to LOOK GOOD when you sell it, which is not the same as WORKING WELL. Sound wierd? Watch the following video... you'll see what I mean.

If you are thinking of selling your home, consider your furniture placement to maximize your home's friendliness, openess and attractiveness.

Don't know how? Call me... I've Got People!

Does Your Lender make a Difference?

When a new buyer chooses a lender, what is their choice based on? Interest rate?, the trust of a referral?, who has the prettiest sign? Often it’s who seems to have the cheapest interest rate. What a mistake!

Consider Captain Sulley. He looked like everyone else who flew. He always landed those planes, so it’s hard to say how good he was. But when disaster hit, he was able to pull off the miraculous, and land a giant engineless jet in the cold frigid waters of the Hudson River. He used his years and years of experience, training, drills, and lessons learned from the inevitable mishaps he must have faced before to pull it off.

Your lender is the same. They all seem comparable… until disaster strikes. And when it does, you want experience on your side. A few months ago I sold a home in a great neighborhood of Citrus Heights, located 1/4 mile from a very seedy street (one of our areas worst). Any local appraiser would have understood to not use comps from the seedy street, as it was insulated from my buyer’s home by geographical factors. But as the crow flies, it’s another story. Our appraisal came in fine… actually above our price. It was the desk review that shot us down. It came in $60K low! Why, because the out-of-area underwriter used a zillow-like process to estimate the value… which included sales within a bull-eye radius. And that meant our seedy street became our comparable.

But my lender has been doing this for over 30 years, and understands the ins and outs of lending like the back of her hand. She whipped into action, and got the loan through. Did she use magic?, coercion?, bribery?... no. She used her experience to know which of the many paths to take to make it work. she could have gone a number of different directions, but she knew exactly the turns to make at each fork in the road, as she led our transaction down the path to a closed escrow.

So don't just pick the lender with the cheapest quote. It could mean the difference between getting your home or not. Always go with experience. Don't know who to call?
CALL ME... I GOT PEOPLE!

flickr Photo by mpflies2

Prep Your Home for Sale - Closets and Shelves

DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR... EVERYTHING MIGHT AVALANCHE OUT! If that's your home... listen up. When you sell your home, you're darn tootin the buyer is going to look in every closet. Afterall, that will be their future storage!

So take a look and see what you should do to make your closets presentable....

To get your closets and the rest of your home ready to sell, call me. I'm brutal when it comes to throwing out YOUR things! Seriously - you will thank me when the buyer makes their offer.

I've sold hundreds of homes where the seller took my advice and prepped it for sale. Let's make you the next one!

Prep Your Home for Sale - Your Bathrooms

Let's take a little stroll into your bathroom and check it out. Sound a little too personal? Well just imagine the buyers who are checking out your bathroom, to decide whether to buy it or not. They don't want to be in there with you OR your personal things... they don't even want to NOTICE you in there, or they get uncomfortable.

Check out the following video and think about how your bathroom looks from the buyers eyes.

Give me a call and let's whip the rest of your home into shape for your buyer. It's money in your pocket, so take the time now.

Prep Your Home for Sale - Personal Belongings

What does "Yo Mama" have to do with preparing your home for sale? Plenty. Take a look at the following video to find out what!




So check out your home from the eyes of a buyer. Do you have a montage of photos on your hallway that will trap the buyer's attention? Get rid of it. And your Mama's wedding picture.... out it goes. At least until you are in your new home and can safely put out all your relatives again... NO MATTER WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE!

Not sure what else to do... I'll help you. Give me a call. We'll get your home looking ship-shape!

A Duplex vs a Halfplex, what's the diff?

Halfplex... duplex... they both look the same. But there is a difference. It starts with the dirt. When you own a piece of land, it has a parcel number. Typically each home has it's own parcel number, which is it's lot.

A Duplex... has one parcel number.... it is one whole "home", and can only be sold as one unit. So if you bought a duplex, you would get the other half along for the ride! The same owner owns the whole thing... always. There might be only one water meter, or one electrical meter, depending on how it was built.

A halfplex... looks like a duplex, but it has 2 parcel numbers.... it's actually 2 separate lots. So there are two different owners, or one owner might own them both. But the key is, that one side can be sold to someone else. Each side has it's own utilities (water meter, electrical meter etc.).

A duplex costs more (like twice as much) because you are getting twice as much. You control the entire unit and control the maintenance as well. So if one side needs a new roof, you make the decision to roof the entire thing. And when you paint, it ALL gets painted.

With a halfplex, if you need to re-roof, you may or may not get the other side's owner to re-roof at the same time. Or what if you want to paint a certain color? The other half may not agree. I've seen halfplexes where each side has a different roof type, and different, and contrasting, paint color schemes. It can get clown-like.

Why do people buy halfplexes?... because they can get into them cheaper (close to half the cost of the entire duplex). They get the feeling of a home, usually with their own yard, but for less money than they would pay for a separate house.

Still confused - let's just go buy one and you'll find out in a hurry what the difference is!

flickr photo by battling apathy

A Walk on the American River, at Fair Oaks

Sacramento Bar is the area just West of the Sunrise Bridge in Fair Oaks, filled with acres and acres of rock cobble left over from gold mining that ended in the 60's. It's one of my favorite places to walk, right near my home in Fair Oaks. You're in the middle of town, yet within minutes, you are deep in nature. Join me as we stroll the American River at Sacramento Bar on a recent winter Saturday...



And just for the record, Lewis and Clark DID NOT raft this river... I just imagine that I'm back in time to when they COULD have.