Down Payment | Lake of the Woods Real Estate Blog

Selling your home can turn into a genuinely lengthy process if you have no information on how to do it properly. Making a detailed plan and having an experienced professional agent by your side can significantly decrease the time your home spends on the market. If you are willing to make an effort, invest your time and some financial means, it will be easier to gain competitive advantage and make your property more appealing than others. Thus, here are some tips on how to interest your prospective buyers and succeed in selling your home faster.

Improving curb appeal is the starting point

The first impression matters greatly when buying a property. Interestingly, sellers very often tend to forget this fact, so they focus intently on the inside of their homes. However, if you aim at selling your home faster, improving curb appeal is the most reasonable starting point. Firstly, pay attention to your lawn. Keep it neatly mown at all times since you never know when the potential buyers can come by. Also, it is necessary to trim trees and bushes regularly and to maintain your garden well enough.

Figure 2 Improving curb appeal is the most reasonable starting point when aiming at selling your home faster. Alt.tag: A beautifully decorated home entrance that can help when aiming at selling your home faster.

Pay special attention to the entrance. If it is necessary to add a fresh coat of paint, do not hesitate to do it. A new house number and a matching mailbox can easily catch everybody’s eye. Ideally, repainting your front door will maximize the positive effect on whoever comes to tour your home. Remember, what you want to achieve is making prospective buyers believe your home is the right choice for them.

Decluttering is critical for selling your home faster

Clutter at your home threatens to prolong the whole process or even reduce the price considerably. Getting informed on some key decluttering tips can help you create an intimate and yet neutral and cozy atmosphere that will enable your prospective buyers to envision their life and family in this place. Furthermore, do not forget depersonalization. If a neutral territory is what you want to achieve it is inevitable to remove all your family photos, children’s artwork, souvenirs from various travels and so on.

Since it is essential for potential buyers to move freely around your home, getting rid of bulky furniture pieces is a must. Ideally, you can look for an affordable unit to store your belongings and these furniture items safely. Then, you can rearrange the rest of your furniture and maximize the space. This will be highly appreciated and valued.

Make your home shine

You need to raise your cleanliness standards to the highest level until selling your home comes to its end. Paying special attention to all hidden areas is of utmost importance because your home needs to bear the scrutiny of various potential buyers. While it may be exhausting and quite challenging to keep your home in pristine shape for long, it is needed given the circumstances. Otherwise, you risk making one of the biggest mistakes when selling a home.

Natural light is a great benefit

Natural light is everybody’s favorite. It brings freshness, calmness, and warmth to your space, so it has to be ample in order to attract attention. Try your best to make your home as naturally lit as possible. Should you find any problems with meeting this requirement, placing decorative lamps around your home might help.

Selling your home faster requires making it available to prospective buyers

It is vital to make your home available to potential buyers. Unfortunately, this most often means allowing them to tour your home whenever it fits their schedule, even at weekends. This is a slight inconvenience you will have to bear if you expect to succeed in selling your home faster. Buyers themselves also feel nervous about finding the property that meets their criteria once they realize that buying real estate is a good investment.

Be realistic about the price

Making a decision about the price when selling your home is a crucial task in the process. With the help of the internet, both sellers and buyers can obtain information on the subject quite easily. Hence, it is essential to be utterly realistic when setting the price. Defining the price either too high or too low is very risky. Should you have any doubts, consulting professionals is advisable.

If you, however, decide to set the price yourself, there is another step you need to define. Having a timetable for lowering the price can prevent your home from being on the market for too long. Instead, a reduced price after some time may incentivize those buyers who were having second thoughts. Eventually, selling your home faster becomes achievable.

Figure 4 Be realistic when setting the price for your home. Alt.tag: Three different piles of coins and a small wooden model house.

Taking some photos can help in selling your home faster

A great majority of prospective buyers start their search for a perfect home online. Most of them prefer seeing photos of the houses listed in order to take them into consideration. Thus, making high-quality photos of your home can be very beneficial. If they emphasize all the appealing and distinctive features, they will easily attract buyers in a short period of time. Make sure you photograph both the inside and outside of your property. If you are willing to invest in hiring a professional photographer, you can expect favorable results very soon.

Feel free to spread the word

Although collaboration with your real estate agent is compulsory, you can also contribute to selling your home faster. Feel free to spread the word. Talk to your neighbors, colleagues, and friends. Use the advantages of social networks and share your listing on various social media. Understandably, the more people you inform the bigger the chance to find the buyer soon.

Time matters

Among other factors, the time you list your home for sale determines how long it will stay on the market as well. When aiming at selling your home faster, it is, generally, advisable to list it in spring or fall. Reasons underlying this suggestion are understandable. The weather in spring is pleasant and people are willing to tour houses more often. The school is coming to its end, so moving will not cause any problems to families with children either. On the other hand, in the fall, the weather is still warm. People have come from their vacations and now they are ready to search for the property that meets their strict criteria. The school is about to begin, so prospective buyers have time to make the final choice and conduct their relocation. Use your chance and make selling your home faster possible.

Whether you’re looking for homes for sale in Lake of the Woods VA or Waterfront property in Virginia we are your Real Estate Advisors for Stafford, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Locust Grove, Central Virginia, and Greater Virginia. Thinking of selling? In any market condition, “what is my home worth?” is the #1 question asked by home owners. If you wish to sell your home, it needs to be sold for top dollar and in a timely manner. Pricing your home accurately, Pat will partner with you to make the selling process so much easier. Get started today by calling us at (540) 388-2541 or contact Pat Licata.

To see available Lake of the Woods properties, please visit our site.

Along with the excitement that buying your first home brings comes the apprehension about the decision. Millions of questions come to mind making your decision even harder to make. The best tip that you can get is to get informed. But, do you know what you have to get informed about? If you are thinking of buying your first property ever, take a deep breath and start reading through the most common mistakes first-time homebuyers make so that you can avoid making the same ones.

Starting a House Hunt Without a Financial Plan

Since you are buying your first home, it is understandable that you are very excited about the idea and impatient to find the right one. However, that doesn’t mean that you should start your search completely unprepared. You should at least know what price range to look at. Since the real estate market is quite competitive and demand is almost always higher than supply you should come prepared. That means that you should be pre-approved for a loan before looking at listings. Then you will be more acquainted with your financial prospects and you will know what you can hope to find. By the way, there are so many facts you should know about mortgage before you apply, so do not rush it.

First-time homebuyers should be prepared before house hunting, Alt. tag: A model of a house made of words FOR SALE

Sticking to One Mortgage Lender Only

A mortgage is also a product that you buy and can find at different prices with different sellers. Do not make a mistake by not comparing the quotes before committing. Choose at least three lenders and compare the estimates that you get. Remember, you are looking for a good deal as well as the lowest rates you can get. You cannot find those if you only consult one bank or lender. The same goes for finding skillful movers who can relocate your home – you need to make a list and then choose one company that suits you best.

Not Paying Attention to Your Credit Reports

Your credit reports are extremely important to a bank or lender that you are considering taking a mortgage from. They will analyze every single detail of it, so you need to make sure that they like what they see. A credit report that contains errors may result in higher interest rates for you, so it is in your best interest to keep it as accurate as possible. The good news is that you can get a free credit report from any of the main credit bureaus at the end of a year so that you can correct any errors that you come across. The lenders need this report at pre-approval and before final loan approval. In the meantime, you shouldn’t be opening new credit cards and you should do your best to pay your bills on time every month.

Credit reports are extremely important to lenders, Alt. tag: Credit report of a first-time homebuyer

Thinking That You have to Make a 20% Down Payment

When you start calculating how much money you need for your down payment, you will probably ask yourself whether buying real estate is a good investment at all. Twenty percent of your future property’s worth is a lot of money to prepare before you even start searching for a home. Luckily, there are some loan programs that allow you to make a down payment as low as 3.5% or even 0%. It goes without saying that a bigger down payment means that you can get a smaller mortgage, so you will have more money left in your budget every month.

On the other hand, while you are saving money for your 20% down, the property prices continue to grow along with the mortgage. So, the decision is all yours and you need to make sure that you set a monthly payment that you can actually provide. And, do not forget that you are obliged to pay the mortgage insurance in case your down payment is less than 20%.

Not Considering Special Programs for First-Time Homebuyers

There are some special programs for first-time homebuyers that offer low down payment loans. You should inform yourself whether such programs exist in your state and learn about the following:

FHA loans – the down payment can be as low as 3.5%. Besides this obvious rebate, the Federal Housing Administration is not so strict about credit reports. But, once you commit to this loan, you will have to pay for mortgage insurance as long as you have the mortgage to pay, which means even after your equity is more than 20%.
USDA loans – if you are planning to buy a property in a rural area, the chances are that you qualify for zero percent down and 100% financing – a program offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If you opt for this program, you will have to pay the guarantee fee instead of mortgage insurance.
VA loans – mortgages offered by the US Department of Veterans Affairs to people who have served in the military. These loans allow veterans to put a down payment of zero percent and get 100% financing. A funding fee has to be paid instead of mortgage insurance.

Falling in Love With the Property and Failing to See its Faults

This can be a huge mistake. It often happens that we like the house, but it turns out that its neighborhood is not a place where we would like to raise our children. You should always visit the place at least two or three times, at different times of day and week, before you make a decision to buy. If you notice that there is something the seller is trying to hide, that should be a red flag to look for.

First-time homebuyers are usually impatient to move in, Alt. tag: House door with keys

Wasting All Your Savings On Your First Property

This is one of the common mistakes first-time homebuyers often make. They do this to add to the sum for a down payment and lower the monthly payment rate. However, you still need to have an emergency fund (three to six months of living expenses) because there are so many things that can go wrong when you buy a property. It is better to pay for mortgage insurance and still have your emergency fund untouched, just in case.

Not Knowing About the Hidden Costs of Ownership

There are many costs of ownership that first-time homebuyers do not know about. Property taxes, insurance (mortgage, hazard, and homeowners), repairs, maintenance, and utilities are just a few of them.