I'd like to say a special hello to the 30,000 new friends from the Great American Homeowner Challenge who have joined our FinishRich Community and newsletter! A huge Welcome to all of you. We're so glad you're here as part of our growing community. Enjoy!
We’re smack in the middle of moving season—prime time for house sales. The National Association of Realtors predicts that 6.6 million existing homes will sell this year. But many markets around the country are cooling and inventory of homes for sale is rising. Compared to the hot housing market of recent months and years, you can no longer automatically expect to sell a house quickly and for a high price. But sensible pricing and careful presentation can go a long way to hasten a transaction.
Follow these four tips, and you'll be on your way to selling your home for a good price this summer:
1. Find Out What Your House Is Worth
You can't charge the right price unless you know what that is. So do a little research:
Go online. For a free Multiple Listing Service Home Market Check that shows what other residences like yours sold for recently in your area, visit the HomeInsight Web site. Or, check out Yahoo! Real Estate and click on "What's my home worth." Finally, visit Realtor.com, where you can browse more than 2.5 million residential listings and take advantage of several services that can help you to determine your home's value.
Check local real estate listings. To get a more accurate sense of your home's worth, look at local real estate listings (often searchable by neighborhood, house size, and price on local realtors' Web sites) for a sense of what houses of similar size, condition, locations, and amenities are going for in your area. Large real estate brokerage firms tend to have the most sophisticated Web sites. Some of my favorite realtor sites include Coldwell Banker, Century 21, and Re/Max.
Attend open-house showings. To get to know a market in a weekend, check open-house listings and attend these events to see what your neighbors are selling their homes for. How do their homes look compared to yours? How are they priced? Talk to the real estate agents hosting the events to find out which properties are moving and why. Asking these questions can help you get a quick handle on the market -- and let you know what you need to do to prepare your home for sale.
Get a comparative-value analysis from a professional. You don't have to do this all yourself -- and candidly, you shouldn't. Get a referral for a real estate agent, and let them know that you're considering selling your home. Ask them to provide you with a detailed "comparative-value analysis" on your home. The analysis will include information about recent sales of homes similar to yours. Ask the agent for an analysis that includes the last year or more of sales for a complete picture, but the most recent transactions are the ones to use as your benchmark.
While you're at it, ask the agent to provide you with a listing of current homes like yours for sale and how long they've been on the market. Finally, request a marketing proposal stating at what price they'd list your house and what they'd do to help you sell it. There's usually no charge for this service, as this is the agent's chance to woo you as a client.
2. Make It Look Pretty and Smell Nice Before the Sale
De-clutter the interior. Pare down before the move. Potential buyers want to see your house, not your possessions. A sparse interior containing just enough furniture to suggest each room's purpose and to provide a sense of scale is ideal. Clean out drawers, empty closets and attics, vacate the basement, and tidy the garage.
Consider renting an inexpensive self-storage unit for items you don't want in the house during a showing. And most importantly, lose the family photos. You want the visitor to think of the house as theirs, not yours.
Give it a good cleaning or hire a cleaning service to do a thorough, one-time job. Make ceilings, walls, floors, carpets, windows, faucets, and fixtures look good -- dust, scrub, and polish until everything sparkles and smells clean.
Paint, repair, replace. The fastest and cheapest thing you can do to help you sell your house is repaint. A fresh coat of paint inside and out can quickly make your house look and smell new. When in doubt, paint the outside a color common in the neighborhood and the inside white.
If it's broke and obvious, fix it! Cracked windowpanes, sticking doors, dripping faucets, running toilets -- take care of them up front, so you don't have to explain them away later. If you don't want to do it yourself, make a "punch list" and hire a handyman service. Your investment will likely pay off many times over in a higher sale price -- and, most importantly, a house that sells.
Create curb appeal. In the beginning, it always comes down to this: How does the house look from the curb when the person drives up (assuming you aren't selling a condo in a building). Studies have shown that simply repainting a house is the best investment you can make when reselling. If your home has synthetic siding, a good power washing may be able to help it shine like new again. Dirty or weathered decks can benefit from the same treatment.
Next, compare your landscaping to others in your neighborhood. You don't have to have the cutest house on the block, but if your yard looks barren, plant some flowers (people love them) and a few bushes. Finally, new grass in the front can make an old yard look brand new (a fast and often cheap fix). Add new house numbers, a nice doorbell or knocker, and a plush new entry mat -- they all help to make a great first impression. Oh, and make sure the front door looks great and functions perfectly.
Clean out the garage, and remove children's toys from the yard. That goes for that creaky, rusty, long-abandoned swing set, too.
To continue reading this article, visit my Yahoo! column by clicking here.
If you missed the original airing of the Debt Diet series on Oprah back in February, now is your chance to catch it from the beginning in its entirety. The series will be re-aired July 10th thru July 14th. The Debt Diet series was an amazing success. Throughout the series, I’ve been coaching the Eggleston Family on getting out of the overwhelming debt that they were in. Their success is truly an inspirational story. If you have any kind of debt, you’ll want to catch this series. It will change your life. Visit Oprah's website to access tons of information on the series and helpful resources for getting out of debt.
Here are some of my favorite links for the Debt Diet Series:
Read all about the Eggleston Family and the remarkable progress they’ve made.
Read the Expert Q and A for helpful advice.
Check out some inspirational success stories from viewers just like you.
I had fun making a recent guest appearance as the money coach on Bravo TV’s Queer Eye. The tentative air date is July 18th so tune in as I give some much needed financial advice to a bachelor who’s getting ready to tie the knot. Check out Bravo TV for more details .
As many of you know, I recently completed the Great American Homeowner Challenge™ Tour of 14 cities throughout the country where I was able to share the message of The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner and talk about the power of homeownership with nearly 30,000 people. The tour was a huge success and I had so much fun meeting so many of you who attended!
If you missed one of the live events, but would still like to learn the fundamentals of buying a first home, a second home, or an investment property, I invite you to attend one of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage's free nationwide workshops.
 Get free advice from Home Mortgage Consultants and local real estate experts. I’ve also created a video presentation that will be shown at these events as well. So here’s your second chance – if you weren’t able to come see me live, be sure to register for a Wells Fargo Home Buying Workshop near you. Click here to register.
If there’s not a workshop in your area, talk with a mortgage consultant for individual guidance on preapprovals, down payment concerns, credit challenges, or finding the right mortgage to finance your next home. Click here for personal assistance.
And to purchase a copy of The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner, click here. Be sure to include it on your summer reading list!
Listen up everyone! EmigrantDirect (one of our online advertisers) is now paying a whopping 4.8 % on their savings accounts. That's six times what the average bank pays!
And right now, when you open a new account, Emigrant Direct is offering a free autographed copy of the #1 bestseller The Automatic Millionaire.
Click here for more details or click on the banner ad on the top right of this newsletter.
We had four books on the BusinessWeek Best-Seller List this month! Smart Women Finish Rich and Smart Couples Finish Rich have both hit the Long Running Best-Seller list - appearing for over two years on BusinessWeek. There's now over 5 million FinishRich books in print so a huge Thank You goes out to all my readers out there. This truly is an amazing community.
So many of you have written in to find out where I’ll be speaking this coming Fall.
Thanks for your patience but the wait is over! Take a sneak peak at our Fall dates now being posted on the website. Online registration will be available soon and we'll be adding more dates to the list throughout the summer ... so check back often.
I hope you're all having a great summer and to my community members
in the United States, I wish you a happy and safe Independence Day.
Until next time...
Live and Finish Rich,
David Bach and The FinishRich Team
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The FinishRich Newsletter is written and produced by David Bach and FinishRich Media. If you have any questions or comments, you can contact us via our online form by clicking here.
This newsletter is purely informative and does not represent an investment or tax recommendation of any kind. Please consult your financial or tax advisor before making any investment decisions.
Copyright © 2006 FinishRich Media
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