Should You Buy a Home

Are you renting and wonder if you should make the leap to buying a home? Consider the following to help make your decision:

• Your financial situation

Request your credit report and see if you have a good credit score. This will be important when it comes time to get a mortgage. You want to have a good credit to debt ratio (having way more credit than debt is what you want).

Budget your finances and see how much you can afford to pay on a home. If your rent is inexpensive, consider what type of home you can get for the same amount. Is it better to continue renting or live in a smaller and less comfortable home?

Do you expect a change in your financial situation in the next couple of years? Either making more or earning less? You may want to wait so you can buy a home that will better meet your needs in the future.

• How long do you expect to own

If you move around a lot such as in the military or because of your business, you may reconsider buying a home. Usually, you can make enough equity in a house in about four years to make it worth it to own. Owning a home for at least two years also means you won’t lose out on capital gains taxes.

• Working on a home

Are you able to work in the yard and fix things in a home? Or will you have to endure the cost of hiring someone? Consider these before buying a home. Remember, when you rent, this is all taken care of.

While owning a home is a wiser decision in many situations, renting can also be a good choice if you are not in the right position to buy.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/john_hall_associates/3110849717/)

Pre-Qualified vs. Pre-Approved

When thinking of buying a home, you may hear the words pre-qualified and pre-approved thrown around. It’s important to know the difference between these so you can make buying a home much easier.

Pre-Qualified for Buying a Home

Pre-qualified gives you a roundabout figure of how much you can afford. This can help you eliminate looking at homes that you won’t be able to get a mortgage for.

Pre-qualification is quite simple. You can do it over the phone, via email or in person. All you have to do is provide some financial information such as your income, assets and your debt amount. Your credit report will not be analyzed at this time.

Pre-Approved for Buying a Home

Pre-approval will provide you with a set amount of how much you will be able to get a mortgage for if you settle on a home. You will be able to know about how much your interest rate will be and receive a letter that shows that you will be able to afford a home at or below the pre-approved amount.

The process of pre-approval involves much more investigation than pre-qualification. You will have to fill out an application and provide statements and documentation of your income, assets, and debt. The lender will pull your credit report to find out what your credit rating is.

Sellers favor potential buyers who are pre-approved for a mortgage. If you are buying in a seller’s market, it’s best to be pre-approved so you have a better chance of entering into a contract. A seller will trust a buyer who is pre-approved over someone who isn’t because it’s insurance that the buyer will be able to get a loan for the amount of the house.

Buyer advice: Don’t get pre-qualified unless you are just curious about how much you can afford. If you are serious about buying, get pre-approved right from the start of your home search.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/2150763364/)

Reclaim Your Lawn with Lawn Care Tips

If you are baffled by what to do to make your lawn look like a golf course, you may need some help from the experts. You probably have seen Scott’s lawn care products and heard of their lawn service, but you may not know exactly what to buy when and how to apply it to your lawn. Don’t worry, you aren’t alone and I used to be in your shoes, until I figured this out. Feel free to use my

Call Scott’s lawn service and have them come out and do an analysis of your lawn. They will tell you what type of grass or grasses you have, which will help you when it comes to figuring out what lawn care products you should purchase. They will also tell you what they will do to repair your yard and then maintain it. Of course, they will also give you a quote for this work. Be aware that the price may shock you, and you may be left thinking, “There must be a cheaper way!”

You are right, there is. You have two options. You can either have the lawn service come out and get your lawn going again. They can kill your weeds and start the turn around. Once they do this and you see improvement in your lawn, all you have to do is maintain it by following the Scott’s program that they have laid out for you (what they were going to do).

The other option is to turn your lawn around yourself by taking the suggestions that lawn analysis gave you. It will take a lot of work and time, but you will save some money. All you have to pay for is the lawn care products such as the weed killer, fertilizer, grass seed etc.

The key is to keep up on your lawn just as the lawn service would do for you. If you don’t have the time or initiative to keep up on it, you might want to consider budgeting some money to have the service.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangeacid/458563200/)

Solve Your Flowerbed Weed Problems

Are you sick of getting on your hands and knees every  summer plucking out weeds? Do you wish you didn’t ever have to pull another one again? You can solve this weed problem with some preliminary work along with your lawn care next year.

Start by spraying weed killer on your flowerbeds. Be sure to use one that doesn’t kill flowers in case you want to plant some in your flower beds. Once the weeds are brown and dead (about a week), you can rake them up.

Your next investment should be weed matting. You can find it at your local gardening center. Before you head out though, measure the area you need to cover so you purchase the right amount. When you get it, lay it down, cut it to cover and place the stakes in to keep it in place.

The black weed matting isn’t attractive so you’ll want to put down some mulch, pine straw, rocks, or whatever you like to decorate your flowerbeds with. To place flowers in your nicely covered flowerbeds now, simply grab some scissors and make incisions where you want them. Be careful not to make the hole too large or weeds will start growing in that area. If you have some matting left over, you can always cover areas you’ve cut too much of to prevent that from happening.

Lastly, stand back and pat yourself on the back for doing such hard work that will save you so much time in the future. Your flowerbed weed problems are gone!

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielfarrell/129009953/)

Beating Dry Grass in the Heat

Are you sick of working so hard on your lawn care, only for it to start to dry up as soon as the sun rises in the morning? Water restrictions are common in hot climate areas, so they work against you when you try to keep your lawn alive during the heat. To cut down on the amount of water you need for your lawn, you might want to consider how you are cutting it.

You should be cutting your grass so that it’s at least three inches tall. Now, if you love to work in your yard, this won’t sound too bad for you. If you don’t enjoy mowing the lawn, you may think, No way! I’ll be cutting it every two days.

Before you turn your head to this tip, understand the concept of cutting your grass to three inches. Let’s start with an analogy:

If you are cleaning something and have wet rags, what happens if you lay the rags out side by side? They dry quickly, right? Well, what if you piled them all up on top of each other? The ones on top would dry while the bottom would stay wet, right?

The same goes for your grass. If you keep it longer, the roots will remain moist longer because it’s shaded by the longer blades so the drying sun can’t zap the moisture from them. That means you can water your grass less often and for less time!

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/614590890/)

Sell Your House: Turn Your Home into a Model

When selling your house, you want to make sure that it appeals to buyers. The number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and floor plan isn’t enough to sell your home. It must have a shock value to it when a potential buyer walks in, and when I say, shock, I mean it in a good way.

The last thing you want people to think when they enter your home is how much of a mess it is. If the first thought a buyer has when entering your home is a negative one, it will dramatically decrease the chances someone will want to buy it. Instead, you want someone to walk in and think, “Wow, I would love to live in a home like this…”

How do you achieve that reaction? One of the best ways is to make your home into a model home. Have you ever seen a model home in a new neighborhood? Everything looks so perfect. It’s decorated just right and it just seems so inviting.

Don’t think you can make your home into a model home? Here are some tips on how to achieve it no matter what your house looks like right now.

• Unclutter

Take everything that you don’t use regularly and box it up. You’ll be moving anyway so this will give you a head start. Don’t leave boxes all over your house, though, instead rent a storage unit to put them in.

• Clean

The dog nose prints and the sticky jelly countertops may not bother you, but they will pop out to potential buyers. Take time to clean your house top to bottom. You’d be amazed at what people will notice.

• Pick up before showing

Before a showing, vacuum all carpets so they look like you just vacuumed. It’s also important to make your beds, pull shower curtains across and pick up things haphazardly thrown throughout the house. The idea here is to make it as perfect as a model home but at the same time, livable.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremylevinedesign/3197502527/)

Benefits of For Sale by Owner

There’s no denying it that selling your own home is a lot of work. However, the benefits of selling your property for sale by owner may be enough to make all of the work worth it.

• The number one reason why people choose to sell their home for sale by owner is because they save money on paying the Realtor.

• Another main reason why people choose to sell their home themselves is because they don’t want others telling them what to do in the process of selling their home. When you work with a Realtor, he/she will tell you how much you should sell your property for and what he/she thinks you should do to your home to help the sale.

• You know that someone is working towards the sale of your home. If you used a Realtor in the past and your house didn’t sell, you may have been skeptical that he/she was doing all he/she could to sell it. When doing it yourself, there is no doubt that you are working on it.

• People are much more willing to buy houses from people who are selling ‘for sale by owner’. More so then they were before.

• You can use list your house under the special listing for ‘for sale by owner’ properties. Visit ForSalebyOwner.com for more information.

Using a Realtor to Sell Your Home

You want to sell your house but you don’t know if you should use a Realtor or try to sell it on your own. Using a Realtor can put you ahead in the housing market; consider the following benefits of using one to sell your home.

The Benefits of Using a Realtor

• You don’t have to do anything but sit back and let the Realtor do everything, which means more time to get ready for your move.
• The Realtor works in your area and knows how much houses that are comparable to yours go for in the market.
• There are many insider tricks that a Realtor can use to try to sell your home.
• They have better networking opportunities since they work with many other Realtors around the country.
• Your house will be listed in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) which lists all homes for sale by Realtors in the country. The MLS is a great resource for buyers, by the way!
• If you’re not into sales, you may not have an easy time “selling” your house to interested buyers.
• A Realtor stands by your side and represents you in every step of the sale.
• Will give you advice about what you should do to your house to make it more appealing to buyers.
• A Realtor will help you with the complex real estate forms throughout the home selling process.
• All you need to do at closing is show up to sign because your Realtor will contact all other parties.

In reality, if you don’t know anything about real estate and how to sell it, you should employ a Realtor. However, if you would like to research how to sell property ‘for sale by owner’ there are benefits to that as well, which will be covered in the next post!

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokersaunders/3557304504/)

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