By taking the right steps, your home is as good as SOLD!
Putting your home on the market and ultimately selling it can be an exhausting, daunting endeavor. If you are not fully prepared and ready to take the necessary steps, you can find yourself stuck with a house on the market indefinitely, or worse, losing hundreds to thousands of dollars in profit.
However, when done the right way, selling your home can be a rewarding, low-stress experience in which all parties involved are left with a sense of satisfaction and feelings of accomplishment. To help keep you from the potential of a miserable experience, here are the top 10 costly mistakes to avoid when selling your home:
1. The Price is (not) Right! - Overpricing is easily the biggest and most destructive mistake to make when selling your home, and also one of the easiest issues to avoid. A high listing price for your property will cause many prospective buyers to lose interest before even seeing your property. This results in your listing taking an unusually long time to sell, and most likely ending up being sold at a much lower price. On the other hand, pricing competitively will spark interest in your home and could lead to multiple offers, and ultimately a higher sales price. Pricing a home to sell is an art, so work with an experienced agent to be sure you do it right.
2. Going it Alone – You don’t need to know everything about selling your home if you hire an experienced agent who does. Trying to sell your home on your own, especially if you have never done it before, is definitely ill advised. A professional agent will: (more…)
A number of fine homes are available in Venice Golf and Country Club. Pictured: 206 Vestavia Drive.
Nestled in 460 tropical acres, The Venice Golf and Country Club is a member-owned, quality equity club community of 587 single-family homes. Residents of this gorgeous community enjoy championship golf, superb tennis, contemporary fitness facilities, a beautiful full-service clubhouse and gracious Florida living amid nature’s splendor. They also take pride in being a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary with 26 lakes and 13 preserves dotted throughout.
Market Activity – Venice Golf and Country Club
Venice Golf and Country Club is fully built-out with the exception of one or two privately owned lots. Available re-sale homes number under 10 percent of the community with the 2010 market activity well in-line with the history of sales. Pricing of the homes is competitive with area golf communities that do not offer the same world-class amenities of Venice Golf and Country Club. (more…)
The city of Bradenton possesses a friendly, small town feel with a strong sense of community. Rich in history, the area was first discovered by Hernando Desoto in 1539. The city takes its name from Dr. Joseph Braden, whose home became a refuge for early settlers.
Bradenton area homes range from beach bungalows and waterfront condos to canal front properties and historic homes of all sizes. The area is filled with charming neighborhoods and grand estates.
A consumer survey released in April by a large nationwide real estate firm—combined with recent trends in local sales—helps explain why home buyers continue to flood into our market, anxious to buy; not at all deterred from doing so by having missed the April 30th deadline for the first time home buyer tax credit. Nearly two-thirds of the current home shoppers questioned in the survey said that the expiration of the tax credit will have little or no effect on their determination to move forward with an eventual housing purchase.
To be sure, the tax credit helped re-ignite the real estate market; even as it benefited quite a few buyers with added savings or the ability to bid-up on desired properties. Locally, it helped unleash a backlog of pent-up demand that not only chewed-up a sizeable portion of our swollen inventory of properties priced below $300,000, but also helped stabilize free-falling prices. The inventory of available properties is now at its lowest level since late summer 2005.
All these benefits were what the government had in mind when it first launched—then extended—the popular tax credit. But let’s face it. No incentive on earth, however well-intentioned, is going to motivate people to buy overpriced properties; or ones they don’t really want or need. The tax credit simply sped-up purchases of desired, well-priced properties that probably would have sold anyway. For this reason, we should not be surprised to see a dip in sales in the months immediately following the end of the tax credit. Buyers who absolutely needed the credit in order to move forward are gone. But the absence of the tax credit—in and of itself—won’t stall our market’s recovery the way an unusually large glut of new foreclosures might.
Revitalized and Refreshed: Discover the charms of downtown Punta Gorda. Image courtesy of tampabay.com.
The City of Punta Gorda was founded in 1882 by Colonel Isaac Trabue on 30 acres of land on the southern shore of Charlotte Harbor. A fire downtown destroyed almost all of Punta Gorda in 1905. After this disaster, the city council mandated all new businesses and homes be constructed of brick or concrete. After the completion of the first bridge across Charlotte Harbor in 1921, the great Florida boom reached the fishing village of Punta Gorda, and several key structures were built including City Hall, the Old Courthouse, Charlotte High School and the Punta Gorda Ice Plant
An Area of Revitalization – Downtown Punta Gorda
In 2004, the damage Hurricane Charley inflicted on the Punta Gorda area included many homes, structures and historical landmarks. A number of revitalization projects took place in the following years involving federal grants for restorations and amenities throughout the downtown corridor. Laishley Park Municipal Marina was constructed along Charlotte Harbor, the second largest harbor in the State of Florida with world-class fishing and access to the Gulf of Mexico. The marina has 85 boat slips and a boat launch for public use. A newly constructed Boat and Sail Club at Alice Park offers a kayak and canoe launch, along with powerboat dockage. The new construction of the Charlotte Event Center on Charlotte Harbor will bring culture and special events to the downtown corridor, and 800 new hotel rooms and restaurants add charm to the historic and downtown feel of the city. (more…)
Your dream home is out there. Be sure to take the right steps to get it. Courtesy of positiverealestateprofessionals.com
With any significant purchase, it is always important to have everything in order to ensure a smooth, stress-free transaction. From planning to payment, the smallest discretion can lead to a nightmare of results and regret. Buying your next—or first—home deserves the same close attention and scrutiny.
As anyone who has ever bought a home or property can attest, the process involves many decisions to be made and even more documents to be signed before the purchase is complete. Along the way, you want to be confident that you took the right steps to protect your best interests. So, if you are about to take the plunge, here are some mistakes to avoid that could mean the difference between a satisfied new homeowner and an unhappy climber on a mountain of debt:
1. Not checking your credit report and score - Review your credit report a few months before you begin your house hunt, and you’ll have time to ensure the facts are correct and dispute mistakes before a mortgage lender checks your credit. You can access a free copy of your credit report HERE once every 12 months. Remember, the cleaner your credit report and the higher your credit score, the more likely you are to be preapproved for a mortgage at a low interest rate. (more…)
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