The Reality of Home Improvement: HGTV installment

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Painting2On any given weekend in my house, at least a couple of hours will be spent watching the designers, craftspeople and entertainers on HGTV or its spunky sister station, the DIY Network.  The premise of these home-centered television networks is that somewhere, sandwiched between long commercial breaks for paint, faucets, flooring warehouses and something called “Slab Jacking”, you’ll find programming about real people making real decisions about their homes. Sometimes those decisions are about buying a home, while other times they may be about selling or remodeling a home.  In all of the situations, experts are brought in to help and a camera crew just happens to tag along, so the rest of us can enjoy the unfolding drama from the comfort of our couches.

Home improvement programming has been around for a long time and is generally considered reality TV, but a lot of the real life is lost between cuts. Here’s a quick guide of some of the more popular programs.

House Hunters – The formula is simple but always entertaining.  Each episode begins with someone unhappy with their living situation, so they call an agent and look at 3 properties.   After weighing the options, a home is chosen.  Of course, this show is over-simplified and leaves out the long weekends the buyer spends in their agent’s car driving from listing to listing.  What you do get is a sense of home values and styles in different regions, the humor of buyers’ reactions to homes, and the excitement new home owners feel as they take the keys to their dream home. You rarely get the type of tension home shopping can bring. The big climax of the show is when an offer is made: the narrator might say something like, “Though their offer was rejected the first time around, the other buyer ultimately backed out and they ended up getting the house for X amount.” But I don’t think they usually talk about it at all. For that kind of tension, you need to check out Property Virgins. The best part of the half hour happens in the last 30 seconds when you see how the new owner redecorates the home in their own style.

Property Virgins– Similar premise to House Hunters, except these first-time homebuyers walk through the basics. The best part about the show is the excitement (and sometimes clumsiness) of the virgin house-hunters. The worst part of this show is when would be homebuyers have unrealistic expectations for their first home.

House Hunters International – Comparable to House Hunters but everyone has accents and the kitchens are shockingly small.

Designed to Sell – Did you know that your spare bedroom filled with Grandpa’s taxidermy and the vintage 1950’s kitchen can be a turn-off to potential buyers? Valuable lessons like these are a just a few of the gems I’ve picked up on Designed to Sell.  Each episode features a home which has been racking up days on the market but no one is interested in buying.  That’s where the army of carpenters and designers step in. When they’re done, the house that looked like Grandma’s musty basement now looks like the lobby of a hip hotel, and they only spent a few hundred dollars.  I love this program for the inspiration but find it short on reality.  The listed prices of these improvements don’t seem realistic, and I often wonder if the costs include the lifetime of carpentry skills, design training, garage filled with power tools and time required to do the job. If you are looking for design ideas and hope for a home that isn’t attracting buyers, you’ll find some great ideas here, but take the true cost of those improvements with a grain of salt.

Real Estate Intervention – Being a real estate agent takes a lot of diplomacy, and this is never more important than that moment they suggest a market-friendly price to a home seller. On Real Estate Intervention, that diplomacy generally fails, sellers are unrealistic, and a stern man with a menacing mustache steps in for an intervention.  He dishes out tough love to the seller and paints a clear picture of market reality.  In a half hour he is able to change minds and make the seller feel good about the decision they made.

This Old House – This PBS staple wrote the book on home improvement programming.  With TOHyou’ll trade commercials for pledge drives, but you’ll also get a more cerebral home improvement viewing experience.  TOH does take patience, as it takes a full season to complete a home improvement project instead of 30 minutes on other programs.  If you are looking for the same quality instruction in a more digestible format, you can check out the spin off, Ask This Old House.

Be warned that the home improvement bug often bites soon after watching any of these programs.  After a long HGTV bender, I find myself wandering through the paint sample aisle and making trips to home improvement stores that aren’t on my way home from the office.  Sometimes life does imitate art and the voice in the back of my head keeps saying, “They make it look so easy.”

What about you? Do you find home-improvement shows useful or do you think they set unrealistic expectations? What are your favorite home-improvement resources?

by Justin Waskow

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Divorce, Custody, and Employee Mobility

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Divorce, child custody and relocation are all difficult topics however, knowing the facts will help you make the decisions that are right for you and your family. Below you will find an excerpt from an article recently published in Mobility Magazine by Windermere’s own Peggy Scott, GRI, CRP, GMS. She is the relocation director and designated broker for Windermere Relocation and Referral Services, Seattle, WA. You can read the article in its entirety here: http://bit.ly/9PrKxL

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“As society becomes increasingly mobile, so does the frequency with which global mobility professionals encounter relocation cases involving child custody. Scott defines custody, discusses its effects on mobility, and offers a case study demonstrating how divorce affects the relocation process.”

While the divorce rate varies greatly in each country of the world, affecting the lives of men and women, those with children be affected the greatest. No family law generates more concern, strife, and emotional turmoil than child custody and visitation matters. Every court around the nation will advocate for the best interest of the children involved in divorce.

Developing an amicable parenting plan or agreement for the interests of the children is the best solution to establishing custody of a child. The best interest of the child is served by a parenting arrangement that best maintains a child’s emotional growth, health and stability, and physical care. According to Washington state law, the best interest of the child ordinarily is served when the existing pattern of interaction between a parent and child is altered only to the extent necessitated by the changed relationship of the parents.

If the parents cannot reach an agreement concerning the custody and parenting plan for the child, then the court may establish either sole or mutual decision-making authority as well as residential provisions. The parenting plan or agreement needs to support, in detail, the child’s best interest in the areas of school, physical care, traveling expenses, individual parental authority, and residence options and rules. All divorce cases involving child custody, whither uncontested or contested, must include a parenting plan or custody order (either by agreement or ordered after trial) that is adopted by the courts.

To read the rest go here: http://bit.ly/9PrKxL

The post Divorce, Custody, and Employee Mobility appeared first on Fort Collins Real Estate | Fort Collins Homes for Sale & Property Search.

Divorce, Custody, and Employee Mobility

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Divorce, child custody and relocation are all difficult topics however, knowing the facts will help you make the decisions that are right for you and your family. Below you will find an excerpt from an article recently published in Mobility Magazine by Windermere’s own Peggy Scott, GRI, CRP, GMS. She is the relocation director and designated broker for Windermere Relocation and Referral Services, Seattle, WA. You can read the article in its entirety here: http://bit.ly/9PrKxL

Argument2

“As society becomes increasingly mobile, so does the frequency with which global mobility professionals encounter relocation cases involving child custody. Scott defines custody, discusses its effects on mobility, and offers a case study demonstrating how divorce affects the relocation process.”

While the divorce rate varies greatly in each country of the world, affecting the lives of men and women, those with children be affected the greatest. No family law generates more concern, strife, and emotional turmoil than child custody and visitation matters. Every court around the nation will advocate for the best interest of the children involved in divorce.

Developing an amicable parenting plan or agreement for the interests of the children is the best solution to establishing custody of a child. The best interest of the child is served by a parenting arrangement that best maintains a child’s emotional growth, health and stability, and physical care. According to Washington state law, the best interest of the child ordinarily is served when the existing pattern of interaction between a parent and child is altered only to the extent necessitated by the changed relationship of the parents.

If the parents cannot reach an agreement concerning the custody and parenting plan for the child, then the court may establish either sole or mutual decision-making authority as well as residential provisions. The parenting plan or agreement needs to support, in detail, the child’s best interest in the areas of school, physical care, traveling expenses, individual parental authority, and residence options and rules. All divorce cases involving child custody, whither uncontested or contested, must include a parenting plan or custody order (either by agreement or ordered after trial) that is adopted by the courts.

To read the rest go here: http://bit.ly/9PrKxL

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Considering becoming a landlord? How to evaluate whether to rent or sell your property

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Over the last few years, we have seen an increase in homeowners choosing to become landlords rather than placing their homes on the market.  In deciding whether or not becoming a Landlord is right for you, there are a number of factors to consider, but primarily they fall into the following three categories:  Financial Analysis, Risk and Goals.

CalculatorThe financial analysis is probably the easiest of the three to assess.  You will need to assess if you can afford to rent your house. If you consider the likely rental rate, vacancy rate, maintenance, advertising and management costs, you can arrive at a budget.  It is important both to be reasonably correct in your assumptions and to have enough reserves to cover cash-flow needs if you’re wrong.  The vacancy rate will be determined by the price at which you market the property.  Price too high and you’re either vacant or accepting applicants that, for some reason, couldn’t compete for more competitively priced homes.  Price too low and you don’t achieve the revenue you should.  If you want to try for the higher end of an expected range, understand that the cost may be a vacant month.  It is difficult to make up for a vacant month.

Consider the other costs renting out your property could accrue. If you have a landscaped or large yard, you will likely need to hire a yard crew to manage the grounds. Other costs could increase when you rent your home, such as homeowner’s insurance and taxes on your property. Also, depending on tenant turn-over, you may need to paint and deal with maintenance issues more regularly. Renting your home is a decision you need to make with all the financial information in front of you.  You can find more information about the hidden costs of renting here.

If your analysis points to some negative cash-flow, that doesn’t necessarily mean that renting is the wrong option.  That answer needs to be weighed against the pros and cons of alternatives (i.e., selling at the price that would actually sell), and some economic guesswork about what the future holds in terms of appreciation, inflation, etc. to arrive at an expectation of how long the cash drain would exist.

Risk is a bit harder to assess.  Broadly though, it’s crucial to understand that if you decide to lease out a home, you are going into business, and every business venture has risks.  The more you know, the better you can mitigate those risks.  One of the most obvious ways of mitigating the risk is to hire a management company.  By hiring professionals, you decrease your risk and time spent managing the property (and tenants) yourself.  However, this increases the cost.  So, as you reduce your risk of litigation, you increase your risk of negative cash-flow, and vice versa… it’s a balancing act, and the risk cannot be eliminated; just managed and minimized.

In considering Goals, what do you hope to achieve by renting your property? Are you planning on moving back into your home after a period of time? Will your property investment be a part of your long-term financial planning? Are you relocating or just hoping to wait to sell? These are all great reasons to consider renting your home.

Keep in mind that renting your family home can be emotional.  Many homeowners LOVE the unique feel of their homes.  It is where their children were raised, and they care more about preserving that feel than maximizing revenue.  That’s OK, but it needs to be acknowledged and considered when establishing a correct price and preparing a cash flow analysis.  Some owners are so attached to their homes that it may be better for them to “tear off the band-aid quickly” and sell.  The alternative of slowly watching over the years as the property becomes an investment instead of a home to them may prove to be more painful than any financial benefit can offset.

In the process of considering your financial situation, the risks associated with becoming a landlord, and the goals you hope to achieve with the rental of your property, – ask yourself these questions.  Before reaching a conclusion, it’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with the landlord-tenant-lawspecific to your state (and in some cases, separate relevant ordinances in the city and/or county that your property lies within) and to do some market research (i.e. tour other available similar rentals to see if your financial assumptions are in line with the reality of the competition across the street).  If you are overwhelmed by this process, or will be living out of the region, seek counsel with a property management professional.  Gaining experience the hard way can be costly.

J. Michael Wilson is the dedicated broker at Windermere Property Management Seattle, and has 17 years of experience managing properties in the Seattle region.

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Beautiful Home in West Greeley!

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Welcome home to 2329 75th Avenue in West Greeley. This 3 bed, 2 bath ranch home features an open layout, kitchen w bar great for entertaining, main floor master, walk in Closet, covered patio, fully fenced low maintenance yard, and an over-sized 3 car garage. Enjoy the Colorado lifestyle in this well kept home with easy access to HWY 34 and all the amenities of West Greeley. Contact Chris Guillan for your private showing at (970) 310-9357 for more information or click the link below for more details.

http://windermerenoco.com/listing/92319941

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Condominium in the Center of Fort Collins!

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Central Fort Collins for $200,000! 2717 Harvard St unit B4 offers quick access to the Max, Foothills Mall, Old Town, and the Harmony corridor. Need to be within 10 minutes of CSU? This would be perfect. Investment potential abounds because of the location and convenient layout or live in a well-maintained townhome style condo with a wonderful location!  Contact Paul Hunter for your private showing at (970) 673-7285 for more information or click the link below for more details.

http://windermerenoco.com/listing/92319943

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What You Need To Know About Buying a Bank Owned Home

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SalePriceRecently, news about how to purchase a real-estate owned (REO/bank owned) home, foreclosure property or short sale is everywhere. Bank owned homes are sold directly from the lender after the foreclosure process is complete, and while you may save quite a bit of money by choosing to go for this type of home, it is not without trials and tribulations. The process of purchasing a home directly from a lender can be long and arduous, but could very well be worth it in the end.
If you have your sights on a particular home or are looking to find a deal on your first, working directly with the lender may be your only option. Purchasing a bank owned home is not for the faint of heart, here are some tips for negotiating the REO process:

1. Be prepared: The condition of bank owned properties is usually poor and hard to show. Past owners may have left angry and left the home in bad condition with foul smells, missing appliances, wires taken from breakers, gas fireplaces gone, even bathrooms without toilets and sinks.

2. Understand the costs: Maintenance or repairs may be necessary, since these homes have been vacant for an unknown period of time–sometimes months or years. Keep in mind, when they were occupied the owners could have been under a financial hardship, preventing them from doing regular seasonal care or repairs when needed. Remember as well that the bank is trying to sell the house immediately, so you will receive a financial break in the price rather than a willingness to negotiate on the maintenance and repair issues.

3. Accept the unknown: In traditional real estate transactions, homeowners fill out Form 17 regarding important information about the history of the house. A bank owned home is either exempt or marked with “I don’t know” throughout the document. Not having the accuracy of this 5 page disclosure form could leave you with a lot of unanswered questions on the history of the home.

4. Know what is non-negotiable: The pricing on the house may not get much lower. Some of these properties can be “a dream come true” if you get them at an amazing price, or they could be your worst nightmare. Do your due diligence researching any property, and conduct all necessary inspections to safeguard yourself. Some major repairs may be negotiable, but will likely not reduce the home price.

5. Make a clean offer: The higher the price you can offer, the better. Include your earnest money, keep contingencies to a minimum, and suggest a reasonable closing date. The simpler your offer is, the higher chance you have of the bank accepting your offer or countering in a reasonable time period.

6. Be patient: Consult with a professional who handles bank owned home purchases to help you negotiate the pathway to homeownership. The process of purchasing a bank owned, foreclosed or short-sale home is typically longer than a typical real estate sale.

What do you want to know about purchasing bank owned, foreclosure and short-sale properties?

Tonya Brobeck is a Broker at Windermere Lake Stevens. She has a total of 17 years combined residential real estate and worldwide resort sales & marketing experience.

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Well Maintained Home in South Fort Collins!

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Welcome Home! Check out this well priced and well-maintained home at 635 Stoney Brook Road in desirable South Ft. Collins. This is the perfect starter home or investment property. This home has an open layout, 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and a well landscaped backyard for those summer BBQ’s. Contact Lindsey Crisanti for your private showing at (970) 420-4498 for more information or click the link below for more details.

http://windermerenoco.com/listing/92306461

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The Office

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As you travel around the Front Range you will notice the following under construction:

 

  • New Homes
  • New Apartments
  • New Medical Facilities

 

However, you will not notice new office buildings under construction.

What gives?  I thought we had a booming economy.  Why no new office buildings?

There are a couple of reasons.  First, construction costs have sky rocketed.  In ten years, construction costs have gone from about $200 per square foot to over $300 per square foot.

Rental rates have not increased at the same pace as construction costs so speculative investors can’t make their numbers work.

It’s too expensive to build compared to the rents that can be charged.

One reason why rental rates haven’t increased at high rate is property taxes.  Property taxes on Class A office buildings have basically doubled in the last 10 years in many cases.

So, until rental rates catch up with construction costs, we won’t see many new office buildings under construction.

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Sellers: Making the Most of your First Impressions

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As the old saying goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression. If you’re selling your home, it’s true, except that there are several impressions to be made, and each one might have its own effect on the unique tastes of a prospective buyer. I’ve worked with scores of buyers, witnessed hundreds of showings, and I can summarize that experience down this: a tidy and well maintained home, priced right, listed with professional photographs, enhanced curb appeal and onsite visual appeal will sell fastest. We all know first impressions are very important, but the lasting impressions are the ones that sell your home. It’s not easy, but if you can detach a little and look at your home from a buyer’s perspective, the answers to selling it quickly may become obvious to you.

The very first impression your home will make is through its web presence, whether on Windermere.com, the MLS, Craigslist or any multitude of websites. Fair or not, the price is typically the very first thing people look at, and it will be the measurement by which your home is judged. You can always adjust to the right price later, but the impact is lost. It will take something dramatic to get a buyer to reassess the way they feel about the value of your home.

Closely following price are the listing photos. According to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal, professional photos will not only impact your first impressions, it may also make a difference in the final selling price. Great photos might even overcome those initial price objections. Does the exterior photo capture your home at its hi-res best? Does the accompanying text enhance or distract? Online, your home has only a few seconds to capture the home buyer’s attention. If it doesn’t, they’ll click the “Back” button and resume their search. The goal is to have buyers excitedly calling their agents to arrange a showing.

Another old saying is “Location, location, location,” and sure enough, the first live impression of your home is the location. Forget this one; you can’t move your home. There’s not much you can do about location, right? Actually, there is one thing you can do: price it right from the start.

Let’s move on to the first time a buyer sees your home as they pull to the curb out front. Go stand out at the curb and look at it the way you would if you were shopping for a home. Sometimes, a couple hours of labor and $100 worth of beauty bark can be worth thousands in the sales price. I’ve had buyers choose not to get out of the car when we pulled up to a home that they had once been excited to see.

Likewise, I’ve had buyers say they’ve seen enough simply by peaking into the front door. The nose trumps the eyes when it comes to the first impression when entering the house. Buyers get more caught up in the details. Once the home shopper is inside, it’s easy for them to get distracted and focus on something that seems to have nothing to do with the structure they will be buying, from a dirty dish in the sink to a teenager’s bedroom that’s been decorated in posters and/or melodrama. Do everything you can to set a positive lasting impression. The buyer may look at dozens of homes. What is your strategy to convince them to make an offer on yours?

Guest post by Eric Johnson, Director of Education

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