Archive for
June, 2009
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 30, 2009
During the real estate boom, no one really cared about staging — the act of preparing a home before putting it on the market so it can sell quickly and for top dollar. Back then, homes practically sold themselves. Sellers would get their asking price (or more in many cases) even if the place was dirty or filled with clutter.
Today, staging is the new buzz word. It’s become especially important in this highly competitive market, where traditional sellers are up against foreclosures and short sales (so-called distressed properties) that can offer rock-bottom prices for bargain hunters. And that’s what today’s buyers crave — a bargain.
But a nicely staged property offers that “move-in ready” appeal that buyers are willing to pay a bit more for. They want to see that the current owner is taking care of the home, not allowing it to fall apart, like the abandoned foreclosure down the street. If they see a fixer-upper, they’ll offer a fixer-upper price.
Luckily, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on home improvements or hire a professional stager to reap the benefits of a staged home. There are simple, inexpensive things you can do, including:
1) Clear out the clutter. If you don’t use it, sell it, give it away or throw it out. Hold a garage sale, donate it to Goodwill or post it on Craigslist. People are always looking for free or cheap stuff. If you simply can’t part with something that’s taking up a lot of space, like your winter clothes, pack it up and put it in storage.
2) Clean and repair. Cleaniness is next to godliness, especially in real estate. And be sure to fix what’s broken, including a squeaky cabinet door, leaky faucet or a torn screen door. If you like, replace outdated hardware and fixtures. They’re inexpensive and add that shiny new feel buyers love.
3) Make room and lighten up. Remove extra furniture or use a smaller couch or bed if they’re too big. Cramped rooms give buyers the impression that your house is small and lacks space. Store some of your clothes so your closets look bigger. Choose window treatments and lighting that brighten each room.
We’ve got tons more staging advice on FrontDoor.com. Staging Diva and FrontDoor Insider Debra Gould shares her top staging tips, including replacing family photos and personal items with tasteful art.
And if you have a little bit of a budget, get inspired by the experts on HGTV’s hit show “Designed to Sell,” who find creative ways to turn a slow mover into a showpiece for under $2,000.
You can see the dramatic makeovers in FrontDoor’s Designed to Sell: Room by Room Staging Guide. Check out these before and after pictures. As you can see, staging doesn’t just refer to the inside of your home. See what a difference curb appeal can make?
We just added 21 new videos and slideshows, so you get more cool ideas to bring out the best in your home!
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 26, 2009
Everyone dreams of their perfect home, but very few get the chance to actually live in it.
The King of Pop was one of them.
In 1987, Michael Jackson shelled out $17 million for more than 2,500 acres in Los Olivos, Calif. (about 125 miles north of Los Angeles).
He designed his dream home, complete with 22 buildings, including a Tudor-style mansion, a zoo and an amusement park with a Ferris wheel, bumper cars and other rides. The Neverland Ranch — named after the island in “Peter Pan” where children never grow up — was estimated to be worth more than $100 million.
But the dream home later became a nightmare, after Jackson faced charges of molesting a boy on the property. He moved out of Neverland in 2005, and the neglected estate went into disrepair.
By 2008, Jackson had defaulted on the mortgage and faced foreclosure if he failed to pay back a $24.5 million loan. An investment company stepped in at the last minute and bought some of the property rights for $35 million, with Jackson maintaining partial ownership.
Now with the legendary artist’s death, what will become of the Neverland Ranch? Personally, I hope the owners will fix up the estate and turn it into a museum and memorial to MJ, similar to what Graceland became for Elvis Presley.
Because Neverland Ranch was always shrouded in mystery, opening it to the public would allow fans to connect with the pop icon at a new level. After all, what better way to get to know a person than by seeing their home.
And I’m sure ticket sales would more than pay off MJ’s massive debt.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 25, 2009
Here at FrontDoor.com, nuestra casa es su casa.
And today, we’re happy to welcome millions of new members to the FrontDoor family — more than 60 local TV station affiliates throughout the country and their viewers!
Now you can get real estate listings and valuable homebuying and selling tips and advice from HGTV’s FrontDoor.com on some of your favorite local stations’ Web sites. This is just another example of how FrontDoor is reaching out to consumers in their local markets.
So, for example, Atlantans who tune in to WSB-TV and Denverites who watch KMGH, the Denver Channel can go to these stations’ Web sites and search for homes in the area and get great articles and videos from FrontDoor.com.
We’re bringing the tools you need for your home search and sale at a hyperlocal level. How awesome is that! Pretty awesome.
For more details, check out the news release.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 24, 2009
Real estate auction company REDC (Real Estate Disposition Corp.) works with lenders to sell thousands of foreclosure properties at auctions throughout the country. And in this market, lenders need all the help they can get to unload this excess inventory, quickly and efficiently. Note: REDC auctions are for bank-owned homes or REOs, and are not the same as the public auction, which takes place at the local courthouse.
On June 7, more than 1,200 bargain hunters attended an REDC auction in New York City, where 113 bank-owned houses in the tri-state area were sold for a total of $10 million in sales.
Watch the video to see what it’s like to buy a bank-owned home at an auction.
AUCTION TIPS:
1) Research. Before you buy at a foreclosure auction, do your research. Print out the auction brochure (if there is one), note the open house dates for the properties you’re interested in and see them in person. You more than likely will have to buy “as-is” and you won’t be able to get a home inspection done. When you visit the homes, look out for these 10 red flags for homebuyers.
2) Crunch the numbers. Estimate how much you expect to spend on home improvements on top of the purchase price, which includes a premium the auction company charges each buyer. If you’re an investor, subtract those expenses from the income you expect to generate from the home (rent) and decide if it’s a smart investment.
3) Register and be prepared. Each auction has different requirements, but all of them require you to register and bring a cashier’s check or cash for the required earnest money deposit. Many transactions are cash-only, but some auctions will allow you to finance the purchase through a lender, so get pre-approved beforehand so you know what your maximum bid will be.
For more tips on how to buy a foreclosure, go to www.frontdoor.com/foreclosures.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 23, 2009
Wanted: Architecture buff with deep pockets willing to put in some elbow grease.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous and endangered Ennis House in Los Angeles is on the market for $15 million.
The 6,000-square-foot Mayan-inspired estate, which lies on a hilltop in the Los Feliz neighborhood north of downtown L.A., is falling apart from earthquake and rain damage and desperately needs restoration.
The legendary architect built the home in 1924 in the experimental “textile block” style using 27,000 16-inch concrete blocks.
The current owner, the Ennis House Foundation, has already invested $6.5 million to stabilize the property. The new owner would need to put in an estimated $5 million to $7 million to restore the home, in addition to the $15 million purchase price. One condition of the sale will be a conservation easement to ensure that the public has access to the house a few days each year.
The main house features three bedrooms, an elevated dining room with massive fireplace, high ceilings, numerous art-glass windows, a rare Wright-signature glass-tile mosaic fireplace, billiards room, pool and small Japanese garden.
The sale is being handled by Hilton & Hyland and Dilbeck Realtors, with marketing services by Christie’s Great Estates.
The Ennis House has appeared in film and TV, including “Blade Runner,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Twin Peaks.”
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 19, 2009
I’m in Washington, D.C., for a conference of the National Association of Real Estate Editors and got to hear from some of the key players in the federal government’s housing recovery efforts, including Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart and some of the congressional representatives on the banking and housing committees. We heard a lot about the Obama administration’s refinance and loan modification programs as well as the massive overhaul of the financial regulatory system.
Some of the notable stats from Thursday’s speakers:
–40% of those displaced by the foreclosure crisis are renters.
–16 mortgage servicers are participating in the federal government’s loan mod program. They handle about 80% of all mortgages.
–So far, 200,000 loan mod offers have been made under the federal program.
–Potential source of real estate growth is the rental market in college towns. That’s because each coming year, we’ll see a record number of high school graduates.
–Another potential demographic shift is the growing population of non-traditional households (“traditional” meaning a married couple with children).
Check out this video of HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan talking about the mission of Obama’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a new watchdog agency that would protect consumers from the kind of predatory lending practices that got us into the current mortgage mess and foreclosure crisis.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 17, 2009
You’ve probably heard about the marital problems of Jon and Kate Gosselin, who along with their eight children (fraternal twins and sextuplets), star in the popular TLC reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”
The couple recently celebrated their 10-year anniversary, but apparently not together. While raising a huge family is stressful enough, imagine having to deal with the media and allegations of extramarital affairs and child abuse. And to add insult to injury, the couple can’t seem to sell their former home in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
The 3,446-square-foot, 5 bedroom, 2.5 bath Cape Cod has been on the market for four and a half months, and counting.
On average, similarly priced homes in the county take about 116 days to sell, according to Lancaster Online.
The Jon and Kate house is listed for $325,000 and features new bamboo hardwood floors, a security system, large rear deck and laundry room with two sets of washers and dryers.
The Gosselins paid $280,000 for it in 2006 and made some improvements to it during their TV show.
Judging solely on these pictures, I’d suggest the home needs some staging to compete in today’s challenged real estate market.
My tips? Remove the dreary blinds and bring in bright window treatments. Replace outdated fixtures and ceiling fans.
You can kind of see the deck through the blinds in this picture. Why not open them, so we can get a great view of the outdoors? Let the sunshine in!
And you can rest assured that the kitchen can handle a lot of cooking. That’s a picture of Kate with her eight children when they used to live in the home.
Last October, the couple moved 40 miles northeast to a $1.35 million, 24-acre estate in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, where they can spread out and have more privacy. (You can see the new home in that last picture.)
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 16, 2009
Despite its name, a short sale is by no means a “short” process. But unlike what you may have heard, getting a short sale approved by your lender is not as hard as you may think — if your real estate agent knows what they’re doing.
In order to orchestrate a successful short sale, you need a master negotiator, says Troy Huerta, short sale division leader at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in San Diego. “Many agents forgot how to negotiate. There was no negotiating in the past. You would list a home at a ridiculous price and someone would pay it.”
Those days are long gone. Home values are falling. Unemployment is at 9.4 percent. And according to RealtyTrac, there were more than 321,000 foreclosure filings in May, 18 percent higher than a year earlier. That’s expected to get worse.
But there’s a way to help ease this flood of foreclosures, Huerta says. Do more short sales.
In the past, lenders have been reluctant to do short sales. And why would they? They stand to lose a LOT of money. But the reality today is that if a lender doesn’t do a short sale, it may get stuck with a property that is harder to sell or will sell for less than it could have gotten. (A buyer is more willing to buy a short sale in good condition than a bank-owned foreclosure that needs a lot of work.) Not to mention the cost of pursuing the foreclosure process.
Even Fannie Mae felt short sales could help reduce foreclosures. It launched a pilot program pre-approving short sales for homeowners in Phoenix and Orlando.
Now, lenders should be more motivated than ever to get these deals done — as part of President Obama’s economic stimulus plan, the federal government will pay lenders up to $1,000 for each completed short sale or accepted deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.
READ HUERTA’S TIPS FOR BUYING AND SELLING A SHORT SALE…
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 12, 2009
With so much drama in the world, there’s no better time than now to step back and take a breath. It’s easy to get caught up with the stress and emotion of buying and selling a home. That’s why FrontDoor Insider Tara-Nicholle Nelson is sharing her solutions and strategies to deal with today’s frustrating real estate situations, like getting rejected for a mortgage or facing foreclosure after losing a job. It’s all in Tara’s Drama-Free Real Estate Guide at www.frontdoor.com/dramafree.
To spread the word about these great tips and advice, Tara and the FrontDoor team took it to the media — with the important message that now is not the time for consumers to panic (and it’s easy to with all the negative headlines), but rather they should be proactive.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | June 11, 2009
RealtyTrac’s May foreclosure report is out, and as usual, the news is grim. Foreclosure activity is up 18 percent from a year ago. Even worse, most real estate experts are warning us about “shadow foreclosure inventory” which is set to hit the market later this summer. Oh yeah and the unemployment rate is at 9.4 percent. So if you think we’ve hit the so-called “bottom,” think again.
The good news is that President Obama’s stimulus plan seems to be working. Lenders are now more willing to work with struggling homebuyers to refinance or modify their loans or negotiate short sales, in which a house is sold for less than what the borrower owes and a portion of the loan balance is forgiven by the lender. Why would they do this? Because the federal government is giving them money to do this, and besides, better to sell and write off the loss now than deal with the foreclosure process and try to sell a property in crappy condition. I spoke to a short sale expert for Coldwell Banker in San Diego, Troy Huerta, who has some great insight and advice on the subject. Stay tuned for my blog post on that.
Meanwhile, FrontDoor Insider and Freak Out Prevention Specialist Tara-Nicholle Nelson is spreading the word about her Drama-Free Real Estate Guide, which provides concrete solutions to some of the most common issues consumers are facing today. Just in time! Situations like losing your job and trying to make your mortgage payment. Or you got preapproved and suddenly your lender says “no money for you.” Yours truly will post a vlog later taking you behind the scenes of our media tour.
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