By SHARON LEE

To get that hotel vibe, focus on these areas of your home.

When it comes time to sell your home, you need to keep one thing in mind: buyers don’t want to see or feel you in the house. What we mean is that buyers are looking for a blank slate that they can envision making their very own. They don’t want your family pictures, unique style, or lived-in look. Instead, they want a house that represents endless opportunities.

How do you make this happen? How do you get YOU out of the house when staging a home for sale?

Think about giving your home a hotel vibe. It’s one of the most successful open house ideas because it’s all about making your home into anyone’s house.

Staging your home so that it feels like a hotel will help you sell it faster and for more money. But what does this look like? Your real estate agent will be able to give you expert advice on how to achieve this.

To ensure you have that hotel vibe, you’ll need to go through your home room-by-room and focus on a few key areas.

Make a Glamorous Entrance

The entrance of your home is your one and only chance to make a great first impression, so you’ll want to make your entrance look and feel like a hotel lobby. If you have room, consider adding an elegant table with artfully arranged flowers. You’ll also want to keep it clear of clutter to ensure that it creates a welcoming feeling.

Create Plush and Lush Bedrooms

Bedrooms are typically the most personal rooms in a home, and so, for an open house, they should be depersonalized as much as possible. Remove all personal items from dressers and nightstands. It’s even a good idea to half empty your closet so that it looks neat, clean, and larger than normal.

In addition to cleaning up, you’ll also want to transform your bedroom with plush bedding that’s reminiscent of a hotel room. Think white linens with throw pillows and crisp lines. It should feel like a hotel room from the moment they walk in the door.

Clean Up the Bathrooms

Just as with the bedrooms, the bathrooms should sparkle and shine. You don’t want potential buyers to walk into your bathroom and think anything other than, “This looks wonderful.”

When staging your home for sale, your bathrooms should look brand new. This means emptying out cabinets and drawers of any toiletries and miscellaneous items. You should also allow a small budget for repainting, changing out old fixtures, and resurfacing countertops.

As for the towels and décor, only use brand new items that are perfectly spotless and would look appropriate in a hotel. Every bathroom should feel like an oasis.

Focus on the Kitchen

All successful open house ideas start in the kitchen. That’s because a kitchen, if done beautifully, can get you more than your asking price while an ignored kitchen can kill a sale just as quickly.

The good news is that updating your kitchen doesn’t require a complete remodel. Small changes can make a big difference. To get started:

• Remove clutter from countertops until they’re completely clear.
• Clean all appliances and replace old, worn out equipment.
• Clear all dishes and keep them neatly stacked out of sight.
• Organize every single drawer, removing extra items.
• Empty out the pantry and fridge until only a few food staples remain in neat rows.

Clean and de-clutter your kitchen until it wouldn’t look out of place on a food show. Only then are you ready for an open house.

Tips and Tricks for Overall Décor

What about the rest of your house? There are quite a few things you can do to create that hotel vibe everywhere.

Bring in Light: Maximize the light throughout your home by removing drapes, cleaning windows, changing lampshades, and increasing bulb wattage.

Choose the Right Colors: Don’t slather your walls and furniture with bright, bold colors. Instead, follow the examples of upscale hotels with neutral palettes of warm gray, taupe, brown, and even black.

Create More Space: Add large mirrors and use appropriately proportioned furniture to create the illusion of more space in tight quarters.

Don’t Forget the Exterior: Don’t forget the outside of your home. Transform your back deck into a cozy outdoor living area, and make sure your front yard leaves a good first impression with a spruced-up yard, fresh exterior paint, and pops of color.

You don’t need a big budget or a brand-new home to create one that feels and looks like a hotel. All you need is a little bit of know-how and some elbow grease and anything is possible. Find a Coldwell Banker real estate agent near you today.

SOURCE: Coldwell Banker

By Sharon Lee

But if you can buy a house with cash, should you do it?

Most people try to avoid getting into debt; it’s a much wiser financial decision. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible. On big-ticket items such as higher education, purchasing a car, and buying a house, loans are a common occurrence. But if you can buy a house with cash, should you do it? What are the benefits of making a cash offer on a home or accepting a cash offer for your home?

Benefits of Buying a House with Cash

If you have the means to be a cash house buyer, then you’re in a great position. According to the National Association of Realtors, roughly 30% of U.S. homebuyers are making their home purchases completely in cash, and it makes sense.

There are many reasons why paying cash for a home is better than getting a loan, even when it comes to the effect of a cash offer on house closing costs.

No Mortgage Payments: If you purchase your new home outright, you won’t have to worry about what type of interest rate you get or how much your monthly payments will be. Instead, you can enjoy financial freedom without a mortgage. This also means that you’ll be saving money on interest. You paid for the house in full, so you don’t have to worry about thousands of extra dollars over the years in interest payments.

Lower Purchase Price: In most cases, sellers love for cash homebuyers. It makes everything easier on the seller’s end, which means that you can probably negotiate a better price. The seller will know that you won’t back out at the last minute due to loan issues so that you can haggle a little more.

Fewer Closing Costs: You might be surprised by the impact of a cash offer on house closing costs. Many typical closing costs have to do with a mortgage, but if you’re paying in cash, you can avoid various loan fees including:

• Property appraisal fees
• Notary fees
• Private mortgage insurance
• Credit report fees

Quicker Closing: With a mortgage, closing a home requires you to wait 30 to 45 days on average. Paying in cash, you can finish the purchase transaction in one to three weeks.

Quality Investment: If you have a large sum of money in cash, it won’t be earning you any extra sitting in the bank or a CD. On the other hand, real estate investment is a great idea, even when the market may not be ideal. If you’re willing to hang on to your property for a few years, you’ll get out more than you put in on a cash deal.

Benefits of Selling a House for Cash

What about when it comes to selling your home? Should you sell a home for cash or is it better to go the conventional route? Beyond the fact that there may be negotiating for a lower selling price for a cash offer, there are many benefits to accepting a cash deal.

Fewer Deals Fall Through: If you’ve ever tried to sell a house, you understand that it can be risky. Too often, buyers lose loan backings or don’t qualify for enough to complete the purchase. With a cash offer, you don’t have to worry about this as much.

Faster Closing: If you need to get out of your home quickly, a cash offer is a great way to do this. Normal closing times are four to seven weeks. A cash offer can cut that time down to one to three weeks.

Fewer Fees: Typically, a cash offer means that you’ll be able to avoid many annoying closing costs, so you keep more of your sale money.

Cash offers in real estate can be a great idea if you know what you’re doing. At Coldwell Banker, we suggest talking to a financial expert, as well as an experienced real estate agent, to help you decide the best option for you.

Stop and Look Before You List

Putting your home on the market is a big project with a lot of different steps along the path to “SOLD!” But if you take the time and effort to make sure some key pieces are in place, the transition to the new homeowner can be swift and smooth.

Prepare yourself

Over the years spent in your home, you will likely accumulate a mountain of paperwork. Even if you are super organized and have everything carefully sorted and filed, it is still a lot to gather together when the time comes to pass it all along.

Your buyers may want to carefully review HOA documents and accumulated addenda to be sure they understand the ins and outs of the community rules and procedures. In some cases, pet restrictions, visitor guidelines or the approvals process for home décor and improvements might influence potential homebuyers in the decision to relocate to your particular neighborhood. This is important information to provide upfront.

It is helpful to have appliance manuals and warranty information on hand as well. Notes on any service calls or brochures for replacement parts will aid your home’s new occupants. Records of repairs may also be needed to verify information that is relayed to the potential home buyer. Plumbing or electrical issues that have been addressed should have backup paperwork with detailed information regarding the contractor (in case future issues arise), the scope of work performed and the cost.

The survey of your property is another important document that can provide the potential new homeowner with a plethora of information. It will note if any portion of the property is in a flood zone for insurance purposes, as well as indicate property lines and setbacks so that designs for a pool or fence can be correctly laid out while still in the planning phase.

Prepare your house

There are a number of reasonably quick and inexpensive upgrades that can make a big impact on your home’s selling power. By addressing the more obvious issues upfront, you will be ahead of the game when the ball really gets rolling.

Take care of any obvious concerns such as a leaky roof or loose pavers that should be fairly simple fixes, especially if you are pretty certain they will be noticed during a first showing. You want your home to make an excellent first impression, so get those problems out of the way immediately.

Ensure that the house will photograph well. Remove any overhanging tree limbs that obstruct a nice view of the façade. A fresh coat of paint will work wonders in giving your residence an instant facelift. That first shot of the exterior is the image that will greet visitors to your listing and hopefully entice them enough to look into your property further, so do what you can to make it beautiful at first glance.

Prepping yourself and your house in these ways during the early stages of listing your home will help make the entire selling process as stress- and hassle-free as possible.

Post created By Adam| February 6, 2018 | View Full article