Fixing Houses: Mixing Your Own Paint for Savings and Harmony
June 30, 2007
To make the maximum profit on your investment properties, you’ll need to save money wherever you can. One way to save significant amounts of money is to mix your own paint.
I recommend that you use only water-based paints. Technology improvements in latex and acrylic paints have made painting easier than it was with the old fashioned oil-based paints, and the new acrylics provide a great-looking finish. Purchasing "oops paint," marked down at home improvement and paint stores, can save hundreds of dollars on your painting projects.
By mixing your own paints, you can also guarantee a harmonious result for the entire house, blending the colors from the exterior to the interior and from room to room. For instance, during one of our projects, we purchased ten assorted gallons of paint from the Restore thrift shop. The paint hade been donated by Lowe’s after having been returned by the original buyers, and included a lot of blues, greens, and grays. We used a fifteen-gallon plastic kitchen trash can to mix all the paint together, and then poured it back into the original cans. The color ended up a complex sage-green, which perfectly complemented the existing teal-green tile floor.
The Costs of Transforming Your Home into a Buyers Dream House
June 29, 2007
Turning your house into the home of a buyer’s dreams doesn’t have to cost a great deal of money. In fact, armed with some paint and the determination to work hard, most home sellers usually need to invest only about $500 to spruce up their homes for a quick sale.
A little paint, inside and out, and some good, old-fashioned “sweat equity” will go a long way toward transforming the look and feel of your home. If you have a Restore outlet (the thrift store for Habitat for Humanity) near you, you’ll also be able to save considerably on lighting fixtures, “oops” paint, and other building materials.
If you shop carefully, you can also find great sales at the various home building supply stores that are springing up around the country. They carry just about anything you’ll need, and their prices are generally quite good, compared to department and retails stores.
So how much should you spend on transforming your house? As I mentioned earlier, if your home needs only paint, you can spend $500 or less to get it looking great. But if you have to upgrade fixtures or carpeting, the cost of completely going through your home may run up to $8,000.
Selling Houses: The Basics of Design Psychology
June 29, 2007
I’m often asked about the basics of Design Psychology, which offers innovative interior and exterior design ideas for increasing profit and shortening market time. In reply, I begin by saying that Design Psychology’s strategies go well beyond normal cleaning, painting, and repair.
Here are a few Design Psychology tips you can use to maximize your sales profits without having to spend a great deal of money:
The first step is to emotionally detach yourself from your home. Think of your house as an investment that needs to be sold. Your ultimate objective is to spur buyers’ imaginations by making your home feel like a nicely-appointed vacation property.
Set out your best china and finest linens, and pack away everything you won’t need, including personal items such as family pictures. You want to create a feeling of luxury and comfort, because buyers will pay more for a home that makes them feel pampered.
Once the interior of your home feels warm and inviting, it’s time to take a look at the rest of the property. Pretend you’re a home buyer, seeing the property for the first time. It may help to have a friend along, in order to be more objective.
Five Ps of Selling Houses
June 28, 2007
1. Planning:
Know Your Target Buyers
Think about your neighborhood and the buyers purchasing homes near your property. Are these home buyers purchasing their first home or moving up? This is important to your marketing and design plan, since the psychological needs of first-time home buyers differ from those of moving-up buyers, in that first-time home buyers are seeking to control their own environment by owning instead of renting. These buyers’ psychological needs include:
- Safety and security - Sense of place or connection - Comfort - Self-control
Moving-up buyers often enjoy these benefits, as well, but are looking for a larger home with more amenities for their comfort, self-esteem, and feelings of prestige. The needs of empty-nesters and retirees also vary, but they’re generally looking for solutions for making their lives easier.
Once you determine who your potential buyers will be, you can make improvements to your home that will attract them.
Selling Season
Calculate approximately how much time will be needed to get your home ready for sale, and then add on a few extra days for unexpected delays. Estimate the length of your selling season — the time of year you’ll be marketing your home. This time period establishes the basis for your decorating choices and helps plan your color scheme.
Interior Design Secrets for Selling Houses
June 27, 2007
New concepts in Interior Design Psychology are helping home sellers net more money in today’s competitive real estate market. Therefore, it’s worthwhile to spend time planning the changes that will help your home sell for the highest price.
Develop a general design plan, keeping your target market and budget in mind. Your overall design plan really depends on supply and demand. How many houses are for sale in your area? How many houses sell each week? Is the selling season cold, warm, or hot? Is it a seller’s or buyer’s market?
If the market is moving fast and buyers are lining up to make offers for homes in your neighborhood, you can do less. But whatever your answers to the above questions, you’ll still need to do a few things to make your home stand out from the competition.
Know Your Target Buyers
Think about your neighborhood and the buyers purchasing homes near yours. Are they purchasing their first home or moving up? This will be important to your marketing and design plan, since the psychological needs of the two types of buyers differ considerably.
First-time homebuyers seek to control their own environment by owning, rather than renting. Their psychological needs include:
Selling Houses: Design Psychology and Interior Colors
June 26, 2007
Interior colors are vitally important to selling your home quickly, and for more money. But you must always take your target market and selling season into account, using Design Psychology techniques, when choosing the colors for the inside of your home.
One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is to paint everything white, which will make the interior of the home look clean, but does nothing to make buyers feel and look good. Your goal is for your home to must make potential buyers feel and look great in your home. When you accomplish that, you’ll have a sale.
Consider Your Buyers
When choosing colors, always keep your target buyers in mind. If they’ll be wealthy and highly educated, you’ll want to use complex muted colors in your interior paint scheme. If your buyers will be less educated and in lower income brackets, concentrate on primary or pastel colors.
Your interior colors should also echo, in slightly lighter shades, the colors you’ve used on the outside of the house. That will give your home a greater feeling of harmony in the buyer’s mind, and since people look better in colored rooms, your buyers will also feel better in your home. As an added bonus, buyers who liked your exterior scheme are also going to appreciate your choice of colors for the interior, which will make them more inclined to buy your home.
Finding a Great Listing Agent for Your Home: 8 Tips
June 25, 2007
If you’ve decided to list your home, you’ll be paying a real estate agent a significant amount of money to the hard work of selling your home. Therefore, you have the right to expect prompt attention, good service, and protection. Here are eight tips for finding a good real estate agent:
1) For your protection, you want a knowledgeable real estate agent to act as a buffer between you and strangers, and to protect you from law suits that might result from your lack of knowledge concerning contract and real estate law.
2) You don’t want your agent to be too busy, but you do want them to be relatively successful, because it shows that they list homes at the right price and succeed in getting those homes sold.
3) You want your agent to offer assurances that they’ll show your home regularly, that they provide proper signage, MLS coverage, and will create a great sales flyer to hand out to prospective buyers and to other agents.
4) Don’t lock yourself into long-term listings. Depending on the market, sixty days may be long enough to show what an agent can do for you. It also allows you to back out of your agreement if you’re unhappy with your agent for any reason.
Ten Steps for Becoming a Successful Real Estate Investor
June 24, 2007
The secret to success in real estate investment is finding bargain properties that you can “flip” quickly for a profit. Here are a few ideas for becoming a successful investor:
1) Obtain sound advice from investors who are already successful. Friends and realtors can refer you to folks who have proven investment track records.
2) Define your investment goals. Do you want to buy a home to live in, to fix and sell, or to hold for your future?
3) Read real estate investing books and articles, attend workshops and seminars, while AVOIDING out-of-date infomercials.
4) Choose a lender with great service, a good closing record, and fair costs, and get preapproved for financing.
5) Define your target locations, and become an expert. Study real estate newspaper sections, pick up sale flyers, and note sales prices in your target area.
6) Interview real estate agents and learn from them, but don’t sign any agreements that will limit your search for bargain properties. You’re looking for agents who know your target market thoroughly and will work hard to find properties for you.
7) Find a good escrow officer and use them for every transaction. They’ll know your needs and will quickly learn how to expedite your transactions.
Five Things to Help Sell Your Home Fast, and For More Money
June 24, 2007
Selling your home requires some thought and a clear plan of action. Here are five things to consider when you’re getting ready to sell your home:
1) Know Your Buyers
Are most of the homes in your neighborhood being bought by first-time or move-up buyers? Depending on which group will be looking at your home, you’ll want to do the things that will make your home appealing to those buyers.
First-time buyers are hoping to gain more control of their environment by making the move from renter to homeowner. Their psychological needs include such things as safety and security, comfort, and control of their living space.
Moving-up buyers want those things, too, of course, but they’re generally looking for more room and increased prestige. Regardless of which group is buying homes in your area, you’ll want to concentrate your improvement efforts toward attracting them.
2) Know Your Selling Season
The time of year you’ll be marketing your home will dictate your decorating choices and color scheme. Use cool colors like blue, green, and grey when selling in spring and summer, and warm colors like yellow, red, maroon if you’ll be marketing your home in the fall and winter. Envision your final product as either a cooling desert oasis or a warm haven, depending upon the selling season.
Using Color Psychology to Sell Your Home
June 23, 2007
When painting your home for resale, choosing the right colors can make a huge difference in your paycheck at closing. For instance, did you know that the exterior color of houses selling most quickly is a certain shade of yellow, but that choosing the wrong shade of yellow can kill a sale?
You’ll find many brochures in paint stores, showing various combinations of exterior paint colors. But most people don’t realize that most of those combinations actually include three colors, and not just two. Limiting your exterior paint scheme to just two colors also limits your income potential.
For a fast sale, think fun colors and go for a third, or even a fourth, exterior color. Think “Disneyland Main Street,” where every shop is painted in glorious multi-colors. Adding more colors will also add definition to the various architectural details of your home. Use gloss or semi-gloss paint on wood trim.
The Psychology of Exterior Colors
When choosing exterior colors, take the sales price of your home into account. Certain colors, especially muted, complex shades, attract wealthy or highly-educated buyers, whereas buyers with less income or less education generally prefer simpler colors. A complex color contains tints of gray or brown, and usually requires more than one word to describe, such as “sage green,” as opposed to “green.”
