What Buyers Look for in the Carson Valley

What should buyers look for in a home? Besides the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, there are some unique factors Carson Valley buyers need to pay attention to.

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search

Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation

Many people don’t think about the exit plan when they buy a house. However, if you plan on selling your home in five to 10 years, then there are a few important things you should consider as a buyer.

First of all, you really need to pay attention to location, especially when it comes to flooding and landslide concerns. We’ve had a lot of rain, a lot of snow, and a lot of flooding this season. There are homes in the flood zone that have been just fine, but they were built a certain way. The owners had brought in a bunch of dirt before they built those homes so they could get an elevation certificate.

Pay attention to things like flooding, mudslides, and elevation.

As a homeowner, it may be beneficial to have that certificate even though your home has not been affected by flooding, as the certificate will ease a buyer’s mind. You should also consider the higher cost of insurance premiums you will have to pay, especially for flood zone insurance.

For example, near Kingsbury, there are many beautiful homes in the foothills. Remember that when you have a lot of precipitation coming off of those mountains, you will have areas that are prone to mudslides. That is important for both buyers and sellers to consider. As a seller, you need to remedy those problems so that a buyer won’t be able to make you reduce your price.

You should also pay attention to crawlspaces. When the storms come in, water will pool underneath those crawlspaces if the elevation around the house is not sloped properly. Again, sellers should address that in order to get top dollar.

Upgrades are great and pricing your home correctly is important, but it’s also important to look at any land and obstruction issues that you might be faced with when you plan on selling your home, whether you are selling now or will be in the future.

If you have any other questions about what to look at as a buyer or how to prepare your home for resale, give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

How to Raise the Value of Your Home This Spring

If you want to raise your home’s value before listing it this spring, here are a few tips for you.

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search

Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation

If you want to raise the value of your home this spring and sell it for top dollar in our market, here are a few tips you can use.

The first thing you can work on is curb appeal. When people drive up to your home, if the aesthetics of the lawn, trees, and the rest of the landscaping look great, they’ll want to walk into the home. Some people also love seeing an upgraded front door or garage door. Not only do these touchups sell the house, but they’re also inexpensive to do.

Inside the home, one of the things you should consider installing is hardwood floors. This is a very popular feature right now, and it’s not as expensive as you might think to add. You can get some great deals for real hardwood or even find some high-quality laminate—it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two. Laminate is less expensive, but putting real hardwood floors down will net you another $10,000 to $15,000 in your home sale.

Another thing to consider is painting your house. Whether it’s the interior or the exterior, it only costs a few thousand dollars and it makes a big difference in terms of your bottom line.

A lot of properties around Carson Valley have old roofing, and if your home does too, you should think about upgrading. What I mean by old roofing is wood shingling that’s been sitting there for 30 years. Old roofing is a concern for buyers because they don’t want to have to spend $10,000 to $20,000 replacing it after they buy their new home. There are inexpensive ways to remedy this problem, and it’s certainly better to do so before listing your home rather than negotiating over it later on in the process.

Order a home inspection before you list so you can negate any buyer leverage.

On a related note, I recommend ordering a home inspection before listing. This allows you to discover and fix anything that shows up on the report. That way, when a buyer makes you an offer and orders their own inspection, you’ve taken everything off the negotiating table for them to bring your price down further.

If you have any questions about this topic or are looking to buy or sell a home, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to help!

Some Easy Credit Tips to Remember

Your credit score is a delicate thing when it comes to qualifying for a home purchase. Any extra debt could negatively affect your ability to buy.

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search

Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation

Today we’re talking about credit. If you plan on buying a home in the near future, you want to keep these tips in mind.

When you're getting a loan to buy a home, don’t mess with your credit in any way. If you have cards you want to close, don’t touch them if you’ve been approved for a mortgage already. You may be hankering to buy a new couch for your new place or a new car, but you’ve got to wait.

Wait until after your transaction closes to buy these things.

If you make any big or unusual purchases with credit, it could affect your score, your interest rate, and more. If a lender has to revisit your rate because of a large credit purchase, you might not qualify for the same home anymore.

To raise your score before you go into a lender, you should have a good debt-to-income ratio. Just by doing that, I raised my score by 50 points on my own. My advice is to save any credit purchases until after closing. If you do that, you'll be fine and you’ll still be able to get new furniture or appliances.

If you have any questions for me or would like some more tips on getting ready to buy, give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.