Landscaping Tips for Increasing Your Property’s Value
Looking for a change in your lifestyle? Whatever the reason behind your decision, when you want to sell your home – it can be a bit stressful. After all, it’s not exactly something that you are taught when you go to school. Certainly not when you want to avoid making use of real estate agents.
There are countless homeowners who want to avoid the net of real estate in modern society. Through this article, we go through the most important documents that you need when selling your home (regardless of who you are selling it to).
Proof of Identity
The first point may be the most obvious. But both parties involved in the transfer of ownership will need to provide proof of identity.
This could be anything from passports, to identity documents. From utility bills to bank statements.
The Title Documents
The title documents are essentially the forms that prove who the owners of the home are. Which is why it is standard that these need to be included in the sale of the house.
If you do not have your title deeds, you can contact the solicitor who helped you originally by your home. They should have these documents on-hand.
Worst-case scenario, you may need to approach your mortgage lender for the documents. These will need to be the official documents from the Land Registry.
Residential Sales Contract: Fitting And Contents Form (TA10)
This form is probably the most important document to have during the selling procedure. This is essentially the contract between you (the seller), and the second party (the buyer).
This will be the form that you turn to in case disputes happen to arise over any aspect of the selling process.
The contract should cover everything from the purchase price, date, tender, inspections, and conditions where the agreement will be terminated.
If you are unsure of what to say/do when it comes to setting up this form, due to the importance of the contract, we recommend turning to a professional. This will help you ensure there are no loopholes to protect both parties.
Residential Property Disclosure: Property Information Form (TA6)
This form is a compulsory form – meaning you will not legally be able to sell your home without the presence of this form.
Essentially, it gives you an official opportunity to talk about all of the defects of your home. Including boundaries, restrictions, or rotting wood in the basements.
From the seller’s perspective – filling out this form as accurately and honestly as possible is imperative. The last thing you want to end up with is a lawsuit after selling your home.
Homeowners Association
If your home falls under the association of homeowners, you will need two additional documents (not optional).
- A resale certificate
- Addendum based on the mandatory homeowner’s membership
Both of these documents contain critical information for the sale process and can be obtained through the homeowner’s association. The addendum, on the other hand, cover fees, and responsibilities of the new homeowner.
The crazy thing?
If this is not submitted along with the rest of the forms – more often than not buyers will be able to completely terminate the agreement to buy the home, without any cost.
Third Party Financing Addendum
Are you looking at getting a mortgage to help you finance the purchase? There is nothing wrong with doing it this way. In fact, plenty of homeowners do. However, the one drawback is that you will need an additional form – the third-party financing addendum. This document essentially creates a responsibility for the buyer regarding what will happen if they do not obtain the finance required within a given time-period.
Lead-Based Paint Addendum
Lead-paint was the popular coating used on homes prior to the 1980’s. Unfortunately, multiple health-related issues were found on the premises of homes making use of lead paint. Which is why the federal government issued the law behind this particular document.
If your home was built before 1975, regardless of the homes original date – you will need to provide buyers with a short explanation (flier) of what their rights are when it comes to lead-based paint homes. The buyer will also typically have 10-days to inspect the home and all of the potential issues that the lead-based paint may cause when they move into the home.
Ready To Sell Your Home?
So, now you know exactly what documents you need to get the process rolling. Have you got potential buyers already?
Selling your home can be extremely tricky. If you are struggling to find personal buyers, there are organizations that will buy your home from you, at the same price as a normal consumer. Look into Southern California Home buyers if this sounds like something you might be interested in.
The last thing you want to end up doing is messing up the sale of something that you could have easily avoided. A simple piece of paper stating something that is otherwise obvious. Keep these tips in mind before you think about selling your house. Be sure to have all of the necessary documents in a safe place where they are easily accessible when the time comes.
When you are relocating and need to put your house on the real estate market, you want the process to be as quick, painless, and efficient as possible. Fortunately, there are now great resources that use the technological trends of society and the traditional methods of real estate to make selling your house as smooth as possible. A resource like NL House Hunter can get your house on the market and visible to potential home-buyers with ease and speed, so you can spend more time enjoying your new home rather than fretting about getting rid of your old one.
Easier to See and Attract Home-buyers
One of the reasons why such a service is so helpful is that it gets your house or other property out on the market with rapidity and efficiency. By using the internet and the most advanced technology available in real estate, your house can be seen by myriad potential home-buyers. People who are searching for a new house can quickly and easily view photos and statistics about your house, and this is excellent, for you no longer have to wait for passerby to notice a “for sale” sign on your front lawn and wait for an open house showing of your home. By having images and speculations of your house on a real estate website, your home can be viewed much more easily and people can get an improved perspective of your house than they would by reading a pamphlet.
More Visible to a Wider Audience
Another great aspect of using a real estate website service is that house-hunters near and far can take a look at your home. Forget appealing only to people in your neighborhood and the surrounding areas. With this kind of online service, your house is visible to a wider audience. People from across the nation can view your home and take a look at the details to determine if it is a good fit for them. Pesky open-house viewings and limited-audience newspaper ads are a thing of the past. The internet is used by so many people, and now the real estate market is joining the ranks by offering online services to both home-buyers and sellers.
Less Stress for Everyone
Finally, the option of showing and marketing your home on a real estate website is a wonderful way to alleviate a lot of the stress that comes with selling a house. Posting ads in local publications is out-dated and increases the work you have to do. Now those who are selling their homes can post the images, data, and price on the internet through a secure real estate web-page so that loads of home buyers can easily and quickly see what you have to offer. This is less overwhelming for both sellers and purchasers. You can even communicate with interested buyers through the internet service, making this approach a win-win-win!
Landscaping Tips for Increasing Your Property’s Value
While there are certainly many practical ways for homeowners to maximize their property’s value, landscaping comes out as an obvious choice. This is because first impressions matter more than anything when it comes to selling a property. Did you know that your landscape can increase the value of your home for about 15% if it’s designed properly? Whether it’s beautiful trees that improve the looks of the whole neighborhood or various water features, landscaping is the best investment for anyone looking to increase their home’s value.
And the best thing is that it doesn’t have to be expensive at all. Of course, there are many expensive landscaping options available, but even the ones that you do on a budget will make your property worth more.
Defining Lawn Edges
For starters, your lawn should always be mowed. You can do this by yourself or hire a professional to take care of it. When it comes to edging, it will make your lawn appear as lower maintenance – which most of your potential buyers will love. Edging doesn’t have to be difficult, all you need to do is use a sharp spade to cut the soil and create a separation between your lawn and other elements, like path, or garden bed. There’s also the possibility of using stone or timber borders to physically separate the two, which can give it an even better look.
Limit the Number of Plants
Many homeowners make a mistake and go for dozens of species of plants in their gardens, thinking that it’ll improve the overall attractiveness of their property. While it may be so, this will also make your potential buyers wonder just how high-maintenance your garden is. The best way to go is to have enough plants to encourage diversity, yet to keep it in single digits. You may want to ask your local garden center about which plants are local and which would be the best fit for your neighborhood. By minimizing the number of plants that you have in your garden you’ll not only give it a more uniform look, but you’ll also create an appearance of low-maintenance, the importance of which we already highlighted earlier.
Your Landscape Should be Stylistically the Same to Your Home
While postmodernism has thought us a thing or two about mixing styles, when it comes to landscaping it’s always best to make sure that the house and the landscape are of the same style. A Mediterranean home won’t go well with an Oriental garden, for example. If you’re a proud owner of an industrial stylized home, you’ll want to go with a more modern landscape with a lot of greenery involved. Garden beds should fit the contours of your house, which is something that shouldn’t be too hard to do and it will easily make your home look more attractive. Any help and advice that you need when it comes to gardening tools can be provided by Hoselink, or other experts in the area.
Consider Adding a Play-Area
An outside play area can be a huge selling point, especially if you’re focused on selling to younger couples who are planning to start a family. It’s never been more important than today for children to have a safe spot where they can play inside the property, especially if they want to avoid their kids spending too much time in front of the computer. If you manage to incorporate a playing area well with the other elements of your landscape, you can easily increase the value and even have an easier time finding a buyer.
Plant Trees
Trees are so often forgotten when it comes to modern landscaping, mostly because people want to have a clear view of their house. But did you know that planting trees can increase your property’s value in more than one way? Having trees in your front yard will filter most of the noise coming from the outside, while also keeping the temperature inside the house more bearable in the summer. For best results when it comes to increasing value, try planting a few trees for all seasons so that your house looks beautiful throughout the year.
Bottom Line
Making a positive first impression on your buyers will already get you halfway through the sale and landscaping can help you with just that. There’s a lot that you can do to increase the appeal of your landscape and, in turn, it will return the favor by making your house look more expensive. The same way a great landscape can increase your property’s value, a poor one can potentially turn away the buyers – or make your house look cheaper than it really is. With a bit of luck, everything that you invest in landscaping will be returned to you (plus more!) once you do make a sale.
Ways to Make More Money When Selling Your Home
Selling a home can be an arduous process, during which a homeowner wants to make sure that they do everything they possibly can to increase their property’s price and their potential buyers. This can turn into a perilous balancing act, where homeowners do not want to sell their property too low but may end up waiting longer for a higher bid. There are a few things that homeowners can do immediately to attract higher bids faster.
- Concentrate on the home improvements with the highest return on investment. Certain home improvements have higher ROIs. Attic bedrooms have a very high return on investment because they create additional livable space. Other cosmetic improvements, such as new entry doors, can also have high ROIs. Home improvements that are specific to the current owner, like a remodeled home office, will usually have a comparatively low ROI.
- Stage the home properly. Too many homeowners simply remove a few knick knacks and then invite people in to a showing. Prospective buyers want to be able to imagine the possibilities that a home will present to them. This means that the home should appear to be perfect before inviting anyone in to a showing.
- Don’t wait for the inspection. Some homeowners may already be aware of issues that their home has but hesitate before fixing it. An inspection will reveal these issues and this might delay a sale or even cause it to fall through entirely. Homeowners should be proactive in repairing their home before sale.
- Consider the use of online advertising. The internet has made it extremely easy for homeowners to advertise their own property. There are many online classified websites where a homeowner can post their property for free. Any exposure is good exposure, and the amount of interested buyers that a homeowner can attract can directly affect the amount of offers they will get on their property.
- Focus on the curbside appeal of the property. Curbside appeal includes everything that the potential home buyers see when they pull up to the curb. This can include the front yard, the pathway to the entry door, the entry door itself and the garage door. Garage doors and entry doors in particular are usually very cheap to replace and will give a good impression. A homeowner can save money on lawn care and maintenance by doing the bulk of the work themselves. A new coat of external paint can also help improve a buyer’s first impression of the home.
- Renovate the property intelligently. There are certain renovations that home buyers will specifically look for and that the homeowner can do quite cheaply. As an example, many buyers today will be impressed by a solar panel system because it will save them money in the long run. While a solar panel system may seem expensive, there are actually many tax credits available for those who want to have them installed. This means that a homeowner may be able to increase the selling price of their home significantly while having the government subsidize part if not most of the cost.
Patience is usually a major component to selling a home at the highest possible price. Many homeowners may find that they will need to wait a while for the right offer, and they may even need to reject a few offers that just don’t feel right. A professional real estate agent can help advise a homeowner on the right choices to make, and let them know when there is a deal that they can’t afford to pass up.