shift your house in hard times

Tittle: How to shift your house in hard times

There can be no doubt now – as the indices below show – that the property boom is over. Asking prices and completions are down and new-buyer enquiries are falling at the fastest rate since 2004, says the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. So with fewer buyers around, how can you raise your chances of selling your home?
Tidy up
One estate agent tells me she frequently ends up doing washing up and tidying away laundry before she takes photos of a property. A buyer wants to see the property – not what you had for dinner last night.
If your property has been on the market a while, consider having new photos taken. Repaint your front door (or clean it up if it’s UPVC) and tidy the front garden – often buyers don’t even bother to look at the house if the garden is a mess.
Don’t do too much DIY
While a lick of paint can help with a sale, don’t get carried away. With house-price growth slowing many buyers believe renovation work is the best way to add value to a property, so they’re looking for properties they feel they can upgrade. As a result, one of the main areas experiencing a slowdown in sales is new-build homes and properties that already have a shiny new kitchen and loft conversion.
But you can make your home more attractive to these fixer-uppers. If it has the potential for a loft conversion or extension, consider getting the planning permission. Do remember, though, that while this will attract buyers, it probably won’t entice them to pay more – after all, they could do it themselves and may not be planning on doing any work for years.
Drop the price
Make sure your asking price is realistic. Find out what similar properties in your area have sold for. Check the Land Registry for details of sale prices by post code. Don’t just go by local asking prices – the house around the corner might be pitched at £500,000, but it may have been on the market for months.
Also, if your home has been on the market for three months, then reassess the asking price. Even if the initial price was perfectly reasonable, the market is not what it was in August. With mortgages more expensive and harder to come by, people can’t, and won’t, pay what they would have paid in the summer.
Choose your estate agent carefully
Get a couple of estate agents round to value your house, but don’t just go with the highest valuation. Estate agents know that this the best way to get a property on the books, so sometimes overvalue a property just to ensure they’ll be representing it.
Check in estate agents’ windows and see who sells the most houses that are similar to yours, and once you’ve chosen a firm read the small print. The average fee is around 1.5%, but some agents charge various hidden fees, including – and this is the worst, given the current market – withdrawal fees.
So they will lure you in and take a fee for putting you on their books, then if they fail at their job and your property remains unsold, they will charge you as much as £400 to take it back off the market.

source: http://www.moneyweek.com/

How To Make Millions By Flipping Properties

By: James Klobasa

No matter if you are young and inexperienced, when you learn how to flip properties, you can make millions. For doing this, you do not even require help from anybody else.

However, there are still many people who hesitate to participate in real estate investing in flipping properties because they think you need to have a great deal of start-up money, which is not true at all. Do not pay heed to such belief because you can buy houses with no money down through various loan programs, and even sellers will often help you with the closing costs. This eventually makes your start-up cost very little. It is not without reason that flipping houses are supposed to be the most tried-and-true way to make a fortune in real estate. In fact there is no other business in real estate industry that can earn you that much money, with that little start-up cost, and that too, in a very short span of time. Many people have become millionaires by flipping properties. So, why should you leave yourself behind? After all, you are in a serious business, and you need to take prompt action as and when the opportunity comes to you. So stop dreaming and get started.

What Is Flipping Properties All About?

In real estate investing terms, flipping properties means buying a property at a low price with a view to resell the same quickly at a higher price after making certain modifications in the property. The idea is so you could make substantial rapid money. You do not keep it long for rental purposes.

Flipping Properties In A Wholesale Market

Real estate investing in flipping properties in a wholesale market requires you to think out of the box if at all you want to make some rapid money. In fact, the real estate market for flipping properties is very hot, and every next investor is looking for properties, which they can fix and flip. Therefore, if you want to save yourself from the hassle of fixing-up the properties, you can easily resell the properties to such investors, keeping a substantial margin for yourself. This way, you can earn some instant profit without much pain, and that too, more quickly than you can do it in a retail market. Obviously, you will not be able to earn as much as you could earn by fixing and flipping the properties in a retail market, but you will be earning your money in comparatively very little time. And, that makes the difference.

Flipping Properties In A Retail Market

If you are planning to earn some huge bucks through real estate investing, and are ready to spend some good time doing the fix-up work, you must sell the properties in a retail market. This way, if you are good at negotiation skills, you can easily make somewhere around $50,000 on each deal. But, at the same time, you must take certain precautions while you flip properties this way. You must be good at analytical skills and making various calculations. Never ever try to underestimate the cost to fix-up the property.

When it comes to real estate investing in flipping properties, you must take into consideration each little aspect. This is what eventually determines your overall profit. So, be very careful.

Article Source: http://www.realestateinvestmentarticles.net/
James Klobasa, once broke with no job and $20,000 in debt made a choice that changed his life forever. That choice was investing in Real Estate. With the founder of, The Little Building Co. you too, can learn at Real-Real Estate Investing