First-Time Homebuyers Pics are here!

I promised this pictures a while ago and they're finally ready to be shown - my delay, not theirs! Take a look at this fabulous transformation my clients Jake and Zoila Couture have done with the bathroom of a home they bought last year in Sacramento's Curtis Park.















I have been inside the home and it looks wonderful. Jake & Zoila are a rare blend of character and commitment and I'm sure investing in real estate will help them achieve their financial goals.

Consider this a taste of future advertising in case they decide to sell the home sometime in the next few years. I've been promised more pictures, so stay tuned.

Adding Value to Your Home Regardless of the Sacramento Housing Market #5

Add container plants and flowers. Especially when you have a container garden near a doorway, it defines an entrance and highlights it. Definition and purpose of every space will always create a positive impact on the buyer thereby adding value to your home.

Plants will likely be considered to be "cosmetic" if you ask an appraiser, but never underestimate first impressions and the psychological impact of anything pleasing to the eye. For potential buyers, the presence of plants and especially flowering plants in a home before they enter it give it a sense of life.

If you've ever been a little concerned to walk by a home with a dead lawn and unkempt hedges, you know what I mean.

Adding Value to Your Home Ragardless of the Sacramento Housing Market #4

Add a bedroom.

Yes, you read that right. If you have an area in your house that is a wasted space and would measure at the very least 10' by 10' it is perfect for a bedroom addition. Be sure to hire an interior designer to see a well drawn out plan and do get a few quotes from professionals to get an idea what such an endeavor would cost.

Last I checked (which was about October of 2006) an outside addition of about 150 square feet complete with matching stucco and a roof was approximately $25,000. An inside addition would cost less, but be sure to check how much.

Here's how it adds value - when you add a bedroom, an appraiser has to compare your home with the rest of the homes in the neighborhood with 3 bedrooms, say - or 4. This works better if the area you live in has mixed homes - that is, if all the homes in a one mile radius have 3 bedrooms, you would probably not add as much value with a fourth bedroom as in an area that provides comparable sales with 3 and 4 bedrooms and where the extra bedroom sells for a premium. Do your homework before you decide to invest in this one!

Oh, another little known fact - for a space to be referred to as a bedroom, it must have a built in closet. Without it, the area is just a den.

A Post Completely Unrelated to Sacramento, Real Estate or Landlording

Well, maybe not completely. There's very little I do that's completely unrelated to all of the above. I share Cari McGee's reaction to "Under All is the Land."

But a phone call last week got me thinking. A telemarketer called me with something she said related to my real estate business. Now, I do listen before I dismiss them, especially if they begin like she did by asking me questions that related to my goals and accomplishments. Good beginning - a promise of something good, maybe.

But that promise was never kept. She did not keep a single word she said. I was supposed to get an email to confirm an appointment which I did not receive. The day we were supposed to have our "teleconference appointment," she called me twenty minutes before and said she had a training class she had forgotten about and would like to move our appointment to two p.m. that day.

Well, I did not keep that "appointment." And I did not return her call and hoped she got the message. Apparently not, because today I get a text message asking me to "forgive her" and asking permission to talk with me again.

Frankly, I could do without the drama.

But it made me seriously think about how often Realtors do this. And how the best and most successful Realtors and Brokers I have met do not. With them, there is no drama, no need to ask "forgiveness." There is only The Client and The Needs of The Client.

I was also having a discussion with my husband about salespeople yesterday and he said that although the company he works for has salespeople, the customers prefer the technicians. Why is that? It's obvious, of course. Salespeople make promises; technicians do the job.

The thing about being a Realtor is that I am both. The person who makes the promise and the person that gets the job done. Which means I must be extra careful not to promise more than I can deliver.

Fulfill the needs of the client. There's nothing more to it than that.

Adding Value to your Home Regardless of the Sacramento Housing Market - Tip #3

Now this may seem obvious and believe me it is!

PAINT.

You have no idea the transformation a house can go through with just a little paint. And you won't believe the amount of people that are turned off by a bad paint job.
Usually, if your home is going on the market, I wouldn't recommend any drastic colors - stick with neutrals, but don't be afraid to try color. Don't paint the home all white. I wouldn't recommend white as a color to any seller unless they think an investor would buy the property to rent it out.

But then again, the reason I have luck with our rentals is precisely because we make a concerted effort to make the place look like a permanent residence for someone. There's curb appeal, flowers, landscaping and so on. It isn't just whitewashed and put on the market.

With paint, you can actually create a place people want to live in. You can change the character of a house with paint. It's the easiest and cheapest way to transform a house.

Oh, and should you paint before you put your house on the market? Absolutely.

Adding Value to your Home Regardless of the Sacramento Housing Market - Tip #2

If you are one of the lucky few to own one of those 1940s or 1950s Sacramento ranch or cottage style homes, you probably have hardwood floors throughout your house. Most people have never looked underneath the carpet to know. I urge you to do so. One home I owned had sticky vinyl squares pasted on top of the beautiful hardwood. Many cleaning agent fumes later, all the vinyl was taken off to reveal hardwood.

Any easy way to know if you have hardwood throughout the house is to look into the closet. If the closets have hardwood - usually not covered by carpet - chances are the entire house has hardwood floors.

The pictures are from one of my rental units and are not retouched. Look at the difference!

The hard part of this is getting all the furniture out, but it's so worth it. Get the floors refinished. You can do this yourself, but it's much easier to pay someone to do it and refinishing floors doesn't cost an exorbitant amount. I recently had about 700 square feet of flooring refinished for $1700.

If you are considering putting your home on the market and have hardwood floors, it is absolutely imperative you get them refinished. Buyers love walking into a home with gleaming floors when you open the main door.

As I like to call it, it creates the "wow" factor of a home and gives a fantastic first impression.

Adding Value to your Home Regardless of the Sacramento Housing Market - Tip #1

With all this talk about the housing market going up or down, I find a lot of people don't pay attention to factors they can control about the price their home can command. The market is beyond the control of homeowners, but the condition of their home is.

Get the front and back professionally landscaped. At the very least, add a sprinkler system. If your home is not going on the market any time soon, you may have time to watch the grass grow back. This is especially important in the Sacramento heat, where infrequent watering will kill the lawn in less time than you can say "Scotts Weed and Feed." Use a timer!

Here are before and after pictures of one of my rentals as it looked when I purchased it and when it was rented out. (Yes, the healthier lawn is when we were through with it, not the other way around.)