Increase Your Living Space With Smart Planning and Simple Improvements
One of the main reasons people move is to get more space. If this is the situation you find yourself in, you may want to make your home seem larger, for your own use and to make it more attractive for getting it sold. Here are some inexpensive tips that you can use that will make your home seem larger. This can be a definite advantage when you are selling a smaller home. You could even like the results enough that you will enjoy your home a bit longer without even having to move!
1. Use Light to Your Advantage — Especially in a small home, lighting becomes surprisingly important. The feeling of openness is aided by bright lighting, because of our lifelong conditioning to associate well lit places with the outdoors. Shine lights on walls to make them look brighter. You might want to have controls installed that will allow you to change the intensity of the lights in each room per your mood.
2. Wall Color — Use warm colors such as red, orange and browns. These colors can make a room seem bigger, and more inviting. To give a particular room added depth, you might try an approach of using light shades on three walls of the room and a coordinating darker tone of the same color on the other wall.
3. Minimum Furniture — Rooms that have too many pieces of furniture in them will look smaller. The more overfilled a space is, the smaller it will seem. Be sure not to crowd your furniture together when you want to make your room look larger. Avoid putting bulky armchairs and sofas in cramped spaces. To maximize the utilization of space, use dual purpose furniture. An example would be an end table with a built in magazine stand takes up less space than two pieces.
4. Be Careful With Your Choices in Decorator Items As Well — The accessories you choose have a big impact on the appearance of overall size. Use curtains in a light color to allow light during the day. Select light colored furniture, or as a minimum use light colored covers for the furniture, since light colors will generally give a feeling of extra space.
5. Storage Plan — Liberal use of storage is important, especially in confined spaces. The more clutter you have in your home, the smaller it will look. Find storage systems that fit your family’s needs. By reducing clutter, the home will look better to guests and homebuyers.
6. Using Mirrors — Use wall mirrors strategically to add depth to a room. You will find there is hardly any improvement you can make that will be more cost-effective in making a room seem larger. Mirrors can be attractive in and of themselves, and they serve the additional purpose of adding depth to a small room.
You can use these hints to improve your home on a small budget. In fact, these suggestions are among the best ways to improve the value of your home, not to mention making it look great on a modest budget.
This content was made available through Automated Homefinder, your Longmont real estate professionals in Colorado.
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Pricing for Success in the Sale of Your Home
It is axiomatic that the higher the price when you go to sell your home, the longer the sale will take. Despite this common knowledge, the mistake made most frequently by people who want to sell their home is aiming for too high a price. This can be really problematic if you have fallen in love with a new home you have found, since you will unavoidably feel mounting pressure to get on with life and get into your new dream home. Even without that, it’s no fun to watch the weeks turn into months with nothing happening, sitting by the phone in a too-quiet house.
Being Competitive Begins With Using the Best Available Information
If you want a quick sale, you have to price your home just below other similar homes in your area. Coming up with a competitive market analysis, which involves a bit of experience in addition to just looking at what other homes are for sale nearby, is something best accomplished by a Realtor if you are working with one on the sale. A good Realtor understands the overall market and can help you set an achievable price point that can be to your best advantage to get the sale made.
Quick Deal Versus (Maybe) More Money
If you are buying an item for your home, you would not likely spend too much time in deciding between an item you could get nearby and one that might cost less but you were required to spend a lot of time and energy researching, locating and hauling and making arrangements to obtain. Your time has a value as does the money you spend on your house while it is being sold. Taking these factors into account puts the subject into a different light. Another disadvantage, if you are in a period of slow turnover and lackluster sales (buyer’s market), is that dropping your price after a time of inactivity tells buyers that you might be in a vulnerable position. They may well respond too eagerly to any sign that you are in an unfavorable position, exercising their advantage against your increasing anxiety to sell.
Go with the Flow of the Market
If it happens that after looking at the case for not going for the maximum price you still have that goal in mind, you will probably just have to be willing to wait until you can get that best price; in other words, give due credence to market conditions. Now might not be the time to be out there, so you may have to yield on the idea of selling with speedy efficiency — but still, when the market makes a move you may need to act on short notice. The latter situation could be especially hard to deal with; although you may have options available such as staying with family or friends a time if you have to sell your home before you get another, more likely you would have to move into a short-term rental situation which could compromise the cash you might have made with your careful timing. This is not the usual situation but if it does you may be successful in getting the buyers to stay where they are longer. In most cases, though, once they know their mortgage is approved they will want to close within a week or two.
About That Repair Work…
It is also too easy to conveniently forget actual differences when you are deciding on a price for your home and you see other homes selling at what seems to be good prices. If you have not maintained your home in top condition, you will not be able to sell it at the same favorable price as the other homes even if they are similar. If this happens you may be able to price it to sell quickly by offsetting the price of any repairs that will be left to the new homeowner. This would result in a lower selling price but a lower level of bother and expense for you — meaning you trade time and effort for money (Nothing new about that deal; we have to make those judgments all the time.) Again, what is your effort and involvement worth? Serious repairs such as sagging beams, roofing problems, and malfunctioning heating and cooling units may not be eligible for this kind of treatment, although you can get away with it for things that only affect appearance. Jobs such as putting in fresh plants, replacing old gutters or shutters, and a new paint job can sometimes be overlooked as long as the buyers understand they will be taking on some physical work in exchange for the price break they’re getting. In fact, some people like the idea of buying a home that needs work because they can make it their own. Anything you can do to get through with the sale in the quickest time is your best way to go.
This article was presented by Automated Homefinder, the Longmont real estate specialists of Colorado.
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