Safety Tip: Your Escape Plan

This is one of the “ Less Fun” posts that you may see this year but an important one.

If you should have the sad event of having a house fire, do you have an escape plan?

If you were to wake up in the middle of the night to hear either your smoke detectors or carbon monoxide detectors all going off ( because they are of course all plugged in, charged, and not yanked out of the ceiling) you would have a plan of where to go and how to exit.

Not only would you have a plan, but your family members would also know how to escape the home.

Important also to have a conversation with any children that the adults would be the only ones to go and find any pets and that their only job is to get themselves out of the house and to a safe designated meeting spot.

Where is the meeting spot? Make sure to pick a location that is close enough to safely run to in the middle of the night yet far enough from the house so that the fear of fire getting too close is not a concern.

Even if you come up with a plan when you first move into your home, make sure to refresh everyone’s memory of the plan every year or two.

Hoping that this post reaches many as it is so important.

Tanya

“Plans are nothing; planning is everything. “

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Seller Tip: Winter Safety for Showings

Dear Sellers:

Please make sure to do absolutely everything that you can to create a safe environment for all showings at your property in the winter time. Especially if you have already moved and the home is vacant.

As much as we , as realtors, love carrying things like shovels and sand in our cars, ideally all of these things would already be addressed prior to our arrival at an appointment.

A few things to think about when showing in the winter time:

• Is your property entry well lit at night? Any showings after 4:30 at night could potentially be in the dark

• Do you have proper lighting in the basement? Are all of your light bulbs in working order? Are they easily turned on without the realtor breaking the pull chain or standing on a ladder? ( again anything that I might reference has likely already happened to me lol)

• If you have entry steps, are they sanded or salted to avoid slips on the way in?

• ( For vacant properties only) Are you making sure to keep your thermostat at a minimum of 60 degrees on super cold and windy days? You certainly want to make sure that a potential buyer doesn’t show up to find frozen pipes at the property.

• Do you have someone on hand or are you ready plow the driveway should a storm hit right before the showing? Making sure that people can easily pull into the driveway to access the home is important.

Why you ask do I even think about this topic ? Until you have sold and CLOSED on the sale of your property, it will continue to be on your home insurance policy.

This means that any slips, accidents, or unforeseen events are on your policy.

My hope is that with the above tips and advice, you can keep your home safe and secure right up until the day of your sale!

Happy Selling !

Tanya

 “I don’t believe in luck, I believe in preparation.”

Bobby Knight

Buyer Tip: Before the Negotiations Start ...

I cannot recommend enough deciding prior to getting into the heat of negotiations, what your top number will be.

This has been an EXTREMELY competitive market this year especially with homes in the price range of $280,000 and below.

With a sellers market this hot we have seen just some of the following happen :

• Multiple offers the first day on the market

• Holding impromptu Open Houses just to get everyone in the first day

• Submissions of personal letters with offers from buyer to seller!

• over asking offers as much as 20% over list price ( I will give you my thoughts and concerns on this in another post)

With all of that said, you want to be both mentally and emotionally prepared when you do find “ The One” and are putting an offer on that property.

Typically, you will start with an opening offer that your buyer’s agent will draft and advise you on. Once that is submitted with all of the proper paperwork, you then wait for a response from the seller/seller’s agent.

Before you hear a response to your offer sit down with your realtor and whoever might also be buying the home with you and decide the following:

1. What is the top price that you are willing to pay for the home? Decide what your absolute top number is that you would pay for the home and that should offers go higher than this number, you are willing to walk away no matter what.

2. Are you willing to pay over the asking price? If so, will you be OK with possibly paying a bit MORE than the fair market value? If this truly is your DREAM home and you are planning on staying there for a good chunk of time, paying over asking or significantly more than you planned might be worth it over the span of a 15 -30 year loan.

3. How will you feel if you lose the property to another buyer? Will you be mildly disappointed or DEVASTATED? This is really important to talk about as a group.

Once you have answered all of the questions above, you are fully prepared to hear whatever response comes your way after submitting your offer.

Lastly, I will say that in 17 years of real estate, I have never seen a deal that fell through not be for the best in the long run. It’s so hard to see that when you are in the midst of it but again I promise you, if it doesn’t come together for that house and another buyer gets it … it just wasn’t meant to be.

Happy house hunting everyone!

Tanya

“Some things are destined to be -- it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”
― J.R. Ward

First Time Home Buyer's Tip: Checking Your Credit

One of the first steps to buying a home is to make sure that you are not only in a financial position to buy a home, but to also make sure that you have the credit history that will allow for you to be approved by your lender for a mortgage. 

There are several ways to find out how you stand for your credit history and credit scoring. 

My first recommendation would be to go right to your local lender ( could be the lender that carries your car loan) and let them know that you would like to find out what you can afford for a home purchase and that you wanted to know your credit score. They can sit with you and go over what they will need to see in terms of documents etc to run all of your numbers and see if you are in a financial position to buy a home. They may even be able to run a credit check that day and give you your credit scores and a full credit report. 

The other option would be to open an account with Credit Karma.com . We did this years ago when we were recovering from some financial hardship and working on repairing our credit scores. It really is a great tool ( No, I am not being paid by Credit Karma.com to write this lol ) It will not only show you what your credit score is but it will show you any lines of credit that might be open in your name. VERY important to check every item here and make sure that all are accounts that you not only know about but are ones that you opened. We live in a time sadly where identity theft occurs so we should all be checking our credit history on a regular basis. 

https://www.creditkarma.com/faq/howitworks

Once you have your score , this will give you a better idea of what mortgage programs you would be eligible for. 

If your score is less than perfect, don’t panic. It is way better to know so that you can come up with a 1 or 2 year plan of repairing whatever you need to work on. Or, perhaps your score is ok but you want to improve it even more to get a better interest rate on your mortgage program. That is also worth waiting on. 

Hoping this post was helpful and as always, reach out to me with questions !

Tanya 

“ All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination” 

-Earl Nightingale