Buyers: How to Put Your Best Foot Forward

Housing prices continue to climb, inventories continue to remain low, demand for housing is intense, and there’s absolutely no relief in sight. It’s a hard time to be a homebuyer right now! Despite that, you can still find a house that you’ll love; it may just take a little extra polish and shine as you head into your home buying adventure. Cash is still king, but you can be more competitive by putting your best foot forward with your offers.

Here are our best tips for buyers trying to secure a home in this busy and tight market.

Bring a Pre-Approval Letter From Your Lender

It’s one thing to think you’ll be approved for a loan, and yet another to know it. In today’s competitive market, your seller doesn’t want to wonder; they want to be certain that the contract they sign is one that will be able to close. This is doubly a concern for sellers who are faced with multiple offers in a short period, since sometimes they all look pretty good on the surface.

Going to your bank and making it as far as your loan approval process can go without a house gives a seller confidence that they won’t be back in the same place in a month, trying to sell a house that already had a contract fall through on it. For them, that might mean delaying their own purchase, or even having to sell their home at a discount, since buyers are sometimes nervous when previous contracts didn’t close.

Go Conventional!

Although many buyers can get into a home faster with an FHA loan, especially with the sometimes lower down payment requirements, sellers know that FHA and other loan programs carry additional requirements for the house itself, too. Although these are usually items most houses will already have if someone is living in them (for example, heat in every room), sellers have often heard horror stories and simply don’t want to deal with the unknown.

Rather than using an FHA program, work on your credit and choose a conventional loan. Conventional loans have far fewer requirements on the property itself, making them an easy transaction for your home seller. There’s nothing wrong with using an FHA loan if you have the time and patience to house hunt using one, but nothing says “easy peasy” to a seller like a conventional loan.

Bring Your Best Offer

Your best offer is the highest amount you’re willing to pay for the property in question, not an ideal price that you’d like to pay. In a different market, where buyers get their picks of the litter, you can feel out a seller to see where the bottom is, but in a market like what we’re still facing in most of the country, you’re far more likely to be competing with several offers at once, so the seller will probably either accept or reject yours rather than try to negotiate.

In addition to bringing your best offer, keep your list of requests short. You can (and should) absolutely ask for repairs to major items you noted when you viewed the home, but now is not the time to sweat the little things. The longer that list is now, before you’ve even had your inspection, the less likely it is that the seller will want to work with you.

Go Forth Boldly Into Your Offer

Putting in an offer on a home in this breakneck speed real estate market can be extremely intimidating, but you never have to face the unknown alone. When it comes time to move into your new home, you’ve got an entire network of friends and partners to help you patch up, paint up, clean up, and even move in!

 

What’s the Best Use of My Remodeling Dollars?

When it comes to remodeling, some changes that you make to your home are going to net you a big return on your investment. Sometimes this return comes in the form of an increase to the overall value of your property, while sometimes the return is more in the form of your enjoyment and the overall usefulness that your home has for you. Either way, there’s a definite positive side to your remodeling project that you’ll reap the rewards from for years to come. With some other projects, though… well, let’s just say that they seemed like a good idea at the time.

If you’re considering remodeling your home, it’s important that you think about what you want to do before you start. This will help you avoid projects that just waste money or leave things worse off than they started. So how do you know if a project is going to be worthwhile? Here are a few suggestions that might help.

Improving the Look

One of the best remodeling projects that you can undertake with respect to average cost versus average increase in resale value is adding or replacing garage doors. Homeowners who undertake this sort of a project typically recoup around 94 percent of their cost in their home’s resale value even when it’s just a change for cosmetic reasons. Replacing siding with manufactured stone veneer has a similar cost-to-resale-increase relationship, with around 92 percent of the cost being recouped. This says a lot for how big changes to the look of your home can positively affect your home’s resale value.

While not every remodeling project is going to make your home’s resale value skyrocket, in most cases you’ll recoup most of your money if you’re making improvements to the overall look of your home. Replacing siding, replacing old windows, or replacing your front door or entryway can all make your home look more like you want it to without causing you to lose a ton of cash value in the process. Just make sure that the project is well thought out before you dive in, since you want to make sure that your improvements match other details of your home.

Functionality Improvements

Another big thing to consider when thinking about remodeling is how your remodel will change the functionality of your home. A big example here is remodeling your kitchen; not only will you be able to change the look of your kitchen, but your remodel also gives you a chance to make some changes to how it functions as well. Adding or updating appliances, moving things around, and opening up that kitchen floor plan a bit can not only make the kitchen look better but can make it easier to use as well. The same goes for some other rooms in the home as well, where remodeling can create a big change in functionality.

Depending on the size and type of remodel you do for functionality changes, you can see a nice improvement in your home’s value as well. Going back to that kitchen remodel, minor functionality updates can get you around a 72 percent return on investment. Even more expensive major remodels can still get you around 57 percent of your money back in your home’s asking price. Bathroom remodels are similar, netting you 70 to 60 percent or more of your costs in home value.

Remodel Smart

The big thing with remodeling is that you want to make sure that you don’t go into it blindly and overspend or under plan. HomeKeepr can help you with this. Our app can connect you with contractors and remodeling pros that will get you on the right path and help you avoid costly mistakes to make sure that your remodel is both easy on the eyes and the wallet.

 

Get More From Your HVAC System

Your HVAC system works hard throughout the year to make sure that your home stays comfortable. During the chilly months of winter, it pumps hot air through the home to keep things toasty and warm. Once summer rolls around, cool air circulates to keep things from getting too hot within the home. When it’s operating at its best, you likely barely notice that it’s doing anything at all; the climate of your home remains so consistent that all of your HVAC system’s hard work just seems to happen in the background. Could it be even better, though?

There are usually things that you can do to improve the efficiency of your HVAC system even more, helping it to run better while also saving you some money on your heating and cooling costs. The specifics of how you accomplish this depend largely on your home’s layout and the sort of HVAC system that you have, but there are generally at least a few improvements that you can make. Here are some suggestions to help you head in the right direction so you can get more from your system.

Optimizing Air Flow

One big thing that you can do to get more from your HVAC system is to make sure that the airflow for your system is unobstructed. There are a few ways that you can do this. Periodically check your vents and vacuum or clean them as necessary to make sure that there aren’t any obstructions or dirt deposits in them. Check your cold air return to ensure that there isn’t any furniture or other large items blocking the free flow of air and that proper clearances are being observed. Check your filters to ensure that they’re clean, or install an electrostatic filter that you can buy once and then periodically wash to keep it in peak operating condition. Basically, the goal here is to make sure that there isn’t anything that’s going to interfere with the flow of air through your HVAC system.

Assisting Your HVAC System

Once you’ve got air flowing without issue, there are other things that you can do to make sure that your HVAC system isn’t working harder than it has to in order to keep your home comfortable. Consider installing a new thermostat, especially a smart thermostat that uses multiple sensors around the home to check temperatures in different locations, to ensure that the entire house is comfortable. A house fan installed in the attic can also be beneficial during certain times of the year, helping to control the buildup of hot air and making the house easier to heat and cool overall.

Another big thing that you can do to help your HVAC system is to inspect your windows and search for signs of damage or leaks. If your windows are letting air leak freely into or out of your home, your HVAC system will have to work that much harder to keep the temperature where you want it, because outside temperatures will have a much greater effect on what things are like inside. While damaged windows are often easy to spot, be sure to periodically check for breezes or other signs of air leaks while the HVAC system is off to make sure that you don’t have any unwanted air exchanges going on.

HVAC Maintenance

Nobody wants to have to call out an HVAC technician on an emergency call because their system has gone out, especially during the coldest part of winter or the heat of the summer months. To help avoid this, periodic maintenance of your HVAC system is essential. Fortunately, many HVAC pros offer seasonal or yearly inspection services to keep your system in top shape throughout the year.

 

What Causes Ice Inside Windows?

When temperatures drop in winter, it’s not uncommon to see ice and snow outside and maybe even a little bit of frost on the outside of your windows and storm doors. Occasionally, though, you might notice a bit of ice building up on the inside of your windows as well. It’s easy to overlook this as just a sign that the temperature has really dropped outside, but that can be a mistake.

Ice appearing on the inside of your windows is usually a sign that there is something going wrong in or around your windows. At best this can drive up your heating costs during the winter, sometimes significantly. At worst, you might be looking at leaks or other damage that could lead to significant repairs down the road. So if you notice ice on the inside of your windows, it’s important that you take action sooner rather than later.

Ice Inside Your Windows

When ice appears on your window interior, it’s typically a sign that moisture is condensing on the glass and then freezing as a result of cold air making it through the window barrier. This can occur in a few ways, including cracks or gaps in the window frame or damage to the window itself. The cold air cools down the window glass, making it cold enough for the water in the air to condense and freeze on the glass surface.

This can be problematic if the air leak is a result of cracks in the glass or window frame, as ice can build up within the crack as well. As the ice expands, the crack itself can widen. Multiple freezes over the course of the winter can cause increasingly worse damage, resulting in larger cracks or leaks by the time that spring rolls around.

Addressing the Root Cause

There are a few different ways that you can treat the problems that cause ice to appear on the inside of your windows. If you can’t find any signs of damage on or around your windows, it’s possible that the icy buildup is simply a result of your home’s humidity being too high and the windows themselves not being sufficient to keep all the cold air out. If this is the case, you can usually get rid of the ice by using a dehumidifier to reduce your home’s humidity or using home exhaust fans to circulate humid air out of the home. This will prevent ice from building up and potentially causing problems in the future.

If you do find potential gaps or cracks on or around the window, try sealing them with caulk to keep cold air from making its way inside. The caulk can be removed once warmer temperatures come around so that the window will be functional. Applying thermal plastic sheeting or other barriers over the windows may also help to control your icing issue since it will keep humid air in the house from coming in contact with the cold glass of your window. Other solutions such as putting towels or other cloth barriers in place over potential cracks or placing a small space heater near windows that have icing problems may also work. It’s worth noting that none of these are permanent solutions, though they may help you to avoid damage until better solutions can be enacted.

Fixing Your Ice Problem

In the end, the only way to really fix a problem with ice forming on the inside of your windows is to repair the problem. This could take the form of making repairs to your window frame, replacing cracked or broken glass in the window, or replacing the entire window itself.

 

Are Your Faucets Frost-Free?

Depending on where you live, this may be the time of year when you keep watching the mercury drop lower and lower as weather patterns come and go. Cold winter temperatures can be difficult for people and pets to deal with, but they can also be an issue as far as your home is concerned. Freezing pipes and faucets can be major hassles that cost a significant amount to repair, especially as they often require emergency service calls that cost extra. This is part of the reason that so much emphasis is placed on freeze prevention during the winter.

One thing that can make a big difference in the freeze safety of your home is the use of frost-free faucets on your home’s exterior. As the name implies, these faucets are designed to make it much more difficult for them to freeze and potentially crack or leak as a result of cold weather. If you aren’t sure whether your home has frost-free faucets installed and you think that you might need them, read on for more information.

What Are Frost-Free Faucets?

As the name suggests, frost-free faucets (which are also called freeze-proof faucets by some) are exterior faucets that are designed to prevent freezing around the valve and within the spigot itself. They do this by using a longer faucet neck and slightly different valve angle to place the shutoff valve of the faucet inside the house instead of outside, ensuring that the valve is in a warmer environment when the temperature drops and therefore the likelihood of freezing is significantly reduced. This protects the valve from freezing damage, but also provides additional benefits as well.

Because the valve is inside of your home, the spigot itself remains dry while the water is turned off. This eliminates one of the other major issues with freezing, damage to the spigot itself that can cause leaks. Since there isn’t any water in or near the spigot, there’s no water available to freeze and expand within the spigot and no way for the increasing internal pressure to cause cracks. It’s worth noting that having a hose connected during the winter can still cause water to be held within it, though, so disconnecting your hoses before cold weather moves in is still important when using frost-free faucets.

Frost-Free Faucets on Your Home

There are a few ways to tell if you have frost-free faucets already installed on your home. One way is to look at the orientation of the faucet itself; if it tilts upward at an angle, it’s likely not a frost-free model. Frost-free faucets have a longer screw mechanism that run the length of the faucet neck, so the faucet and valve control are almost certainly going to be situated straight out from your home and perpendicular to the wall.

Another key feature of frost-free faucets is that the neck of the faucet goes into the wall instead of simply being connected to a pipe coming out of the wall. While they may have mounting hardware that helps to hold the faucet in place against the wall, upon closer inspection you will likely be able to tell that the faucet and the “pipe” going into the wall are all part of a single piece of material. Standard faucets will have a separate pipe that will be obvious upon inspection.

Installing Frost-Free Faucets

Proper installation is important for frost-free faucets since even a small leak during installation can increase the chances of freezing during cold weather significantly. As a result, it’s generally recommended that you bring in a plumber so that the new faucets are installed professionally. If you aren’t sure which plumber in your area is the best for the job

 

Fix Your Yard’s Drainage Now

Drainage problems can be a major issue for homeowners. Not only does poor drainage cause standing water in your yard, but it can also lead to leaks and foundation problems with your house depending on where the water collects. As if that wasn’t bad enough, landscaping and lawn upkeep become a lot harder when your yard doesn’t drain well. Is there anything that can be done for these problems?

Fortunately, yes. There are actually a few different ways to treat drainage issues in your yard, and this is a great time to undertake a project to correct them. By taking action now, you can avoid problems that might arise from heavy spring rains. The exact solution to your drainage issues will depend on the cause of your problem, so here are a few different options to consider.

Grading Issues

One common cause of problems with drainage is inconsistent grading in your yard. This can cause problems if your home is at the bottom of a big slope across your yard, but it can also be an issue if the grading is inconsistent and as a result has one or more low spots in the yard. Water flows along the soil wherever the grade leads, so this can cause it to collect around your home or in low areas which can then become swampy and overgrown.

Regrading your yard can be done either with specialized tools that scrape soil from higher areas into lower ones, or by bringing in additional soil to completely change the grade. Each method has its advantages, with redistribution being favored when there are both high and low areas in your yard, and the addition of new soil being best when you need to change an otherwise mostly good grade. Once the regrading is finished you can seed the graded area and have grass growing by the time spring arrives.

Soil Penetration

Another big problem with drainage comes when water simply can’t penetrate down into the soil in time to be absorbed. This is especially problematic because you end up with way too much water in the areas where water collects but the soil in other areas might not get enough. Sometimes this is because the soil has too much clay in its composition so it’s difficult for water to penetrate, and sometimes it’s a result of other issues such as thick thatch. In some cases, it’s even just a matter of the soil being too compacted by traffic and time. Regardless of the cause, though, there are solutions.

Clay-heavy soil is the most work-intensive to correct, but the solution is also pretty simple. You simply need to break up the clay and add soil or sand into the mix to make it easier to drain. Sometimes this is as easy as adding a few holes in the clay-heavy area and mixing it together, especially if the clay is in a relatively small area. In some instances, though, you may need to do some tilling or other heavy mixing to break up larger clay beds.

Other issues can be fixed by using a dethatcher on your lawn to break up the thatch buildup or running tools over the ground that punch small holes to break up overly compacted topsoil. Dethatching and aerating the soil like this are often done together, as the loosening of soil is good for the growing grass as well even if it wasn’t excessively compacted.

Fix Your Drainage Problems

Correcting drainage issues can be a big job, but your yard and your home’s foundation will thank you. If you’re in need of a landscaping pro to get the job done, HomeKeepr can help with that. Creating a HomeKeepr account is free, and once you’re a member you can connect with a wide range of pros in your area to help with this and other tasks around the house.

 

Is This the Year You’ll Add a Home Gym?

Winter and early spring are typically great times for construction projects around the house. Not only do materials tend to be a bit cheaper due to reduced overall demand, but some labor costs may be reduced as well. Because of this, some homeowners tend to start looking for add-on projects or major remodels to undertake so that they can take advantage of lower prices and faster project starts.

One popular home project in recent years is adding a home gym, often converting a largely unused basement or garage space into an area for a wide range of workouts. It’s possible that you’ve considered adding a home gym yourself, either as a room conversion or in an exterior building or add-on. Let’s look at this project a little more closely to determine whether this is the year you should let those home gym dreams come true.

Home Gym Basics

When you think of a home gym, you might think of some big elaborate space with big, bulky equipment and mirrors hanging everywhere. Sounds intimidating, right? Not only is something like that probably more than you need, but having such an over-the-top gym area in your home could actually make it harder to sell since it’s such a specialized room. This is why most home gyms are generally much simpler affairs, and really only require a few things to make them truly functional.

The basic things that you’ll need for your home gym are floor space (obviously), good ventilation, some storage areas, and access to electricity. In a pinch, you can even make do with a small shed or room corner that has some storage totes and some foam padding on the floor. Even when you go for a full-room conversion, these basics will generally remain the same.

Designing the Gym

If you want to convert a room into a home gym, start with adding some impact-absorbing foam panels or something similar on the floor where you’ll be doing a lot of your workouts. Plan out where you’re going to place treadmills or any other equipment that you’ll need to plug in and see if there are outlets nearby; if not, you’ll need to bring in an electrician to add some. You’ll also need an area to store exercise equipment, either in cabinets or totes, and possibly a laundry basket for dirty towels to keep the sweat contained. For ventilation, you’ll either want the room to connect to your heat and air system or to have fans and windows that you can leverage to circulate the air around.

If you want something smaller, take these same basics and scale them down. Instead of plotting a full-room floor plan, arrange your storage solutions along the walls leading into a corner. A small TV in the corner can also help you to access exercise videos and other content to help you with your workouts. A standing fan can help with ventilation, and so long as you make use of your storage you should be largely good to go. Even with minimal changes to the house, it should still be an effective workout area.

Building Your Home Gym

A home gym project can be as big or as small as you need it to be. Even if your plans are relatively minor, though, you may still need to make a few changes to your environment or bring in a decorator to help you arrange things in a small space. Fortunately, HomeKeepr is here to help you find the pro that you need for your home gym design no matter how big or small the project is.