PDX Renovations

Tag: #webuyhouses

  • 4 Mistakes Owners Make When Preparing a House For Sale

    Anyone who has sold a house in the past knows only too well that major expenses can be in order to make the house marketable, and/or to get a buyer to close on their offer. The house seems fine to the family that has lived there for years – but the offers show that home-buyers want you to replace your ancient-but-functioning water heater, and want price concessions to allow them to replace the carpet.

     

    You’ve gotten the pep-talk from your real estate agent about what makes one house stand out over another to a potential buyer. But here is where owners eager to sell often start to go wrong – they spend money to freshen and brighten their house – but not in the ways that interest buyers.

     

    • Owners anxious to make their property appealing can make the mistake of putting their own color preferences first. The owner might not realize that the sunshine yellow wall paint they love is a show-stopper for the home-shoppers who don’t want to live with it. The owner may despair over the recommended color neutrals, but that’s what sells homes.

     

    • Owners often to invest in things that buyers consider nice to have, but won’t pay more to have. Upgrades such as full-room sound systems are great! They may even help your property be a first choice and sell sooner. But home-buyers shopping your neighborhood may not be willing to actually pay extra for that, or for expensive decorator molding along the top of the walls.

     

    • Owners may spend gobs of money spiffing up one room but neglect the others, while buyers look for consistency throughout the house. Even minor disrepair throughout the property – chipped baseboards; floor cracks; peeling paint around the windows – will create a bigger impression on home-shoppers than one major upgrade in one room. Cute new kitchen cabinets with extra pull-outs will be canceled by ragged carpets and fading paint elsewhere, as far as home-shoppers are concerned.

     

    • Overly-personalized décor, creative furniture arrangements, too many photos and wall-hangings, may warm up a room with the owner’s personality, but it can put off the next person who is considering living there. Eclectic looks and furniture that doesn’t fit the space make the house look like a series of problems to someone considering making it their own.

     

    One person’s treasure is another’s trash, and that is never more true than in staging or decorating a house for sale. Accepting knowledgeable professional guidance is critical to preparing a home for sale in a way that truly brings in better offers, sooner.

     

     

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    Question or Prompt for Response – open ended, relevant

    Can you afford your best guess as to what it will cost to prepare a house you expect to inherit for sale?

     

    Call to Action

    Do you have a piece of property (house, lot, or land) you’d like to sell fast?  Fill out our Sell Fast Form and get a cash offer within one hour of us viewing the property. https://patient-liger-dev.10web.site/sell-house-quick/we-buy-homes-bring-us-a-deal/

     

  • Why Your Inherited House Will Become a Rental Nightmare

    Why Your Inherited House Will Become a Rental Nightmare

    Inherited House

    It’s understandable that having just inherited a house along with the financial and maintenance responsibilities, not to mention the emotions of losing a loved one, the new owner may wish to simply buy some time while sorting through the options. An owner may think that installing a tenant is the answer (at least temporarily) to the issues I described in my last blog post “4 Headaches of An Inherited House”.

     

    But the owner of an inherited house who has never managed a rental before may be in for a rude awakening! Consider these scenarios before putting yourself into a rental nightmare situation – a quick home sale might be a better choice.

     

    • A house new to the rental market, perhaps recently occupied by an aging or sick individual, may need major work to bring it up to code standards for a rental.

     

    • Screening applicants before the lease is signed will have you weighing the implications of the credit issues many individuals carry after years of a bad economy, not to mention a past divorce or foreclosure.

     

    • The laws are strict about landlord do’s and don’t’s. If your tenant turns out to be a disaster of late payments, failure to perform upkeep, and even calls from neighbors with noise complaints, you can’t just chuck ‘em out without going through the hoops according to the law.

     

    • What if they aren’t paying – or are paying late every month? If the house didn’t come with a mortgage on it, as a first-time landlord you may find yourself being too lenient – until they have built a rent backlog it is unlikely they can ever meet. Again, you must follow the legal requirements to take action on rent payment problems.

     

    • Renter phone calls reporting problems such as a lack of hot water or that the air-conditioning stopped working mean that you drop everything and deal with this as an emergency, along with a potentially major outlay of capital funds. It’s even worse if the renter procrastinates telling you about the new lake forming in the basement or the warping front steps. Renters are notorious for not reporting or delaying telling you about problems.

     

    Rentals require a source of backup funds to deal with unforeseen repairs, as well as considerable diligence, patience, and fortitude to deal with renters. If you are wishing for more time before final disposal, or you think it’s too expensive to get the house in shape to sell, a rental could actually make things worse rather than better. A quick home sale to a company like PDX Renovations, who are professionals with such issues, can often be a better long-term solution than renting.

     

     

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    Question or Prompt for Response – open-ended, relevant

    If you’ve been a landlord, what advice do you have for first-timers?

     

    Call to Action

    Get an all-cash offer on your rundown house within an hour of our viewing  – find out about PDX http://bit.ly/W4S55u #pdx

  • 4 Headaches of An Inherited House and Why You Want to Sell Fast

    4 Headaches of An Inherited House and Why You Want to Sell Fast

    inherited house

    It may have been grandma’s house while she was alive, fragrant with the smell of baking cookies and enriched with the love she had for all her visiting children and grandchildren. But it’s been a month since she passed away and nothing has been done for the property while everyone was focused on the funeral service and getting the estate process underway. –  inherited house

    Only a month, and already it looks as if “The Addams Family” is in residence! The un-mowed yard and dying landscaping, storm damage to the picket fence and window shutters, and the formation of a new lake where drainage is blocked with debris have all begun the deterioration.  And that’s just the outside.

    In spite of sentimental attachments, inherited houses tend to fast become a heavy burden for an heir(s) who have no interest in taking residence.  It is astonishing how quickly even a previously well-maintained property will take on a look (and reality) of decrepitude once no one is living in it and maintaining it.

    Be assured that regardless of unpreparedness you are to be saddled with this responsibility, the longer it sits vacant, the more the positives erode and the negatives increase as it evolves into a “neglected property”.   It is frequently best to let it go on to a new owner who will care for and treasure it as did your loved one, as quickly as you can arrange a sale.

    Here are 4 reasons why you should sell your home fast –

    • Cash is needed to pay the property taxes, perhaps an existing mortgage, HOA fee, and other obligations, as well as insurance. Unless you pay what is owed, after only 2-3 months liens and foreclosures will have the same consequences as for any other property.
    • Unless maintained the house and yard will deteriorate even faster than an unpaid mortgage loan. The downhill slide detracts from the marketability of the house. The out-of-pocket cost to the heir(s) can go well beyond paying the neighbor kid to mow every once in a while.
    • No matter how beloved the previous resident, count on the neighbors to become quickly aggravated at the decaying vacant house on their block and to report it to the city, bringing you a city nuisance action. If the deterioration goes far enough – and that can happen faster than you think – at some point, you could even be facing condemnation.
    • Thinking of installing a tenant while you sort out the long-term decisions? Before you can rent it, defects must be addressed almost as if you were selling to meet marketability, ordnance, and building code standards. Prospective tenants must be screened, and once they are in you’ll be dealing with whatever issues they bring, as well as ongoing repairs and maintenance.

    Time will not stand still while you ponder if you should sell your house. As property conditions fester, options for either sale or rental become more difficult, even impossible. Act in your own long-term best interests, keep the memories and photos and let the property go forward to a new owner before the problems have a chance to grow.

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