Ameublement Resources and Information

Archive for the ‘Real Estate’ Category

Have you made the decision to move house? If so, here are 10 steps to help you find the ideal property.

1. Your first step is to make sure you’re ready to move. We all have aspirations of living in a bigger, nicer home in better surroundings, but there are good times and bad times for buying. Time it right to get the most value. Also, by thinking about why you want to move, you can start to draw up your criteria.

2. It’s a good idea to speak to a mortgage advisor to find out what you can and can’t afford. This will help you to determine a budget that will help narrow your search and save you from wasting time.

3. If you have a property to sell, it may be worth doing some research into how much similar properties in your area are going for. Also pay attention to how quickly they sell. This will help you to put your property on the market for a more realistic value and help you understand whether this is a good time to move.

4. Whenever you are buying or selling a property, you’ll need to appoint a residential conveyancing solicitor to help walk you through the legal aspects of the move. Find one that has the experience, expertise and personality to make this aspect of the move as simple as possible.

5. Many people looking to move already have a good idea about the place they want to move to. However, if you’re yet to decide, it’s a good idea to have a little drive round to see what’s around. This will help you to get a feel for the nicest areas to live.

If the biggest decision you have ever made so far is to escape from your parents’ house to practice your independence or just stay under their roofs and care, then you must have been flipping through life rather slow. Every single day, we face different situations, whether big or small, trivial or important, and the only reasonable thing to do is to decide among many or few options ahead of us. While others may be easy as pie, but for many life’s decisions, a lot of thought and preparation ought to be done to arrive at or achieve that perfect goal.

Here are some of life’s altering decisions we should never take for granted, for if we do, it might lead to costly and damaging results. But if we take necessary precautions and do our homework, the fruits of our labor will not only be sweet but rewarding.

What house to own and where.
Of course, we reach a certain stage in our lives that we yearn to have our own home, especially when family members increase in number. Whatever the urgency is though, sometimes we dismiss it, either because of unpreparedness or restraint to take the risks involved, such home-buying – especially with the current trends in the housing market these days. And with a hefty price involved, not to mention the future of your family’s it is just fitting to make all the necessary and right processes when purchasing a house.

With the real estate industry still placed in its awkward stage, home buyers and even property investors are adamant to go out in the market. Some say the situation is national, while other experts claim it is regional in scope – on which there still lies hope for those who want to do the plunge, say, among Charleston homes for sale for example.

Quite obviously, potential profits are enormous. More specifically-and I prefer to be specific as opposed to sounding like some get rich real estate infomercial that are intentionally vague and leave potential investors dazed and confused-the potential annualized income should and can fall between $100,000 and several hundred thousand dollars a year. The potential for this type of money is contingent upon how many flips are turned a year, with the expectation that the average, properly executed flip should yield $30,000 to $60,000 a hit. Thus, earning $100,000 to $200,000 a year is not unreasonable. Once again, your typical bread-and butter, Grade A, shelf-ready, by-the-book flip will yield the investor $30,000 to $40,000 on average per deal.

The following is a prototype transaction: The value of the home when you buy it is $300,000. You’re able to secure a LTV of 95 percent on a new loan. That equates to $15,000 down. It takes nine months to build. Let’s say at the end of the nine-month period it’s worth $350,000. You put this property on the market, which you had originally purchased at $300,000 nine months ago, for $365,000, just to add a little margin in case you have to go down in price. You sell this property, put it under contract, and close it for $355,000. Your expenses are approximately $10,000 for escrow, commission, title insurance, etc., (minus the $15,000 you have sunk into the 95 percent LTV loan). That’s a total of $25,000 in expenses. Minus this $25,000 from the sale price of $355,000, nets you $330,000. Consequently, since you bought the property for $300,000, that’s a $30,000 net profit. This should be your minimal threshold, because anything less than that starts to have a diminishing point of return. And as stated earlier, you’re getting in very shaky territory when you’re netting less than $30,000 a transaction, because if anything goes wrong, like a shift in the market or unexpected price reductions, you could potentially be at a loss.

To flip or not to flip, that is the eternal question. There are some real estate critics, and depending on what the media reports, one might think that flipping was some sacrilegious act that preys upon innocent builder/developers and destroys entire master planned communities in its wake. Some people even think of the “flip” as a four-letter word. The reality of it is that flipping can be a good thing for both developers and investors and/or a bad thing depending on how it’s approached. And depending upon how it’s executed, it can be profitable or a bust.

Many factors play into this equation. Later articles will expound upon this circumstantial roulette that is largely dependent upon the investors’ execution power, which-depending how it’s executed-could be the difference of walking away with $10,000 or $60,000. It should be kept in mind that walking away with $10,000 is not a good thing. Walking away with $10,000 means you’re lucky that you didn’t have a wash. In real estate home pricing, unlike other items of retail buying, you don’t reduce a property’s asking price by $500! Normally, price reductions are anywhere from $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, or sometimes more, depending on the value of the home. With that in mind, walking away with $10,000 means you’re about a hair away from walking away with nothing or potentially writing a check at escrow. That’s not a good thing.

Unfortunately, one of the inherent problems of buying pre-owned homes is not knowing exactly what you’re buying. No matter how good the inspector was that you hired to inspect the home before you bought it as an investment, the chances of a costly defect is always an ominous occurrence waiting to happen. However, when completing the purchase of a new tract home, even though the home may have a defect or two, the defect is correctable most of the time, if not all the time. This is accomplished through the built-in home warranty that comes with a home upon its purchase. More often than not, national, regional, and local builders have some type of warranty that covers even the smallest of defects, such as cracked tile, masonry work, squeaky floor boards, and caulking issues, or major issues, such as pipe leaks, roof problems, foundation cracks, and other structural issues. Structural issues may include a ten-year warranty to cover costs related to the defect. Generally, warranties are defined as standard and structural, as most major homebuilders provide these warranties, such as KB Homes, Centex, and Pulte Homes.

And yet, despite the coverage that most warranties will provide for a pre-owned or resell home, such as the warranty you can buy for $350 to $450 from Fidelity or Old Republic, nothing beats the comfort of acquiring a new home that has that bumper-to-bumper warranty coverage and still has that new car smell to it. Other negatives of pre-owned homes include the following: mold issues, termite infestation, hard to detect structural damage, and cracked foundation or slabs. It would be very rare for the latter issues to arise in a brand new tract home. These are only a few of the problems that may occur with pre-owned homes since there may be many more.