Simple Improvements to Help Sell Your Home – DIY Addition

Most homeowners today have at least some experience with DIY projects around the house.  There are a lot of little things that happen around the house, inside or outside, and if you had to call a handy man every time a light bulb or air filter improvements to help sell a homeneeded to be changed you would be spending a lot of extra money that you could save if you did it yourself.  If you are a homeowner and don’t feel comfortable doing any project at all I would strongly reconsidering the attempt of a DIY project especially if you are making the improvements to sell your home.  There are many simple improvements that can be completed before you sell your home.  The following information will get you started on the most impacting items, there is a huge amount to consider when you are making these upgrades but you have to make sure you don’t get carried away and don’t bite off more than you can chew!

First things first would be to consider new paint.  Even if you just painted within the last couple of years it would be smart to consider a quick re-coat on the exterior and interior walls. After you finish there will be a huge improvement.  Another aspect to painting is the finish and color choice.  When you are painting main living areas and other bedrooms it is important (when selling) to have colors that are not out of the ordinary.  The kid’s bedrooms that are ninja turtle green and princess pink are not always going to have the same appeal to the potential buyers.  The idea behind the color choice is allowing the buyer to see a “clean slate”, this doesn’t mean you have to paint everything plain white but rather natural colors are ideal.  Additionally, the finish choice of the paint should be taken into consideration depending on the rooms the scale for finish typically includes flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss and gloss and goes from most fragile and reflects no light to most durable and reflects a lot of light.  Which brings me to the next DIY project, interior lighting.

Without getting into the physics behind how electrons move in a wire and how light particles flow through a room, we will keep this simple.  Lighting in a house is very important, in fact most of the time you can tell when a house was built by the kind of lighting and how much was installed.  I would recommend before completing any electrical work it is important to have the breaker shut off to whatever you are working on.

There are many fixtures or even bulbs that could be replaced very easily to improve the aesthetics of your home.  Many bulb types and power requirements all have a new and improved bulbs and a “cleaner” whiter light.  Moving onto the fixtures I would concentrate on the main living areas, kitchen and bathrooms.  Many times surface mounted fixtures and ceiling fan light kits are very easy to upgrade with one mounting bracket and just a couple of wires.  Again these updates can be very cost effective, allow a new look, offer a higher quality and better distribution of light.

The last item I would ask you to consider is the flooring. When trying to sell your home the most beneficial type of flooring to replace is linoleum or carpet, the nice thing is that these types of floors are SUPER easy to remove.  The carpet will consist of padding and tack strips (that holds the carpet to the edge).  The linoleum is usually just stuck down and can be peeled up to be thrown away.  The options I would recommend as a DIY project would be wood floors, tile, or believe it or not more linoleum. They make really nice and high quality linoleum these days and if it is a small laundry room it may be a good application. Installing wood floors may scare you but they make new laminate wood floor systems that are very easy to to put in, its just a matter of snapping the boards together!  Some may say that if it’s not “real” wood then it’s not worth it, but actually this new engineered wood holds up better than real hardwood.  When it comes to not being sensitive to water, scratch resistant, low maintenance and cost effective the laminate wood flooring is the best choice.  My thought is that the people who love the “real” hardwood floors have never cleaned, sanded and refinished them before or money is not a concern and they have no issue forking out tons of money for upkeep and maintenance.

I say for the average homeowner there may be a lot we can’t do but keep in mind we aren’t replacing a roof, windows or pouring a new driveway.  A little paint, an eye for good lighting, and a day of snapping in some new flooring goes a long way when trying to sell your home.

If you happen to be in the market for a new home make sure to check out the MoveMap on MoversAtlas.com to research potential homes, neighborhoods, and their surrounding communities so you can make the best choice when making your home buying decision!

Florida Sinkhole Information: What Is A Sinkhole And How Can They Effect My Home

Sinkholes, like the one that recently opened up near Legoland in Winter Haven are common in Florida.  While most sinkhole locations in floridasinkholes don’t result in the kind of tragedy that cost a Tampa area man his life earlier this year, they do occur fairly regularly and can pose a significant risk to property.  In this blog post, we’ll explain a little bit about how sinkholes form and why they are so common in Florida; we’ll also give you a few suggestions on how to protect your property from sinkholes.

Sinkholes result naturally from Florida’s unique combination of limestone bedrock and surface/groundwater chemistry.  Much of Florida has what are commonly called karst features underground.  Karst topography is often described as cavernous underground terrain consisting of pits, crevices, voids, underground rivers, etc.  Karsts arise because Florida’s bedrock is made of limestone; which is an alkaline, calcium rich sedimentary rock.  Limestone’s solubility in water and weak acids causes it to become porous; gradually, surface water made slightly acidic by Florida’s soil seeps down into the alkaline limestone and dissolves it. Over eons, this process gives rise to the fissures and caves we see today.  If the cavern that develops is close to the surface, it can cause a sinkhole when the sediment (soil or clay) that constitutes the ceiling of the cavern settles or collapses into it, under its own weight.

Complicated geological explanations aside, from the surface sinkholes can be described quite simply as large depressions in the ground which can vary considerably in terms of depth and width.  Readily identifiable by their round shapes, many of Central Florida’s lakes are simply sinkholes which have filled with water.  While their true geological lifetimes span millennia, as viewed from the surface, sinkholes may open up gradually over a period of days or months, as in the case with the Legoland sinkhole; or they can evolve extremely rapidly as the ground’s surface collapses in minutes.  This was the case with the sinkhole which opened up under a Tampa man’s home earlier this year, tragically taking his life.  Fortunately, rapid-collapse type sinkholes are extremely rare.  The Legoland type sinkhole is much more common.

Florida’s karst geology means that predicting where or when a sinkhole will occur is extremely difficult.  Even with modern drilling equipment, sophisticated analysis of soil/rock samples in the lab, and ground penetrating radar, professional engineers and geologists still have an exceptionally challenging time predicting where, or even if, a sinkhole will occur.  The implications for homeowners are mixed.  On the one hand, if a sinkhole opened up a few blocks away from your house, there isn’t necessarily any reason to expect that you will have a similar experience.  On the other hand, if you live in an area that’s free of reported sinkholes, there’s no guarantee it will stay that way.

Needless to say, the common occurrence of sinkholes in Florida, coupled with the difficulty in predicting where exactly they will open up causes many homeowners a fair amount of anxiety.  The good news is that sinkholes rarely pose a threat to human life.  They do certainly cause structural damage to buildings, but this can be mitigated through insurance.  In fact, many insurance companies that operate in Florida provide sinkhole coverage.  These companies also have the right to deny you coverage if there are sinkholes in the ‘area’ around your prospective home.  The term ‘area’ is loosely defined and policies between companies differ, so it’s best to shop around for pricing and availability.  Chances are, even if you’re in a risky ‘area’, there will still be someone willing to provide coverage.

If you’d like to see a map of sinkholes throughout Florida, check out the MoversAtlas MoveMap, it contains sinkholes and other ‘subsidence features’ throughout the state.  The map is composed of voluntary sinkhole reports, so it tends to biased towards populated areas.  It’s important to note that there are several maps (some of which are proprietary) used by insurance companies to quantify sinkhole risk, so the one you’re looking at here may be different from what your agent is using, but will give you an idea of how many sinkholes are in your community.  Good luck with your home search!

Tips On Managing Your Money To Help Save For a New Home

For most peoples, when you were a kid, it would only take a few dollars to get through the week. The household chores or saving up to buy a housepart time job enabled you to buy pretty much anything you wanted because your overhead was much lower.  After you get through school and get your first full time job the majority of people want to get rid of that heap they have been driving since high school and look for something new. Most folks tend to finance the car and thus beginning the subtle escalation of ones overhead or cost of living.

The cars, boats, bikes and then the apartment, townhome, or house is next.  As time goes on that $150 per week part time job that used to cover your expenses begins to barely cover your gas and food.  These are the reasons it is difficult to save for a new home, but it is still possible to complete this task.  It is important to understand that managing your money while saving for a home is only a temporary sacrifice that will set you up for a lifetime of good financial stability.  The corners you will cut, the lunches you will pack for work and the movies you rent from Redbox will all be worth it in the end.

The first task is to have a written budget. Have you ever gotten that paycheck on Friday and by Monday it’s all gone without even a simple goodbye?!  The reason is because you didn’t keep track of your spending and for this reason the money spent itself without you even knowing.  Writing down a list of where your money is to be spent BEFORE you receive it is the way to go.  Simply list everything out while leaving some room for fun things and stick to the list!

After the list is complete it would be worth going back a month or two to see where you actually spent your money.  After you realize that the budgeted amount you wrote down for eating out should be no more than $150 a month and that number ended up being triple what you budgeted in past months will be your starting point.  Some people believe they are very conservative and just don’t make enough money but after you find the past months you spent $300 on restaurants or bars along with $75 on coffee shops, $150 on miscellaneous clothing and $150 on entertainment this all adds up to over $600!

The example may seem a bit excessive but try to write down your expenses and look back to see what you actually go through each month, remember you are saving for your very own home! What most don’t realize is after the budget is created and tightened up is when the magic happens. On paper you may have only a few hundred left over to put in savings each month but when you have actually lived it and stayed dedicated there is usually MORE money left over, this is because you are aware of where the money is going and you begin to surpass your own penny pinching.

A written budget is most important but being disciplined over time will be the toughest challenge.  The best way to keep this going is to set a small goal, maybe save an extra $100 for the week and celebrate the small win.  Developing a bar chart you can fill in as you go and place it on the refrigerator or a place you see every day right next to a picture of a house you always wanted or even a picture of a BBQ grill in a back yard with a group of friends to keep your goal in mind.  These actions will keep you concentrated when you feel like going out to the movies with friends or a restaurant you will look at your chart and see that $25 or $50 would be better saved and staying in doesn’t seem pointless.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to be living on scorched earth while saving for something like this but keep in mind if you need clothes or miscellaneous items you can still purchase them but be sure they are in the budget, set a limit and stick to it!  Don’t go to the mall with an open checkbook, have a plan for the work pants or shirts and don’t go over the designated dollar limit you predetermined.

Remember each extra dollar spent on the polo shirts you wanted will just push you back even further and considering your closet is full of the entire last year’s line just continue wearing them for a little while longer, this is all temporary!  The closer you look at the person in the mirror the sooner you will find the problem with the spending.  In the meantime continue to research properties, neighborhoods, and communities with the MoveMaps on www.moversatlas.com.