Archive for June, 2007
Keep a House File
I know being organized is a challenge for some, but when it comes to your home, it’s very important to keep detailed records.
When you purchase a house or condo, you’ll be hit with a flurry of paperwork. The Purchase and Sale agreement, various disclosures, inclusions/exclusions forms, your home inspection, the insurance policy, and mounds and mounds of mortgage documentation. Keep all of this. DO NOT throw it away. It will only serve to help you later on when you decide to sell.
Additionally, keep track of improvements and maintenance that you perform on your home. Save invoices and receipts and organize them chronologically, if you can. This history will help your real estate agent understand what value you put into your home and how it affects the listing price. These expenditures also help you calculate your cost basis so you can understand if you have a taxable gain. For a primary residence, there would be a tax if the gain was more than $250,000 for a single homeowner or $500,000 for a couple. A primary residence is defined as property that the owner lives in for at least 2 of the past 5 years. If you keep your receipts, you will be able to prove a higher cost basis, which will lower your capital gain and potentially reduce your tax liability.
Finally, if you have any hazardous/environmental items removed (ie- asbestos, in-ground oil tank, etc.) be sure you have a licensed professional carry out the removal and that all proper documentation has been filed with necessary city and state offices. Additionally, keep disposal reports for your records (these should be provided by the contractor you hired), as these will be VERY important when you sell your home. The next owner will want to insure that everything was removed safely and there will be no negative residual effects from improper removal.
At times keeping records for your home may seem like a tedious chore, but it always pays off when it’s time to sell.
New Retail Space at Prospect and Boulevard
Just about every day I drove by Larry’s Service Station at the corner of Prospect and Boulevard, on the West Hartford border. Then late last week the trucks were gone and there was a chain link fence surrounding the property.
Where’d Larry go? Apparently to Farmington Avenue in Hartford.
And yesterday the demolition commenced on Larry’s old locale. Steel beams swung around by a crane, dropped onto a pile of rubble below. Larry’s old home was razed.
So, what’s going to take its place? According to the Courant, a small retail shopping complex will be gracing the corner. Three stores will occupy the 5,256 square foot site. The town oversaw the site plan, which included landscaping, in April. Tenatively, one of the stores will be a coffee shop.
Hopefully it will add some positive development to the area, without negatively impacting traffic too much. Stay tuned for future updates…
Understanding Home Pictures on the Web
These days approximately 80% of home buyers use the internet to research homes. An important part of that research is pictures, as it allows the prospective buyer to get a sense of updates, layout, and room sizes in the home. However, often these pictures can be deceiving, or at least deliver a message. Here are some patterns I’ve seen after looking at hundreds of pictures online, and then actually viewing those homes in person.
1. On Realtor.com, if there is only 1 picture available, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the house needs a lot of work. Realtor.com charges agents thousands of dollars a year for an “enhanced” package, which allows us to post multiple pictures. If the agent doesn’t pay for the enhanced package, they only get one picture fed in from the Multiple Listing Service, and that’s usually an exterior shot of the home.
2. If you are looking at a company-specific website, say Raveis.com, and there is only 1 picture, the house may need a lot of work. Company-specific sites let the agent upload multiple pictures. If you don’t see multiple pictures on a company sponsored website, the house could need a lot of work, or the agent may be lazy and didn’t take more than 1 picture.
3. If there are no pictures of the yard, it may not be usable or it might be undesireable in some way. For example, it may be very close to the neighbor’s house or sloped and rocky.
4. If there are no pictures of the kitchen or bathrooms, they may need to be updated. Kitchens and baths sell homes. If the agent didn’t take pictures of these rooms, they are sending a message.
5. If the bed appears to be taking up the entire room in a bedroom picture, it most likely is. You can confirm bedroom sizes by looking at the dimensions which are usually provided.
6. If there are multiple photos of the kitchen and not many other pictures, the kitchen may be the nicest part of the house and other areas may have been sacrificed to fund the kitchen improvement.
These are some general rules of thumb that may help you narrow down house choices when you’re searching online. Or, it may be the starting point for a conversation with your agent. S/he may have seen the house and could provide some insight on whether it might be a good fit for your needs.