You should prepare your home for sale. This means sprucing up the yard and putting away personal items.  Rake the yard, trim the trees and any bushes you have in your yard. Plant some flowers. You want your home to look nice when the buyers pull up to see it.  Does the trim need a fresh coat of paint?  A little time before you put the home on the market making the entrance look good will make your home sell faster and for a better price.

Inside you should put away the family pictures.  You want people picturing their family in the home not yours. Could some walls stand a fresh coat of paint? Do the carpets need cleaning?  Does the screen door have holes in it? How about the kitchen. Does your refrigerator have magnets and pictures from your children all over it? Clean it off, you can put them up when you buy your next home.   All these things get noticed by the buyer.

A fresh clean home will always sell faster and usually for your asking price or closer to it.

Next your ready to list!

These are all good reasons to be selling. Now the question is, can you afford to sell? If you have owned your home for 5 or 6 years you may have paid more than it is worth in the current market.  It is usually best to call 2 or 3 Real Estate agents in your area and ask for a market analysis. Tell them up front you are not sure if you are selling but need to know what you home is worth in today’s market.  Based on that figure, you can decide if selling is the way to go. You may want to consider renting it out for a year or so before selling. There are most likely companies in your market area that specialize in doing that, and managing the rental for a portion of the rent.

When you have decided which way you want to go the next step, if you are going to sell, is to look at your house to make it the most attractive it can be. This will bring the buyer to your house before the competition.

We will cover that next time.

While many people may not agree, I think this could be good news. Maybe a few companies will start hiring more people. The media maybe will stop telling everyone how bad things are. If everyone hears good news maybe things will turn around faster and we will see real progress with the economy and unemployment.

When these things happen the housing market will look better. Any positive signs will help. Also in the news was housing starts were up in August. This is another positive sign.

We all need to keep thinking positive and everyone will benefit.

Then there is the price a buyer is willing to pay for a home to live in. They usually base their price on what they can afford and what other similar properties in the area are selling for or have sold for recently. Hopefully the buyer has received guidance in his offer from someone familiar with the recent sale prices.

The last price is the seller’s price. The seller may be emotionally attached to the home and place value on things that they have done over the years that would be considered normal maintenance. Does installing a new furnace increase the value of the home? It increases the salability but most likely not the value. Completely remodeling the outdated kitchen may increase the value but replacing the faucet, probably not.

One of the toughest parts of being a Realtor is meshing these three prices to make everyone happy. In today’s market I find this a challenge everyday. 

Be info smart
Just as you wouldn’t post your Social Security number online, don’t post your date of birth (or at least eliminate the year). And what are you using for your passwords? If it’s your pet’s name or your children’s names, you might want to reconsider – eventually you will talk about them online. Similarly, that family tree you posted or that link to Great Aunt Millie’s genealogical work is going to certainly contain your mother’s maiden name. Be careful!

Also think about what contact information you want to include. Web programs called spiders troll the internet grabbing email addresses that are resold and spammed. Consider listing your website address instead, or creating a free email account just for social networking. 

Be info smart
Just as you wouldn’t post your Social Security number online, don’t post your date of birth (or at least eliminate the year). And what are you using for your passwords? If it’s your pet’s name or your children’s names, you might want to reconsider – eventually you will talk about them online. Similarly, that family tree you posted or that link to Great Aunt Millie’s genealogical work is going to certainly contain your mother’s maiden name. Be careful!

Also think about what contact information you want to include. Web programs called spiders troll the internet grabbing email addresses that are resold and spammed. Consider listing your website address instead, or creating a free email account just for social networking.

Be wary of quizzes and games
They’re fun, and you can see how you stack up against your friends, but it’s amazing the amount of information they can gather as part of their terms of service. When you sign up for a quiz, typically a notice pops up to declare that interacting with the application requires opening access to information such as: “access will let [the application] pull your profile information, photos, your friends’ info, and other content that it requires to work.” Pretty broad rights.

Keep your computer and software up to date
Similar to the above, hijackers and phishers will sometimes gain access to your system via a request to update your Flash or Adobe reader software. Clicking through the link will take you to a mal-ware infested website. Always go to adobe’s site on your own to update, never via a link. Keep your browser up to date too.

Remember whatever you do to protect your privacy, it could fail
Finally, regardless of what privacy options you put in place, assume they will fail and the whole world will be able to see everything. Will a determined hacker target your accounts? Probably not, but you never know. Only share what you feel comfortable letting everyone know about.

This is an artice from Realtor.org. I think it is important to consider in todays world. We all need to be careful the information we put out there for the world to see. Have fun with it but be careful!

Also the Norwich Farmers Market: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Route 5. Featuring Chloe Brisson with Absolut Jazz, 10 to 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Bedding, herb and vegetable plants, hanging baskets, cheese, meats, produce, crafts and more. Information:(802) 436-1630.

Also the Hanover Area Farmers Market: 3 to 6 p.m., Dartmouth Green. Fresh produce, poultry, plants, meats, herbs, flowers,dairy, cheeses, baked goods and more. Music, demonstrations and free parking on College and Wheelock streets. Sponsored byHanover Area Chamber of Commerce. Information: (802) 299-9707 and farmersmarket@hanoverchamber.org.

or the Lebanon Farmers Market: 4 to 7 p.m., featuring Scottish and New England contradance accordion music by Sylvia Miskoe, Colburn Park, Lebanon. Information: (603) 448-5121 or www.lebanonfarmers.org.

There is also story times as a ongoing summer event like Story Time in Lebanon, for ages 2 to 3, with caregiver: 10:15 to 10:45 a.m., Lebanon Library, 9 East Park St.Information: (603) 448-2459.

Also in Hanover Preschool Story Times in Hanover, for ages 3 to 5: 10:30 a.m., Howe Library, 13 South St. Information: (603) 643-4120 or www.howelibrary.org.

Fun thinggs to do that are also free like Ultimate Frisbee in Hartford, for teenagers and older and for all abilities: 5:30 p.m., Watson Field, Route 14, justwest of the I-91 overpass. Bring cleats to play in and dark and white T-shirts. Free. Information: (802) 295-5036 orwww.hartford-vt.org.

How about a community dinner like Takeout Barbecue Chicken in Enfield: 3 p.m., Fellowship Hall, Enfield United Methodist Church, Route 4. $6 for half of chicken. Information: (603) 632-5030.c   Also Community Meal in Windsor: 5 p.m., American Legion Hall, Court Street. Bring a friend. Free. Sponsored by WindsorClergy and Churches. Information: (802) 674-2157.

The Upper Valley has a lot going on. Check out the list of upcoming events at

http://www.vnews.com/calendar/calendar.htm

This is a great area to be at this time of year.

Normally, residential builders should start about 1.6 million homes per year. This combines two key factors: population growth and net scrappage. The 1.6 million figure also includes the impact of mobile homes (which reduce the need for regular housing starts) and homes that are started but never finished.

In the first four months of 2009, builders started homes at a 511,000 annual rate, about one-third the long term trend. For the time being, such a slow pace of housing starts is understandable. Builders constructed way too many homes earlier this decade, resulting in an excess inventory of more than four million units in 2006. At present, the excess inventory is still about two million too many homes.

Given the slow pace of home building, however, the excess supply of homes is falling rapidly. If we normally need to start 1.6 million homes per year but are only starting 511,000, the excess inventory will fall about 90,000 per month. At this rate, the excess inventory of homes will be fully corrected in two years.

Normally, about 80% of the homes that Americans build (and buy) are single-family homes. If housing starts are usually 1.6 million, that means 1.28 million should be single-family units. However, not all of the 1.28 million homes will count as new home sales, because about 325,000 per year are built on land owned by the homeowner. Subtracting these suggests the official new home sales number should average about 950,000 per year.

In the first quarter of 2009 new home sales averaged 348,000, well below the long-term trend. Given the overhang of excess inventory, it is understandable that new home sales should suffer. Why buy a new home when there are so many foreclosed properties for sale as well as other properties being aggressively sold by homeowners who are short their mortgage balances? In fact, new home sales typically average 17% of all home sales (existing plus new homes). Lately, the share has been already down to 8%.

It would be difficult for new home sales, which have dropped substantially faster than existing home sales, to continue falling. Given the weakness in sales in the past couple of years, the ten-year sales average is already down to 938,000.

Every three months the Federal Reserve publishes data on the market value of residential real estate. Along with its quarterly GDP numbers, the Commerce Department calculates the rental value of homes. We use these figures to generate a price-to-rent ratio for the housing market. As the next chart shows, the P/R ratio generally hovers right around 15.

As an example, if a home rents for $1500 per month (or $18,000 per year), the owner should be able to sell the property for $270,000 ($18,000 times 15). At the peak of the housing frenzy, the P/R ratio hit 22, which means a home renting for $1500 per month could be sold for about $400,000. At the end of the first quarter, the P/R ratio was back down to 16.1 and so the corresponding home price was down to $290,000, or only about 7.5% above fair value.

Assuming very modest gains to rents, home prices will be back to a fair value P/R ratio of 15 by late 2009. It is plausible that the remaining excess inventories in the housing market will temporarily drive the P/R ratio below fair value in early 2010. However, much of the price declines still in the pipeline will be clustered in the states with the largest overhangs of inventory, including California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. Many other areas around the country are likely at or near fair value already and prepared to show price gains as the broader economy recovers.

This all sounds good for the housing market. In the Upper Valley we are seeing  housing sales improve slowly.  One week it is very busy and the next week it slows. Part of that I believe is the weather. there haven’t been that many sunny days to bring out the buyers.

New Hampshire Realtors who have been feeling as though business has picked up recently now have a piece of sales data to back up their optimism.

First quarter sales numbers released recently by the New Hampshire Association of Realtors (NHAR) showed that March 2009 home sales were up 9.3 percent over March of 2008 – the largest year-over-year single-month increase since July 2004, a span of 56 months.

And while local markets within the state varied, all but three New Hampshire counties saw a year-overyear increase in March, and the statewide jump gave Realtors reason to believe that the recent good news may be a sign of things to come.

“Even though it’s just one month, I believe the March numbers are statistically significant, because based on the conversations I’ve had with Realtors around the state, this truly seems to represent what’s going on in the marketplace,” said 2009 NHAR President Paul Sargeant, who brings more than 20 years of real estate experience to his role. “These numbers coincide with a genuine sense of optimism out there that I really haven’t seen in quite some time.”

The March 2009 sales data showed 703 sales of residential properties in New Hampshire, compared to 643 in March 2008. And although first quarter 2009 sales still lagged behind the pace of last year by 5 percent, the most recent uptick should not be ignored, said Sargeant, who cited low interest rates, vast inventory, low prices and the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit as evidence of a true buyers’ market.

“Now is a great time to buy, and many around the state are starting to catch on to that,” he said. “We’ve been feeling it for a few months, and now we’re starting to see it in the sales data.”

Meanwhile, prices still showed a steady decline statewide. The median sale price of residential homes in the first quarter of 2009 was $195,000, a 17 percent drop from the first quarter of 2008. And the median price in March 2009 of $200,000 was 13.8 percent down from the $232,000 median price in March 2008.

Sargeant said those prices can still be attributed, in part, to a correction following the huge increases of the late 1990s and early 2000s, during which median prices spiked by 112 percent from 1998 to 2005.

“The price declines since 2005 have decreased values in the short term, but it is also reflective of a market that needed to get itself back in order,” he said. “Sure, we’ll be happy to report when those prices start trending back upward in a steady way, but there is something to be said for affordability, too.

“We’re happy that more people are now able to experience the American dream of homeownership.”

I had a home listed for sale. It was on the market for eight months. I received an offer that was accepted. The buyer chooses to get a VA loan. These are great loans for veterans. The veteran needs little or no money down, gets a good interest rate, and can have the seller help with closing costs.

The buyer had a home inspection and found a few problems. Nothing major and the seller agreed to give the buyer $3,000 at closing for those items that were deemed to need repair. Things looked good.

The lender sent the appraiser and the appraisal was completed 15 days before the scheduled closing. Two days before closing I was notified by the lender the appraiser had found several problems with the property. The property was a manufactured home and needed hurricane tie downs. The detached garage needed the soffit repaired and the detached garage also needed staining or paint.

Obviously there was no way these repairs were going to happen before the scheduled closing date. Second problem, it is the middle of winter. You can’t stain or paint the exterior of a building when it is 10 degrees out.

To make matters worse, this was a bank owned property and any repairs needed their approval with 2 estimates.

The bank agreed to extend the closing date and after many calls and pleas the tie downs were installed and the soffit repaired. That still left the staining or painting issue. The VA lender agreed to escrow the funds for the staining/painting issue however the seller bank would not allow any money to be escrowed.  At this point the contract looked dead as the buyer and selling bank were not willing to extend the closing any longer and wait until spring for the garage to be painted.

The good news is we did finally get this property to close. The veteran did get the house he wanted. By being flexible as the listing agent, I was able to get the money for the staining/painting escrowed in a way that made the buyer and lender happy.

I am now strongly encouraging my seller clients to have an appraisal done at the time of listing the property. I believe it will head off problems down the road and could help the sale by advertising it as a VA or Rural Development approved home for sale.