Staging to sell: Tips for homes that need a little sprucing up

View Photo Gallery —  Some homeowners pay staging professionals to help make a home more appealing to buyers.

By Ellen Ryan, Published: November 30

Need to sell your house? Your broker may well recommend staging it — usually meaning winnowing down the furniture and accessories to a well-chosen few, artfully highlighting your home’s selling points, and neutralizing paint and personal touches so buyers can imagine it as theirs.

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When is an offer on a house a contract?

By Harvey S. Jacobs, Thursday, December 1, 1:07 PM

Dear House Lawyer: My wife and I are in the process of buying our first home. On a Monday, our licensed real estate agent prepared our offer using the local standard residential real estate contract. We completed all of the blanks, initialed where indicated, signed all documents and delivered the offer, along with our $10,000 earnest money deposit check, to our agent. He delivered the offer to seller’s real estate agent in person. The list price for the home was $400,000. Our offer was for $350,000. On Wednesday, the seller’s agent e-mailed the seller’s signed counteroffer agreeing to sell the home to us but changed the price to $375,000 and inserted a clause stating that the home gym equipment would not be included. 

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A smaller house will make a big difference

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By Carla Fried, Janice Revell, Donna Rosato and Tali Yahalom @Money November 14, 2011: 1:19 PM ET

(MONEY Magazine) -- Last year the economic forecasting firm Fiserv predicted that home values would sink around 5% in 2011, and that prices in three-quarters of the nation's major metro areas would fall. The bad news is, the firm wasn't that far off the mark. The good news: In the coming year, Fiserv thinks 95% of the 384 metro areas it tracks will see prices rise.

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Pending-home sales up by most in almost a year

Rick Bowmer / AP

This Nov. 28, 2011 photo, shows a home with a sale pending sign, in Portland, Ore. The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes jumped in October to the highest level in a year.

 

By Reuters

Pending sales of existing U.S. homes surged in October by the most in nearly a year as Americans took advantage of low interest rates for mortgages, data from a real estate trade group showed on Wednesday. The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in October, rose 10.4 percent to 93.3 from 84.5 in September.
That was the biggest monthly gain since November 2010.

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 5 tips if you have to sell your home in winter

It may not be an ideal time, but there are some things you can do to help yourself         

Steven Senne  /  AP

Sometimes a job transfer, lease or personal circumstances require plunging into making a sale in the dead of winter.

By DAVE CARPENTER

updated 11/13/2011 12:19:59 PM ET

CHICAGO — Just your luck — you have to sell your home in winter, the slowest and dreariest sales season of all.

But cheer up. You can use staging, the reduced competition and some seasonal opportunities to your advantage.
"You wouldn't necessarily choose to sell your home in winter," says Katie Severance, a broker for ReMax in Upper Montclair, N.J. "But there are certain extra steps you can take to really help your chances."
Many homeowners pull their houses off the market by year's end if they haven't sold. That's understandable.

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Late mortgage payments rise in 3rd qtr for first time since 2009; may show start of new trend

View Photo Gallery — How does your city stack up?: The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index offers a monthly assessment of how home prices are faring from city to city. In the most recent report, Washington, D.C. saw the greatest gains in prices.

By Associated Press, Published: November 7 | Updated: Tuesday, November 8, 7:48 AM

NEW YORK — While lawmakers in Washington debated the debt ceiling and consumer confidence dropped, more homeowners in the U.S. were having a harder time making their mortgage payments.
The rate that mortgage holders were late with their payments by 60 days or more rose in the June-to-September period for the first time since the last three months of 2009, according to TransUnion.

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Linda Bond’s house in Chevy Chase

View Photo Gallery —  How a dark, dreary and dated house became light and elegant.

By Terri Sapienza, Published: October 26

Two years ago, when Linda Bond had the chance to buy a house she had admired for a long time, she jumped at it.
But the house had one flaw: a dark, outdated interior. The look she imagined for the five-bedroom French manor home in Chevy Chase, Md., was light, airy and elegant.

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