Getting Your  Monmouth County Home  Ready to Show to Buyers

Courtesy of Reese Imaging

A house that “sparkles” on the surface will sell faster than its shabby neighbor, even though both are structurally well maintained.

From experience, I  know that a “well-polished” home appeals to more Monmouth County home buyers and will sell faster and for a higher price. Buyers feel more comfortable purchasing a well-cared for home because if what they can see is well maintained, they assume that what they can’t see has probably also been well maintained. In readying your house for sale, consider:

• how much should you spend to prepare your house for sale?
• exterior and curb appeal
• interior appeal

Before putting your house on the market, take as much time as necessary (and as little money as possible) to maximize its exterior and interior appeal.

How Much Should You Spend to Prepare Your House for Sale?

In preparing your home for the market, spend as little money as possible. There is a big difference between making minor and inexpensive polishes and touch-ups to your house, such as putting new knobs on cabinets and a fresh coat of neutral paint in the living room, and doing extensive and costly renovations, like installing a new kitchen.

I am familiar with buyers’ expectations and can advise you specifically on what improvements need to be made and which improvements are most effective. Don’t hesitate to ask for advice.

Maximizing Exterior and Curb Appeal

When preparing to put your home up for sale, your first concern is the home’s exterior. If the outside,  looks good, people will more than likely want to see what’s on the inside.

Here are some tips to enhance your home’s exterior appeal to buyers:

• Keep the lawn edged, cut and watered.
• Regularly trim hedges and weed lawns and flowerbeds.
• Be sure your front door area has a “Welcome” feeling.
• Paint the front door.
• In spring and summer, add a couple of pots of showy annuals near your front entrance.
• In snowy areas, keep walks neatly cleared of snow and ice.
• Check foundation, steps, walkways, walls and patios for cracks and deterioration, and fix any problem areas.
• Remove and repaint any peeling paint on doors and windows.
• Clean and align gutters.
• Inspect and clean the chimney.
• Repair and replace loose or damaged roof shingles.
• Repair and repaint loose siding and caulking.
• Reseal old asphalt.
• Keep the garage door closed.
• Store RVs and old cars elsewhere while the house is on the market.

Maximizing Interior Appeal

As your Monmouth  County REALTOR®, I  want your Monmouth County home to look as spacious, bright and clean as possible. Also the home should look neutral – without a lot of your personal and sentimental objects – so buyers can begin to imagine living there.

Here are some tips to enhance your home’s interior appeal to buyers:

• Give every room in the house a thorough cleaning and remove all clutter. This alone will make your house appear bigger and brighter. Some homeowners with crowded rooms actually rent storage garages and move half their furniture out, creating a sleeker, more spacious look.
• Remove the less frequently used, and even daily-used items from kitchen counters, closets, basement  to make these areas more inviting.
• Make sure that table tops, dressers and closets are free of clutter.
• Pay special attention to the kitchen and bathrooms: they should look as modern, bright and fresh as possible. It is essential for them to be clean and odor free.
• Repair dripping faucets and shower heads.
• Buy showy new towels for the bathroom, and put them out only for showings.
• Spruce up a kitchen in need of more major remodeling by installing new curtains and cabinet knobs, or applying a fresh coat of neutral paint.
• Clean walls and doors of smudges and scuff marks.
• If necessary, repaint dingy, soiled or strongly-colored walls with a neutral shade of paint, such as off-white or beige. The same neutral scheme can be applied to carpets.
• Check for cracks, leaks and signs of dampness in the attic and basement, and fix any problem areas.
• Seal basement walls if there are any signs of dampness or leakage.
• Repair cracks, holes or damage to plaster, wallboard, wallpaper, paint and tiles.
• Replace broken or cracked windowpanes, moldings and other woodwork.
• Inspect and repair the plumbing, heating, cooling and alarm systems.

Please call me and I will be happy to give you some ideas on putting your best foot forward with your Monmouth County home.

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Time to buy real estate!

Then housing market has entered a new phase. This is the time where everyone who doesn’t own a Monmouth County house and can afford to buy one, should get off the fence and go out and find a home while real estate  prices are low and the interest rates are at historically low levels. If you stay on the fence you will watch the interest rates climb up and your affordabilty will drop. There has never been a better time then the present to get into the housing market. If you would like to stop paying for your landlords mortgage, which you get nothing for, and start building equity and having a tax write off. Please sit down with a mortgagte representative or a CPA who can  show you that it will actually cost you less to own  a Mommouth  County house than to rent with the tax savings. Start investing in your own Monmouth county real estate, instead of your landord’s property.

There is such a variety of homes and price ranges available, there is no reason for anyone who can qualify for a mortgage to sit on the fence any longer.

Spring has sprung, spring off the fence and go buy a  Monmouth County house.

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What has happened to real estate sales in Interlaken NJ. To say that the sales have slowed down is being kind. So far in Interlaken this year we have seen some big price reductions on the listed inventory. If you wanted to own a home in Interlaken and thought that it was out of your price range, it may now be  right in your price range.

The home on the market at 731 Bendermere Avenue is listed for $378,100 this home had sold in September of 2005 for $582,500 this asking price is 36% less then the house sold for in 2005. Another example is 712 Grassmere Avenue that had sold in 2004 for $480,000, it was a little handyman house. A builder bought it knocked most of it down and built a 5000 square foot home on the property and that is on the market for $699,900 after being reduced and reduced and reduced. This home started with a list price of $1,699,000. So now it is a million dollars less then it was originally listed at. There are some hard realities  in this information, but facts are facts. Another case in point is the cute little Tudor over on 715 Bendermere Avenue. That home is now listed at $599,900 the current owner bought it in October 2005 for $645,000 and put in a new kitchen added a 2 car garage and fixed many mechanical problems with the home. All that work and he is now offering his house for less then he paid after being on the market for close to a year and a half.

As of 2/3/2010 there are eleven homes on the market. The inventory changes day to day, what isn’t changing is the length of time these homes are taking to sell. The homeowners that need to make a move will end up adjusting their price until it is priced where a consumer says okay, I think I will take that one. It is a very difficult market for seller’s, but if you have been longing to move into this little town, this may be your chance.

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What a great little town Ocean Grove is. It is known as Gods square mile. That comes from back in the 1800′s when Ocean Grove was set up as a Christian community. Now it is the hip place to be in the summer. Buying real estate in Ocean Grove is an investment at the Shore. Beautiful beaches, downtown area with shops and restaurants. You can walk to a train station and you can walk for miles on the beach or boardwalk either into Asbury Park or going south into Bradley Beach and on to Belmar.

Real Estate is still moving in the Grove. There were 80 sales this past year, between single family homes, condos and multi family houses. 53 of the sales were for single family homes, with a low price of $110,000 for a handyman bungalow to $1,600,000 for an ocean front victorian. the average sales price for a home in Ocean Grove was $518,474.

Many of the people who are buying and selling real estate in Ocean Grove, are people who own a home, sell it to upgrade or perhaps someone looking for a smaller home now that the family is grown. Many folks just sell their little summer home and then retire into a larger year round home. What ever your needs are there are plenty of great options for buying a home in Ocean Grove. If you are thinking of buying or selling real estate in Ocean Grove, please contact me at 732-763-2284.

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This would be a great year to buy a Monmouth Beach condo. Having looked over the data for the past year, Monmouth Beach condo sales are still down. There are only 30 sales of condos reported through multiple listing including one that I sold that was not listed. There may have been a few private sales, however it will not change the statistics by much. Monmouth Beach has several different condo complexes. Channel Club Tower, the Admiralty, the Shores, Breakwater Cove, Sands Point, Monmouth Common and the Wharfside. When you see how many condos are in Monmouth Beach, 30 sales seems like a paltry number. This is actually three more sales than in 2008 however  the average sales price for a condo was $374,350. which was down from $394,456 in 2008. The high sale was a double unit that I had listed in the Channel Club on the 17th floor. It sold for $$1,050,000. The lowest sale was for $192,500 in the Wharfside condos.

There were over 35 units that expired from the market, meaning they failed to sell and either got relisted or not. You can see from this information that pricing a condo at the right price in Monmouth Beach is very important, as it is in any community. However when there is so much competition it is really important. Good news is if you are thinking about buying a Monmouth Beach condo, this may be the right time. Please call me at 732-763-2284 and I will be happy to let you know what is available at this time and give you all the details you need.

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Now that we have reached the end of another year, we have the total sales and average sales prices to show us which way the Interlaken, Monmouth County sales have gone during the year 2009.

There were a total of twelve home sales in Interlaken this past year  with a low sales price of  $390,750 and a high price of $1,275,000. The averge sales price was $607,354. If you take away the high sale and low sale as we sometimes do in a market report the average sales price for Interlaken home sales in 2009 would be $562,250. This number pales in comparison to the year 2008 where 15 homes sold in town. So to start with there has been a 20% reduction of sales. Now if you take the average sales price for 2008, which is $686,266. you will see that there is a 11% drop in price in the Interlaken home sales from 2008 to 2009. We can read all the facts that are printed in the paper but the fact remains Real Estate is local. You must determine what is happening in your market to come up with a true market valuation of your property. These are the facts for Interlaken, Monmouth County New Jersey. Please call me when you are ready to buy or sell in Interlaken, 732-763-2284, I would love to show you my town.

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Marketing Your Home

It has always been said that price, condition  and time  determine if your property is a marketable property. However in today’s difficult market place that we have been experiencing in Monmouth County, time is not your friend. You can have all the time in the world but it will not help you achieve and unrealistic price.

Price – If your home is priced too high,  it will not receive any offer’s. If you get many showing’s but no offer’s, it means that the buyer’s have rejected your property at the listed price. At that point dropping the price at least five percent is recommended.

Condition- Setting the stage is important. If your home is in deparate need of a good cleaning and removal of clutter, please remove the clutter, pack it away, make the light fixtures shine, wash the windows. It is all about packaging what you have to sell. There are times when you are selling an “as is” home, but still the less clutter the better. You don’t want the buyer’s getting caught up looking at the stuff, you want them to be able to focus on your home.

Time - If time is your primary concern, then you must list the property at a move right away price.

Showing- If you are planning on being home while your home is being shown, please make your self scare. The buyer’s are not comfortable looking around your home when you are sitting there watching them. They need to feel themselves living in your home. Take the dog for a walk or go out on your patio, just let the buyer look at your Monmouth County home without your presence being felt.

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Selling your property is so much more complex than most homeowner’s realize. You cannot just put a home into multiple listing and put up a “For Sale ” sign and hope that it will sell. That  is why homeowner’s  hire real estate agents to handle the details for them. I have been in the real estate business since the mid 1970′s and I see how much more there is to do today to successfully market a property and  bring it to a quick closing. I help you prepare your home so it is ready to hit the market running. I do my best every day to help my clients stay stress free during the process.

With an hour of your time, I can explain the marketing process that I will go through  for selling your Monmouth County  home, each home is different and it is not a cookie cutter marketing plan. I  will point out things you should do to make your home more appealing to Buyers, . Here are some things I will do to assist you in selling your home:

Go over the selling process with you from soup to nut’s.

Do a comparative market analysis.

Determine the best list price, for the best sales price

Discuss the many ways I will be marketing  your property

Keep you informed through out the process.

Present all offer’s.

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Fox Chase Town House, located in Tinton Falls close to major roads and shopping. This wonderful starter home is in a very private setting giving you a great view of greens and tree’s a park like setting  from your home. This is the lowest priced town home in Fox Chase. It is immaculate and ready for a quick occupancy. If you have been searching for a Tinton Falls property this may be the one for you. The main bathroom is all new  with a water efficient commode, new tub and vanity and tile floor. Must be seen at this low price of $235,000 you should call right away. Close to the parkway and all major roads, plenty of shopping close by. These Tinton Falls town homes have a low monthly maintenance fee of $200. This property also comes with a home warranty for the buyer. Call me today to see this great Foxchase Tinton Falls townhouse. 732-763-2284

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