My Hattiesburg

The 10 Biggest Home Buying Mistakes: Mistake 1-5

David Weekley, CEO of Houston-based David Weekley Homes, is one of the country’s largest home builders. He has compiled a list of the 10 biggest mistakes people make when buying a home.

Mistake #1: Not Doing Your Homework
The old saying “knowledge is power” is so true and with the rise of the Internet there is a ton of information available to help prepare you to buy a home. So, there is really no excuse for going out unprepared.

Mistake #2: Trying to Make a Savvy Investment
You need to buy a house that fits the needs of your family. Don’t try to guess what is going to happen to the market in 10 years.

Mistake #3: Choosing a Poor Location
Is you home on a busy street? Is there a retail center out your back window? Choosing a house around a lot of hustle and bustle may wear on your nerves down the road.

Mistake #4: Overlooking a Inferior Floor Plan for and Attractive Exterior
The house you look at may have tons of curb appeal but you don’t do all your living in your yard. No matter how good the outside of a home looks you still need the inside of the home to be livable.

Mistake #5: Overlooking How the Home will Function for Your Family
How does your family really live? If you eat-in a lot you may want a nice big kitchen. Do you entertain enough to constitute having a formal dining room? Could you do some of your office work at home if you had a home office? The bottom line is that the house you pick should be functional for your family.

Hattiesburg’s Real Estate Bubble

I have decided to detour from my series for a few days and discuss some things more prevalent to the Hattiesburg area. So here it goes. Hattiesburg is really a unique market in the area of real estate. It just doesn’t seem to slow down but will it? I was just thinking the other day there has to be a point at which the market has to start to decline some. However, with the recent disaster of Catrina and thousands of new people flooding into Hattiesburg I challenge you to predict where that point is. With all this growth and the rate at which it is growing do you think it could lead to a real estate market crash? I guess the question is how big do you think Hattiesburg’s real estate bubble is and how long before it pops or you may not think Hattiesburg will be affected. Feel free to discuss all the possibilities.

9 Steps in Selling Your Home: Steps 1-4

Step 1: Get Pre-Approved
The first thing you need to do is to make sure you will be able to get financing for your new home after you sell your current home. You may want to refer back to the posts on buying a home.

Step 2: Check Mortgage Payoff
You can call your lender to get the payoff amount. Usually a teller can look it up on their computers but you may want to see the loan officer just to make sure you get correct information.

Step 3: How Much is Your Home Worth?
So how do you determine the market value of your home? If you have a real estate agent he or she can do a fair market analysis to determine your home’s value. However, if you don’t have a real estate agent you will need to go to your county court house and try to look up your neighborhood and see what the houses in the area that are similar to yours sold for. Based off that information you can determine about what your house is worth. It is way easier to let a agent do it.

Step 4: Estimate Your Cost in Selling
Here is a list of some of the bigger things you will need to account for when estimating the costs in selling your home:

• Real estate commission if you use a agency
• Attorney’s closing fee and other professional closing fees
• Advertising costs, signs, newspaper ads, and fliers if you sell by owner
• Any fees paid by the seller in you general area (example: surveys, inspections)
• Tax on the sale
• Your annual expenses, such as property taxes, home owner association fees, and fuel
  tank rentals.

Real estate agents deal with transactions on a daily basis and can offer a pretty close estimate on what your closing costs may be.

9 Steps in Selling Your Home: Steps 5-6

Step 5: Determine the Cost to Acquire a New Home
Total your costs to acquire a new home may include but not limited to: down payment, loan costs, moving expenses, home inspections, title work and new hazard insurance policy premium. When you applied for pre-approval your lender should have given you a disclosure of estimated costs.

Step 6: Calculate Your Estimated Earnings
This is basically estimating the money you will have left over after you sell you home.
First, deduct the mortgage payoff from the fair market value of your home. Then, deduct the cost to sell from the remaining balance and this will give you your total proceeds made from selling you home.

For example, my mortgage payoff is $70,000, fair market value is $100,000, and the cost of selling my house (includes agents commission, repairs, advertising, ect…) is $7500.

This is how you would work it: 100,000 - 70,000 = 30, 000 then 30,000 - 7500 = 22,500. So the total proceeds that will be made off this example would be $22,500.

9 Steps in Selling Your Home: Steps 7-9

Step 7: Make Needed Repairs
Be sure to fix the thing about your home that is broken and in need of repair. Failing to do so may result in a buyer submitting a lower bid.

Step 8: Get Your Home Ready to Show
Most homes need a little cleaning up before they are ready to be shown to potential buyers. Some improvements may include: fresh paint indoors, a cleaned yard, well organized closets, clutter free rooms, and clean floors, windows, and appliances. I think you get what I am talking about.

Step 9: Stay Excited About Showing
If you use a real estate agent then they will more than likely ask you to leave while they show the house to a potential buyer. Why do agents do this? Well, so that no undue pressure is on the buyers. Sellers that lurk around the house while a buyer is looking often makes the buyer uncomfortable and you should want the buyer to be as comfortable as they can possibly be. However, leaving your house 3 or 4 times a week for a agent to show your home will become taxing on your emotions. Just keep your attitude in check and get through it because the more times a agent shows your house the more likely you are to sell it.