Top 5 ways to boost the value of your home! – Learn how to make 10 percent more money when selling your home

How do you make the most money, no matter which end of the transaction you’re on? For answers, the Consumer Reports National Research Center turned to the people most in the know for answers—the real estate professionals who broker almost 90 percent of residential sales.

A panel of 303 pros from around the country (covering markets big and small, hot and cold, city and suburban) completed our recent online survey, filled with essential questions: What are the costliest mistakes sellers make? When is the best time to put a home on the market? How negotiable are broker’s fees, really?

The answers may surprise you. If you’re a seller, advice from the pros on smart presale fix-ups, coupled with our expert product ratings and tips, can help you get the best sales price for your home—an additional 12 percent, on average. With median single-family home prices hovering at about $205,000, that’s a potential gain of $24,600. In pricier markets, the profits will go many times higher.

Both buyers and sellers can come out ahead with our guide to savvy financial and negotiating moves. Avoid the most typical mistakes and you could gain 11 to 20 percent, and even more in some markets, of the home sale’s price. Click here to read the full article.

Source:Consumer Reports

8 Hacks for Hosting Thanksgiving at Home

It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is almost here. Harder still: the concept of having to host the holiday at your own home. Even if you love opening your home to friends and family, hosting on turkey day can induce stress in even the most experienced home entertainers. To help out, we’ve collected some tricks that make cooking faster, clean up easier, and the whole event less expensive. Bonus: You won’t lose your sanity and snap at a guest (at least not more than once). Click here for Thanksgiving tips

Credit goes to Celeste Perron on Realtor.com.

 

In Defense of Buying a Historic Home: It Could Be Downright Amazing

Maybe you’ve always dreamed of buying a beautifully built home, something that doesn’t look like it came out of a cookie cutter.

And you probably also get some side eye as soon as you mention your historic-home dreams. Real estate agents, friends, and family are often quick to tell you to think twice before investing in an older home. And they’re not wrong. Click here to continue reading.

Article By: Rachel Stults on Realtor.com.

Borrowers, Beware! Four Home-Loan Horror Stories

Here is a great article from the Wall Street Journal. Enjoy!

In the spirit of Halloween, scary scenarios that almost killed the deal.

ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS GASH

By

ANYA MARTIN

Oct. 28, 2015 10:50 a.m. ET

At Halloween, everyone enjoys a good monster movie, but the last thing a home buyer wants is a mortgage horror story. In the spirit of the year’s spookiest holiday, we asked jumbo-mortgage lenders for some recent “scary” scenarios.

The Haunted House

A San Francisco attorney agreed to buy a house right across the street from his elderly father before the property was even listed. Because the homeowner knew him, he let him go ahead and move in, says Mathew Carson, a broker with San Francisco-based First Capital Group.

A home appraiser sent by the lender reported the “early habitation,” an irregularity that is a red-flag to lenders that typically hold jumbo loans—those over $417,000 in most parts of the country and $625,500 in high-price areas—on their portfolios.

Spooked by the unusual move, the lender declined to finance the mortgage, despite the borrower’s excellent credit score, a 40% down payment on the $1.26 million house and more than sufficient income to qualify for the mortgage, Mr. Carson says.

Conforming loans, those below the jumbo limits, don’t have as rigid occupancy requirements as jumbos. So Mr. Carson says he restructured the deal into two loans, a conforming loan for $625,500 and a second mortgage for $235,000, with a different lender.

Credit-History Gremlins

A New York businessman’s income easily qualified him for the jumbo mortgage he needed to buy a Manhattan condo. Rather than make the sale contingent on his ability to get a loan, the buyer committed to close within 30 days, says Ray Rodriguez, regional mortgage sales manager for Cherry Hill, N.J.-based TD Bank. A credit check, however, revealed that the home buyer had been slow in paying small balances on about 10 credit cards.

The borrower was able to hire a credit-repair agency and get his score fixed quickly, but not fast enough to make the 30-day closing commitment, Mr. Rodriguez says. The home had multiple offers, so to get the seller to wait an extra 10 days, the buyer had to add another $30,000 to the purchase price.

Aside from paying his bills on time, the borrower should have gotten preapproved for a loan, which would have revealed the problem before he made an offer, Mr. Rodriguez adds.

The DTI Deal Killer

The debt-to-income ratio, or DTI, reflects the percentage of a borrower’s monthly income that goes toward the borrower’s debt. Mortgage lenders like borrowers with a DTI of 43%—the maximum by federal rules—or lower.

So high-net-worth borrowers who rely more on their assets than their income to qualify for a mortgage may need more time to shop around for a lender, says John Walsh, chief executive of Total Mortgage.

Total Mortgage had a home buyer who earned $1 million in the previous year, but only $250,000 was straight salary and the rest was a profit-sharing bonus. The buyer was rejected for a $1.1 million jumbo mortgage by a large bank because he didn’t meet the 43% DTI ratio using just his income. “He was a super well-qualified borrower with fantastic credit, who was declined on ability-to-repay rules,” Mr. Walsh says.

Total Mortgage found a mortgage lender that would underwrite a loan for this wealthy borrower by factoring in capital gains from the sale of stock market holdings, but the approval came down to the wire, Mr. Walsh says.

Dial D for Deadline

In a competitive real-estate market, home buyers may feel the urge to rush a deal to get their dream home. But jumbo borrowers tend to have more complex income streams with substantial paperwork to validate, and that takes more time than the average conforming-loan borrower, says Mike Lyon, vice president of mortgage operations for Quicken Loans, a national lender.

One such high-net-worth borrower came to Quicken with a purchase agreement that had a three-week commitment to close. Quicken Loans was able to squeak the deal through and make the tight deadline. Still, because of waiting periods required by new federal lending rules that took effect Oct. 3, few mortgages are likely to close in less than 30 days, Mr. Lyon says.

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/borrowers-beware-four-home-loan-horror-stories-1446043807?cb=logged0.5625367525499314

Colorful Pumpkin Decorating Ideas

One of the best parts of fall is pumpkin picking and carving. Nothing can compete with tradition but for those that would like a change, here are some other ways to turn your pumpkins into art this season.  Click here for more designs: Creative Pumpkin Ideas

Seven Mistakes People Make When House Hunting

If you’re thinking about purchasing your first home, it’s tempting to dive right in and start looking at houses. But before you dedicate your Sunday to visiting every open house in the city, you need to know what you’re looking for, otherwise the process of shopping for a home is likely to be long and frustrating. Ill-prepared and uninformed buyers will find it more difficult to discover the home that’s right for them, much less get to the stage where they’re ready to make an offer on a property.

Here are seven big mistakes first-time house hunters often make when shopping for their dream home. Avoid these errors and you should find it easier to find the home that’s right for you.

Click here for the full article.

Connect With City Government!

1) Get news, information, and alerts from the City of Kalamazoo. Sign up at www.kalamazoocity.org/connect, follow the City on Twitter @kalamazoocity, or search for “the City of Kalamazoo” on Facebook.

2) The City has launched a new website; www.ImagineKalamazoo.com where the public can connect and collaborate with local decision makers and other residents on the future of our community.

3) City email Newsletter – This bi-monthly publication contains information about what is happening around the City and includes news, alerts, meeting schedules & agendas, and events. Go HERE to sign up to receive it.

Source: http://www.winchellneighborhood.org/

Colony Farm Orchard Update: WMU to Establish Committee for CFO Development

The next step in Western Michigan University’s plan to develop Colony Farm Orchard is establishing a committee to make sure WMU hears from all respective parties regarding its plan to develop Colony Farm Orchard, President John Dunn said.

WMU also will put together a plan that will be transparent and available to the larger community about how it sees development plans for Colony Farm Orchard coming together, he said.

You can read the full Mlive article HERE

Source: http://www.winchellneighborhood.org/

Welcoming Fall – Fall Decorating

Fall is here and it’s time to bring out the decorations … or to create some new ones. Here are some inexpensive ways to decorate your home for the fall holidays. Click here for Fall Decorations! 

An Apple a Day in a Creative Way

Caramel apples and apple pie are great uses for the apple, but how about making it into an edible display? Here are 15 different way to use an apple this season. Impress your dinner guests by displaying one of these great ideas at the dinner table. Creative Apple Ideas