Open House – it’s time!

Open door

If you’re planning to sell your home, it’s time to get ready for Open House.

The nicer weather is bringing people out and you want to have your home’s best face ready to be seen! Even if you’re not putting it on the market for another month, now is the time to be getting it ready. Here are some things you need to do:

1) Clean up the clutter! Clean out cabinets and closets. Throw out what you can; give away what can be passed on; box up what you want to keep that you won’t be using often. This gives your home a more open and airy feeling for buyers who will be coming through. It also gets you closer to being ready to move! Read this: Cleaning Out!

2) Clean up the yard. Get rid of all the winter debris – anything dead or dying. Rake the yard well and throw out new seed. Freshen up flower beds with bark or straw and plant flowering plants when the weather allows. Cut back overgrowth.

Read more…

More Unique Ways to Sell Your Home

If you have a home for sale today, you’re not alone, by far!

How do you get your home to stand out so it will sell? First of all, read my post, Unique Ways to Sell a Home.

Then, listen to Barbara Corcoran on this Good Morning America video.

Real Estate Investing – Do You Need Training to Invest?

Unlimited Success group

Do you need training to be a doctor? A teacher? A computer programmer? Have you ever started a job where someone didn’t show you what to do, even if its flipping burgers?

Of course you need training. I’m always amazed at the number of people who decide to make money buying real estate and insist they don’t need training. I guess its because you can buy any house that has a for sale sign in the yard and to sell it, all you need to do is put a for-sale-by-owner sign in the yard. But will you really make money that way? Consistently? Safely?

Real estate is a very expensive and very risky business. Even if you inherit a property and owe nothing on it, you still have costs like taxes, insurance, maintenance. If you decide to put in a tenant, you’d better be familiar with landlord-tenant laws which vary from state to state. And, you’ll need to know something about contract law. Its far better to learn ahead of time than to learn with a lawyer standing beside you and a judge seated in front of you.

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Blog Redesign Complete! well.. almost

swiss-miss & aldenta

Look at my new site! Isn’t it fabulous? So easy to read! So easy to use!

This site was designed just for me by the amazing swissmiss, Tina Roth Eisenberg, the Swiss designer now of New York. It was built by fabulous John Ford, owner of Aldenta of Greensboro. What a team they are!

Thank you to both of them from me. I couldn’t be happier with my new site.

Please tell me here what you think of the new look and functions. A few more fabulous additions to come soon. Watch for them!

I’m so happy!

Earth Days may have Shortened due to Chilean Quake

Earth

Can you imagine? According to Nasa, the Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each Earth day.

Not only that, but perhaps even more impressive is that the quake actually shifted the Earth’s axis and, relatively speaking, by quite a bit!

Why did this quake have such a global effect when most quakes don’t? A number of things worked together. First of all, it was a very large quake that lasted for a very long time. Next, this quake was located very near the center of the earth making it “easier” to shift the axis. And, finally, the quake was very deep.

Read more about this phenomenon at the Nasa news topics site.