When you want to sell a house, everybody wants to know about your listing or asking price. Set it too high and you can scare off folks who are looking in a lower price range. You want to see what comparable houses in the area have recently sold for (known as “comps”) and you want to know what houses in the are are currently listed for.
Real estate laws vary from state to state. Apart from the legal issues in following state laws, making proper disclosures, and having offers and counter offers in writing, there is much more to the actual selling. Marketing your house is where agents earn their commission. If you are going to use an agent, selecting that agent is important.
Even folks who don’t invest in real estate can face selling a residence. This series will discuss preparing the house for sale, selecting an agent vs selling it yourself, setting an asking price, mineral rights, marketing and showing the house, negotiations, and the closing.
One of my hiking buddies stays in shape through the year by working out at a fitness gym plus he takes a yoga class a couple of times per week. Those provide a good variety of work on flexibility, strength, and endurance training. They also have an ongoing cost for participation, beyond the time commitment.
I have taken a different approach. I bought a Wii with the FIT board and program. I am working my way through its yoga, strength, balance, and cardio exercises/games. I paid for it once, and now use it. As I spend more time on it and improve my performance it rewards me by …
The stock market liked what it heard today – despite a net loss of 247,000 jobs in July, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell from 9.5% to 9.4%. Never mind that the declining unemployment rate is due to 422,000 people without work abandoning the job search after months of disappointment.
I have been mentoring a friend of mine who wanted to take control of his 401k plan and manage his investments rather than choosing from the standard mutual funds that have performed poorly in the past year or so. As I have shown him the mechanics of expanding the choices in his plan and discussed [...]
Yesterday President Obama announced the (forced) resignation of GM’s long-tenured CEO and Chairman, Rick Wagoner along, with a demand that the company take stronger action in restructuring in the next 60 days or face bankruptcy. At the same time he guaranteed both GM and Chrysler’s warranty programs and provided interim funding to keep both companies going, albeit on different paths as he announced the arranged marriage for Chrysler with Fiat in the next 30 days. This is huge news in economics, investments, politics, and nearly any other arena. Rush Limbaugh weighed in with the retail store policy, “if you break it you bought it.” President Obama just took away GM’s leadership and then said “you have to do better, and quickly.” If the President is promising sweeping changes in taxes, regulation, and health care to go along with taking control of businesses that are too large to fail, how does anyone plan for and invest in the future without knowing what the ground rules are going to be? The markets reacted strongly to yesterday’s announcements, broadly losing over 3%.
