Homeowner's insurance is vital for protecting your investment. Lenders also require coverage if you have a mortgage on your home. For some reason, many homeowners overlook ways they can save money on their premiums. Shopping around is a good idea, but like auto insurance, there are many simple things you can do to impact how much you pay annually to protect your home.

Home inspection professionals are trained to spot problems and evaluate a home’s overall condition. Home inspectors will do their best to be ethical and thorough. However, they are also still human, and as a result, sometimes details escape their attention. 

If you’re making a significant investment in a home, there’s no reason you have to leave 100% of the inspection up to someone else. There are areas you can review for yourself (or hire an outside party to review).

Before you sign off on a house, don’t neglect to review these commonly overlooked areas:

If you love your home and plan to live it in through your retirement years, you’ll want to be sure it’s safe for you as you face some of those little challenges aging presents. Assess your home and see if there are any changes you may need to make. Doing so will not only reduce the risk of injury, but it will also give your loved ones peace-of-mind, especially if you live alone.

When inventory is tight and a market heats up, sellers often dream of finding themselves in a multiple offer situation. In a multiple offer situation, more than one potential buyer submits a written offer on the home. With multiple offers on a property, the listing agent can then try and “shop the top offer” in order to try and get the best deal possible for their client.

If you live in a hot market, how do you structure your listing in such a way that you get the best possible offers in a multiple offer situation?

Why is staging your home to sell a critical step to take? Much like cleaning up a home’s curb appeal to appeal to buyers, staging can position your house to sell faster and for a higher price than it might otherwise. By staging, you will present your home in the best light. 

There are a couple of vital keys to remember when staging.  

Discovering an error on your credit history can be a rude surprise when you’re attempting to get pre-approved for a mortgage. Though most people don’t think about the details of their credit report until the need to secure a loan, it’s a good idea to check your report for inaccuracies periodically.  It is easy to do, each of the nationwide credit reporting companies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, are required to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months.

I would consider this a factual statement:  All sellers would love their home to sell for the highest possible price.  Understandable.  Unfortunately, this strong desire and motivation is the reason why it’s so easy for agents to “buy” listings. If you’re not familiar with the concept, “buying” a listing is when an agent tells a client their home is worth far more than the market value in order to win the listing.  This tactic is unscrupulous, but sadly it isn’t illegal.

How do you predict the value of homes in the Prescott area neighborhoods? While no one can say for sure how home values in a neighborhood will rise or decline over time, there are big-picture economic factors that you can look for to help get handle on where they may be going.

Even though I am a realtor with extensive experience in real estate, the word ‘inspection’ tends to make me, as well as many of my clients, uncomfortable.  This is truly understandable.  If you are the seller, you don’t want to lose the sale.  If you are the buyer, you don’t want to lose buying the house of your dreams.  Plus, add into the scenario, no-one wants to spend more time and money than necessary.  All of that combined can make an uncomfortable situation. 

How do you predict the value of a neighborhood? While no one can say for sure how home values in a neighborhood will rise or decline over time, there are big-picture economic factors that you can look for to help get handle on where the prices of homes for sale in Prescott, Arizona, may be going.