How's The Market with Nancy Braun | Real Estate. Real Answers.

Whether you want to purchase your first home after years of renting, or buying a big home to accommodate a growing family, purchasing a home is certainly one of the biggest decisions you’ll ever make in your life. Therefore, its important to do you homework, and make sure you understand everything involved.. In this week’s episode of How’s the Market: Real Estate. Real Answers, Nancy Braun is joined by Wes Pruitt, Senior Manager at Reliance First Capital to discuss 6 important things you must know before you buy.Tweetable moments:Pre-approval is basically an opportunity for the lender to discuss with you what your current credit situation is, as well as, your current income situation so that they can make  sure you qualify and let you know what it is you really qualify for. – Wes Pruitt You really don’t want to get involved and start looking at homes that are for example, out of your price range or anything of that nature. So it’s really important to get that pre-approval upfront. – Wes Pruitt A lot of people hold back and say that they’re not ready to buy because they haven’t saved any money yet I have closed so many homes with people with very little money down because there are these various programs out there that can assist with your downpayment. – Nancy Braun You’re the buyer, you’re going to get a mortgage. Ask the question, is this mortgage that I will be  paying assumable to my next buyer? It may be a very great sellable feature when you put your house on the market for the next buyer who buys your home to be able to keep your low rate – Nancy Braun

Regardless of your reasons, upgrading and performing home repairs offer a lot of benefits especially to the homeowner. To tell us how to upgrade your home without breaking the bank, Jim Potter, President of Old Towne Development, joins Nancy Braun for this episode of How’s the Market: Real Estate. Real Answers. They’ll also be giving away some important information like the top 5 home improvement projects for this year and how to set on a budget on your home upgrades and repairs.Tweetable moments: Replacing your front door. I almost always recommend that either it’s replace or re-stained or the hardware is replaced before I have a client of mine put their home on the market as I think it’s the first thing that a buyer sees when they enter a property. – Nancy Braun Remodel a kitchen. I strongly urge you to take a good look at your kitchen and see if it’s up to date. Kitchens that are outdated are really hard to sell. People are really into kitchens nowadays even if everyone’s eating out. – Nancy Braun Just to give you an idea of the amount of money you’d spend for a typical size deck, let’s just take a 12 by 16 foot deck. If you were going to pressure wash it, stain it, maybe do a few repairs; for that size deck, you could probably spend $89.00. – Jim Potter

In this episode of How’s the Market: Real Estate. Real Answers, Nancy Braun is joined by Craig Spiesman, President of Fresh Air Technologies, to talk about two of the most overlooked problems at home – mold and water damage.Their discussion will cover all the areas of the home where mold and moisture are most commonly an issue, which are the foundation, crawl space and roof and what are the available solutions to resolve such problems.Tweetable moments:There’s an easy way to test to see if your house is actually waterproof on the foundation wall. If you pick any exterior wall and dig down about 12 inches on the wall and you don’t see what looks like black paint plastic or a product called drain board, then mostly likely that wall is not waterproof. – Craig SpiesmanDry ice blasting is extremely environmentally friendly. The thing that’s great about it is that it micro abrades the wood surface so basically it’s going to strip off that first layer of wood and it’s going to leave the crawlspace immaculate. – Craig SpiesmanThe ductwork is a perfect breeding ground for trapping pet dander, pet hair, mold spores, allergens, dust and it can just wreak havoc on your health if you have really dirty ductwork. We recommend to have your ductwork looked at maybe once every 3 to 5 years depending on how your system is set up. – Craig Spiesman

Due to the increasing popularity of short sales, people have started to ask questions about it. What is short sales? What is its process? What are its effects to the buyers? What is its financial impact on the seller? How can it help avoid foreclosures? To answer these many common questions about short sales, Laurie Baker from Baker Law Firm joins host and owner of Showcase Realty, Nancy Braun on the 14th episode of How’s the Market: Real Estate. Real Answers. Tweetable moments: A short sale is when a homeowner essentially is not able to make payments on a home or essentially behind in their payments on mortgage on the home. – Laurie Baker Foreclosure is a very bad thing. It’s a hard thing for folks to go through. I’ve unfortunately seen folks who have to go through this, and if they have acted just a little bit sooner, then a short sale might have prevented them from going through this situation. – Laurie Baker Experience is critical. You can’t replace experience so you need to make sure if you engage the services of either party that you definitely have someone who has been down the road a number of times working out these short sales transactions because they are tricky. – Nancy Braun The biggest thing that affects your credit is not paying your mortgage. More so than the foreclosure or a short sale. – Nancy Braun

If your home has just come off the market and hasn't sold, don't be discouraged. This week’s episode of “How’s the Market?” aims to help solve that problem. Nancy Braun along with Montage Mortgage’s Account Executive Jessica Cook, will discuss reasons why some houses don’t sell while giving away four important points that will get your house sold. Tweetable moments: Pricing. That’s key. I’m a firm believer that every house can sell as long as it’s priced right. - Nancy Braun Unfortunately, you could get a real estate license but it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great negotiator. - Nancy Braun It’s historically been noted that if you price your home too high for the market, you’re inevitably going to be actually selling your house for less at the end of the day than you would have had you price it right at the very beginning. - Nancy Braun Sometimes, even spending some money to put new hardware on your front door so it looks fresh might not come back as an instant reward for the expense but it got your home sold quicker. - Nancy Braun The internet is based on visuals. So you want to make your home showcased beautifully there. - Nancy Braun