Details Sell in Buyer's Market

Stencil above Entry Door

When I wrote my first book Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, I shared our family's fix and flips. What's important about our story is that the 30 houses I talk about in the book all happened before the recent rise and fall of sales prices. This means that my book helps investors more in a buyer's market than in a seller's market.

Selling houses today is possible. People still need housing. If you want to sell your home or rental, you must make your property stand out. You can either keep lowering the price or add details that make your home more attractive to a buyer, like the stencil above on a new million dollar home in California. A stencil costs very little and gives a great impact.

Read more about fixing and flipping houses. Find out how using Design Psychology can increase your profits.

Turn you house into a buyer's dream home. Add color and details that SELL!


Joy,

Jeanette

Question about Granite Countertops

First, thank you to the readers who watched the Flip That House TV show over the weekend.

This is the answer to a question from one of the kind emails I received after the show.

Some buyers think they want granite countertops. We used granite in our flip because one of my students gave us a great price.

Personally, I don't like the business of granite. In our home, we used engineered granite. I prefer the clean lines and lower price. See our Kitchen Remodeling Pictures

Video, Podcast, and Feature Story of Flip

The Press Enterprise featured our flip in today's newspaper.

Video:
http://www.pe.com/video/southwest-index.html?nvid=179302

Podcast and story:
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_mural29.3d55bdb.html#

More about Flip That House with Fishers

(I was told the show will be on at 9:30 tonight.- Jeanette)

Flip That House Featuring Our Family

Flip That House Featuring Fisher Family Benefits Habitat for Humanity

Louis, our producer on Flip That House, told me that the house is the star of the show. It will be interesting to see the show tomorrow evening and how they cover the story of our family tragedy. Will the house remain the star? Will the artists that rescued the house with love be the stars? Will the family's sadness make it like an episode of Extreme Home Makeover?

Most episodes of Flip That House film a shopping spree at a home improvement store that donates materials to the flipper in exchange for the advertising. We chose to film at Habitat for Humanity's ReStore to let the world know about the home improvement outlet that helps pay for houses.

This is from the Flip That House press release:

Saturday, September, 29, 2007 at 09:30 PM ET on TLC

Flip That House

Brian and Jeanette

The Fisher family and their 22 person crew are flipping a 3 bedroom 1 bath home in Lake Elsinore, California that they purchased for $340,000. They have a budget of $10,000 and a 1 month schedule. Will they be able to finish on time and under budget?

If you want to see before and after pictures, go to Flip That House with Faux.

Let me know what you think about the show. Post your comments below.

Great Faux Finishing Tips For Obtaining Professional Results

Faux for More

Faux finishing a wall can be a fantastic way to create a one-of-a-kind look in a room, and the good news is faux finishing is the type of project any relatively competent do-it-yourselfer can tackle. However, any task can be smoother if you learn a few tricks of the trade, so here are a few of my favorites to add to your own repertoire before you begin.

When laying down your base coat, use an eggshell latex paint that has a slight sheen to it. Latex paint dries more quickly than oil-based paint and the eggshell finish will allow you more options as to what you want to do with your top coats. Clean up is also much easier. If you use an eggshell base coat, use an eggshell top coat, too. It will give a more uniform texture to the overall wall.

Another good idea is to experiment on a practice board first. If you can get a spare piece of material that’s exactly like the wall you'll be working on, so much the better. If you'll be working on drywall, for instance, try to practice on a piece of drywall so you can see how your proposed faux finish will look before you begin on the wall itself. If the wall you'll be working on has already been primed and painted, you'll want to do the same to your practice piece. This can be very useful--especially if the colors or technique don't turn out to be what you were hoping for.

It may sound strange, but one of the best tips I can give you is to practice, practice, practice before you begin your wall. I know it’s human nature to just want to plunge in and get started, but you'll get better results and save possible frustration if you have a good handle on what you're doing==well before you start your wall project. If you're going to be doing a sponge project, I don't recommend using artificial sponges. Use natural sponges because they aren't uniform like the manmade kind. If you're hoping to create a random look, you'll have a much more difficult time if you try to use manmade sponges. They're just not irregular enough. As you begin dabbing on your sponge paint, be careful about overlapping areas you've previously done. You want continuity, but you don't want new sponge prints over old ones.

Overlapping risks the possibility of getting too much paint on the wall. As you work your way across the wall, move quickly, reloading your sponge as often as necessary, but don't overfill it. Again, that can result in too much paint on the wall, which is generally not the effect you're hoping to achieve. Twist your sponge slightly in your hand between dabs. That will create a more random look and avoid having your sponge pattern look like printed wallpaper. Moving quickly also helps keep you from working too long in any given area.

Faux Finish by Kari Barron

See more faux and designs for making more at Flip That House with Faux

Copyright © 2007 Jeanette

"What improvements will make the biggest difference in attracting buyers to the home I'm going to flip?"

One of the questions I get most is, "What improvements will make the biggest difference in attracting buyers to the home I'm going to flip?"

I answer that question in one word: paint. Then I go on to explain that a carefully chosen painting scheme can make the difference between a looker and a buyer as people walk through your house.

One of the most profitable places you can spend time on is in the kitchen. The kitchen truly is the heart of a home, so it needs special attention when you begin remodeling a house with flipping in mind.

The first thing you always want to do is bring in lots of light to a kitchen. Begin by using a light-colored paint, although it’s not quite as easy as just finding the brightest white you can find and slapping it on the walls and ceiling. Choosing the perfect paint color also has to do with what season of the year your home will be on the market, the price you're going to be asking, who your target buyers are going be, the area your house in, and how it’s situated on the lot.

To give you an idea of how a well-chosen paint scheme can work, let’s look at my own house. I live in Southern California and our home has wood shingles on the outside, but we've painted the exterior trim of the house green with brick red accents. That means that our front door has been painted red. It looks great from the outside, and we love it.

However, when you walk into the house, you'll find that the interior walls have been painted a lighter shade of green. Using a slightly lighter shade of green in the entryway to the house makes for a nice, smooth transition from the outside to the inside. By carefully choosing our colors, we've made sure that it all flows together.

So when you paint the inside of a flip, make sure that you bring some of the outside colors into the entryway. That will reinforce the exterior theme, which is important, because the potential buyers probably liked that theme. After all, it was inviting enough to prompt them to take a look at the inside. Taking a lighter version of the main color scheme and using it inside makes a house feel harmonious, and will go a long way toward making people comfortable.

About the chicken: Jennifer West, Caricature Artist, painted a "Chicken Soup" theme in the Faux Flip featured on TLC's Flip That House scheduled to air September 29.

Mural Artist Kim Schaffer and Decorative Painter Evan Dahlke helped me finish the kitchen paint with a tea glaze after my friend Imelda and I painted it three times.

Copyright © 2007 Jeanette Fisher

Make Money Flipping Houses in Any Market

If you think there's no money to be made in a soft real estate market, think again. History has proven that some of the world's biggest fortunes were made during downward economic cycles. For instance, Warren Buffet made a huge part of his fortune by buying companies that had fallen on hard times and turning them around, and Donald Trump made his billions by buying rundown or vacant properties and rehabilitating them.

The secret? Trump or Buffet had a strong grasp of the most basic law in the world: the law of Supply and Demand.

The important thing, if you want to make BIG money, is to go against "what everybody knows" when it comes to the economy's current situation.

For example, common wisdom says that buying foreclosures is the next big thing, since the market is slowing, interest rates are creeping up, and homeowners are increasingly feeling the pinch. That's all well and good, but that means an ever-growing number of would-be investors are clamoring to buy those foreclosures, driving prices up and making them less attractive as investments.

However, you can go against what everybody knows, while staying well within the law of Supply and Demand, by buying homes that are in short supply in high demand areas, whether they're foreclosures or not. I live in Southern California, where the demand for homes is high, but the supply of homes is limited, so if I can locate reasonably-priced properties and give them a new life, I generally find a line of buyers waiting to bid on them when I'm done.

But what if you live in an area that has the opposite situation--high supply and low demand? You can still make money. If you happen to be buying properties at a time when many people are trying to sell their homes, you're in a position to get a better sales price, giving you more room for profit when you flip the property. What you're doing, in essence, is increasing the demand for YOUR particular property, even if it's a buyer's market overall.

If you've familiar with my experience in using design psychology and home staging to sell homes, you know that there are many ways to increase the value of a home without spending a great deal of money. Then, once you've increased the demand for your home, the profits will come--even during an economic downturn.

Learn how to use interior design secrets and make money flipping houses.

Copyright © 2007 Jeanette J. Fisher

California Real Estate Market Cooling

After several years of runaway price increases, it appears that California's market is due for a bit of a downturn. According to the California Association of Realtors (CAR), the trend will be downward throughout the coming year as the market begins to correct itself from the upward spiral it had been enjoying until recently.

Read the rest of the story: http://www.joytothehomerealty.com/california_real_estate_market.html

Short Sales Mistakes

There’s an old saying "it's an ill wind that blows no one good," and that’s especially true today as the real estate market begins to decline in many parts of the country. As many homeowners begin to feel the pinch and edge closer to foreclosure, the potential for investors to buy those homes through a short sale becomes more tempting.

However, short sales aren't for everyone. They can be frustrating, even when they go smoothly, but they can turn into nightmares if you don't avoid certain mistakes. Here are some examples of mistakes many short sale investors make: Short Sale Mistakes

Real Estate Seminar at MSJC

Flipping Houses for Profit: Still Possible in Riverside County?

Join us at Mt San Jacinto College, Menifee Valley Campus, Saturday, January 27 for a low-cost real estate seminar: "Flipping Houses for Profit: Still Possible in Riverside County?"

Although the college website says that no seats are available, they moved the class to a larger room and you may still be able to register by calling (951) 487-3711. Class section #9348

Learn how to find, finance, fix and sell houses for profit in any market. Explore fresh ideas for fixing houses using interior design methods that make houses simply irresistible to buyers.

More information: Flipping Houses Seminar