Want to know what to fix to sell?

Are you having trouble selling your home?

We have some ideas that can help you in today’s difficult market.

Join our special conference call on Facebook. The advantages of this call system:

* You can type your questions in so I can see them.
* You can mute yourself by clicking on a microphone icon.
* You can “raise your hand” to speak.
* You can even upload your pictures so I can see your house outside and inside.

How to participate:

1- Join Facebook
http://www.facebook.com

2- Join my Conference Call for Home Sellers. Click the link below to add the conferencing application and join the call.
http://apps.facebook.com/freeconference/conf/show/11113

3- Join the group: Jeanette Fisher’s Home Seller’s Helpline
Click on the Groups button on the left under applications.
Search for Jeanette Fisher’s Home Seller’s Helpline or try this link:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9721931758&ref=mf

I know all this seems complicated, but the conference call will be unlike all the other teleseminars we’ve done. This is a hands-on experience where you will get answers to YOUR home selling questions.

Joy in technology!

Jeanette

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

Flip This House - FSBO in South Carolina

Not all flips need fixing. If you want a bargain house in South Carolina, check out this property offered by owner.

$10,000 BELOW APPRAISAL MAKE OFFER NEED TO SELL
440 Whispering Winds Drive, Lexington, SC 29072

Ready to Move In, Lovely 3 BR, 2 Bath home in quiet neighborhood with privacy priced below market value provides savings to the buyer.
Approx. Sq. Ft.: 1486

Home has a vaulted ceiling in the great room with fireplace and ceiling fan.

It has an open white kitchen, dining room and great room layout that provides for spacious living.

Crown moulding throughout with chair rails in Kitchen and Dining room gives a nice touch of elegance.

All windows are wood framed. Warm Earth tone colors on the walls round out this peaceful setting.

The Master bedroom has tray ceiling, fan, and a walk-in closet and private bath with double sink, white tile floors, a garden tub and separate shower.

The home has a two car finished garage providing ample storage space. The attic is also partially floored to provide additional storage.

Landscaped back yard with privacy fence and brick patio lets you get away from it all.

Owner: Martin Lee (803) 767-2882

See more pictures at Sell House Race

Rehabbers: Current Carpet Trends Help You Sell

If you're rehabbing a house to sell in today's market, keep up with contemporary features home buyers expect to see in your remodel.

Home buyers frequently preview model homes and dream about living in a perfect home. When they are forced to buy a more affordable resale home, they look for a home that has features like the models they preview. If you want to attract these buyers, use carpet similar to what they see in the model homes staged by professional interior designers.

Flipping Houses for Profit: Current Carpet Trends Help You Sell

Real Estate Market and Media

Is the Real Estate Market Crashing?

We've all been bombarded recently by reports in the various media about how the real estate boom of the past few years is over. Whether you read it in the newspaper or a magazine or see it on television, it seems as if the media has decided the real estate bubble has burst and the housing market is in the initial stages of a major swoon. Not so fast, say a number of leading economists who are challenging the negative view being portrayed in the media.

Statistics Challenge Negative Media Coverage
Real Estate Market & Media Coverage

Flip THAT House | Flip THIS House

Flip THIS House on A&E focuses on two real estate investors who transform eyesores into "profit-making beauties." Filmed in San Antonio and Atlanta, each investor has a team of "characters" who buy, rehab, and flips for a profit. The show loves friction between all the players.

Flip THAT House is a documentary series for TLC. Each episode follows one investor/flipper through the process of buying, fixing-up, and selling a house.

One criticism of Flip THIS House come from viewer Jennifer B who says "The show is not informative at all, and most of the time you watch the people argue and complain about each other. They spend too much time goofing off instead of working which I don't care to watch..." Read review of Flip shows.

Critics of Flip THAT House complain that the sale is not completed so the viewer doesn't know how much money is actually made. Another real estate author, John Reed says that the show focuses on beginners who don't know what they're doing.

While that may be true of some of the show's guests, we're going to be on Flip That House. Since we have been flipping houses since 1979, maybe we know a thing or two. I just hope John doesn't watch the show since he has such a low opinion of flips.

Fisher Family on Flip THAT House

Copyright © 2006 Jeanette J. Fisher

Should Investors Hold an Open House to Sell?

In 2202, a survey by the Real Estate Center at Texas A & M University found that private open houses for other agents were more effective than public open houses. The agents surveyed thought public open houses troublesome, dangerous, and generally ineffective except for agents who needed to build a client base. The survey said "Although open houses are popular with sellers, they appear to be losing their appeal among agents. Sellers see the open house as an indication the agent is actively promoting the listing. Agents know, however, the odds are long that an open house will produce a buyer."

A more recent survey conducted by The National Association of Realtors in 2005 found that open houses led to only 7 percent of all home sales. In their profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the NAR, reported that 42% of home buyers found open houses to be "Very Useful" as an information source. In fact, 55 percent of home buyers do look at open houses to gather information. However, of the nine categories listed where buyers first learned about the home they purchased, open houses was not even mentioned.

Findings include:
Most people attending open houses are not serious buyers.
Most open houses are held merely to appease sellers.
Three out of four agents think open houses are effective in interesting buyers in homes other that than the one being shown.
Agents also pick up new listings at open houses.
Not many homes actually get sold because of an open house.
Visitors include a lot of looky-lou's and unqualified buyers.
Sometimes, thieves look for easy targets by visiting open houses.

Should investors stage an open house?

If open houses lead to 7 percent of all home sales, you might consider a open house. We like to have an open house when we finish remodeling a fixer and invite all the neighbors. Often, neighbors know a friend or family member looking for a house.

We make the open house an event and tell the neighbors to bring anyone looking for a new home. We stage the house with extra flowers and essential oil scents, play music, serve refreshments, and have our loan officer ready to answer financing questions.

To do this effectively, you need help. Our adult children actively pick up after people and run a Swiffer around the floors. Asking home shoppers to put on hospital booties helps keep the floors clean. Plus, people like the idea that we're picky about keeping the house immaculate.

Even with all this work, the best outcome for us is meeting the neighbors in our target area and finding people who want to SELL their homes.

Fixing and Flipping Houses

Copyright © 2006 Jeanette Joy Fisher

Real Estate Investing with Fixers

New site with pictures of before and after of our fixers:

Real Estate Investing with Fixers

Free Real Estate Investing Teleseminars

#1 Learn About Apartments and How to Find New Hot Markets

Special teleseminar Tuesday night, Oct. 3.

9:00 PM EST / 6:00 PST

There's so much competition these days among real estate investors. The good news is that great bargains still exist in most markets, because they're passed over by the vast majority of investors. Many of those bargains are in apartments.

Most investors think they must unclog toilets and deal with tenants in order to make apartment-sized profits. That suits our friend, Dave Lindahl, just fine. He buys apartments from burned-out landlords at great prices. Best of all, Dave's figured out ways to deal with no tenants.

Dave's going to tell us how to buy apartments with no down; how to manage them without ever dealing with tenants, and how to make it work in YOUR real estate market.

Dave's also an expert at market cycles. He'll talk to us about his secrets for finding the next hot markets, and how to quickly and easily "read" where a market is in the up/down cycle.

Dave built his fortune from scratch, in tough neighborhoods. He's entertaining, knows his stuff, and you'll greatly benefit from this call.

If you can make this call, and while there are a few telephone lines left, be sure to register!

Join Apartment & Market Teleseminar

#2 Can You Still Make Money Fixing Houses?

Find out how to find a fixer and how to profit in the new buyer's market.

Free Fixer Teleseminar

Live seminars coming soon at Joy to the Home Realty in Lake Elsinore, California and Las Vegas, Nevada.

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The Real Doghouse to Dollars Blog Is Back | 2006 Market Trends

Hello from Jeanette Fisher,

You may have noticed that this blog was captured by someone who used it for an adsense revenue generating blog. Google played fair and returned it to me. The problem was that I listed this blog in some of my articles, one of which is Flipping Houses for Gold (viewed over 21,000 times on EzineArticles and posted on thousands of real estate websites).

In case you're wondering if you can still make money fixing and flipping houses with all the media coverage of the real estate bubble burst and the return to a buyer's market, I'll share some success stories and market trends.

Last week, we listed a property in Riverside California and sold it in one day for full price, which is $85,000 more than the purchase price.

Joe Luckino in Ohio continues to work full time fixing houses. Joe keeps most of his properties but he still flips some. You can read about his investment plan.

I see more investors like Joe getting serious about real estate as a long-term investment. Instead of house flipping, they're fixing and renting. Joe wants 100 rentals and he's well on his way with 56 houses.

Even though newspapers and TV news report that housing prices are dipping, they tend to confuse the facts. For instance, reports in our area says that the prices fell but what they really mean is that prices didn't go up as much as they did last year. According to Jamie Johnson with Keller Williams Realty, Riverside County didn't appreciate 30 percent in 2006 like it did in 2005. However, prices overall appreciated over 6 percent. Prices did not go down. In fact, southwest Riverside county saw significant gains.

Lou Barnes, mortgage broker and nationally syndicated columnist said "The best thing is to stick with the data, and evaluate commentators by what they say about it. Example: this week the National Association of Realtors announced that median home prices fell in July, headlines shrieking. Someone who really wanted to know what is going on would have to dig deep to find reality: a decline in median prices just means that more cheaper homes are selling than expensive ones; the median says nothing about the fate of an individual house or neighborhood, or city."

Facts:

* Declines in price are minor.
* Declines mainly in economically weak zones.
* 20 percent decline in new home construction.
* 50 percent nationwide increase in inventories of unsold homes.
* No sign of a downward price spiral in any market.

Decline in home mortgage refinance means less business for mortgage brokers. Two of our mortgage brokers are branching out into home sales. This means that investors will get more attention and quicker action from their loan officers.

What does this mean for people who want to get into real estate investing?

Learn as much as you can about the different strategies to make money in real estate. You can still make money flipping houses but you can also make money as a landlord.

In case you think you need a huge down payment to get started, below are pictures of the house we just finished. It was purchased for no money down, fixed, refinanced with $65,000 cash out, and just listed yesterday.










Copyright © 2006 Jeanette J. Fisher

Real Estate Investing Scams: Infomercial Schemes, Tax Sales, and Mentoring

By Jeanette Joy Fisher

Flipping through late-night infomercials recently, I saw two real estate get-rich quick schemes, and I couldn't help but wonder why people still fall for those old scams? Has anyone really talked a seller out of his home for no money down WITH owner financing lately?

Real estate infomercials do great harm to beginning investors, who waste hundreds of dollars on old information. Worse yet, those beginners soon get discouraged and miss out on the true (and profitable) adventure of real estate investing.

One of the most popular late night infomercial shows tells beginners that it's possible to make a fortune by buying houses with no money down and then renting them out to cover the monthly payments. It's true that you can buy a home for no money down, but the requirements include having good credit, good income, and the home should be owner-occupied.

Rentals don't normally qualify for no money down financing. Institutional lenders aren't supposed to make no money down loans on investment properties, and even if you could buy an investment home with no money down, the monthly payments would generally eat up the rent.

Late-night scammers also claim that investors can get owners to pay the closing costs, including the down payment. But when a lender asks where your down payment will be coming from, saying, "the seller" is not the right answer! Today's sellers are also fairly savvy, and understand that with no money invested in a property, a buyer could easily walk away and leave them with a home that's been ruined by careless tenants.

Another TV program offers a bogus system for buying houses at ridiculous prices, but think about it: has anyone bought a home, free and clear, for $345.00 at a tax sale recently? Hordes of investors flock to the tax sales in the area where I live, bidding up the prices of foreclosure properties far beyond a few cents on the dollar. It just doesn't happen.

Today, another real estate investment scam is popular in Southern California. Here's how it works: a young person we'll call Chuck charged $4,000 on his credit card to hire a real estate "mentor," after the mentor wined and dined him at a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant.

In exchange for the fee, the mentor instructed Chuck to find distressed houses by driving around the area and writing down the addresses of ugly houses in nice neighborhoods. Once Chuck had given him the addresses, the mentor obtained the owner's address and sometimes a phone number. Then it was up to Chuck to call the owners and talk them into selling their houses for no money down, and carrying the paper, too!

I met Chauck when he called me about buying a property that my husband and I had on the market for $1.2 million. When I asked him how such a young man was going to make the payments on $1.2 million home, he told me that he planned to rent the house out for enough to make the payments.

As a real estate investor myself, I tried not to laugh at his naivete, and after talking to Chuck and listening to his frustration about trying so hard to follow his mentor's advice, I offered to help him find a property, and I'm happy to say that Chuck now owns his own home. But he'll still have to spend years paying off a $4,000 credit card bill.

If you want to make money as a real estate investor, a good first step is to buy your own home, like Chuck did. You can do that for no money down if you have good credit, or for a relatively little amount of money down if your credit is poor. Once you've purchased your own home, fix it up and then either sell it or refinance it and use your profits as the down payment on an investment property.

Don't pay hundreds of dollars for out-dated methods that may have worked in the middle of last century! They're a waste of your time and money. Real estate investing is truly a great way to make a fortune, but you must stick to tried-and-true proven strategies, ones that work in today's real estate market.

Copyright © 2006 Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.

FREE Real Estate Investing Teleseminar
"How to Get Started Investing in Real Estate"

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