If you stop to think about it, selling a home is a bit of a strange endeavor. You’re asking prospective buyers to make a huge investment in your home without the experience of actually living there. Yet this is standard procedure. Buyers make offers after showings without having spent a single night in the home where they’re planning on living!

Now there’s an emerging marketing trend designed to take some of the ambivalence out of buying a home. Some sellers are taking the steps to let prospective buyers “live” in their house for a few days to see if the home is right for them.

AirBnB is one platform making this strategy possible. Most effective for sellers who have staged their house and are not currently living in the listing, the approach is direct: Sellers list the home on AirBnB and when they have an interested buyer, they arrange a temporary “rental” of the property. This way, the buyers get to spend real time in the home. They are allowed privacy, the chance to see what it’s like to sleep in the house at night, and use the facilities just as they would if they owned the home.

While the approach goes a long way to calming buyer fears, the idea is not without its critics. For one, not all brokers may be comfortable with this approach. Obviously having prospective buyers temporarily rent the home can create difficulties showing the home to other buyers when the property is rented.

Also, there are infrequent horror stories associated with this type of short-term rental. Home damage and even squatters who refuse to leave have happened to people listing their property on AirBnB. Finally, there are potential legal complications related to short-term rentals in certain communities. Nonetheless, there are thousands upon thousands of people who have offered up their short-term rental with no problem.

You can see the appeal, though. There’s a real potential for buyers to build an emotional attachment to your home if they spend a little vacation time there together while evaluating the property.

What do you think? Would you AirBnB your home if it gave you an selling advantage?

AirBnB’ing your home is hardly the only strategy for a quick, competitive sale. I have a full range of marketing and sales techniques to help you sell! If you’re thinking about selling soon, get in touch to see what I can do for you.

Mark Sotir
Realty Executives Midwest
1310 Plainfield Rd. Ste 2 | Darien, IL 60561
Cell: 630-815-8098
E-mail: marksotir@realtyexecutives.com

When you’re a renter, there are a lot of details you might overlook. Given how much is out of your control about the condition or landscaping around your apartment complex or rented home, you may not be greatly interested in certain aspects of the house.

All of that changes when the home is your own investment. With your money and your safety on the line 24/7, you’ll need to pay attention to some areas which renters take for granted. Keep these few tips in mind and you’ll avoid several common homeowner mistakes.

• Call 811 before digging up the yard. Landscaping is a great pleasure for many homeowners, especially those who want to plant their own food or dig in a nice water feature. The only problem? There could be pipes, power, and telecom cables underneath your soil. Before you rent the backhoe, call 811, a national hotline dedicated to dig safety. By calling 811 first, all of your local utility providers will get the heads-up to come out and mark all of the areas you’ll need to avoid when digging.
• Find your water main’s shut-off valve. When a pipe bursts and you don’t know where to turn off the water to your property, a simple leak can turn into a catastrophic amount of water damage. Make sure you know where your shut-off valve is located and that you have the tools you need handy to cut off the flow should an accident happen. (The same is true for those of you with natural gas connections. Special tools can be used to shut off the gas in an emergency.)
• Before you drill, use a stud-finder. For less than $30, you can get an idea whether or not you’re about to drill yourself a hole into power conduit, plumbing, or ductwork. Also, you’ll want to be sure the art or shelves you hang in your home has a firm grip and doesn’t come crashing down with the drywall.
• Check your insulation depth. You know that funny looking door in your ceiling? It leads to the attic or crawlspace. Inside, you’ll want to make sure you have insulation deep enough to trap your heat and keep your cool. Most insulation needs to be 12 to 16 inches deep, depending on the quality of the insulation. You can even hire companies to “blow in” the additional insulation you need. Conserve energy with this simple move.
• Checking your foundation. You want your soil to slope away from the house at least 6 or so inches over 10 - 12 feet. This prevents water from pooling at the foundation, which can lead to costly cracks and repairs.

Looking for a home worthy of your careful attention? Let me help you find the right one!

Mark Sotir
Realty Executives Midwest
1310 Plainfield Rd. Ste 2 | Darien, IL 60561
Cell: 630-815-8098
E-mail: marksotir@realtyexecutives.com

Why is looking at homes before you’ve thought about what you want to buy dangerous? In this post I talk about the pitfalls of home shopping prior to taking the big picture into consideration.

It starts innocently enough... you pass a house in a neighborhood you like, you hear someone is selling their home, you happen to look up home prices online. Before you know it, you’re knee-deep in home shopping and open house visits. This can actually be exceedingly dangerous to your financial future.

Falling in love with a home before you actually know what you want in a home is risky. To avoid the “buy first, think later” syndrome that burdens family finances, marriages, and work life, ask yourself these important questions:

1. How much do we want to spend each month on home expenses? There’s a tendency for people who shop first to try and “make the math work” on purchasing a home. Often this leads to stretching the home budget and ignoring crucial expenses such as maintenance and property taxes in order to “make the mortgage.” Determine a comfortable, conservative range for home expenses first.

2. Which neighborhoods make sense from multiple angles? You may love a neighborhood for its leafy streets and family-friendly atmosphere, but what if it adds thirty minutes to your commute? Are the schools good? What are the crime stats like? What’s the walkability score? Don’t view a neighborhood with rose-colored glasses based on a single quality you like.

3. What’s a priority and what’s a nice extra? You may think you want extra bedrooms for guests and a home office, but which one is more important? Rank the must haves against the “nice to haves.”

4. What’s our long-term ownership picture look like? Are you settling in for ten years, or do you suspect you’ll need to move in four? While you can’t predict the future, you can make some estimates. Those estimates will help you understand how much home you should buy, what kind of down-payment you’ll want to have, and what the picture might look like in terms of renovations.

5. When can you move vs. when would you like to move? Rental leases, selling your current home, and job and schooling factors all impact the timeline for a purchase. Wrap your head around the pragmatic timeline as best you can.

I’m more than happy to help you think these through. Contact me for help today at 630-815-8098 or email me at marksotir@realtyexecutives.com.

I’m here to save you pain, buyers. There are myths about the home shopping experience that must be addressed. I like to make the home buying experience as stress-free as possible, so please hear me out on these three big mythsabout home buying:

Myth #1: “That house has been on the market so long I bet we can work the seller down easily.”

Not necessarily. Exceptionally high days on market could mean almost anything. The seller could be bullheaded about their price. The seller may not be particularly motivated to sell for emotional or other personal reasons. Don’t forget: A sales-weary seller isn’t likely to respond to your host of rational reasons why their house should be a bargain.

Myth #2: “I want to look at foreclosed homes because they’re a real bargain and the banks need to unload them.”

Banks, like entrenched sellers, don’t always make decisions which seem rational based on obvious information. You can have a hard time divining the reason a bank chooses to reject an offer for a foreclosed or distressed property, and their decision may be based on financials which seem counterintuitive. The truth is, many distressed sales can be longer and more fraught than regular sales.

Myth #3: “I liked this house a lot, but with this market, I bet it will still be there if I decide to buy it.”

It’s very, very painful to see a client love a home but fail to make a move to purchase that home. If you fell in love with it, why wouldn’t someone else? Just because a property has been on the market a little while doesn’t mean it will stay on the market. The bonus myth in this one? Your “perfect” home is probably going to be a home with some small compromises. If you don’t make an offer on a home, you’re effectively saying, “I’m comfortable losing this home.”

My job as an agent is to represent your interests and do my best to protect you along the way. If you’re pursuing a home purchase in the near future, please get in touch. There are many other ways I can lower your stress and help you find a great home. Contact me today at 630-815-8098 or email me at marksotir@realtyexecutives.com with any real estate related questions.