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When staging a home for sale, use neutral colors in flooring, upholstery and window dressing to enhance brighter accents.

Staging Your House For A Quick Sale
Posted: 6/15/2010

(NAPSI)-"Home staging" is increasingly popular among homeowners seeking to sell their house. Curb appeal, clutter removal and a thorough cleaning are important, but a few extra steps can dramatically improve the appeal of your home to a buyer.

Design and model home expert Janice Jones, who oversees model home design and decorating for Pulte Homes, offers a few tips to help you create an up-to-date new and fresh look that can set your home apart from the competition:

1. Use Color: Adding the right punch of color to accent walls or trim can create depth, enhance kitchen cabinets or bring a boring bathroom to life.

Jones encourages homeowners to find pops of color in accessories, such as throw pillows, coffee-table books and decorative canisters. The key is to experiment and not be afraid to add extras such as exciting wall art or a playful chair or an area rug. Different colors have different effects, Jones says:

• Red is stimulating and encourages self-confidence.
  
  
• Orange promotes happiness and celebration.
  
  
• Yellow is uplifting and light-hearted.
  
  
• Blue is calming in softer tones, promotes clarity in deeper ones.
  
  
• Green is the color of nature; it feels fresh and rejuvenating.
  
  
• Aqua is restful while pink is gentle and sweet-making a great pair.
  
  
• Purple tones bring out a sense of compassion.

2. Less Can Be More: When Jones decorates model homes, she takes care not to clutter spaces and aims to keep rooms inviting, comfortable and memorable. This requires appropriate-sized furnishings that allow for maximum seating without crowding.

"Use fewer accessories and try not to overstimulate," she advised. "This makes living spaces appear much larger."

3. Focus on the Home: Homeowners achieve better results by displaying only their most important collectible treasures in a bookcase, a see-through furniture cabinet or open shelving. The focus should be on the house, not the current homeowner's knickknacks.

4. Know the Latest Trends: Design trends have been moving toward simple clean lines, an organic approach and a more relaxed look overall. Flat-screen TVs, laptop computers and other technology have changed the need for heavy, deep pieces.

5. Even Small Changes Reap Rewards: Jones stresses that even a small decorating project can make a significant difference.

"Interior design gives home sellers a great opportunity to make a good first impression," she said. "Simple staging can be livable as well as sellable."

For more home-staging tips from Pulte Homes, visit http://bit.ly/StagingTips.

Karla Hawe
Mortgage Consultant

Getting the best Interest Rate on Your Home Loan?
A Qualified Mortgage Consultant Can Help Boost Your Credit Scores

Consumers interested in purchasing or refinancing a home will pay an interest rate based on current market conditions and their ability to pay back the loan. The borrower’s income and debt ratios are taken into consideration by the lender, as well as the predictability factor provided by credit scoring. It’s important to have a mortgage professional in your corner that has a keen eye for solutions to improving credit scores in an effort to get the best interest rate possible.

Interest rates associated with various loan programs are broken down into schedules based on credit score ratings. While each lender has its own guidelines, it’s safe to assume that as the consumer’s credit score goes down, interest rates will go up.

If you have already taken out a mortgage loan with a higher interest rate because your credit score was a little under par, you will really appreciate the value in doing a little work to improve your credit score. Refinancing from a loan you received when your credit scores were low to a loan with high credit scores, can save you literally thousands of dollars in financing fees over time.

A qualified mortgage consultant, such as myself, will guide you through the nuances of the process of improving your credit score to refinance and save money. First and foremost, I would want to review the terms of the existing mortgage loan to determine if you have a pre-payment penalty clause written into your contract.  If you were to sell the home or try to refinance before the pre-payment penalty expires, you would most likely have to pay a 3 percent fee back to the lender to compensate for the high risk and cost incurred to provide that financing.

There are five factors that make up the credit score and I can coach you through some basic strategies to improve your credit score. Once your credit scores have improved, it’s time to refinance at a better interest rate.

It is important to work with a mortgage consultant who can give you a roadmap to follow and a strategy for success in building personal wealth. Please feel free to call me for a free credit consultation. You can contact me, Karla Hawe at 916-923-5900 or karlah@bwcmtg.com.

Ed Wacaster, CMPS

The Mortgage Manager

This is definitely the time to be putting some serious thought to buying real estate. With all of the programs available today to help First Time Home Buyers with Down Payment Assistance, not to mention government loan programs as well, today is the right time to try. But be smart about it and find a true professional before you jump into something.

The key to successful home ownership and the happiness that is supposed to come with it, can only come with a transaction done correctly and efficiently. In order for that to happen you need to have the right people in your corner, watching out for your best interests. Can you imagine how much lower the foreclosure rate would be if people had used the right professional when they decided to use that person for a mortgage? What would the media have to talk about? They would have to go hunting for something different to scare the jeebers out us.

I’m going to repeat myself here:. You need to have a relationship with your Real Estate Agent and your Mortgage Professional much like the one you have with your Doctor and Dentist. I’m not putting us on that type of pedestal, but if you don’t have that relationship established, you are open to being ripped off big time by someone who could destroy your future. There are too many good professionals in the real estate industry to open yourself up to such treatment. If you don’t know a good professional yourself, ask someone you know if they would use the person who helped them buy their home, and with their mortgage again. If not, ask someone else.

Be careful of cleverly worded radio ads and direct mail. Most of the time those companies will do a mortgage for you, and you don’t want to use them again. The really good ones do very little advertising and are worth their weight in gold. When I had my radio program last year, I was shown a loan file from a competing show. The host of that show was going to send his kids to college on one loan. Making money is one thing; greed is just that, greed.

So, get in the game, but be careful. I am not the only out here that cares about my clients. I have many good friends that I would refer to if I weren’t in this business, and they’re just that, really good friends, and really good people.

You can contact Ed Wacaster, CMPS at 916-677-0996 or www.EdWacaster.com

New Law Helps Working Families Facing Home Foreclosure
Press Statement by Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, California Labor Federation

“Millions of working families are at risk of losing their homes due to reckless and predatory mortgage lending. Now, with the economy in recession and the cost of gas and food at record highs, these homeowners are seeing their monthly payments double and triple overnight.

“Today, Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 1137 in order to provide some desperately needed protection for families who can no longer afford their home loan. This bill, carried by Senator Don Perata, requires lenders to contact borrowers before they start the foreclosure process. This gives families a chance to try and modify bad loans before they lose their homes.

“Over the past few years, more and more California borrowers have been persuaded to take out loans with exorbitant pre-payment penalties. Predatory lenders have steered them into high-cost loans, even when they actually qualified for lower, fixed-rate loans. Far too many families have ended up in loans they don’t understand and can’t afford.

“No one wins with a home foreclosure; a family loses not only their most valuable asset, but the roof over their children's heads as well. The banks lose money from a short sale, and neighbors watch property values plummet. When a family is trapped in a loan they cannot afford, the best outcome is for everyone is a loan modification. That's exactly what this bill promotes.

“This bill provides immediate protection to those who need it most. We commend Senator Perata for championing this bill and the Governor for signing it. But this is just the first step in banning the abusive lending practices that created this crisis. California's working families, and our struggling state economy, simply cannot allow this sort of foreclosure freefall to happen again.”

Assessed Value Drops On 85,000 Sacramento County Residential Properties

Reflecting the fact that much of the residential real estate market has been in a decline since mid-2006, Sacramento County Assessor Ken Stieger announces that the Assessor’s Office has reviewed the market values of residential properties in Sacramento County and will be reducing the assessed values for over 85,000 properties on the 2008-09 property tax roll. These decreases are often referred to as Proposition 8 reductions, reflecting the 1978 ballot proposition that authorized them.

Generally speaking, properties purchased in 2004 and later are affected. Most decreases will range between 10% and 30%.

The majority of the remaining residential properties in the county, some 300,000-plus parcels, will continue to be assessed under Proposition 13 provisions and will not be receiving notices. If a property was purchased prior to 2004, it is unlikely to receive the Prop 8 decrease in assessed value.

In the next few weeks, the Assessor’s Office will send letters to the owners of these properties, notifying them that the assessed value of their property will be reduced for the 2008-09 property tax roll. The letter will advise affected owners of their new Proposition 8 assessed value and will also include their Proposition 13 factored value for comparison. The Prop 8 assessed value will be reflected on the tax bills issued in October of 2008.

Proposition 8 value reductions are temporary. Once a property receives a Prop 8 reduction, its value must be reviewed as of January 1 each year to determine whether the current fair market value remains less than its Proposition 13 base year value plus inflationary adjustments. The Prop 13 value is typically the property’s acquisition value plus inflation factors for intervening years. The lower of these two values is the value used for property tax purposes.

Since the reduction Proposition 8 value represents the property’s current Fair Market Value, it can fluctuate from year to year without limitation, to reflect changes in the real estate market. When the real estate market recovers and the market value exceeds the Proposition 13 factored base year value, the property’s Proposition 13 value will be restored.

The anticipated decrease in assessed value for the 85,000 properties should approximate $6 billion, and will result in a revenue decrease equal to 1% of that amount, or $60 million. The lower amount of property taxes in the County will impact local schools, cities, and special districts

Assessor Stieger also wishes to alert the public that property owners may receive solicitations from private businesses and individuals offering assistance in this process for a fee. While property owners are certainly at liberty to use these private companies, they can apply for this reduction themselves at absolutely no cost simply by writing a letter or otherwise contacting the Assessor’s Office.

Taxpayers may visit the Assessor’s website: www.assessor.saccounty.net for more information or call the Assessor’s Proposition 8 Customer Service Line at (916) 875-0455.

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