Tag: selling your lake home

Whiteboard Topics: The Highest Offer For Your Lake Home May Cost You More Money

Posted on Kenya Spencer

Selling a lake house is an exciting but difficult undertaking, and your main goal as a homeowner is to secure the greatest offer possible. However, it is critical to exercise caution because the highest offer may not always be the most lucrative. Let’s look at some important points to consider when selling your lake house to prevent financial hazards.

1. Avoiding Selling Too Quickly: Resist the urge to accept early offers; instead, wait for perfect market circumstances to obtain the best price.

2. All Cash Transactions: Be wary of all-cash proposals since they may come with lesser bids and make it difficult to negotiate a fair bargain.

3. Limited (or no) Contingencies: Carefully evaluate proposals with fewer conditions to prevent any legal or financial problems.

4. Seasoned Real Estate Agents Who Understand Niche: Work with seasoned agents who specialize in lakefront properties for professional advice, effective marketing, and skilled negotiating.

A thoughtful and informed approach to selling a lake house may make it a rewarding experience. While a large offer may appear appealing, it is critical to consider all elements to prevent financial disasters. Take your time, investigate all-cash bids, evaluate conditions, and seek advice from experienced lakefront real estate brokers. With these safeguards, you may sell your cherished lake house with confidence and optimize your investment return.

Do I Smell a Sale?

Posted on Staff

Article co-written by Dezirae McGee and intern E’vondrua Harvey

plate of herbs used for making your home smell inviting

As a recent study confirms, 80% of people decide whether they want to buy a home within seconds of stepping into it.

However, this isn’t always for aesthetic reasons, as many other factors can affect a buyer’s initial impression of a property.

One of those factors is how the home smells.

Believe it or not, scent can draw the line between making a sale and having potential buyers running in the other direction.

Why are good scents important?

Prospective buyers tend to perceive a place as displeasing or of less valuable if it does not look and smell fresh.

Just as you wouldn’t go into an interview for your dream job without showering that morning, you want your house to look and smell its freshest.

Essentially a listing walk-through is an interview between the house and its prospective buyers. If a home has an unpleasant smell, the agent may know immediately if it’s going to make the home harder to sell.

According to The Ultimate Guide to Using Ambient Scent to Sell Real Estate, humans can detect at least one trillion different scents.

We react positively to smells we find familiar, which means as buyers we take more stock in properties we identify with.

For example, if a couple walks into a prospective home and smells fresh pine, it may remind them of a peaceful hike through the forest, thus allowing them to perceive the space as peaceful.

Or the scent could trigger memories of Christmas trees, leading them to imagine what it’d be like to have Christmas there.

Making the home smell its best

To ensure a home smells its best, it’s important to explore the home for items that could cause foul odors. You can start by following these simple steps:

  1. Clean. Do not simply surface clean. You will need to replace air filters, check air vents, remove any traces of mold in sinks and tubs, and clean current appliances. Then you can maintain surface cleaning.
  2. Trash Removal. Remove any trash from the home. This includes bathroom trash, junk mail, old boxes, etc.
  3. Floors. Have the carpets and floors professionally cleaned. Depending on the condition of the carpet, it may be best to have it replaced.
  4. Pets & Smoke. Make sure that any traces of pets, such as hair, toys, and litter boxes, are contained or taken out of the house. Also, remove any ashtrays and replace linens that may have been tainted by cigarette smoke.

Be sure to give special attention to areas that can generate the most odor, such as bathrooms and kitchens.

What scents, and where?

After the home has been properly cleaned, the next step is to choose a fragrance to fill the space when potential buyers visit.

U.S. News and World Report recommends using simple scents such as vanilla, herbs, green tea or citrus. Other suitable scents include aloe vera, ivy, and lavender.

Even though the choice of scent is important, how you choose to disperse the scent is just as important.

It is best to use discrete methods to do this. Examples include potpourri, oil plugins, linen, reed diffusers or fresh plants.

Regardless of which smells you choose, remember masking bad scents isn’t going to fool anyone. Find the source of the odor, treat it, and then proceed with making the home smell to sell.

Sensory smells can make a person picture themselves living, working and most important, breathing in the home. Be sure the scents you choose can paint the picture you want it to.

These 4 Things are Essential to Selling Your Lake Home

Posted on Staff

Selling your home is never easy, but selling your lake home comes with its own set of unique challenges and pitfalls. Check out LakeHomes.com‘s five tips for selling your lake home to ensure you’re prepared for the journey.

Clean up the Lakefront

Just as you would pressure wash your driveway and edge your lawn for a traditional home sale, it’s important to make sure your waterfront is in tip-top shape when selling your lake home.

agent shaking couple's hands who are selling their lake home

Lake weeds can quickly overrun your shoreline, so be sure to free it from suffocating vegetation.

You should also cut overgrown grass along the edge of your retaining wall and incorporate shoreline-stabilizing landscaping.

Popular lake landscaping features blue flag iris, lemongrass and cardinal flowers.

Keep in mind when touching up your home’s waterfront appeal that you avoid introducing invasive species to your lake

Such species include water hyacinth and purple loosestrife. Though they may be pretty to look at, theses plants are dangerous to the your lake and its ecosystem.

Other ways to improve your shoreline appeal include installing solar lights along the path from your home to the waterline and painting your metal bulk head for a restored look.

Repair Your Docks and Decks

You know that plank that’s been missing from your dock since 2004? If you’re selling your lake home, it’s time to replace it.

Of course your home’s interior is important, but most likely prospects will be more concerned with the external parts of your property.

This means they will be paying special attention to the condition of your boat dock, deck and patio.

Ensure your docks and decks are buyer-ready by repainting metal surfaces with weather resistant finishes and removing any screws or nails that are not flush.

Also, replace any splintered pieces of wood and pay careful mind to weathered hand rails, which will not escape notice.

For a full boat dock inspection check list, click  here.

Lifestyle Staging

One of the most important things to remember when selling your lake home is that potential buyers need to be able to envision their own families occupying the space.

Real estate pros recommend staging both the inside and outside of the home to help make this easier.

Indoors:

On the inside, start by removing family pictures from the walls and replacing a few of them with mirrors, so potential buyers can literally SEE themselves in the home.

Also, get rid of clutter by removing knicknacks like key hangers and collectibles. You should remove any magazines littering the coffee table and swap out your colorful throw pillows and blankets for those in neutral colors.

Make sure the lake is within sight as much as possible, even if that means removing thick curtains and window screens that may obscure the view or darken the room.

To be sure your lake home is inviting and homey, subtle lake lifestyle-inspired accents such as a welcome mat that reads “life is better at the lake,” or hanging a beach towel in the changing room may do the trick.

A few candles and fishing pole-emblazoned coasters on the coffee table can also bring the home to life.

Outdoors:

Put away all inflatables, pool noodles and other water toys, and make sure there are no knotted fishing lines or rogue hooks laying out.

Take some age off your outdoor furniture with a pressure wash, and upgrade any weather-worn cushions with new, brightly colored ones.

Tiki torches, big umbrellas and other lounge accessories like Adirondack chairs are also appropriate staging props.

If you have a canoe or kayak, experts recommend placing one in your yard, and hanging a few life jackets on your deck will also help get buyers in the right mindset.

Last, outdoor kitchens and grills should be cleaned of ash, soot and food remains before showing your home.

Hire a Lake-Focused Real Estate Agent

Above all else, always hire a lake real estate professional to guide you through the lake home-selling process.

Unlike traditional real estate agents, lake-focused agents live, work and play in their local markets, which provides them with intimate knowledge about the area’s real estate and the nuances of the lake itself.

These lake experts can also provide sellers with national exposure for their listings via sites like LakeHomes.com, which welcomes two million visitors a year looking specifically for a home like yours.

Lake agents’ local expertise on current market trends and access to lake traffic information about where buyers are most frequently coming from can help make selling your lake home a smooth, effortless process, too.

Do you have tips for selling your lake home? Tell us in the comments section below. And for more on make the sale, be sure to read “3 Reasons Your Home Won’t Sell.“