Home Buying Tips

Posted by The Upfront Mortgage Broker

When the time comes to sell your home, there is a good chance you will have a few questions racing through your head at the same time. The first area of concern should be, what do you need to do in order to increase your chances of finding someone to buy your home. Second, you will likely feel overwhelmed when it is time to select your agent. By following a few simple steps, and working with ethical and professional Realtors, you will find that it can actually be quite easy to sell a home for the first time.

Making Your Home Into a House

In order to sell your home, one of the most important steps to take is to de-personalize it. When you are shopping to buy a home, you want to find a house you can picture yourself living in. The same is true for your prospective buyers. They need to be able to see themselves living in it.

In order to de-personalize your house, you should remove knick-knacks and other items of a personal nature. In addition, if you have transformed the main purpose of any room to other than what it was originally intended, change it back now. Otherwise, potential buyers may have a difficult time seeing the room as something other than what you have turned it into.

Adding Curb Appeal to Your Real Estate

To improve your chances of selling your home in the shortest period of time, you need to take steps to improve the curb appeal. Curb appeal is the first impression the potential buyer sees from the road. In order to improve curb appeal, you might need to invest a bit of cash. The investment has historically been well worth it. Some simple ways to improve curb appeal include:

• * add colorful flowers or other landscaping elements to the front of the house,
  • * pressure clean apply a fresh coat of exterior paint,
  • * add shutters, window boxes or other decorative elements to the outside of the house and
  • * repair any broken windows, hanging address numbers or other noticeable problems.

Each of these improvements are simple and cost less than a few hundred dollars. Yet, taking these steps can increase your profits while also helping you sell the property faster.

Picking the Best Real Estate Agent

Your agent is going to play a very important role when it comes to selling your home. You want to take care in selecting the agent to work with you. It is best to interview a few different real estate agents. Don't be swayed into going with the agent who appraises your home at the highest value. Go with the agent who seems to be the most honest and you are the most comfortable with.

By taking the steps to improve the appearance of your home and by selecting the right real estate agent, it shouldn't be long until you sell your house and move into a new place you can now call home.

Respectfully,
The Florida Upfront Mortgage Broker
Joe Bartolotta
Residential, Commercial & Reverse Mortgages
Direct 407.340.0220
Joe (at) the upfront mortgage broker (dot) com

Xbox 360 Contest

Hello Everyone,

I don't normally post about a contest but I thought you should know about this contest. It is for a xbox360 plus a GTA4 game. Take a look at John Cow's site http://www.johncow.com/win-an-xbox360-elite-and-a-copy-of-gta4/ and enter. Don't forget to head over to the sponsor, Top Hosting Center http://www.tophostingcenter.com/and check out what they are all about.

The great thing about the contest is that it is short, it ends at the end of the month. It also offers numerous ways to get entries into the contest to better your chances of winning.

Here are some of the rules:

• Write a short post about the contest on your own blog linking to the contest post and gain 250 “tickets.”- I did this already
• Become an affiliate of Top Hosting Center, receiving 50% commission for each sale you refer, as well as 250 “tickets” in this contest.
• Every comment you leave on another blog’s latest post talking about and linking to this contest page will get you 25 tickets.- I did this already,see Erica DeWolf's site
  
• Leaving this contest link in a new forum thread will gain you 25 tickets
• Mass message your MySpace or Facebook or Twitter friends and gain 25 tickets- I did this already
• Subscribe to John Cow.com and Top Hosting Center’s blog feeds and get 25 more tickets- I did this already
• Give the contest post a thumbs up on StumbleUpon and receive 10 tickets.- I did this already
  

Here is some more info:
You can gain entries in this contest until April 30th, when the winner will be picked in a lottery type contest. There seems to be a lot of potential for gaining entries into the drawing, so get started now! You only have 28 days left to generate a thousand entries…so go promote it, and good luck!

If you aren't in it, you can't win it so get on over there now and enter.

New FHA loan limits

FHA announced a new loan limit and it is nearly $100,000 higher than before. What does this mean to you? If you were contemplating buying your next home or refinancing your present one, now may be the time. Cash-out refinancing is available up to 95% of your current value.

NEW FHA LIMITS

·Lake $353,750
·Orange $353,750
·Osceola $353,750
·Seminole $353,750
·Volusia $303,750
·Flagler $287,500


For a list of all counties in Florida, please click here.

FHA is the most lenient program in today's mortgage market, it also has the lowest mortgage insurance requirement and allows for the most financing at 97%. Rates are great as well, now is the time to make your move, literally.

There are lots of good reasons to choose an FHA loan, especially if one or more of the following apply to you:

You're a first-time homebuyer
You don't have a lot of money to put down on a house
You want to keep your monthly payments as low as possible
You're worried about your monthly payments going up
You're worried about qualifying for a loan
You don't have perfect credit
You're worried about what will happen if you fall behind on your payments

If any of these scenarios describe you, then an FHA loan may be right for you. Why? FHA-insured loans offer many benefits and protections that you won't find in other loans including:

Lower cost: FHA loans have competitive interest rates because the Federal government insures the loans for lenders. Always compare an FHA loan with other loan types.

Smaller down payment: FHA loans have a low 3% down payment and the money can come from a family member, employer or charitable organization as a gift. Other loan programs don't allow this.

Easier qualification: Because FHA insures your mortgage, lenders may be more willing to give you loan terms that make it easier for you to qualify.

Less than perfect credit: You don't have to have perfect credit to get an FHA mortgage. In fact, even if you have had credit problems, such as a bankruptcy, it's easier for you to qualify for an FHA loan than a conventional loan.

More protection to keep your home: The FHA has been around since 1934 and will continue to be here to protect you. Should you encounter hard times after buying your home, the FHA has many options to help you keep you in your home and avoid foreclosure.

Call me today and let's talk about your options with these new loan limits.

Respectfully,
Joe Bartolotta
Mortgage Consultant
Residential & Commercial
web www.joebartolotta.com
blog www.theupfrontmortgagebroker.com
Direct 407.340.0220