Barrington, IL Real Estate News

The biggest mistake overall is pricing too high. The mentality of “let’s just try it” at this price is often a huge mistake. Also, trying to sell on ones own is a mistake some sellers make. Equally important is ignoring repair or updates that need to be made. A seller who really wants to get top ...

If a seller knows they want to list in the spring, they need to prepare their home in the winter. They should take the cold momths to paint, do repairs and get ready. They need to have an appointment on the calendar with a Realtor so that they can get paperwork done and the home is ready to hit t...

Pricing too high can be detrimental to sellers in a couple of different ways. First of all, there is a built up pool of buyers waiting for homes that match their criteria to come on the market. If a home matches the buyer’s criteria, but is priced outside of their search parameters, they may neve...

Every now and then there is a program that will help a homebuyer buy a home with very little down…but there is always going to have to be some investment of a buyer’s money when buying a home. There are many programs that will allow as little as 5% down. Some banks may offer promotional grant pro...

The purpose of doing a final walk-through on a home is to make sure that it is in the condition expected for the new buyer. If there have been a large number of repairs to be done, then a check-list would be appropriate and used. If there have not been, then we would walk through room by room, an...

The best thing a seller can do to prep for an open house is be sure the house shines in every way. Make sure that the home is cleaned from top to bottom, all light fixtures are working and on, if it’s winter have a fire in the fireplace (supervised of course), music playing, if it’s game day, hav...

We have many good home stagers we have worked with and can definitely make a referral for someone to maximize your home’s appearance. Home staging can make the difference between a sale and no sale. It’s very important. A professional with an eye for what will make your interior rooms look best i...

There are pluses and minues to both. Obviously it is nice to have a new home which no one else has lived in. One would expect that everything would work well, be clean, and the home would be a blank slate for the new owner’s touches. Often new construction will appear to be a very good buy as nei...

Generally speaking, no. Zillow is one tool that people can use to get an idea of home values in their area. However, Zillow (and other online pricing services) are no replacement for the first-hand analysis of a Realtor who is familiar with the neighborhoods and individual home sales that may hav...

Being pre-qualified is a very quick process based on telling a lender your income, and a brief synopsis of your bills and a credit check. If all those look good a lender would pre-qualify you. Pre-approval goes a little deeper into the process, an application is madeand the lender makes sure that...