Top Tips to Prepare Your North Texas Home for Heavy Rain, Severe Storms, and Possible Flooding

Top 8 Tips For Preparing Your North Texas Home for Heavy Rain, Severe Storms, and Possible Flooding

All this North Texas rain lately has everyone concerned. Whether you think are at risk of flooding or not, it is important to prepare your home and have a plan of action just in case. The lakes are beginning to fill to over capacity and with more rain predicted to be in the forecast, the importance of preparing your home for heavy rain, bad storms, and possible flooding is at an all time high.

 

1. Clean your rain gutters: Make sure the rain gutters around your house have been cleaned and function properly. Clogged gutters can prevent rain from running off your roof and cause potential leaking in your home. Decaying wood, siding, and other materials, in addition to damaging the outside of your home, can damage the interior of your home as well. Check that the gutters do not have leaks and are tightly sealed. Make sure the gutter runoff has somewhere to go away from your foundation. This helps prevent pooling of water close to your home.

 

2. Make sure your roof is in good condition: Walk around the outside of your home carefully inspecting your roof for signs that your roof may need some repairing. Look for signs of aging, damage, and sagging. Loose or missing shingles, cracks in the chimney and along the edge of the shingles, holes or rust in the sheet metal, and a part of the roof that looks unusual in comparison to the rest could be warning signs. Be aware of any areas that seem particularly worrisome and that may need a closer inspection. If you have an outdoor shed, make sure the roofing on it is in good condition as well. You can always hire a professional inspector or roofer to assess the damages for you. Clear any debris that may be on your roof off, like fallen branches, leaves, and garbage blown on the roof. Check inside your attic, if you see any light shining through the roof this could be an indication that the waterproof insulation on your roof has been damaged.

 

3. Fix any leaks in your windows, door, or ceiling: inspect the caulking around your home at least once a year for chips and cracks, which means the caulking is old and needs to be replaced.  Remove cracked and aged caulking and re-caulk around the seals of the window and doors. Replace old or worn weather stripping under the door. Properly sealing the cracks around your home can also help cut back on your electric bill.

 

4. Maintain the plants around your home: Heavy winds can cause plant limbs to snap, and depending on the weight of the limb can cause serious damage to your home. If lightning strikes a tree and causes a fire, the fire can easily spread to your home. Trimming bushes and tree branches away from your home can help prevent a disaster. Stake bushes and other plants firmly to the ground, this helps prevent the wind from uprooting them, and blowing them into your home. Dead bushes and tree limbs should be removed and are especially hazardous if a fire breaks out. They are also the part of the tree most likely to snap from wind.

 

5. Lower water levels in pools: with all the extra water we’ve had lately, lowering the level of your pool could prevent overflow, but do not to drain more than a foot of water. The water in your pool helps protect it from damage from debris that may be blown into it.

 

6. Secure loose items around the yard: Patio furniture, planters, backyard toys and playgrounds, and anything else that may be loose around your home’s exterior should be secured in case of high winds that could possibly blow items into your fence windows or siding and create serious damage. Patio furniture should be stored in a dry area like a shed to prevent heavy rains from damaging the furniture.

 

7. Check with your home insurance policy to make sure you are covered: Consider the type of coverage you have, what level of damage you are insured for, and that your policy covers you for damages specific to your area.

 

8. Have an emergency plan: You can never be too careful when it comes to your family’s safety. Many people have been experiencing floods in this weather that never before had any issues with flooding. Be prepared for the worst. Generators can be an expensive but good investment if you are without power. Have bags of sand handy if necessary to soak up extra water. Consider where your family may be when emergency strikes and have a plan of action to bring everyone together and keep safe. Have an emergency kit in case you lose power or have to evacuate. 

How to Prepare Your Home for Sale

How to Prepare Your Home for Sale

When the times comes to sell your home there are several preparations you should make if you want to get top dollar, This list of top tips to sell your home quickly and for the most money is a great place to start!


De-clutter: The first thing you will need to do, is de-clutter your home. It can be difficult for buyers to see past too much furniture and items. When buyers walk into a home, they need to be able to imagine their lives there. You want them to start picturing where they would put their furniture, and how they would decorate, and if there is too much in the home, it is just not possible for buyers to picture their new life there. Storage units can be a great way to de-clutter a home without having to get rid of anything. Too much furniture, too many decorations, and piles of stuff makes a house look much smaller and takes away from the charm of the home.

Clean: Dirty homes are one of the biggest turn offs for buyers. Deep clean your home before it is on the market. You would be surprised what some buyers notice that you may not. I had a client once that would walk into a home and take a look at the baseboards and if they weren't sparkling my client wanted to leave because she felt like the owners were not clean and did not want to buy a dirty house. Clean blinds, baseboards, vents, appliances, floors, bathrooms, bedrooms, anything you can think of. Get rid of anything with an odor and try to keep your home smelling as clean as possible.

Yard Work: Take a look at your front and back yards. Make sure grass is mowed, plants look neat and well-kept, and get rid of too many plants. You don't want your home to look like a jungle. In the fall and winter, make sure you are keeping both your front and back yards completely clean from leaves, and in spring and summer make sure to water your grass and replace plants that died over the winter. Trim your trees away from your roof (inspectors will often put a tree too close to the roof in an inspection report for buyer to be aware of), prune your bushes, and replace old mulch. Keep the outside of your home looking like a meticulously maintained oasis rather than a waste land. Make sure any trash in your yard is picked up, and if you have dogs keep the back yard clean as well.

Maintenance: Check your entire house for any deferred maintenance. Paint the exterior, fix wood rot, stain your fence, touch up the inside of the home, have a roofer give you a free evaluation on the condition of your roof, get your ac checked, anything you can think of that is not perfect. Pay close attention to cracks in your home. While homes do settle and minor cracking can be caused by the home settling, sometimes cracks can be an indication of foundation problems. While covering settling cracks can make your home look better, if the cracks are from foundation they will return and continue to get bigger.  A home cannot be financed if the roof needs work or the foundation needs to be repaired. Change out all burnt out light bulbs, make sure everything in the home is functioning as it should be such as the garage door, hot water heater, disposal, and appliances. Re-grout bathrooms and tiles where the grout is disintegrating, Buyers would much rather buy a home that is move-in ready and needs minimal repair than have to mess with a home where they have to replace the siding or any other maintenance issue

Updating: If you have a room that has brightly colored walls, paint them. Neutral colors are key to attracting the most buyers. Let the buyers decide for themselves what they want to paint a house. If you are updating flooring, choose something that is easy for anyone to match, not something designer and over the top where a person has to have home decor experience to make it look good. Get rid of colored carpets and anything in the home that is hard to match. Don't go over the top and put marble in a 200,000 home and expect it to sell for more, instead try to update your home to the standards the rest of the neighborhood has. How much updating you should or should not do depends largely on when your home was built, what has been done to the home, and what most other homes in the neighborhood have.

What is a seller's market?

What is a seller's market?

A sellers market is a real estate market in which the number of homes for sale (inventory) is less than the amount of buyers looking to buy a home. In a balanced market, there is about 6 months worth of inventory, but in a sellers market, the inventory is down to 2 months, and in some areas less than 1 month. What this means is that the supply of homes for sale would be exhausted in just 2 months by buyers if no more homes were listed.

What does this mean for you? Well, that depends on which side of the real estate transaction you are on.

Buyers are dealing with bidding wars on almost every property they are looking at. You go look at a property the day it is listed, fall in love, and make an offer only to find out there are multiple other offers. If you want to be the winning bid you must do everything you can to make your offer more appealing than the others. And even after offering substantially more than list price, you still often loose the home to another bidder and have to start your search all over again. This can go on and on, and many buyers are having to make 10 offers and sometimes more before they are able to get in a property just because there are so many other people looking for a home too.

On the flip side, sellers are seeing property values sky rocket and when they have a home that is priced right it often sells very quickly and for higher than the asking value. Now, many homeowners think this is a great market to sell your home in, and it is very appealing counting the extra equity you are gaining by selling at a time when everyone wants to buy. However, even as a seller you are facing problems when selling. Homes are selling so fast that the appraisals are not keeping up with market values and many homes do not appraise for the amount they are selling for. It is very stressful when you think you've sold your home for a high amount but then the appraisal comes in $20,000 low and the buyer is suddenly no longer able to get the home at the price you both agreed to because the banks won't lend on a home that does not appraise. Unless a buyer or seller wants to come up with the difference (sellers going down in price or buyers paying additional cash out of their pocket or a combination of both), the deal will not go through. Then when a seller sells, they need a home to move to and become buyers in this crazy market and have to face the same problems, unless they are relocating to a different market. Even rentals right now are being leased at record rates, and the rent rate goes up all the time.

What can you do as a homeowner or buyer in this situation? Your best option when buying and even selling in this sellers market is to make sure that you have a competent agent on your team to guide you through the issues you may face and help you conquer them. A good agent knows what to do to make your offer more appealing and can also guide you through appraisal issues and may even be able to dispute a low appraisal.

Why you should NOT sell your home for sale by owner

Thinking about selling your home by yourself? Make sure you have done your research and understand why there are Realtors in the first place.

1. Texas is a non-disclosure state- In the state of Texas, home sales prices are not public information (non-disclosure). This means that as a homeowner, you cannot accurately price your home. Sure, you can ask neighbors what they sold a home for and hope they are honest about the price, you can also find out what neighborhood for sale properties were listed at, but there is no way you can find out what a home actually sold for unless you pay for a comping service like investors do, or talk to an agent. Zillow does not have sales prices, nor do any other free sight you visit. The Zestimate on Zillow is almost never accurate, and more likely to be off by close to $50,000 or more. The tax assessed value is completely inaccurate as to the market value of your home as well. While knowing list prices on homes comparable in square footage and condition can help you get a general idea as to price, you will not be able to get an accurate market price. You have no way of knowing if homes in your neighborhood sell for more or less than list price, and how much the difference is. When pricing a home, you need the final sales price, not list price. 
2. Realtors know how to qualify a buyer- Real estate agents have a way of pre-screening their buyers before they even let them in their car to look at homes. As a homeowner, your family's safety should be one of your top concerns. You do not want to open your doors to just any stranger claiming they want to look at your home to purchase, and accidentally let a predator into your home. The dangers of meeting a stranger are well known, and can end up with detrimental consequences. Realtors also know which lenders have reputations for pulling funding last minute and ruining the entire transaction, and often have back up lenders that may be able to save the contract and close on time. 
3. Negotiating experience- Experienced agents have the negotiating skills developed specifically for real estate transactions. They have knowledge of the current market and what is typically paid by buyers and sellers, and know how to talk to buyers and/or buyers agents to negotiate the best terms for you. The Realtors job is to work for their clients best interest and get their clients the best results possible. 
4. FSBOs get on average 10% less than a home listed with an agent- Yes, you read that correctly, on average for sale by owners transactions sell for an entire 10% less than the same home would if it had been listed with a Realtor. Many FSBOs pay the 3% buyers agent commission on top of selling the home for more than 10% less than homes listed with agents, which means even less money in your pocket. If you pay a listing agent, you are still making over 4% more than if you elected not to.
5. Investors and buyers agents know they have the advantage on a homeowner- Investors and buyers agents know the stats on the market. They know how to talk owners down on homes, and they know how to use actual facts to convince the homeowner a property is not worth what the homeowner thinks it is. An experienced listing agent knows how to weed through deception and help you understand if what the person is saying is true or false. Investors specifically target FSBOs because they know it is much easier to get a deal from a homeowner than from a property listed with an agent
6. Marketing your home- Marketing is the number one thing that can be done to increase exposure to your home and generate the most offers, pushing your walk-away cash higher with more and better offers. Good agents know about how to market your home in a way buyers appreciate and can often generate a frenzy of buyers before the property is officially entered into the multiple listing service (MLS), especially in the current DFW real estate market.
7. There is more to making money on your property than just the sales price- There is more involved in a transaction than just selecting the offer based on sales price alone. There are terms like home warranties, survey, title policy, and seller contributions for buyer closing costs. A Realtor can tell you what is customary for sellers to pay, and break down each of the different amounts and what they will be for the home being sold. Realtors have gone to school for and studied contracts, and understand what different contingencies are and if and how they can hinder the sale of your home. They know what is typical for option periods (both the length and amount), the length of time financial contingencies should be, what type of loans are more likely to close and which loans take longer to close. When dealing with real estate, time is money. 

If, after reading this, you are thinking about speaking to an agent, make sure you interview them thoroughly. Understand what their marketing plan is, how they work, what they provide, and how much they know. It is pretty easy to spot a rock star agent among a group of average agents, don't sell yourself short by hiring someone that is less knowledgeable and experienced because you think  you'll save money on a reduced commission. There is a reason people pay the full commission, and the results speak for themselves.