Birmingham Real Estate & Community News

If your commute to work takes 25 minutes, congratulations – you’re average, according to a 2009 study by the United States Census Bureau. Commuting to work is a very real part of American life for lots of people, yet seldom considered when they are buying a house.

Sure, it’s easy to get distracted by an amazing kitchen or a great backyard, but this is your opportunity to possibly cut the time it takes you to get to and from work. We’ve put together a few things you may want to consider as you choose your new neighborhood.

After a disaster, everything is a little overwhelming and it may feel like there are hundreds of things that you have to do, but where do you start? This may be even further complicated when you have to evacuate to a new city and are living out of a hotel.

Equifax is one of the nation’s three credit reporting agencies. These companies pull together your credit information from banks, credit card companies, and service providers to create your credit report.

Adam Levin from CyberScout told AL.com "On a scale of 1 to 10, this is a 10, and that's because of the quality of the data ... your Social Security number is the skeleton key for your identity."

Fewer seniors are selling their homes these days with two-thirds planning on staying in the family home and making the changes to the home to accommodate their evolving needs, according to a 2017 Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing. This has created a deficit of older homes coming to the market that tends to create a pool for a more affordable starter home. In turn, slowing down millennials coming into the market even though there are newer homes and communities in the area that are easier for senior living in Birmingham.

Most people know about spring cleaning and have a list of things they do to summarize their homes, but how about using the chance this fall to do some things around the house that can help you in the long run when and if you chose to sell your home. This is a great time to make a reminder for yourself to do some safety checks and to finish that home preventative maintenance chores to do list.

It’s a toss-up whether the home inspection or the appraisal induces more nail-biting. Homebuyers, sellers and the agents involved await the results of both with a mixture of anticipation and fear. The latter, at least statistically, is unfounded. “Nationally, [only] 3.9 percent of sales failed in 2016,” according to Samantha Sharf at Forbes.

Even if you aren’t considering selling your home in the near future, a finished basement offers more living space – something most homeowners dream about.

If you are considering selling, you’ll recoup 70 percent of the cost of the remodel, according to Remodeling Magazine’s 2017 Cost vs. Value Report. Furthermore, keeping your basement-finish budget to no more than 10 percent of your home’s appraised value makes it a smart investment, Lending Tree Home Pros’ Neil Salvage tells HGTV.

Birmingham, if you want to sell your home this fall, start doing these things now

When trying to forecast the future Birmingham housing market, most experts look at pending home sales. If they’re consistently trending upward, we can comfortably look forward to a robust near-future. For most of this year, the pending home sale statistics have looked like a rollercoaster, with three consecutive months of declines until June, when they began increasing again.

Want to make an extra $1,500 on the sale of your home? Paint the front door dark gray or navy blue, according to a study by Zillow. Nab another $1,500 by painting the home’s exterior "greige" (a mix of beige and gray).

You can leave that taupe or medium brown paint, but there is a risk. Fresh paint will photograph better and may be the deciding point for a potential buyer. Just as color can impact us positively, some colors can be the kiss of death.

Writers have a target audience in mind as they peck away on the keyboard. Radio DJs are admonished to hold a mental image of their audience (one person of a certain age group, by the way) every time they open the mic. And, the key to success for professional marketers is to “know your audience.” The latter uses market research to determine from what pool of consumers will come to their potential customers.

When a home is the product we don’t need expensive research to determine who will be most interested in it. Thankfully, the National Association of REALTORS and others have done the legwork for us, so we have a pretty good idea of which demographics drool over which types of homes.