Real Estate Search Blog | Property Listings MA

Cambridge MA is one of the best places to live in the entire Boston area; there are plenty of schools, the local infrastructures are more than adequate, transportation systems are top-notch, and a host of other benefits make it an ideal place to buy a home. If you already made up your mind about getting one of the Cambridge homes for sale, then the only thing you have to think about now is when to go house hunting; and for some people this can be quite tricky.

Here are some of the pros and cons of going househunting during any particular season:

Spring and Summer

This is the time when most people go searching for homes to buy, mainly because the weather is nice enough that people can leisurely stroll about the neighborhood of their choice. If you choose to search for a house during this time of the year, then you will be able to scout the area, and the house more thoroughly.

The downside about house hunting during the warmer seasons is that there will surely be a lot of competition, and the chances of you getting a house that is well within your budget will be minimal.

Autumn and Winter

Cambridge can get quite nippy during the fall and winter months, so you may want to consider layering your clothes when looking at the available homes in the area. Although the weather may seem unreasonable, the good news is that there would be considerably fewer people that you will have to contend with, and it is more likely that the sellers would agree to lower the asking price for their homes (especially if they are planning to relocate to a much warmer part of the country).

House hunting during the colder parts of the year will also allow you to find out if the heating systems of the houses are functioning properly, how much snow accumulates in the area, and of course how your prospective neighbors celebrate the upcoming holiday season.

Whatever season you choose to go searching for the perfect Cambridge MA homes for sale, there will always be a couple of pros and cons that you have to deal with. Hopefully, if you can manage to follow the tips mentioned above, not only will you find the best new home for you and your family, you will also get a good deal for it as well.

Everyone knows that the rooms that can make or break the sale of a house are the bathrooms and the kitchen, so it makes sense that you have to concentrate most of your home staging efforts in these rooms if you want your piece of real estate in Somerville MA to fly off the housing market shortly after you place it there. You need to focus mainly on the kitchen area because this is where most people would dwell during an open house, so you need to make it more appealing to potential buyers.

Contrary to what most people think, you really do not have to spend an exorbitant amount of money in sprucing up your kitchen. Here are some helpful tips on how to make your kitchen look stunning without breaking the bank:

Repaint everything you can

Are the cabinets looking a little worse for wear? Does the wallpaper look dingy and dated? If you want to rejuvenate the look of your kitchen then just put a fresh coat of paint over everything! You will be amazed just how good your kitchen would look once you are done painting everything; the cabinets would look brand new, and the walls and ceilings can actually brighten up the entire room.

Replace all the broken/dated hardware

Remember the broken cabinet handles that you promised to replace a while back but haven’t gotten the time to do so? Now is the perfect time for you to do all the necessary repairs. Replace all of the dated cabinet handles with new ones with a modern design and you will completely change the way they look. You might also want to install an overhead pot rack over the island countertop; this not only adds more storage space, it also gives a feeling of functionality to your entire kitchen.

Freshen up your tables and chairs

If your kitchen tables and chairs are starting to look their age, instead of replacing them with brand new ones, you can just rejuvenate them. If you have a wooden table and chairs, then you can paint them with a color that matches the walls of your kitchen, you should also re-upholster the seat cushions if they are a bit frayed around the edges.

With these simple and affordable tips, you can bet that your Somerville MA real estate for sale will not stay in the market for too long; you might even get an offer that is much more than what you expected.

If you are planning on selling your Cape Ann MA home, and you want to go about it without too much stress, then you might want to consider professionally staging your home, and if you hired a real estate agent, then you might have heard this same piece of advice from him/her. You might be wondering how professional home staging can help sell your little slice of Cape Ann MA real estate right now, but after reading the following benefits you might just change your mind.

It makes it easier to market your home

People are more likely to give you offers on your home when they get to tour inside a nicely-staged home. Having most of the necessary repairs made, and “freshening” up the look of your home will also make for better photos for your online advertisements, and these will get more people interested in buying your house; and the more interested buyers, the higher the likelihood of you getting more than your present asking price for the house.

Hiring a home stager can help identify problem areas

If you try to stage your home by yourself, your emotional attachment to the house may get in the way of your decision-making. For instance, you may not want to change the colors of the walls because your family were the ones who painted them when you first moved in the house, and the memories of that time still hung over your head. A professional home stager on the other hand would not hesitate to do anything necessary in order to make your house more presentable to buyers, this way you do not have to deal with the hard decisions on your own.

If you do not stage your house, then your house will get ignored

Consider this, because other Cape Ann homes are getting professionally staged, buyers tend to gravitate towards them and ignore yours. Having only a couple of bidders on your home will make you want to just give up and take a low offer (even one that is well below your asking price) on your home just so you can get rid of it and get on with the rest of your life; if you are really unlucky, then your house might be on the market for months, maybe even years, and this can be pretty frustrating.

These are only some of the many reasons why you should get the help of professionals in staging your home. With home staging, not only will you be getting more, and much higher bids, you will also avoid most, if not all of the stress and disappointments associated with selling your home.

If you are trying to sell your house in Cambridge, and you want to get it over with fast, then you should place your house in an MLS or Multiple Listing Service/System. Most home sellers often get frustrated when they do not get too many offers on their homes; which is why most of the time they tend to shortchange themselves and just accept any bid that they get no matter how low it is. MLS can save you from all this frustration by helping you, and your Cambridge realtor, spread the word about your house.

An MLS is actually a network of real estate agents and brokers, they help each other by sharing whatever kind of information that they have. This started way back in the 1800s when real estate brokers would gather in one office and they would share information with each other; they used the network to help sell each other’s inventories. Nowadays you can find many different Multiple Listing Systems online, making it even more convenient to use.

This can help them find out about deals that they could not otherwise find on their own, and they could also use the service to compare appraisals and find out how much houses are selling for in a certain area these days. So when you submit your house for sale advertisement in an MLS, not only will you have the help of your own realtor in selling your house, you will actually have an entire squad of them disseminating information to a wider range of potential buyers.

The great thing about the MLS is that everyone benefits from it. You and your realtor will be able to find a buyer for your house easily, and the real estate agents on the other end will also have a relatively easier time to find the perfect house for their clients and thus helping them make commissions as well. You are basically letting even more people to gain access to your listing, and this means more offer will come your way so the possibility of you getting the asking price for your house, or maybe even more, will also increase.

With the help of a professional Cambridge MA real estate agent and the information network known as the MLS, you will never have to entertain low ball offers on your house, and you also do not have to wait for months, or maybe years, before you can sell your house and move on with your life.

If you are looking for a Fall River real estate that will not impact your housing budget too hard, then you should checkout the auctions for foreclosed homes. In these housing auctions there is a chance for you to get a house that is well within your budget, and even leave you with some money for some necessary repairs and improvements. But before you get on a bidding frenzy in housing auctions, you need to know about the potential problems that you may need to face later.

One of the most serious problems that homebuyers like you would face is if there is an existing tenant in the house that you just bought. If the previous owner of the house leased the property before it got foreclosed then you will be facing a legal battle with the tenant, and it is a battle that you may not win because the law states that you cannot officially evict the tenants until after 90 days have passed according to their rental contract.

The problem here is that the owners of the property which will be foreclosed soon can actually draft legal documents that will allow them to rent their house to other people, and they are not actually obligated to inform the new tenants about the impending foreclosure; it will be up to you, the new owner of the house to deal with the occupants and become the bearer of bad news.

It is a sad fact that most homeowners who know that their house will get foreclosed still insert renters into the property, knowing quite well about the legal problems that will ensue after their agreement. If you happened to buy a house from a trustee auction, and unfortunately the previous owner thought that it would be a good way to get back at their lenders to rent the house to another family, then you can expect that you would not be able to move into the house until after the mess gets cleared.

If you are a timid fellow, someone who would rather not go into a confrontation with an unhappy renter of the property, then you need to study the details of the property that will be going on the trustee auction. Blindly bidding on foreclosed Fall River homes is a surefire way to get into a legal bind, which will cost you a lot more money instead.

If you are planning on selling your Boston real estate, then the internet can be a valuable tool. Other than hiring a real estate agent to market your house, you can also be proactive and post some ads for the house online as well. And, to make your advertisements more appealing to the public, you need to post a couple of really nice pictures of your property; and the best part of this deal is that you do not need the help of a professional photographer to take the pictures, you can do all of it by yourself.

What photos do you need?

When posting an online ad for your house, there are a couple of important pictures that you need to take. The first is a good picture of the outside of your house, this will show people the curb appeal of the entire house. You should also post photos of all the rooms in the house and of the additional features that it has; you need to put a bit more attention to your kitchen, bathroom, and the master bedroom because those are the rooms that usually make or break the sale of a house.

Resolution is key

Would you be interested in looking at house photos that are blurry and do not contain a lot of detail? No, you won’t. So how can you expect people to take a liking to your house if the pictures of it are grainy and lack detail? Instead of using the camera on your cellphone (although some high end smartphones do have a good camera) to take the pictures, you should use an actual digital camera for taking the pictures, even a regular point-and-shoot that provides a good amount of ppi (pixels per inch) will suffice; you should also use a tripod to prevent the camera from shaking.

Use as much natural lighting as possible

Take the pictures during the brightest time of the day, like mid-morning, and open up your window blinds and curtains to let plenty of the natural sunlight in the room you are taking a picture of. Most house hunters look for houses that have good natural lighting, so you need to showcase this in your pictures.

With these tips, you can be sure that a lot of people will be coming for your open house. Even small things like posting an online advertisement can really help in your efforts of selling your Back Bay Boston real estate fast so you can move on with your life as soon as possible.

Homebuyers are discriminating folks, and they have every right to be since they will be spending a lot of money on their purchase; and if you are planning on selling your home in Cambridge to this very discerning lot, then you better be prepared to please them in any way you can. There are already plenty of guides out there on what you need to do if you want to sell your house, but here are some of the things that you should not do if you do not want buyers to look at the other Cambridge homes for sale instead of yours.

The abandoned building look

If your shrubs and lawn is in serious need of trimming, the outside paint is a drab grey when it was originally yellow, and other little details that make your house look like it has been abandoned for quite some time now will surely invoke very little interest from buyers; and if some do appear interested, then you should expect very low offers; offers so low that they just make you want to cry and/or punch the other person in the face. Now if you want to avoid any unpleasant encounters like this, then you should do your best to at least make your house look like a decent person can live in there.

Extremely personalized

When you first bought your home, the one thing that you immediately set out doing is adding your personal touches to make it more cozy, and that is the same kind of feeling that you would want buyers to experience when they look at your home. If you want to sell your house, then you should not leave your personal items on display; if you cannot get rid of them, then place them in a storage locker and only take them out once you have moved into your new home.

The retro/outdated look

Cars are the only things that look good in their original shape, this does not apply to houses. Just because your home was built in the 1970s that does not mean it should stay in that era. Take out the shag carpeting and use a more modern approach in designing if you want your home to sell quickly.

If you want your home to stand out (in a good way)  from the other Cambridge MA homes for sale, then it is best if you can avoid making the kind of mistakes mentioned above.

So, you are looking through a couple of Cape Ann homes with the intent to buy, but you cannot seem to find the right one that fits your budget. Now before you quit and resign yourself to your fate for not having enough money, did it ever cross your mind to negotiate with the seller to get the prices of the house down? There is always room for negotiations when it comes to large purchases like buying a house, but you have to go about it the right way or else you risk infuriating the seller and dash all your hopes of buying the house you want.

Play it close to the vest

When you are dealing with real estate agents, it is best if you mimic their behavior and not jump in too aggressively in the negotiations. Being too assertive will only make the seller return with an equal force, but if you try your best to become as amicable and talk to the seller in a nice and calm manner, it will make him more open to your suggestions at lowering the price.

Do not make lowball offers

Before you even make an offer on the house, you need to do some research on just how much other Cape Ann MA homes for sale are going for; you should never ever insult the sellers by making a lowball offer on their houses. Making lowball offers in the hopes that the seller will meet you in the middle will usually lead to the seller not wanting to negotiate with you at all.

Do a comprehensive inspection of the house for sale

You need to inspect the home closely to spot any defects or disrepair that you can use as leverage in your negotiations, and it is better if you have a professional contractor with you when doing an inspection. You should not be shy in pointing out any issues that you might find, but again do not offer an insultingly low price when negotiating with the seller.

Keep in mind that the world does not revolve around you, the seller also needs to make a respectable amount of money from the sale of his house; and if the both of you are stubborn in the negotiation process, then you will not get anywhere fast. Learn to give as much as you take and soon you will reach a solution that would be mutually beneficial to you both.

If you have fallen on hard times and you need to sell your home in Cambridge MA, then you might want to consider getting the help of a Cambridge real estate agent to help facilitate the transaction. But is there a way that you can sell your house on your own without incurring more expenses? There are actually a couple of methods that you can try if you want to sell your house on your own, like:

For Sale By Owner (FSBO)

Some homeowners would rather go with the FSBO route because most real estate agents charge five to eight percent of the total sale price of their house as commission; it may not seem like much, but that amount may spell the difference of making a profit or taking a fall on the sale of the house. The people who choose this route do so because they want to gain control over all of the aspects of the sale, thereby ensuring that they can get the most profit from selling their house; at least that is what they set out to do.

If you are willing to put enough time, energy, and money into research and the marketing of your house, then you can be quite successful at selling your house and making a decent profit out of it; unfortunately not all citizens have access to the kind of information network that real estate agents do, so you might end up taking a dive.

Selling Directly To Real Estate Investors

If you want to sell your house as soon as possible and without having to spend a dime on making it pretty for buyers, then you should sell your house directly to real estate investors. These companies deal in buying houses that are in need of a bit of restoration and then flipping them for a profit. Although you can sell your house quickly if you approach investment companies directly, you should not expect to make too much out of the sale of your house; the investor will nitpick at every little detail to lower your asking price as much as possible so that they can get as much room for profit on their end.

If you are willing to take a risk at selling your house, then there is nothing stopping you from trying to sell your house on your own. But if you want to go about it without too much hassle and drama, then get the help of a professional Cambridge MA real estate agent.

A lot of people would like to cut back on the costs of buying Boston real estate as much as possible, mainly because property prices there are quite high already. One of the methods that people use to lessen their expenses is they try to do as much of the work by themselves, but what they do not know is that they will actually be wasting a lot more time and money if they try to do everything themselves; especially if you are trying to do the work of a real estate lawyer.

Most people might think that they would only need the help of a lawyer when they find themselves on the wrong side of the law, what they do not know is that hiring one can also prevent you from getting in trouble in the first place. To give you some perspective on when you need the help of a legal professional in buying a house in Boston, here are some of the instances wherein their help will be much appreciated:

When facing legal issues regarding the purchase – For instance, if you are planning on buying a property which has a preexisting legal issue regarding the former owner, getting the help of a good real estate lawyer will prevent you from inheriting the legal problems of the previous owner.

When you cannot understand the legal jargon in the contracts – When you read through the legal documents involved in the purchasing of a house you are interested in, you will find quite a lot of terms that may sound foreign to you. So before you sign your name on anything that can possibly get you in trouble later, you need to have a lawyer scan through the documents first and have him explain everything to you.

When there are looming legal disputes – Rarely does housing purchases go as smoothly as planned, there will always be times when you will be butting heads with the seller, your realtor (regarding commission), the local government, and other people that you meet along the way; and when such things do occur, it will be best if you have legal representation so you will not make any costly mistakes.

Based on the details provided above, you can plainly see that the best time to get the help of a real estate lawyer is every time. If you want your purchase of Back Bay Boston real estate to go the way you expected, then you should hire a lawyer to make sure that they do.