Sellers

By: G. M. Filisko

Make your home warm and inviting to boost your home’s value and speed up the sale process.

The first step to getting buyers to make an offer on your home is to impress them with its appearance so they begin to envision themselves living there. Here are seven tips for making your home look bigger, brighter, and more desirable.

1.  Start with a Clean Slate

Before you can worry about where to place furniture and which wall hanging should go where, each room in your home must be spotless. Do a thorough cleaning right down to the nitpicky details like wiping down light switch covers. Deep clean and deodorize carpets and window coverings.

2.  Stow Away Your Clutter

It’s harder for buyers to picture themselves in your home

G.M. Filisko, Contributor | HouseLogic

While you'd like to get the best price for your home, consider our six reasons to reduce your home price.

Home not selling? That could happen for a number of reasons you can't control, like a unique home layout or having one of the few homes in the neighborhood without a garage. There is one factor you can control: your home price.

These six signs may be telling you it’s time to lower your price.

1. You’re drawing few lookers.

You get the most interest in your home right after you put it on the market because buyers want to catch a great new home before anybody else takes it. If your real estate agent reports there have been fewer buyers calling about and asking to tour your home than there have

Updated Servicing Rule Provides Surviving Family Members and Other Homeowners with Same Protections as Original Borrowers

Washington, D.C. (August 4, 2016) – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today finalized new measures to ensure that homeowners and struggling borrowers are treated fairly by mortgage servicers. The updated rule requires servicers to provide certain borrowers with foreclosure protections more than once over the life of the loan, clarifies borrower protections when the servicing of a loan is transferred, and provides important loan information to borrowers in bankruptcy. The changes also help ensure that surviving family members and others who inherit or receive property generally have the same protections under the

By: Lisa Kaplan Gordon

Upgrading your outdoor spaces? Here are upgrades that landscape architects rate as most popular.

If you’re thinking of sprucing up your yard, install what you love; but also pick upgrades that will increase your home’s value and, someday, attract buyers.

The new "2014 Residential Landscape Architecture Trends Survey" by the American Society of Landscape Architects clues you in on what outdoor features are trending up: 

1.  Outdoor lighting (98.3% of architects rated this as very popular): With today’s solar and LED lights, it’s a low-cost upgrade, too. 

2.  Terraces, patios, and decks (97.7%): Adding any of these features is like adding another room to your home for much of the year.

3.  Low-maintenance landscaping

Source: HomeOwnershipMatters.realtor

Fast Fact: The National Association of REALTORS® Issues Mobilization grants help keep you and your neighbors aware and informed about public policy changes that would impact your wallet and your home.

Too often, legislators target homeowners when seeking to fund federal programs. Even recently, some tried to put the financial burden of highway and transportation programs on the backs of homeowners.

A proposal in Congress would have diverted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s guarantee fees (sometimes called “G fees”) to pay for these long overdue national highway and transportation improvements. Each time G fees are used for unrelated government spending, America’s homeowners wind up paying more for their

Phishing, hacking, wire fraud  these are all ways people attempt to steal from others online. As real estate searches and transactions move more and more online, the chances of being caught up in a cyber scam have become even greater.

“By now most people have heard of the Nigerian prince scams or phishing emails asking for social security or banking information, but many people don’t know that they need to watch out for possible scams when buying or selling their home,” said Jon Schnoor, 2016 President of the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors®. “Cybercrimes have become increasingly sophisticated over the years and the people perpetrating them focus on situations where a lot of money is changing hands, making real estate transactions an

You’ve heard the expression, ‘dumb as mud?’ Well, that’s not really how we think about our mud here in New Mexico.

Adobe is a defining feature of New Mexico’s unique architecture, and something visitors from around the world are drawn to discover and explore. Along with New Mexico's endless skies and stunning landscapes, adobe gives our state a look and feel that can’t be found anywhere else.

Find “Cured Earth” and the New Mexico True Adobe Trail at NewMexico.org.

Pick a trail and see where it leads – to classically New Mexican adobes or Victorian neighborhoods on the Architecture Trail; to green chile cheeseburgers and family-owned wineries on the True Cuisine Trail, to famous artists, Native craft and top museums on the Art, Culture

By Eva Medcroft, Editor for NewMexicoHomeSearch.com

In 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created under the Dodd-Frank Act. The purpose was to create a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives.

When financing a home, CFPB’s goal is to ensure home buyers are engaged, prepared and knowledgeable so they are more likely to achieve successful, sustained homeownership.

To empower home-buying consumers with the information they need to make informed mortgage choices, the CFPB has implemented of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule, which is often

There are many aspects to a REALTORS®' job as your listing agent. If you are selling  your home, they provide a series of services to ensure your property sells as quickly as possible for the best price possible.

Here are just a few examples of what REALTORS® do for you as a listing agent:

• Produce Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) reports to recommend the most competitive selling price so your property doesn’t sit too long.
• Advise you on staging your home to get a better price
• Coordinate professional photography of your house.
• Create a marketing plan for your property.
• Recommend contractors and vendors to help prepare your home for market.
• Promote the benefits of your house and neighborhood to potential buyers.
• Coordinate

Photo Credit: Kitecsettlement.com

During the housing boom from 1995 to the downturn in 2007, thousands of homes were built in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque’s west side.  Many of those new homes installed Kitec plumbing fixtures.

Even though Kitec was recalled in the late 1990’s, some New Mexico builders continued to use the product. This has left many Albuquerque and Rio Rancho homeowners at risk of structural damage and massive flooding. Because of the type of damage it can cause, Kitec repairs can range upward of $20,000.

In this multi-part series, we will provide you with information you can pass on to your clients and information you need to know as a REALTOR® about disclosure requirements for legal cases like Kitec Plumbing