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How Home Staging Can Help Sell Your Home
Home Staging should be done when you sell your home. Staging a home can bring you a much higher selling price and help you get offers on your home faster. A home staging professional can be hired to tour your home and direct you to make the changes...
How To Find Houses For Sale?
When it comes to purchasing a home, the choices available can be a little overwhelming. With the onslaught of the internet, it seems there are thousands of ways to locate that perfect home, and a new buyer might be a confused about where to start....
How To Use Color Psychology To Prepare Your Home For A Top-Dollar Sale During Cool Weather
You've decided to prepare your home for sale. Whether you sell by owner or hire a real estate agent, you want to get as much money as possible without spending your profits. The real estate market normally slows down and most homes take longer to...
No More Estate Agent Fees
Follow a few simple guidelines, and marketing your own home can be easy. And it will save you thousands. The recent property boom has a lot of people thinking of selling. Unfortunately, the costs of selling can really eat into your profit....
Selling Your Home on Your Own – Examples of Problems and Solutions
What can go wrong? About a gazillion things, but this is true if you’re working with a broker, too. A broker is probably more experienced than you, and may well have confronted and solved your problem on a previous home sale. If you can stay calm...
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Renting Out Your Basement
Some homeowners consider their basement a wasted space. It's used for storage, they say, and maybe during tornado watches, but for the most part, it can be a vast unused area just dying for some renovation. With property values on the rise, many homeowners toy with the idea of turning that space into a rental property.
If you've thought about renting out your basement, there are a few important things you should know first.
First of all, you have to clear it with the authorities. Head to your local building department and find out whether or not rentals are allowed in the area where your house is situated. If they're not, renting- even just your basement- is not going to happen. If you are allowed to rent your space, you must make sure it clears all building codes. These involve having the required electrical systems (outlets, light switches, and wiring), exits, smoke detectors, ventilation, and the ability to heat and cool the space. Some areas have much stricter building codes than others, so it's important to check what applies in your neighborhood. In order to make your basement a rental, you'll have to bring it up to speed.
Many homeowners hit a stumbling block when it comes to the doorway factor. Having a tenant in the basement means that the tenant needs their own entrance and exit that opens to the outside. It can cost big bucks to remodel a basement door into a usable entrance, and some basements don't have a door to the outside at all, which means construction costs will be first on your list.
Even if your basement meets all of the
above requirements, there's still work to do. Unless you have a particular tenant in mind and know their needs, you must realize that your city is probably full of apartments, and your basement has to compete. This probably means the installation of painted drywall, carpeting, and other small amenities (including a bathroom and kitchen area!) to make this space truly appealing. Is this beginning to sound like a big investment yet?
Before you make the plunge of building a basement rental, it's strongly suggested that you think seriously about whether or not you truly want a tenant. Unless, as stated before, you have a particular tenant in mind, you will have to go through a screening process before allowing a stranger to essentially live in your home. Also keep in mind that your basement, unlike apartments in a complex, was not built to be a separate living space, and there will be sound leaks and other nuisances that might pose problems. It's a big jump to go from a private home to a private home with another private home beneath it. Make sure it's a jump you want to take before you start laying out the cash to make it happen.
About the Author: Kirsten Hawkins is a real estate expert from Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.king-of-real-estate.com/ for more information on real estate, mortgages, and finding the house of your dream.
Source: www.isnare.com
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