Prepare Your Home for Marketing!

1)Clean up. This is often one of the least expensive yet most significant things you can do to improve the look of your home. Simply picking up and cleaning up. A clean home is a sellable home.

2) Prune and plant. Cleaning up your landscaping is another relatively easy step. Start by pruning trees and shrubs to enhance their beauty. Then do some planting. Use Low plants and groundcover to tie everything together. Brightly colored flowers in the foreground are a sure way to make a yard look lively.

3) Wash the siding. If you can work safely from the ground or a ladder, this is a job you can do yourself; otherwise, call a handyman or professional pressure washing service.

4) Paint. If cleaning doesn’t revive your house’s paint job, painting—though relatively expensive—will give you plenty of bang for your buck, transforming your house with an entirely fresh, new look. If painting the siding is a bit beyond your budget right now, consider painting just the trim.

5) Green-up your lawn. Because a front lawn often carpets much of the front yard, its condition is critical to how a house looks from the street. You can start with regular mowing, raking, edging, weeding, and watering.

6) Create some visual interest. The pathway, or sidewalk, leads to your front door. Give it some thought and accentuate it (lighting, flowers, etc.).

7) Focus on details. Small things can make a big difference. Your mailbox, house numbers, front light, and potted plants on the porch all present a relatively inexpensive but highly influential opportunity to project style and excellence. Above all, be sure your front door is in great shape. If it isn’t, either refinish or replace it.

8) Tyler Texas real estate, John C. Martin, Century 21 First Group, has a certified staging professional to help with the interior of your home. All things being equal, the home that is "staged" is the one that sells!

9) Clean your garage!

Commercial Real Estate in Tyler, Texas

I subscribe to a good many national information letters concerning real estate. And it's easy to see that commercial real estate is doing extremely well in most places. Tyler, Texas is no exception.

We don't have enough available properties to satisfy the numbers of people who wish to do business here. Everybody seems to be happy and making money, so nobody wants to sell. I'm just sitting here in my office at 4:00 am trying to think of ways to satisfy inquiries.

Capital Gains

Capital gains in residential real estate.

The new capital gains law allows homeowners to avoid paying taxes on the first $500,000 of profit if they are married or on the first $250,000 if they are single.
You must have lived in the home as your primary residence for two of the last five years.
You are allowed to use the provision as often as you like, as long as it fits in that
two year period. Any gains above the limit will be taxed at the new 20% capital gains rate - down from the current 28 %.
The old law provided a $125,000 "one time" tax free exclusion on profits for home sellers
55 or older. This no longer is used, but those who have used it will be allowed to use the new provisions without penalty.
Under the old law you could roll over gains if you bought a more expensive house.
If you sold a more expensive one and purchased a less expensive one you were liable
for gains tax. Under the new law this provision is no longer in effect.
So now you can take a profit of a half million dollars on your existing home and invest it, tax free, in Tyler Texas real estate! Hopefully this glorious homeowner's tax break won't be taken away from us.