Working with sellers who have some—but not unlimited—cash for upgrades? Here are budget-minded enhancements you can suggest to make their home stand out.

1. Tidy up kitchen cabinets.

“Potential buyers do open kitchen cabinets and look inside,” says Morrissey. “Home owners can add rollout organizing trays so when buyers peek in, they feel like there’s lots of room for their stuff.”

2. Add or replace tile.

“By retiling very inexpensively, you make a room look way cleaner that it was,” says Javier Zuluaga, owner of Home Repairs and Remodeling LLC in Tempe, Ariz. “Every city has stores that offer $1 to $2 tile, so home owners have to pay only for the low-cost tile and labor to replace a dated backsplash or add a new one. We also use inexpensive tile to upgrade bathrooms.”

3. Add a breakfast bar.

When a wall separates a kitchen from a family room, suggest cutting out an opening to create a breakfast bar. “In one home, there was a cutout in the wall between the kitchen and living room,” explains Matthew Quinn, a sales associate at Quinn’s Realty & Estate Services in Falls Church, Va., who handles estate and real estate sales for family members whose loved ones have passed away. “We left the structure of the cutout, added an oversized granite breakfast bar, and put chairs in front of it. That cost about $600.”

4. Install granite tile instead of a slab.

“Everybody is hot for granite kitchen countertops, but that can be a $5,000 upgrade,” says John Wilder, a general contractor and owner of Fence and Deck Doctor in New Castle, Ind. “Instead, home owners can put in 12-inch granite tiles for about $300 in materials and get very high impact for little money.”

5. Freshen up a bathroom without retiling.

“With a dated bathroom, I recommend putting in a new medicine cabinet for $100 to $150, light fixtures for about $100, a faucet for $50 to $75, and a vanity for $200 to $300,” says Wilder. “And instead of replacing the tile, the existing grout can be lightly scraped and regrouted, which leaves a haze that can be buffed out and will make the tile look brand new. Also install glass shower doors. A French door adds a lot of panache and elegance for $250, and people will notice the door, not the tile. With all that, you’ve done a bathroom remodel for $1,000 to $2,000.”

6. Freshen up the basement.

“If home owners have cement block or poured concrete walls in the basement, suggest they have a contractor fill in cracks with hydraulic cement and then paint with waterproofing paint,” recommends Wilder. “They can then add a top coat to add color. They can also paint the basement floor with a good floor paint, which spiffs it up. The basement may not be finished, but it’s no longer a damp dungeon.”

7. Add a room.

Look for large spaces that can be enclosed to create a new bedroom for just the price of creating a wall. “One time, we closed off a half-wall to an office and added a door to the other side of the room, thus creating another bedroom,” says Quinn. “That $400 procedure, which took a contractor one day, netted about $40,000 in the sales price.” Zuluaga has also added bedrooms inexpensively. “In a two-bedroom house, there was an archway that led to a third room that was used as a den,” he explains. “It had a dry bar where there would have been a closet, so we took out the dry bar and created a closet so the owners had a third bedroom.”

8. Spruce up cabinet fronts.

Suggest home owners update tired-looking kitchen cabinets. Reconditioning is the least expensive move for under $1,000. “If the wood is starting to look shabby from use or contaminants in the air, we take out the nicks and scratches, recondition it with oil, and put new hardware on,” explains Heidi Morrissey, vice president of marketing and sales at Kitchen Tune-Up in Aberdeen, S.D. For $1,500 to $4,000, owners can replace the cabinet doors and drawer fronts, and for $4,000 to $12,000, they can have all the cabinets refaced. “With refacing, owners can change the color of the cabinets by replacing the door and having a new skin put on the boxes,” says Morrissey. “If they have oak cabinets today, they can have cherry the next day.”

9. Replace light fixtures.

“In a foyer and in bathrooms and kitchens,” says Wilder, “replacing overhead light fixtures provides a lot of pop for a little money.” If the kitchen has track lighting, Zuluaga suggests the home owner spend $450 to $600 to have an electrician replace it with recessed canned lights on a dimmer switch to add ambience. For about $700, Zuluaga also suggests installing pendant lights over a kitchen island or peninsula.

10. Tech-up the garage.

“Sometimes we replace the garage door opener with a remote touchpad entry system,” says Zuluaga. “That costs about $425 and makes it look like a high-end system.”

Olympics Put Utah Skiing “On The Map”
Games brought acclaim, newer and faster lifts, more acres of skiable terrain
Associated Press, 12/2009

SALT LAKE CITY – In addition to great powder snow and a long winter, Utah’s ski industry is blessed by the lingering buzz of the 2002 Winter Olympics, plus a major nearby airport that makes getting to Salt Lake City easy from other parts of the country.

The Olympics brought international acclaim, dozens of new and faster lifts and thousands of more acres of skiable terrain. Traffic on the slopes was up by 37 percent in the six years after the Olympics, before the economy soured, making Utah skiing a $1 billion industry.

“That was our coming-out party,” said Nathan Rafferty, president of the trade group Ski Utah. “We were always in the shadows of other resorts, like Colorado’s. But hosting the Olympics put us on the map.”

The most noticeable Olympic legacy has been nonstop development, most recently at Solitude Mountain Resort, which just added its fourth new chair lift since the 2002 Games.
Another legacy, say local skiers: It’s getting crowded on the slopes. Forget trying to ski Saturdays at the most popular resorts, they say. The lift lines at Alta ski area, for one, are getting longer with waiting skiers more impatient.

Off the slopes, this season’s biggest improvement is a new set of state liquor laws. The reforms broke up a private club system that made getting inside a bar without a membership a hassle. Utah still strictly regulates drinking venues, a quota system limits their numbers, and regular strength draft beer is banned, thanks to the influence of the teetotalling Mormon church.

But lawmakers are starting to ease up, in part to make the state a more attractive destination.

From the outset, no Utah resort built itself up bigger or faster than Snowbasin, the downhill Olympic venue near Ogden that dropped $200 million on a makeover with stately day lodges and high-speed chair lifts, gondolas and a tram. Snowbasin, still without any base lodging, rarely sees a crowded lift line.

The Canyons, a rival in development that was once the smallest Park City resort, now bills itself Utah’s largest ski area. That claim might properly go to Vail-sized Powder Mountain, still something of a Utah secret, but skiers there have to climb, shuffle along mountain ridges or get pulled by a snowcat to reach much of the terrain.

Powder Mountain, with 5,500 acres, is hidden in the mountains 19 miles northeast of Ogden.

Utah offers a variety of resorts all within an hour’s drive of the airport. Many rub shoulders near Salt Lake at higher elevations of the 11,000-foot Wasatch Range. There’s renewed talk of linking them up, making for North America’s largest skiing complex.

For now, Utah’s resorts are happy to bask in Olympic glow.

“It’s fair to say all of the resorts have benefited to varying degrees from the Olympic recognition,” said Mike Goar, managing director of The Canyons, which sprawls across eight peaks and 3,500 acres. “It really did shine a bright light on Utah. This is a terrific location because of easy access and consistent snow.”

Truth be told, Utah always had the best snow, a secret the Olympics spilled far and wide. Major skiing magazines started to consistently rate Utah’s resorts the best.

For a third straight year, Deer Valley Resort has been named the No. 1 North American ski resort by a leading magazine, Skiing.

Deer Valley gets high marks mostly for service. For snow alone, Alta-Snowbird ranked No. 1, as it almost always does in major surveys.

More than 500 inches of snow blanket Utah’s northern mountains from October through May. Thanks to the combined effects of the desert and Great Salt Lake, winter storms dispersing dry, powdery snow can linger for days over Wasatch resorts. From the northwest, the storms funnel into Salt Lake City’s Cottonwood Canyons, dropping their loads on four resorts that log the biggest season totals.

For a religious state, the snow here is almost holy.

“You blow it off your hand, it’s like smoke,” said Bill Tatton, a 47-year-old financial consultant now attending helicopter flight school. “We have the best snow on this rock (planet,) especially when the Great Salt Lake turns it on. I’ve skied days when you needed a snorkel to breathe, it’s so deep and light.”

Not one to miss a good day of skiing, Tatton was trudging up Alta in a foot of fresh snow one October day before the lifts started operating. He grew up skiing in Colorado, then spent time at California’s Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, but his first time in Utah, he said, was like nothing else.

It’s like falling on pillows of dry feathers.

“The snow also smells differently — a salty aroma,” said Rick Yost, a 57-year-old locomotive engineer for Union-Pacific Railroad. “It was in my face a lot when I learned to powder ski.”
Utah’s ski industry rivals Lake Tahoe’s, a mountainous region straddling California and Nevada that also receives a bounty of snowfall. In many ways, the two Olympic regions progressed similarly on bragging rights.

The 1960 Winter Games were held at Squaw Valley, a sprawling ski area with 33 ski lifts. One lift is by reputation North America’s best for transporting skiers quickly to the resort’s best terrain. Together, the lifts move more people uphill faster than anywhere in North America.

“It put Tahoe on the map,” said John Wagnon, president of the trade group Ski Lake Tahoe. “It was early in Winter Olympic history, before the grand fanfare it has now.”

It was the first televised Winter Games, “so people all over the world saw California skiing,” Squaw Valley spokeswoman Savannah Cowley said. “It gave us an international name.”

Skiing around Lake Tahoe was at its infancy. Now major resorts around Lake Tahoe log up to 3.5 million skier visits a season. Utah recorded 3.9 million last winter, down from 4.2 million the year before.

Utah has 13 to Lake Tahoe’s 14 resorts, but half a dozen of Tahoe’s ski areas are much smaller than most of Utah’s.

Stewart Katz, for one, moved to Lake Tahoe to beat the Utah crowds and its desert heat in summer. Summers at Lake Tahoe are much cooler.

“It’s also a lot cheaper for locals out here,” said Stewart, a retired South Carolina pawnshop businessman who snapped up season passes at Heavenly and Kirkwood resorts for $329 and $259.

But Katz admits the bounty of dry Utah snow can’t be beat.

At Alta last spring, he recalls, “we had a foot a day for 14 days in April. You couldn’t even breathe.”

One of those days, “I came off the mountain choking.”

Real Estate Deals Total More Than $575 Million In The First Nine Months of 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

23 October, 2009 (Park City) – The dollar volume of real estate transactions in the greater Park City area (which includes Summit and Wasatch counties) totaled $575.5 million in the first nine months of 2009, down 33.7 percent compared to $868.1 million in total sales in the same January through September period in 2008, according to the Park City Board of REALTORS^®.

“There continues to be tremendous opportunities in the current market for buyers,” said Lincoln Calder, president of the Park City Board of REALTORS^®. “When you look at the entire market for the Park City MLS, median sales prices have come off about 30 percent from their highs in 2008.”

The 758 sales transactions in the first nine months of 2009 were down 30.4 percent compared to 1,090 transactions in the first nine months of 2008. The sales trend seems to have changed course in recent months, however. “Since February 2009, we have seen a steady increase in the number of pending sales,” Calder said. “Buyers have come back to the market and have been motivated by lower pricing.” He added that there continues to be pressure on pricing and finding value is of primary concern to buyers.

Single-family properties continue to account for the majority of sales transactions occurring in the market. Condominium sales make up nearly one-third of the total transaction volume.

More Than $858 Million In Park City Real Estate
Single Family Homes Sales On The Rise
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

25 January, 2010 (Park City) – More than $858 million in real estate transactions changed hands in 2009 in the greater Park City area (Summit and Wasatch counties), according to a report today by the Park City Board of REALTORS®.

The total volume included the sale of homes, condominiums and land. In 2008, total sales exceeded $1.03 billion, which is a 16.9 percent decrease in the volume sold in 2009

“In spite of two difficult economic years, Park City’s economy remains resilient,” said Mark Seltenrich, president of the Park City Board of REALTORS®. Compared to all other Rocky Mountain ski destinations, Park City has fared better than our neighbors in Colorado, Wyoming and other resort towns. “For example, in Vail, Colo., REALTORS® reported that 2009 real estate sales were down nearly 60 percent compared to 2008, while Park City was down only about 17 percent.”

Sales of single-family homes were the strongest part of the market in 2009, with sales of homes in the greater Park City area in 2009 surpassing the levels of 2008. “This is due in large part to homes becoming more affordable and the desirability of Park City as a place to live and raise a family,” Seltenrich added.

With the average home size declining, owners are cleverly doing more with the square footage they have.

Years before house staging came into vogue as a sales tool, Howard Hoffman was helping sellers rearrange their furniture to maximize floor space and enhance a home’s beauty. Hoffman, GRI, SRES®, now owns Stage & $ell, a home staging and redesign company in Indianapolis.

Chances are he’ll have a lot more business in the years ahead from people needing to resize their lives. With baby boomers entering retirement, young adults delaying marriage, and the economy improving by fits and starts, Americans are starting to embrace the idea that less is more when it comes to their square footage. The average size of a new house decreased last year for the first time in nearly three decades.

“Home buyers have been changing,” says Fran Litton, a planner with Evans Group, an architectural firm in Orlando, Fla. “They still want the luxury and toys, but they’re putting them into a smaller space.”

Although the average square footage of a new house is still double what it was in 1960, in the last year, it decreased slightly to 2,215 square feet from a high of 2,277 square feet in 2008, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. While the decrease doesn’t approach mid-20th century levels, it is the first drop in house size since the recession of the early 1980s.

Smaller houses can mean bigger challenges for real estate professionals. “Eighty percent of people appreciate only what they can see,” says Hoffman, who also works as a sales associate with F.C. Tucker Co. in Indianapolis. “You have to make sure you’re showing them what you’ve got.” That means making sure each room is easily identified. “Get rid of that desk and computer in the dining room,” he says. “Make sure buyers can see it’s a dining room.”

Hoffman also advises clients to remove rugs to show off hardwood floors and take pictures off the walls. “The less the eye has to distract it, the bigger a room feels,” says Hoffman. “People buy what they see. If they can’t see the floors or the walls, they won’t buy the house.”

Interior designer Roberta Lathrop agrees. She tells her clients with smaller kitchens to clear the counters. “You can’t have all the small appliances sitting on the counter,” says Lathrop, who runs Designs by Roberta in Belmont, Mich. “It will start looking very cluttered very fast.”

Smaller houses require owners to rethink what they have and how they use things. “If you have a smaller house, maybe you don’t need half a dozen different pans,” she explains. “Maybe a single flat griddle that you can put over a couple of burners will do.”

One of the first tasks she assigns clients is to go through their stuff—ruthlessly. “We all have too much stuff,” she says. “Get rid of it. If you’re attached to an item, or think maybe you’ll need it, put it in a box and store it somewhere for six months. Then go back through it.

Have you used it? Have you even missed it? If not, donate it. Get it out of the house.” That goes for clothes as well, she says.

There is a lot of inventory here in Park City, why not shine at a Twilight Open House!

It works for sellers because many people would rather make themselves scarce in the evening then say on a precious day-off-of-work Sunday afternoon. It works for buyers because many can stop by after work. It helps your listing stand out from the crowd. Many open houses are held during the day or on weekends.

So turn on the lights and the buyers!

Homes are now cheap.

No, not everywhere in the country (more about that later). And, even after the latest Case-Shiller data, it’s anyone’s guess when they might actually turn around and start rising steadily again. It could be years.

But if you’ve been thinking of buying a home to live in, the current meltdown is a big opportunity.

You might not know it from the coverage of the latest data. Too many, as usual, are focused on the trees instead of the forest. The 10 and 20-city composite indexes were unchanged between September and October. And the numbers were lower than a year ago, but the rate of decline seems to have slowed: Two facts that are both obvious and practically useless. Indeed the latest survey contains a whole truckload of information for all those who prefer data to knowledge.

But long-term fundamentals are more important than the short-term noise. And it’s generally a mistake to pay too much attention to doomsayers or to overthink these things.

Here’s some home truths.

Real estate prices in the Case-Shiller 10-city index have now fallen by a stunning 30% from their 2005 peak. Nothing like it has been seen since the Great Depression–and, according to some sources, not then either. Obviously for anyone who bought a home at the peak of the market this has been a disaster. But for those thinking of buying a home now this is exceptionally good news.

And at the same time, mortgage rates have also plummeted. In 2006 you had to pay an average of about 6.4% on a 30-year fixed loan, according to the Federal Reserve. Right now you can get deals for about 5%.

More on Case-Shiller

Put the two together, and it’s a winning combination.

The Case-Shiller 10-city data go back to 1987. I ran the numbers comparing the index values, mortgage rates and average weekly earnings. Net conclusion: On average–an important point I’ll return to shortly–buying a home now is as cheap as it was in the mid-1990s, when houses were an absolute steal.

No, the Case-Shiller data aren’t perfect. The biggest complaint is that they are weighted too much towards the coasts and the big “bubble” cities like Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

So I decided to run the same analyses–average prices, mortgage rates and weekly earnings–for the home price data tracked by the U.S. Census. Those numbers go back further than Case-Shiller, to 1972.

There has been a clear, gently rising long-term trend: Over many decades people have been choosing to spend more on housing, buying bigger and better homes. But the bubble, and subsequent collapse, still stand out clearly. By this measure, median homes nationwide today are about as cheap–when compared to earnings–as they were in the early 1990s.

Yet back then mortgage rates were around 8, 9 or even 10%.

If you buy an average home today, and take out a 30-year mortgage at 5%, the annual bill for interest and repayment of principal will come to about 19 times typical weekly earnings (If you get the $8,000 refundable tax credit too, it drops below 18 times). As you can see from the bottom chart, we haven’t seen it that low since the early 1970s.

You can hear the objections. Doomsayers ask: What about these waves of mortgage resets coming in the next two years? What about all the unemployment? And the foreclosures? And so on.

These are all valid arguments for refusing to buy homes when they are expensive, or even averagely priced. But the whole point about markets is that they adjust. Prices are now cheap. They reflect this bad news, and more. If you have a stable income, and you can get a 30-year mortgage at 5% or so, and you are willing to drive a hard bargain on a home in this market, this is your time.

Over and over again, history suggests that the best investments are the ones no one wants–gold when it was $260 an ounce, Amazon.com when it fell below $10 in 2002, Hong Kong shares during the SARS “crisis” in 2003, and so on. If an investment feels comfortable, it’s should make you nervous. If it makes you really nervous, that’s probably good.

The biggest objection, or caveat, is one I hinted at earlier. These are average prices. The variations are truly remarkable. Prices in places like Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix have roughly halved from the highs in early 2006, according to Case-Shiller. Meanwhile in cities like New York and Boston they have fallen by a fifth or less. It’s hard to argue that some of the most resilient areas are cheap. New York real estate prices are still up about 75% since the start of the decade. Maybe they have much further to fall.

But outside of these hot spots, real estate is now cheap.