Tips On Preparing Your Home When Selling FSBO Pt 1

Preparing your home to be sold FSBO, or for sale by owner, is not a lot different to preparing your home for a real estate agent to start selling it for you. The only difference is that you are in complete control over the process. To get a good sale price, as well as a quick sale you will need to be determined, and focused on the task at hand, you will also need to get some things organized.

De-Clutter

The ‘de-clutter’ word may make people shudder at times, as they think that all of their treasured possessions are anything but clutter. The trick to selling your home FSBO is preparation, and presentation. Remove the possessions in your home that make it your personal haven. By doing this you will give your potential buyers the chance to imagine their possessions in your home, and that will lead to them imagining how great it will be to live in your home.

While your house is on the market, place all of the things that you don’t need in storage leaving only day-to-day necessities out. When you have done this walk around your home and look at it. If it feels impersonal, and a little bare you have reached your first goal.

Scrub, Scrub, And Scrub Some More

Once you have removed all of your personal effects, and any thing that doesn’t have to be in your home, you are ready to start on your next FSBO step. You will notice there is a lot of empty space, bare places. You will now need to start in one room of your home, and get the scrubbing brush out and keep scrubbing until you have cleaned the entire room from top to bottom.

Once you have finished in one room, then continue to the next room, and repeat this process until you have cleaned the entire inside of the house. If you are using cleaners while you are scrubbing make sure to use protective clothing and open some windows to provide adequate ventilation.

Paint Your Walls And Ceilings

Regardless of what many people may think painting it is vital to the sale of your FSBO home. For starters you will want to make your home look clean, fresh, and salable, old paint never has that effect even if it is washed.

Another reason why you will need to paint your walls is because you may have color preferences of your own, which may not appeal to other people. By painting your home in clean looking neutral colors you will appeal to any taste in buyer as they will see your home as a blank canvas ready for them to personalize according to their own taste.

Look For Faults

Once you have your home looking clean and fresh you will then need to look over it for any faults, or for things that need fixing up. Are there cracked tiles? What about holes in the walls? Is there anything that you have just never got around to fixing up? Look around the home, jot the jobs down on a pad, and begin fixing them. If you cant repair these things yourself, then call in the professionals.

Owner-occupants continue to drive industrial sales activity - San Gabriel Valley

MARKED by the tightest industrial market outside of downtown L.A., activity in the San Gabriel Valley for the third quarter continued to be led by owner-users taking advantage of low interest rotes to buy buildings.

With vacancy rates at 2.2 percent on a base of 164 million square feet, according to Grubb & Ellis Co., demand for leased space was strongest among users in the market for less than 100,0130 square feet.

An essentially fully leased market coupled with an eager and able stable of buyers has helped push prices higher, as institutional investors cashed out of several properties.

Rents have followed property values higher. Third quarter asking rents were 50 cents per foot, 11 percent higher than the 45 cents being asked in the April-June quarter and near the upper end of the L.A. County industrial market.

Those factors have forced some tenants to look to the Inland Empire or even out of state in search of locations for expansion.We're running out of product," said Jim Center, a senior vice president at Grubb & Ellis. "We're really starting to exhaust the supply side. There's not a lot of new construction coming on line. We're running out of land."

With few substantial sites left for development, Majestic Realty Co. remains in the catbird seat when it comes to leasing large portions of space.

"Majestic is the only one with substantial holdings in the San Gabriel Valley," said Steve Bellitti, who along with fellow Colliers Seeley International senior vice president Tom Taylor works the market. "Finding a five acre (development) site is virtually impossible."

Majestic, in partnership with the City of Industry, is developing the 400-acre, 6.5 million-square-foot Grand Crossing business park near the intersection of the Pomona (60) and Orange (57) freeways at the eastern end of the city.

On the cusp of the San Gabriel market, and about to get underway, the Carpenters Pension Trust, with CB Richard Ellis Advisors as its investment manager, has been given entitlements for a 1.5 million-square-foot development between Rose Hills Road and Mission Mill Road. The site, in an unincorporated corner of the county, sits between Industry and Whittier, a Mid-Cities market.

Focus on sales

While those leasing opportunities remained limited, sales activity continued to drive the market.

"Interest rates are still historically low, and Southern California has always been a small business, entrepreneurial market," said Phil Lombardo, a principal at Trammell Crow Co. "There are always more buyers than there is product for sale."

Lombardo pointed to the $11.6 million sale of a 181,000-square-foot building in Industry. ABS Computer Technologies Inc. purchased the building, which is 70 percent vacant, from fund manager RREEF.

Most of the sellers were institutional investors, and while many of the buyers were owner-users, other large buyers took advantage of the buying opportunity as well.

Layton Belling & Associates did two substantial deals in the third quarter. The first was the $59 million purchase of the 667,000-square-foot Concourse industrial and office complex from AEW Capital Management LP. The project consists of a 420,000 square feet of industrial space, 158,000 square feet of office space and 88,000 square feet of flex plus 5 developable acres. The project, built in 1989, is fully leased.

The Newport Beach-based investment and management firm also struck a $26.2 million deal for the Kellwood Building on Temple Avenue in Industry. The 471,000-square-foot building was purchased from TA Associates Realty.

About the only large lease deal completed in the quarter was the 85,000-square-foot expansion signed by Scholastic Book Clubs in an Irwindale building owned by Clarion/ING. The 7-year deal was valued at $3 million.

Looking ahead, Lombardo said leasing activity would pick up in the first quarter of 2004, but the limited supply of land would continue to push demand further out.

Major Events:

* Manchester Tank signed a 42,000-square-foot lease at 88 Fairway Drive in Walnut for an estimated aggregate values of $1.2 million.

* Layton Belling & Associates purchased two industrial projects for a combined $85.2 million. One was the 667,000-square-toot Concourse industrial and office complex, the other the 471,000-square-foot Kellwood Building on Temple Avenue, both in Industry.

* Scholastic Book Clubs signed a seven-year lease in Irwindale as part of a 5,000-square-foot expansion valued at $3 million.

Companies look to the future by exploring online sales options - Timeshare: technology - Brief Article

While timeshare has only scratched the surface of the Internet, new applications are forthcoming. Online timeshare purchasing soon will be a reality, according to Howard Nusbaum, c.e.o. and president of the American Resort Development Assn.

Most developers are seeking new ways to exploit the Internet and service an information-craved clientele. Bluegreen Corp. is rolling out a Web-based central-reservations outlet that will allow owners to book real-time reservations, pay maintenance fees, view account activity and gather detailed information about the resort portfolio. Chad Jernberg, Bluegreen's marketing and e-business strategist, said there will be on-line telesale options in the future.

Fairfield Resorts is exploring online sales models through the company's branded portal, said Mary Mahoney, senior v.p. of service and resort hospitality.

The Internet's ability to post owner testimonials is another example of its power.

"They can post a negative experience, perhaps from a misunderstanding of a situation, or the product they purchased," Jernberg said. "This can cause bad-will about a property and shed a negative light."

David Pontius, president of Resort Condominiums International North America, said the biggest challenge with the Internet is realizing how to keep up with consumer's expectations.

"Customers get frustrated that there's not enough information," he said. "They become accustomed to the better sites and they get spoiled."

"We're making a lot of steps forward," Jernberg said. There's a lot of room for improvement about how it's marketed, what's there and what to do with the information online

Touched by the top angel: Anaheim, thanks to its owner's willingness to pay big money to such talents as Vladimir Guerrero and Bartolo Colon, appears

A dozen cardboard boxes were piled up in a hallway outside the Angels' spring training clubhouse in Tempe, Ariz. They were serving as makeshift mailboxes for the team's better-known players. Spring training was barely a week old, but the boxes already were filling up--and no box contained more mail than the largest one, the one belonging to Vladimir Guerrero.

It seems the newest big-name Angel is fast becoming the most popular Angel. Judging from his 24/7 smile, Guerrero looks like the happiest Angel, too. Why not? After years of toiling for the Team That Bud Neglected, the right fielder has left Montreal and found work with a franchise ready to settle in with baseball's elite.

In 2002, the Angels went on a magical run to win their first World Series. After spending their first 41 seasons as mostly an afterthought on southern California's sports landscape, the team was on top of the baseball world. Seven months later, Anaheim got some really good news.

Arte Moreno, who made his fortune in the billboard business, bought the club from the tight-fisted Walt Disney Co. and quickly showed he does not plan to operate as most owners do. He cut ticket costs, lowered beer prices and wandered arou

To make good on his word, Moreno committed more than $145 million in the offseason to four free agents--including $70 million over five years for Guerrero. Now a club with a payroll of about $80 million last year will have one closer to $110 million in 2004. While the Yankees and the Red Sox hogged the hot-stove spotlight, it was the Angels who landed the best free-agent player in Guerrero and the top free-agent pitcher in power righthander Bartolo Colon. The signings of righthander Kelvim Escobar and outfielder Jose Guillen further strengthened the club.

"Those guys definitely provided the entertainment for the offseason," Angels outfielder Tim Salmon says of the high rollers in the American League East. "From our standpoint, even if we hadn't done anything this winter, we were thinking as long as we can get healthy, we'll take our chances. Then we go out and make some moves. We're thinking, hey, those are nice additions. Then ... all of a sudden, it's Guerrero. Now it's like we've been given more than we ever asked for, but we'll take it."

On paper, Salmon says, this is the most talented Angels club in his 13 seasons with the team, an opinion difficult to dispute considering what Anaheim added to a core that includes seven regulars and the heart of the pitching staff from the '02 championship team. "When you go up against the Yankees, sometimes they win because they have the most talent," Salmon says. "You can put this team in that category now. Guys like Garret (Anderson), Vladdy and Colon literally can put the team on their back and carry you to a win."

Of course, you must remember a favorite cliche of spring training: "The games aren't played on paper." On paper, most teams look like winners in March. But what's on paper means about as much as a fan letter. One example that the best team doesn't always win the biggest prize just happens to be those '02 Angels, who fielded no better than the fifth-best talent in the majors (after the Yankees, A's, Giants and Cardinals). But manager Mike Scioscia sold his players on his sum-is-greater-than-the-parts approach. By June, the club was making late-inning rallies a routine occurrence; before long, baseball fans across the land were going nuts for the rally monkey.

"We had to play that selfless style because we didn't have a guy or two who could carry us," says Salmon, the longtime right fielder who now is Anaheim's primary designated hitter. "We fed off each other. I watched the Marlins last year, and imagine that's what they had. Pressure is a lot less of a load when everyone is contributing."

Even though they'll have more players capable of picking up teammates, the Angels don't plan on changing their style. They won't ask Guerrero to curb his aggressiveness at the plate because they're confident that his run production will more than offset his disdain for walks. With the added power, the Angels might not need to move runners over as often, but Sioscia still drills his players on situational hitting. The Angels will continue to rely on defense and what has been the league's best bullpen over the past two seasons.