Eric Mitchell Real Estate

  Ending Small Talk: Tips for More Meaningful Conversations Having more meaningful relationships with friends both new and old is a great goal, and it can start with your conversations. Below are five tips for those of us frustrated with small talk. Skip the weather.  As tempting as it may be to springboard off the weather, this can lead you down the empty-conversation rabbit hole and into a twenty-minute dialogue about rain. Asking about almost anything else should yield more interesting results. Think of base questions.  So, what should you talk about, if not the weather? Come up with a short list of base questions you can turn to in a flash. If you’re talking to a stranger or new acquaintance, try “have you done any traveling lately?” or “are you reading any good books?” These more personal questions show genuine interest and will actually reveal something about your conversation partner. Make eye contact.  Regardless of what you’re discussing, work to maintain or...

Should You Borrow the Maximum a Lender Will Approve? When you apply for a mortgage, a lender will decide how much money it’s willing to give you to put toward the purchase of a house. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should take out a loan for the full amount. In some cases, borrowing the maximum a lender will allow could leave you overwhelmed by debt. How Lenders Decide How Much You Can Borrow Lenders base their mortgage decisions on several factors, including credit score and length of credit history, but the most important factor is a borrower’s debt-to-income ratio. This is the sum of all debts, including a mortgage, credit card minimum payments, and vehicle, student, and personal loans. Most lenders want borrowers to devote no more than 28 percent of their gross income to a mortgage, property taxes, and homeowners and private mortgage insurance. They also want total debt payments to be no more than 36 percent of gross income. If your debt-to-income ratio is highe...

Is Home Flipping for You? While you may think that home flipping went the way of the dinosaurs after the real estate bust, flips actually rose 3.1 percent from 2015 to 2016, with gross profits averaging $62,624, according to research from ATTOM Data Solutions. Home flipping enjoyed a boost last year thanks to low inventory in many areas of the country and an infusion of foreign and domestic capital, says ATTOM, who reported that roughly 6 percent of condo and single-family home sales in 2016 were flips - the highest share in three years. Hot markets in California - like San Jose, San Diego, and San Francisco - along with cities such as Baltimore, Md., Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y. and Seattle, Wash. earned more than $100,000 in profits. The most flipping took place Florida and Tennessee, where it comprised 11.7 percent of all sales in Memphis, Tenn. Are you ready to get into the flipping game? Consider these pros and cons from The Balance: Pro:  Home flipping can be...

4 Exterior Renovations That Increase Your Home's Value If you're considering selling your home, you're likely looking into improvements that bring the highest return on your investment. Should you revamp the kitchen or the bathroom? Finally finish the flooring in the basement? According to a new study from the Appraisal Institute, the home improvement that offers the greatest bump in home value is actually the exterior. "The latest research shows that home renovations focused on the exterior of a property are most likely to generate a positive cost-to-value ratio," says Appraisal Institute President Stephen S. Wagner, MAI, SRA, AI-GRS. "However, not all home improvement projects offer a full return on investment – cost doesn't necessarily equal value." According to Remodeling magazine's most recent Cost vs. Value report, the projects with the highest expected return on investment are: Garage door replacements.  Garage door looking sh...

Buying Your First Home? Simple Tips to Keep the Process Running Smoothly While buying your first home can be nerve-racking, paying attention to the following items will go a long way toward putting your mind at ease as you make your way through the process.   Get your finances in check.  Just because you have money in the bank doesn’t mean you will qualify for a mortgage. Meet with a financial advisor and get a handle on what you can truly afford. If you want to do the numbers yourself, make sure to create a comprehensive list of every possible expense—loans, student debt, monthly expenses, etc.—and don’t rely on your lender to figure out a total for you. Lenders look at your debt-to-income ratio and not necessarily your day-to-day spending habits. Choose an agent.  Buying a new home will likely be one of the biggest decisions of your life, therefore, it’s important to take your time when choosing an agent. Not only do you want someone who is willing to c...

Dos and Don'ts of Starting a Home Remodel Whether you’re remodeling your bathroom, kitchen or whole house, proper planning is essential to project success. HomeAdvisor offers the following tips to help keep your remodeling project on track and avoid common mistakes: Don’t be impulsive. Do your research. It might be hard to imagine, but one of the biggest mistakes you can make is rushing headlong into a remodel without proper planning. You might be itching to get started, but beginning a project before you have every detail finalized could be a recipe for disaster. While the planning process varies, consider spending between one and two months planning your remodel. Don’t be blindsided by costs. Do stick to a budget. Going into a remodel without a clear spending limit will guarantee that you go over budget. HomeAdvisor’s True Cost Guide could help you get a better idea of how much you can expect your remodel to cost. Having your budget finalized before you meet with ...

How to Choose a Qualified Contractor We’ve all seen news reports about fly-by-night contractors who took thousands of dollars for home improvement projects and disappeared without completing the work. And you might have friends or neighbors who thought they had hired a competent contractor, but the company ended up doing a shoddy job or going way over budget. These types of horror stories understandably make some homeowners nervous when it comes time to hire someone to remodel their bathrooms or build an addition. Rest assured that most contractors are reliable workers ready to take on your project in a professional, trustworthy manner. To help you avoid scams and find a qualified contractor, the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) offers the following six tips: 1. Stay Local Local contractors are compelled to perform quality work that satisfies their customers in order for their business to survive. Local firms can be checked through references,...

Raising Caring Kids Most parents start by encouraging children to share—and that’s a good start, agrees Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd. Weissbourd’s recent study, however, found that 80 percent of children believe their parents care more about their grades than whether they care about others. If we want children to grow up caring and respectful, says Weissbourd, we need to raise them that way. He and his staff provide five strategies for raising kinder, more ethical children: 1. Make Kindness a Priority –  Children need to balance their needs with the needs of others. Parents should encourage them to honor their commitments, try to work out disagreements, and address others respectively even when they are angry or tired. 2. Provide Opportunities to Practice –  Pitching in around the house, helping a friend with homework, or sharing a favorite toy with a sibling are good ways to make caring second nature. You don’t need to reward them for doing routine cho...

House Hunting Mistakes to Avoid Buying a house is a serious thing and if you’re on the hunt for a new home, it’s important to make smart decisions. One of the biggest mistakes people make is buying a home they can’t afford. It’s important that you consider what the mortgage payment is of course, but you also need to factor in insurance, taxes, upkeep, monthly bills and any renovations that will need to be done. Sure, you might have enough to buy the home, but you don’t want to be spending every last dollar once you move in. Another mistake people make is buying a home too quickly, even when it doesn’t meet the hopes and dreams on their “wish” checklist. Now, this doesn’t mean you are definitely going to get everything you want in a home, but don’t be discouraged after one day of looking. By not doing your due diligence, you could see your dream home become available soon after and by then, it will be too late. Try to make a list ahead of time of what you really desire and ...

Closing Cost Primer: Know Your Terms Buying a home is undoubtedly one of the most expensive ventures of your lifetime. But it’s important to understand that much more goes into budgeting for a new home than the price of the house itself—like closing costs. Closing costs are fees charged by the lender at the closing of your real estate transaction, and usually amount to thousands of dollars. Your real estate agent can explain and estimate what all of your particular closing costs will be, as they vary by state, but here is a handy list of terms and definitions from Bankrate.com to help bring you up to speed. Real estate lingo can be confusing, so becoming familiar with these terms in advance will help demystify the closing process. Origination, broker, lender or originator:  A fee charged to create a home loan. It's often a set percentage of the mortgage amount. Discount points:  A fee in the form of mortgage interest paid upfront. In exchange for this fee, the le...

5 Painless Ways to Save Money Everyone wants to save money—to put funds aside in case of emergency, put a down payment on a house, or take a fun vacation. But for many people, saving isn’t easy. One sensible way, say financial advisors, is simply to pay yourself first; put 10 percent of every paycheck in a savings account before you do anything else. Proponents say you’ll hardly miss the money you skimmed off the top—and the joy of watching your savings mount up will be more than worth the sacrifice. The penny-pinchers at PennyHoarder.com suggest five more (relatively) painless ways to build up your savings: Get a piggy bank.  Empty your pocket change into a piggy bank every night and count it whenever it’s full. You’ll be amazed at how much you save. Join an online focus group.  Taking polls and answering surveys can pay off in bankable funds. Check out sites like MyPoints, Opinion Outpost and Inbox Dollars, which may pay you more than $700 a year for taking s...

How to Save for Retirement If You're Self-Employed Working for yourself comes with a lot of responsibilities—and funding a retirement plan should be one of them. After all, if you don’t think ahead to your retirement, who will? Payroll deductions and 401(k) retirement plans set up by employers make it easy for workers at 9-to-5 jobs to contribute to retirement plans. But for the self-employed, it can be more of a challenge simply because there’s no one to do it for you. Here are some ways to take the process of funding a retirement plan into your own hands: Traditional or Roth IRAs If you’re just starting out or saving less than $55,000 a year, a traditional or Roth IRA is a good option. If you’re leaving a job to start a business, you can roll your old 401(k) into an IRA. As of 2018, the annual IRA contribution limit is $5,500, plus $1,000 catch-up contribution if you’re 50 or older. The Roth IRA has income limits for eligibility, meaning that those who earn too ...

How Yards Affect Home Values After deciding on a neighborhood, finding the perfect home can come down to price. One home could be priced five or six figures higher or lower than another home on the same block. What gives? Big factors such as neighborhood comps, crime and the quality of nearby schools affect prices, but they should affect all homes in an area equally. Some factors are less obvious but can affect a home’s price in a big way. For example, yards that can have a big influence on a home’s value for a number of reasons, according to an analysis by  HouseCanary , a data analytics real estate business. Here are some: View Angle The bigger the view angle is from a backyard to scenery or nature, the better. This was the most popular hidden factor influencing home values in the analysis, affecting 95 percent of counties studied. No scenic view would be the worst angle, while 180 degrees is a scenic view from every angle. Backyard view angles were most prize...

6 Myths of Selling a Home As soon as you start to think about selling your house you probably feel pretty confident that you’ve figured it all out…right? Just call your realtor, put it in the MLS system, and put up a sign. Simple. Or, maybe you’re the daring type that wants to save all those selling fees and sell the house yourself. You, my friend, are exactly who I need to clarify a few things for before you begin the process. Selling a home takes science in the form of researching the market to determine pricing, developing a pricing strategy based on comparable homes on the market, and putting together the marketing plan. Yes, marketing is the second most important aspect of selling a home…second to pricing…but arguably, is more important because the right marketing plan can bring a higher selling price. So, before you list your house, check out this list. Myth 1. You Can Sell It Yourself The first thing sellers think about is the cost to sell. Realtor commissions, c...