winterHere’s a list of Five Helpful Home Maintenance Tips to help ensure your home is in tip-top shape for the cold winter to come.

  1. Schedule your HVAC check-up. Nothing is worse than discovering your furnace is out-of-order on that first chilly night. Turn it on now to make sure it’s working and consider having it professionally cleaned. You’ll also want to change any air filters in your home and prepare your humidifier for winter’s dry air.
  2. Prepare your pipes. Exposed pipes can be a nightmare come winter time. Nobody wants to lose water due to a burst pipe. To avoid this, wrap all exposed pipes in foam insulation. You’ll also want to shut off the outside water supply from inside your home and drain all the water from outdoor spigots.
  3. Clean your fireplace. Make sure your fireplace is ready for use by scheduling a professional cleaning. Birds’ nests and debris can accumulate in your chimney over the spring and summer, causing either a clog or a fire hazard. A clean flue will help you stay safe and warm this winter.
  4. Clear your gutters. After autumn leaves have fallen, you might find a fair amount of debris lodged in your gutters, so make sure to give them a good clean now. Clogged gutters can lead to ice dams and prevent melting snow from draining, which, in turn, can damage your roof and siding.
  5. Keep an eye on your trees. Do you have beautiful trees surrounding your house? Be careful – these could cause problems in ice and snowstorms. Branches can get weighed down and snap, damaging your home. When you have a winter storm, help out your trees by knocking off excess snow and relieving some of the weight. A roof rake is a great tool to get those hard-to-reach branches.

By spending a fall weekend now, you can prepare your home for winter weather and keep it running in good condition all season long.

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any real estate and home related questions. As your local Realtor, I’m available to help with all your homeownership needs.

All my best,

maria_name

Fall isn’t traditionally thought of as the busiest time in real estate, but there are big advantages to buying or selling a home during autumn. People are always moving into our area, and your home will undoubtedly stand out if there are few others like it for sale. Additionally, buyers who are out looking in the fall tend to be more serious, so you could have fewer showings, but a greater chance of one of them garnering an offer.

As you can imagine, it takes time and effort to sell a home in any season. A professional real estate agent like me will handle all of the details and promote your best interests. I help sellers get their homes staged and ready, advise them on pricing, market the home, coordinate showings and work my contacts to find the right buyer. Once the right buyer is found, I aggressively negotiate on your behalf and help you navigate a relatively complex process to ensure you close with the best price and the least amount of stress. If you are interested, I would be happy to provide a free competitive market analysis which will give you an accurate idea of your home’s potential market value.
The National Association of Realtors has also found this season is the best time of the year to purchase a home because of potentially lower home prices, less competition and the possibility of getting a deal on a property that has been on the market since summer. Sometimes homes are available in the fall because the sellers are motivated to move quickly due to unexpected circumstances like a job change.

The perfect time to buy is as soon as you are ready. In today’s market, with appreciating home prices, low inventory, strong demand and rising interest rates, the longer you wait, the more expensive your ideal home will become in the future. History has shown that a home can be a great investment in any season, if you are buying for the long term. As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me with any of your homeownership needs.

All my best,

maria

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