Atlanta Housing Source

Most of us spend a great deal of time in the kitchen—and not just while cooking. The kitchen is the traditional heart of the home. And with the holidays coming up, you may be looking for fast and easy ways to make your home more welcoming to guests.

Whether yours is a huge kitchen with a family room attached or a cozy convenience kitchen, several quick and inexpensive tricks let you spruce up your kitchen without undertaking a complete overhaul:

Nothing changes a room faster than a fresh coat of paint. It immediately brightens the walls and ceilings.

If your cabinets have seen better days, consider painting them—even if they are natural wood.

Express your style and liven up your cabinets with unique knobs, handles and hinges. Kitchen cabinets are a popular do-it-yourself project and can enhance the beauty of your home.

New linoleum is fairly inexpensive and provides a clean, fresh look.

Get rid of the refrigerator magnets—unless of course, they hold your family’s art gallery.

Select a brightly colored rug and dish towels to provide accent color.

Hang a window valence to tie it all together.

Line the windowsill with pots of herbs grown from seed.

Redecorating your kitchen is an easy way to change the whole look and feel of your home. And here’s something to remember when you decide to sell: the kitchen is considered by many to be the most important room in the house.

These tips can also be used to help stage your home to sell for the best possible price. If you’d like more ideas for getting your home ready to sell, feel free to email or call any time.

Quick turns can provide substantial profits if you take the time to properly research the homes you are interested in buying. You will want to look at comparable homes for sale in the area, to determine the best price for your property. If you exercise patience and persistence, you can purchase properties below market value, so you can sell them for a profit.

There are several risks involved with a quick turn real estate investing strategy as well. First, you may incur unexpected repair and renovation expenses after purchasing the property. You can make a reasonable estimate of these expenses by walking through the home and looking for the cosmetic items as well as purchasing a home inspection. Yet, even with these reports, often times you find that there are items that go above and beyond your initial budget once you start the project. We recommend that you build in a financial cushion for surprise expenses when determining if an investment will likely be profitable. Typically, we suggest 10 -15% of the overall initial cost just to be on the safe side. If not needed, you have only enhanced your overall profit.

Another risk is that you may be unable to sell the home quickly after repairs and renovations have been completed. Even the perfect home can sit on the market for months, and you will be responsible for mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, and other expenses until the property is sold. You should have an alternate plan, such as renting the home to tenants, in case the home does not sell as quickly as you had hoped. So you might want to establish a relationship with a property management company or be prepared to become a landlord.

You might also want to consider the tax implications of this investment strategy. When you purchase and sell the property in less than 12 month’s, the IRS looks at the profit you make from the sale as ordinary income. This will mean that all the profit from the sale will be taxed as your normal tax bracket. So if you make $50,000 profit, your tax will most likely eat almost 40 to 50% of that, but the time you calculate your federal & state tax rate.

It may be possible to accurately assess these risks yourself when evaluating and purchasing investment properties. However, you can save yourself quite a bit of time and expense by hiring a REALTOR® to help you navigate the quick turn process. An experienced REALTOR® who is a seasoned investor themselves, will help you find properties that will make profitable investments, and help you sell the home as quickly as possible once your repairs and updates have been completed. Not all real estate agents understand investing, so we highly recommend that you interview thoroughly to make sure the agent you have selected can provide you with accurate information and assistance.

Buying a property as a real estate investment, fixing it up, and selling it quickly is an attractive real estate investment strategy. The potential for large profits can be a great reason to purchase a “fixer upper”; however, you need to be aware of the risks as well as the rewards of buying such a property.

The major advantage of buying a fixer upper is that you can often obtain such a property below market value, giving you plenty of opportunity to sell it at a profit later. Often, the owners of fixer uppers are financially unable to make the necessary repairs to such homes, and would rather sell the properties than worry about upgrades and repairs. This gives you the leverage to negotiate a lower price.

The first major downside to this investing strategy is that you will have to front the costs of the repairs yourself. You can make an estimate of repair costs when evaluating a fixer upper home for purchase, but you’ll need to build in extra costs for undisclosed damage and surprise repairs. Properly accounting for repair costs is critical to your success as a real estate investor – being too optimistic about repair costs can cause you to end up spending more on renovations than you can make with the resale of the home.

Another risk of buying a fixer upper is that the home may be located in a declining area. While some fixer upper homes are located in desirable neighborhoods, many more are in areas where neighboring properties are also in disrepair. If this is the case, it will be difficult to sell your investment home, no matter how much time and money you have spent renovating the property.

Finally, you should be prepared for the risk that it may take quite some time to find a suitable buyer for the home, no matter what kind of neighborhood the property is located in. You will need to sell the home for substantially more than your purchase price, and buyers may be hesitant to pay much more for a home than it was worth six months or a year ago.