Home Loan Focus

In this market if you are selling a house, you need to make sure that your house is primed for sale.  That doesn’t just include curb appeal that means insuring that your house is attractive from every perspective, even when a possible buyer reviews your gas and electric bills.  If your heating bill out of control, that is going to scare a lot of people away from your home. 

Oil is likely to hit $100 a barrel and that will impact heating oil, natural gas, and electricity rates.  No one wants to buy a house that costs a fortune to heat.

So before you spend $10k installing a Bose home theater to make your home more attractive to sell, consider calling in a professional to give you an assessment and guide into making your home energy efficient.

Odds are if you have not had a review done yet, you may not know where to look or who to trust for this type of service.  With that in mind we recommend a listing of pre-screened heating and air conditioning companies that have positive recommendations for work in your area and climate.

You can check out this Guide to Heating and Air Conditioning companies and find a trust worthy company that can help tighten up your home, and make it attractive to sell come next spring when buyers come out looking to make a move and a purchase while the kids are out of school, while temperatures and weather are typically better for home shopping, and when the mortgage companies will have recovered from the sub prime home loan issues.

If you act now, you can also start to build up a heat bill history that will reflect in a 1 year energy audit, which you can then provide to prospective buyers during an open house or a house showing.  I never buy a house these days with out requesting this history, and I am always more at ease when a home seller is more than happy to display and offer a copy of their energy bill history.

With some energy bills topping $400 – $800 per month, this effort can be very important to buyers.  A home that is expensive to heat can be extremely detrimental to the final sales price.  If you make a small investment in your home in insulation and possibly some upgrades to old HVAC equipment, you could see a big return in your sales price especially in very cold or very hot climates.

A bill of $500 per month is worth $6000 in one year.  A very good HVAC unit that can cover a home of 3000 square feet, can start off at $2500 plus labor to install.  At those rates an upgrade can pay for itself in a year.  From a buyer’s perspective, they would rather have this cost financed in the house, than pay for it out of pocket after the fact.  They will also look at the heating cost over a 2.5 year history, which will mean to them that at $500 a month they can expect to pay $15,000 over 2.5 years.

If you spend $4k for a new HVAC upgrade, you might be able to command a price premium on your home of $8k and save the buyer $8k as well.  More importantly in today’s market, failing to do this could prevent your home from selling at all!

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