Are you ready to get serious about house hunting? Once you’re past the stage of casually popping into open houses on your way home from the supermarket, it’s important to have a plan to keep you on track. No two home buying experiences will be exactly the same, but there are three general phases.

Just Dream a Little

When you’re starting out, it’s okay to picture your dream house. This can serve as a baseline for your ideal home that has everything you want. However, it’s important to remember that this dream may not come to life and you may have to compromise a little here and there. Once you have your dream home in mind, do a mental walkthrough and figure out what is a need and what is a want. Making this distinction will help you move to the next phase.

Get Realistic

With your list of needs and wants in hand, you can figure out how much you can afford. Getting pre-approved for a mortgage before you put an offer on a house will help your offer seem more legitimate, and hopefully speed up the closing process. You’ll need to get all your financials in order before you head to the bank, so make sure your credit score is looking good and you know how much of a monthly payment you can afford.

Open Season

Now that you know your needs from your wants and how much you can afford, it’s time to house hunt with confidence! If you’re looking for a used home, it’s best to get in contact with a local realtor. But if you’re looking for a new construction home that can be customized to your liking, call Perry Hood Properties. For almost 40 years, we’ve been turning dream homes into real homes. Give us a call to get the process started!

If you’re looking to upgrade your starter home to a new construction home, you’re probably on the hunt for easy ways to make your home sell fast. One of the easiest ways to boost your home’s value is by improving the curb appeal. Whether buyers are shopping online or showing up to an open house, the front elevation will likely be their first impression. So why not knock their socks off with some amazing curb appeal?

Here are some quick and easy ways to give your curb appeal a boost.

Give it a Wash

You’ve likely already thought to pick up sticks, limbs, and leaves from your flower beds and give the lawn a fresh mow, but spending an extra hour to wash the windows and spray down the exterior of the house will really be helpful. For the windows, a basic garden hose and some Windex will do the trick, but you may need a power washer to take care of dirt caked on to the brick or siding. If you go the power washer route, make sure to avoid washing away the caulking around windows and doors.

Do Up the Door

Your front door can be used to make a real statement that welcomes buyers and gets them excited about your home. Painting is always an option, but it isn’t the only option. Adding molding, house numbers, a decorative knocker, or even just a wreath can transform a boring door into the little nudge house hunters need to place an offer.

Shutter Up

Adding shutters to your windows will make the windows look bigger and helps break up an ordinary home exterior. Go with a color that really pops against the exterior wall to make the shutters stand out and draw the buyers in.

Keep it Simple

When it comes to front porch décor and furniture, it’s best to not overdo it. Keep things simple and avoid clutter. This lets buyers feel like there’s still room for them to put their own personal touch on it, while still showcasing the potential of the space.

While house hunting and building a new construction home can be a fun and exciting process, packing everything you own in boxes and loading up a moving truck isn’t that exciting. You have lots of options when it’s time to move, and the costs associated will depend on which options you go with. If you’re trying to crunch the numbers on how much a move will cost, here’s a list of typical moving costs.

Rental Truck- Flat rates start at $20 and go up from there depending on how big of a truck you need. There may also be charges for mileage driven.

Movers- There are two options here: loaders and full service. The first option will cover loading and unloading the truck, but you’ll have to pack everything in boxes. Rates for this service can range from $200-$2000 depending on how big your home is. Full service movers will do the packing and the loading for you, all you have to do is point where things go. Rates go for $25-$50 per hour per mover.

Storage- In a perfect world, you would close on your new house and sell your old home with no awkward in between time. However, there’s often some overlap and you may need to store some item temporarily.  Storage facility rates start around $50 per month for a small unit, and go up to $300 or $400 for larger units.

Moving Supplies- Finally, you’ll need to account for the cost of boxes, tape, and packing supplies. You can normally scavenge spare boxes from friends, liquor stores, and big discount stores, but you’ll likely end up buying some new boxes as well.

Trying to find the perfect home in the city you’re currently living in is hard enough, but if you’re looking for a home in another town or even another state, the problem gets even harder. Although difficult, this task isn’t impossible if you know what you’re doing. Here are a few quick tips you can use if you’re doing some long-distance house hunting.

Don’t Just Research Homes

You’ll obviously spend a lot of time looking at home online, but that’s not the only thing you should look at. Once you find some homes you like, start checking out what’s around those neighborhoods. Are there stores, restaurants, and activities close by? What’s the crime rate like? Are the schools any good? These are all questions you’ll want to answer before you get the keys. Online research is helpful for this phase, but using a local realtor you can trust will be your best bet.

Budget for Travel

As the move gets closer, you’ll need to budget some money and time for travel. This gives you a chance to verify all your research and get a feel for your new city and house first hand. With some careful planning, you can line up several home tours in just a few days to really maximize your visit.

Know Your Needs from Wants

Getting together a list of needs and wants is helpful for any buying situation, but when you’re shopping long-distance this list will be invaluable to your realtor. With that in mind, it’s important to put a lot of thought into this list. Really consider what the essentials for your next home are and what’s just nice to have.

Buying a home when you’re shopping long distance can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re looking for a new construction home in the Tulsa area, call Perry Hood Properties.

It’s no secret that Spring is typically the best time to sell a home. The holidays are finally over, so people actually have time to look, the weather is prime to make the lawn and landscaping look great, and the school year will be over soon, so parents can buy without uprooting their kids mid-school year.

Combine all those factors with the low interest rates we’re seeing right now, and it’s a great time to sell. However, selling a house is never a cake walk no matter how good the market is. We know anyone looking for a new construction home in Tulsa will have to sell their current home first, so we put together a quick list of how to sell your home in Spring.

Invest in Landscaping– This time of year makes landscaping a no brainer. Make sure the lawn is mowed, weeds are pulled, and fresh flowers are planted. If your thumb isn’t so green, it may be worth hiring a professional landscaper to do the dirty work for you.

First Impression– A home listing will never get more views in a single day than the first day it’s listed. With the steaks this high, you can’t afford to blow this first impression. Make sure the pictures are perfect and the price is right before your home goes live on the market.

Aim for Thursday– Speaking of listing your home, studies have shown that homes listed on Thursdays will sell faster. No one is exactly certain why this happens, but we’re guessing it’s because most buyers look on the weekends, so they start looking online on Thursdays. Regardless of the reason, it’s an easy step to take to increase the odds of a fast sale.

Be Realistic– Yes, it can be a seller’s market this time of year, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to be unrealistic about price and timeframe. You still need to list your home at a fair price and be ready to wait it out.

If you’re in the market for a new construction home in the Tulsa area, call Perry Hood Properties.

A fresh coat of paint, new hardwood floors, remodeling the bathroom, and sprucing up the landscaping are all the tried and true ways to increase the value of your home. However, there are a few factors that can move the needle on your home’s value that may surprise you.

Kind of Blue

The study of color psychology is fascinating, and the folks at Zillow decided to conduct a study on how colors affect the value of a home. By looking at more than 30,000 pictures of sold homes across the country, they found painting kitchens and bathrooms blue to be a strong value-adding factor. Blue kitchens fetched an extra $1,809, while blue bathrooms garnered an additional $5,440.

Coffee Run

Homes located within a quarter mile of a Starbucks increased their value by 96% between 1997 and 2014 compared to 65% for all US homes. Researchers also looked to see if a similar boost was seen by homes near other coffee shops. They found that these homes did, in fact, see a greater boost when compared to the average US home, although it was not as high as the Starbucks homes.

Easy Street

Studies have shown that people prefer to live on a street with a name, like Elm, instead of a street with a number, like 31^st. What’s even more surprising is that researchers have found a correlation between price and address suffix. Street is the least expensive, boulevard is the most expensive.

Chip and Jojo

Living in Oklahoma, we’re all well acquainted with that adorable couple down in Waco. The Gaines have made quite a splash on the home improvement and real estate market. By listing some of their favorite home features like “farmhouse sink” or “barn doors” homes are selling for more money and they’re selling much faster.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s March and that means it’s time to clean. No one is sure of the exact origins, but for some reason the Spring season has become synonymous with finally getting around to those cleaning duties you normally neglect. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. That’s why we put together a quick list you can use to get the ball rolling on your Spring cleaning.

Shampoo Rugs and Carpet

Regular vacuuming is a good idea, but rugs and carpet will collect stains and dinginess overtime that vacuums just can’t get out. Giving rugs and carpets a good wash with hot water and shampoo once a year will keep them in tip top shape. You can either rent a carpet cleaner or pay professionals to do it for you.

Clean Walls and Ceilings

Walls will get scuffed up and ceilings will get dusty throughout the year, but it’s easy to not notice these blemishes as they slowly accumulate. Take this opportunity to wipe down walls and dust ceilings.

Polish Knobs and Handles

Every time you open a door or cabinet, your hands leave a little oil on the knob or handle. This oil can slowly build up and become unsightly. Grab a bottle of metal polish and clean off this build up.

Wax Wooden Furniture

Applying a new coat of wax to your wooden furniture will keep it looking good and protect it from damage. Apply the wax with a cotton cloth, let it dry, and then buff with a clean cloth.

Purge Everything

Now is a great time to go room by room and evaluate what you really want to keep. It’s easy to let little knick knacks pile up and end up with a house full of junk. Get some boxes and start filling them with things you don’t really need to keep and then drop the boxes off at your local Goodwill.

Dust Like There’s No Tomorrow

Window seals, ceiling fans, air vents, bookshelves, blinds, and all the other places that collect dust need to be dealt with.

If you want to get really serious about your Spring cleaning, here’s a truly exhaustive list of things you can clean around your house.

Most homeowners know to keep a hammer, tape measurer, and screwdriver set in the garage, but there a few surprisingly useful tools homeowners may not know to look for. These five tools can save you tons of time and money when doing home improvement projects and most of them don’t cost more than a few bucks.

Zip Ties: You know those really annoying things that strap down kids’ toys to the cardboard box? Well they’re called zip ties, and they’re amazing. You can find them in multiple lengths in the electrical supply aisle of your local hardware store, and use them for all sorts of projects. They’re great for taming a mess of cables and cords behind a TV or quickly repairing a broken weld on some lawn furniture.

Multi-tool: No self-respecting handyman would be caught dead without a multi-tool in their pocket. They might be small, but they sure can pack a punch. Standard multi-tools have a knife blade, pliers, and screwdriver set, but some come with even more features. These are ideal for quickly making impromptu repairs around the house without having to grab the full toolbox.

Stud Finder: One of the greatest inventions for home improvement has to be the stud finder. Instead of knocking on the wall hoping to hear the stud, you can now use technology to instantly find a stud and hang your TV with confidence.

Putty Knife: The humble putty knife has been around for decades thanks to its multiple uses. You can scrape a sticky mess off the floor, apply new spackle to drywall, and much much more.

Shop-Vac: You probably already have a vacuum for your carpets and rugs, but what about messes that happen in the garage or car? And what if the mess is liquid? With a shop-vac, you can easily handle problems like these. A wet/dry shop vacuum is a solid investment for any homeowner with messes to clean up, and they can go for as little as $20.

Experience is often the best teacher and buying a home is no different. The first year you’re in your first home, you’re likely to encounter a litany of different scams trying to prey on your inexperience. Knowing what these scams look like before they show up in your mailbox or inbox can save you from losing lots of money.

Wire Fraud

One scam growing in popularity is for hackers to steal information from title companies and send out emails to soon-to-be home buyers with instructions on where to wire their down payment. This can cost a new home buyer the shot at their dream home by robbing them of the down payment they’ve worked so hard to save. It’s best to do these wire transfers in person at your bank to avoid scams like this.

Getting Your Deed

One of the most common homeowner scams will probably show up in your mailbox the first week you own the home. Buying a home in the state of Oklahoma will automatically generate a new property deed that is stored as a public record in the county record’s office. Scammers will track down these new records and send you a very official looking letter in the mail claiming you need to send in $60 to get the deed to your house. However, the county will send you the deed for free if you just wait a few weeks.

Hail Storm Chasers 

Living in Oklahoma, you’re likely to get at least one good hail storm every year. These storms bring sleazy roofers out of the woodwork trying to convince you that your roof is totaled and needs to be replaced. If one of these roofers comes around knocking on your door, always get a second opinion. Talk with your home insurance company to get a list of preferred vendors so you know you can trust what they’re telling you.