***Quick Ways to Change the Appearance of Property

I tell my clients that there are 2 things that we can’t cost effectively change to make their property more desirable when trying to sell an investment property...location & floor plan. Everything else is fixable.

If you bought a property in an undesirable location and are trying to sell you had better make everything else unique and perfect. Take some time and give it a quick home makeover. Find out about the demographic of the type of people most likely to buy in the area and then cater to them when staging the property. For instance, if it’s near a “trendy” area, make sure you get modern accouterments to make potential buyers connect with the property. Many buyers lack the creative vision you have and because they don’t have enough time to stay and figure it out during a showing, you need to SPELL IT OUT for them sometimes.

If you have property with an unusual layout or with ‘hard-to-understand-why-the-heck-did-they-do-that area”, then put on your thinking cap and figure out how to make the space work. Get a designer or some design software and re-work the space in a “virtual” way and promote your ideas to prospective buyers. By capturing them with your imagination, they will no longer see the problem area as an issue, but more like an opportunity!

The key here that even the best real estate investor will sometimes end up with a property in a less than red hot market. Sometimes something changes after the purchase or what appeared to be a great deal wasn’t quite what you though it to be. With time and experience you are less likely to end up in a position like this but even if you do there are often simple and low cost ways to turn the situation around. Remember always that an investors biggest asset isn’t his or her credit limit or portfolio, it is creativity and that alone is often the difference between a great return and a substantial loss.