In today’s episode of the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show, Stephen and Julie Storm talk about advantages of owning a house.
Studies show, that if you live in your own house:
- family stays together longer,
- kids do better in school,
- relationships stay together and last longer and
- the actual quality of the home improves.
Don’t wait until the new year to sell your house. During the holiday season, there’s a lot less showings, but when they do come, they’re giving up time to be with their families to house hunt, so that makes them much more serious buyers.
For more useful information watch this video:
STEPHEN: Hello I’m Stephen Cooley and welcome to the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show. This is a very special show, as you can see, we’re filming with a Christmas tree behind us and I’ve got Julie Storm on the show, welcome back to the show Julie and Julie’s allowed us to film in her beautiful home that’s decorated for Christmas, and I’ll tell you I wasn’t in the Christmas spirit until I came in your house.
JULIE: Thank you Stephen, I always love doing this every year.
STEPHEN: I know, so thank you so much for having me out today. And I wanted to just talk about today..the gift of real estate into your family or into your life.
JULIE: Yeah, that’s it’s very important I think sometimes people take it for granted, but if you really stop and think about it there’s a lot of good points there, you were just sharing some of that with me, so let’s talk about.
STEPHEN: So there’s tons of studies out there that show if you take a family let’s say for example, and they live in a rental home, and they buy a home. Studies show that the family stays together longer, the same study shows that kids do better in school that relationships stay together and last longer and it shows that the actual quality of the home improves because renters really don’t take care of a house, but if that home turns into a home that people own, they paint and they decorate and they work in the yard and doing those type of things actually the study shows helps the nucleus of the family when a family paints and a family works in the yard and plants a garden and a lot of times people don’t get pets until they own a house.
And so all that really helps the quality of the family or the people living there and families defined as many different ways these days but studies show that it helps the folks and so during this holiday season with this beautiful tree behind me I’m just wanting to share that if you don’t own real estate it can be one of the best things for the people who you live with and it causes people to really enjoy being home.
JULIE: Well, this is a time to ending the year and looking towards the new year a lot of times people are setting goals, so if you don’t own right now may be a good thing to do is put out some pen and paper and write it down and say next year I’m going to own a home.
STEPHEN: Well, think about anything you rent whether you rent a car on vacation or anything that you may rent for the day how you treated it differently than if you owned it, and you think about how you feel when you own something versus when you rent something and Julie one of the beautiful things that really helps folks is with that build equity in their home and they build no equity in a rental house and equity when I say equity let’s just say the homes worth 250 and you’ve paid the loan down to 150 you’ve got a hundred thousand dollars sitting there that the family can use for emergencies, you can get an equity loan on that, you can sell the home and get that hundred thousand and the only thing that’s caused that equity is the home to go up in value in every payment instead of going to rent pays down the mortgage and you would create a distance between the value and the loan payoff and that’s called equity and that is the number one wealth builder for Americans is equity in real estate. So the gift today to your family if you don’t own real estate is to buy it and then that kind of ties back to…There’s over 3,000 homes locally in our market area,25 miles, for sale right now.
JULIE: And you’re on the holiday and you wanna show your house, and you wanna decorate so what do you do?
STEPHEN: Well, I’ll give you a great example really quick. I’m a big fan of the Biltmore house and I went six years in a row at Christmas because it just puts you in that Christmas spirit when you go. I went this past spring when it wasn’t decorated for Christmas, it was a whole different house. You saw how big the rooms were they put all the furniture back and it was just a different home so when your buyers come into your home, and it’s on the market it’s their Biltmore house and most of the time and I bet true in your house today, that things are moved around to fit the tree and to fit the things in so I would say enjoy Christmas if your home’s on the market, put your decorations up maybe a week later than normal and then the saddest thing ever whether it’s in my home or in someone else’s is Christmas decorations after Christmas because it’s such a build up that then it reminds you that Christmas is over and it’s a letdown so I would say if your home’s on the market maybe put the things up just a little bit later in the season and then take them down on the 26th, 27th, just have some time reserved to get all Christmas holiday decorations out of your house..
JULIE: And clean really good, get all the glitter and all that kind of stuff out.
STEPHEN: And I see a lot of Christmas decorations Julie into February in homes that are for sale. So I would just say set some time aside and the other thing that I would say is enjoy the holidays. Buyers are much more serious. That’s a good thing. There’s a lot less showings, but when they do come they’re very serious buyers because remember they’re also humans, and they’re also giving up time to Christmas shopping and holiday party and be with their families to house hunt so that makes them much more serious buyers. This is such a great holiday season and these holidays are very tied to being at home and having family in your house and that’s just another wonderful reason is to own the home so you can really show it off when people come to visit.
JULIE: Maybe would be a good idea to, if you have some photographs of your house prior to being decorated to Christmas, maybe leave those on the counter or something like a little scrapbook or something.
STEPHEN: That’s wonderful and I tell you it’s great this time of year to have your yard in bloom laying out on the counter or hopefully the realtor does brochures provide some photos of when the azaleas are in bloom or trees are in bloom if you’re thinking about selling during the holiday season take some photos in the summer or go back and see if you can find some so people can see actually what the yard looks like because nobody’s yard looks good right now.
JULIE: That’s true.
STEPHEN: Thank you so much for having me in your home, It’s really put me in the Christmas spirit and great to have you on the show and happy holidays.
JULIE: Happy holidays.
STEPHEN: And happy holidays to you. We’ve got beautiful homes for sale in your area, and we’ll be right back.
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