Rancho Santa Fe Condos / Buyer – Seller Tips

Qualifying the Buyer for your Rancho Santa Fe Property

Either you or your agent will want to weed out potential buyers who cannot afford to purchase your Rancho Santa Fe home. Items to investigate include the buyer’s debt and credit history, current income and employment, the availability of cash for a down payment, the time the buyer needs before closing on the home and the buyer’s level of interest in your home as compared to other properties.

Rancho Santa Fe Home Improvement

In a recent study, a midrange bathroom renovation paid off with an average 102% return on investment and an upscale bathroom renovation recouped 93% of its cost. A midrange kitchen renovation recouped 91% of its cost on average, and an upscale kitchen recouped 85%. A minor kitchen-remodeling job returned 99% of its cost. There are numbers that apply to Rancho Santa Fe.

Proper maintenance and annual upkeep of your Rancho Santa Fe home may be the most important improvements of all. Clean the gutters to protect the exterior from water damage. Trim shrubs. Check for termites. Keep track of annual checkups -- and use that as a selling point. Annual maintenance pays back handsomely when you sell. And before the house goes up for sale, experts recommend a fresh coat of paint.

The Benefits of Selling Rancho Santa Fe

As you know, you are allowed to sell your Rancho Santa Fe principal residence once every two years and exclude up to $250,000 ($500,000 for a married couple) of the gain of the sale on your Federal income tax. Please note: This is not a once in a lifetime tax savings and you don’t have to be any certain age or buy a more expensive property. If you meet the two-year residence test you can sell your principal residence every two years if you are so inclined and the market cooperates. But this tax saving does not affect rental property unless you convert the rental to your personal residence, live in it for two years and then sell it.

Tips for Buying or Selling Rancho Santa Fe

Most experienced real estate agents and brokers already have Websites that showcase their local MLS data so your Rancho Santa Fe can show up online as soon as it is listed. On the other hand, if you are selling on your own it will take time or a considerable advertising budget to get your individual Rancho Santa Fe property to show up on the major search engines where prospective buyers will find it. You could tap into one of the several For Sale by Owner Websites but that would limit your market of buyers.

Buying real estate in Rancho Santa Fe is also much easier when you work with a real estate agent who knows the area and the market. While there is a great deal of information online about real estate asking prices, it is not always so easy to find out what a property actually sold for. And even then, specific terms of a sale often make a difference in how to interpret the sales price.

What Makes Rancho Santa Fe Sell?

People often ask me when is the best time to sell my Rancho Santa Fe? I usually reply that if you want to get the best price for your home, it is wise to give yourself as much time as possible to sell it. However peak selling seasons vary in different areas of the country, and Rancho Santa Fe is no exception, and weather has a lot to do with an area’s peak season. For example, late spring and early fall are the prime listing seasons in many areas because houses tend to show better in those months than they do in the heat of summer. Having said that, houses sell in every season in areas where there is a demand. By demand, I mean a significant number of prospective buyers moving to the area for a variety of reasons.

Rancho Santa Fe DEDUCTIONS

One of the advantages of home ownership is that while most other types of interest are not tax deductible, the interest you pay on your Rancho Santa Fe loan is deductible on your Federal and State income tax. This fact alone gives homeowners a distinct advantage over renters.