Articles
Personal Health and Safety During a Home Move
Moving house is a stressful time and can also be a dangerous time if you don’t take the right precautions. There are a number of hazards to be aware of during the moving process.
Incorrect lifting
If you are moving yourself, you need to make sure that your cartons weigh no more than 20 kilos and are small enough to be handled by one person. You also need to observe correct lifting procedures, such as bending your legs and never using your back to lift with. These issues won’t arise if you are using a removalist, as professional movers are trained to lift correctly.
Sourcing Packing Materials for your Move
In these uncertain economic times, many people are choosing the cheaper option of packing their belongings themselves and then either hiring a moving company to move them or moving it themselves.
Packing materials
If you are packing your own belongings, using the right materials is the best way to ensure that no one gets hurt during the move and everything gets from A to B in one piece. The main materials you will need are:
Keeping Your Home Furnished Before Selling
There are two schools of thought as to whether your home should be furnished or vacant when selling.
Vacant
Some people believe that a completely empty house allows prospective buyers to visualise what their own furniture would look like in it and to imagine what they could do with each space.
And it is true that viewing a home with someone else’s things in it can be distracting. Their taste in décor may not be the same as yours and subconsciously you may think less of the overall property because of it.
Simple Tips for Selling a Home Faster
Selling a home doesn’t always coincide with peaks in the real estate market, so if you find yourself needing to sell fast in a slow market, here are some useful ways to speed up the process.
Curb appeal
Improving the curb appeal of your home will make it more inviting to browsers who might not otherwise get out of their car for a look. Landscaping, a coat of paint, a new fence or even just bright flowers in the garden are all things you can do relatively cheaply and quickly to spruce up your front yard and encourage tyre-kickers to venture beyond the front gate.
Shopping for a Home Near Your Job
One of the most important considerations for most people when buying a home is its location. How close it is to public amenities such as shopping centres, schools and hospitals, and most importantly, whether it is within commuting distance of their jobs.
Suburban living
As our cities get bigger and more sprawling, living in the suburbs means commuting further and further to work. If your finances dictate that you must look for a house in the outer suburbs (often where new housing estates are located), then you have to be prepared, either for a long commute to the city, or to find a job in your local area.
Dressing Your Garden for an Open Home
Your garden plays an important part in the overall appeal of your home, so it needs to be at its best for an open home. If you don’t have much time or much of a green thumb, here are some easy ways to spruce up your garden before those potential buyers arrive.
Garden beds
Even if you don’t know the names of the plants in your garden, you should be able to recognise a weed when you see one. Overgrown beds are an eyesore and make a garden look sad and neglected. Roll up your sleeves and do some intensive weeding and you’ll be amazed at what a difference it makes. Scattering some wood chips or mulch around the weeded areas will complete the picture.
Pots and planters
Finding the Right Sized Home for Your Furniture
Most people would buy a home and then find furniture to suit it. But if your furniture is antique or custom-made or you just can’t bear to part with it, then moving becomes all about finding the right sized house to put it in.
Scale
Scale is all about having everything in the right proportions. If you have large furniture, then you will need large rooms to put it in, otherwise the rooms will look small and crowded. If you have smaller pieces, then a large house would dwarf them and leave big areas of empty space, so a house with smaller rooms would suit them best.
Avoiding a Rushed Home Purchase
Buying a home is an exciting prospect, but the process should never be rushed. Unless you take the time to work through all the steps, you could end up paying more than you intended for a home you’re less than happy with.
Finding the right mortgage
Long before you start looking for a home, you should be looking long and hard at your finances. How much income do you have? How much debt? How much can you afford to pay towards a mortgage?
Spotting a Home with Potential
Looking for a new home can be quite overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a lot of money to spend. However, the key to finding the right place is knowing how to spot a home’s potential. The following is a look at how to spot the potential you want and need from your new home, so if you are on the lookout for your ideal place, make sure you know what you are looking for.
Know what you want
We all have different ideas of what our perfect home would look like, so in order to spot a home with the potential you need, first consider what you are hoping for from your new place. If your new space will need to fit a few large or irregularly shaped items, make sure you know their exact measurements before you begin your search; or, if there are other features or items you could live without, weigh up these big decisions well ahead of time.
Buying a Home Within Your Budget
A home is one of the biggest purchases most people will ever make, and while it will usually cost a significant amount of money, if you are buying within your budget a new home can be a smart investment. The following is a look at how to buy a new home that you can afford.
Establish your budget
To be any chance of buying a house within your budget, you will first need to establish your budget, so work out how much you can afford to spend on a new place, remembering to include related costs such as insurance and removalists. If you borrow money, only borrow what you can afford to repay; otherwise, you may end up having your sweet new place repossessed. If your dream home is just out of reach, hold off until you have saved a little more money
