Do-It-Yourself, Sell Your Dream Home Yourself !

If you are like most people, you have thought, “How hard could it be to sell my house? Let’s just do it ourselves.”

It is a legitimate thought; the average seller has access to most every avenue that the agent does.

You have signs, websites, Craigslist, Kijiji and plenty of other places to advertise. The problem is, the average seller thinks that the only thing they pay a real estate agent for is the advertising and the “getting it under contract part.” While that is a large part of what we do, it isn’t our expertise.


We are trained both in the classroom and in the real world on getting your house under contract and keeping it that way until you have gone to closing and had it recorded under the buyer’s name. That is where an agent earns their commission.

  Especially in a buyer’s market, sellers can get beat up pretty badly if they aren’t well represented, or if they just do not know any different. Buyers are expecting to get great deals, and for that seller need to keep  their home in top-notch condition. 

Again if something unexpected discovered during home inspection, then buyer can further press you. So what typically happens is a buyer comes in and negotiates with you to get you to your bottom dollar, then asks for so many repairs that you net less than you expecting, but you are too scared to say no to the repairs because of fear of losing that oh-so-precious buyer. 

The road from getting your house under contract all the way to the closing table is long and slippery. You have to be able to pull yourself out of the situation emotionally and work through every obstacle from a third party’s perspective. It is not easy, but it can be done.

If you are considering selling on your own, let me give you some tips that will help guide you in the right direction. 

First, make sure that you are being safe. Do not schedule showings if you are going to be home alone if at all possible. Better yet, have each potential buyer email you a pre-approval letter, which will qualify them pretty quickly, and keep you from wasting your time with those people who just want to see what kind of carpet you have. 

Second, read up on what information you are required to tell the buyer. In all situations you are better off to disclose than to keep any information hidden, especially when it comes to defects or material facts. A material fact is anything that would affect the buying decision. Is it something that you would want to know? If so, tell it.

Next, consult the advice of professionals; do not write up a contract on a napkin. Have an attorney do it, talk to your accountant, make sure that you are making good decisions. 

Finally, know your rights as a seller. Yes, most things are negotiable, but you do have the right to say no. Sometimes it is worth losing the buyer.

Do you know how your home is heated during winter ? Forced Air Gas Furnace

The forced-air gas furnace is the most common heating system in North America. It has undergone many improvements over the past few years making them efficient, quiet and reliable.

Efficiency
Most of the heat generated when a gas furnace burns goes into the house, but some of the heat goes up the chimney. Furnace efficiency refers to the amount of heat delivered into the house relative to the total amount of fuel energy used. Another way to look at it: if you burn $1 worth of gas and you get 80 cents worth of heat into the house, your furnace is operating at 80% efficiency. This quotient is often called AFUE, or annual fuel utilization efficiency.

Furnaces are classified into three efficiency categories, each correlating to a specific design: conventional, mid, and high efficiency designs.

Conventional
A conventional furnace is the oldest type and is generally 55% to 65% efficient. In other words, a great deal of heat is lost up the chimney during the operation of the furnace. Conventional furnaces are no longer made but many still exist in homes.

Mid
Improvements in design led to the mid-efficiency furnace, operating at around 80% AFUE. The big development, the induced draft fan, sucks the combustion products through the furnace and discharges them into the flue. No longer reliant on natural draft to run, the heat exchanger design was optimized in order to extract more heat before the combustion gasses went up the chimney.

High
Further developments in furnace design led to the modern high-efficiency furnace, operating at an AFUE of 90 to 97%. A high-efficiency furnace has two heat exchangers, the second’s job being to condense the gases, thus extracting most of the heat that would otherwise have been lost up the chimney.

Other benefits of a high-efficiency furnace:

• Does not require a chimney: since most of the combustion gases are condensed and trickle down the drain, the remaining (fairly cool) gases can be vented through a plastic pipe directly through the wall of the house.
• Doesn’t burn house-hold air: combustion air is drawn directly from the outside through one plastic pipe and a second plastic pipe discharges the remaining combustion gas to the exterior.