Financing is the First Place to Start Whether you are buying your first house, your step-up house, or downsizing to a smaller home, the first question you need to answer is how you will finance the purchase. You can use cash, financing through a bank, or proceeds from the sale of your current home to cover the cost of your new home. Each person’s situation is unique and may take a combination of options to achieve your overall goal of finding your next home. Let’s look at these options more in-depth:   Cash Offers Cash offers are pretty straight forward. Since there is no 3rd party lending involved, you won’t need an appraisal and you won’t need to go through a bank’s underwriting requirements. As a result, cash offers are typically very quick to close, if desired.   Traditional Financing This is the most common way to obtain the funds to purchase a home. Traditional financing entails working with a lender of your choosing to take out a 30-year or 15-year mortgage to purchase your home. Your lender will look at your credit score, debt to income ratio, and funds for a downpayment and then give you a pre-approval letter.   Proceeds From Equity Using the proceeds from equity to cover the cost of your next home is a common desire for someone looking to downsize. I’m going to highlight a couple options that may work for you here. The first one is getting a bridge loan through a lender. This is where they loan you money against the equity in your current home in order to cover the cost of your next home. There are some major pros to this approach, such as allowing you to have a few weeks in between the closing of your purchase and the closing of the sale of your current home. This will give you plenty of time to move and get through the many years of items you may have stored away. The other benefit to using the bridge loan is that you keep some major contingencies off of your purchase agreement when you are writing offers. Since the bank is converting your equity into cash, you essentially have a cash offer and don’t need to place a sale contingency on your offer. A sale contingency is when you have to sell your current home for the offer to move forward with the purchase of your next home. These carry risk to the seller of the home you are trying to obtain and can be looked at negatively in a competitive market like we are experiencing today. The main cons to a bridge loan are that they cost you money and you need to be able to qualify for that second loan if your current home isn’t 100% paid off. The bank is going to charge you underwriting fees, processing fees and interest on the loaned money. Even though it’s a short period of time, it can easily cost you $1,500 to $2,000 depending on the amount of money borrowed. The second way to go about using the proceeds for the equity in your home is to place a sale contingency on the contract stating your need to sell your current home first and also time up the closings to be on the same day. As mentioned previously, this will make your offer less competitive, but may be completely acceptable in certain situations such as buying new construction in today’s market. The other negative aspect of timing up both closings on the same day is that you will need to be out of your current house prior to closing in the morning, for example, and won’t be able to get into your next home until you close in the afternoon.   Every Situation is Unique I hope this information helped clarify the various ways to finance a home purchase. Each person’s situation is unique to them and there isn’t a single best course of action that works for everyone. This is why I highly encourage a relationship with your lender along with your realtor to help you navigate meeting your goals.   Want to Know What Your Home is Worth? I've been receiving great feedback from the clients I've set up on Homebot. This powerful platform gives you a monthly report about the value of your home and insights about your equity and various financial considerations. I'm happy to offer this app to my network free of charge. Click here to sign up for Homebot.

Have you ever wondered how a house is valued? Is Zillow accurate? It’s both an art and a science when it comes to placing a value on a property. Factors like location, demand of that local market and condition of the property can greatly influence the value of the home. A good realtor will pull a list of recently sold properties, currently pending properties and active properties to see where your home will stack up.  Fun Fact: Commercial Real Estate isn’t valued this way. Call me if you want to learn more about this. A lot of people reference Zillow’s “Zestimate” for understanding the value of their home. Zillow is not wrong all of the time, but its estimates can be off by quite a bit. I personally prefer HomeBot, which I provide free to any of my clients. Click here to sign up for it. If you live in a production builder neighborhood where many houses look the same and quite a few houses sold recently, Zestimate will be a very reliable number. For all other situations, it takes more nuance to determine an accurate value of your property. Here are 3 things I consider when placing a value on a property: Comparable sales “Comps” There is no exact science to choosing comparable homes to help determine your home’s value. How I go about it depends on the location, style of home and age of home. If you live in an area where there are many similar houses and lots of sales recently, I’m going to use those sales to come up with a value. If you live in a more unique home or in a remote location, this is when I have to look at a variety of characteristics to determine a value. Condition of home The condition of a property can vary drastically and it takes more speculation to determine where a home is on that spectrum. Ask yourself, does this house have curb appeal, is it clean on the interior, have we been putting off making upgrades, what kind of deferred maintenance do we have? The first thing I look for is the age of the roof and major appliances. If you don’t know how old your appliances are, there should be an install sticker on your water heater, furnace and AC. Advice I received on staying up with maintenace was from a friend of mine and he told me last year, “if you try to update one thing a year, you will always stay on top of it.” Obviously that’s easier said than done, but it’s a good goal to have. Have we been ignoring our landscaping and now it’s overgrown with weeds? This is a cheap and easy fix.  Competing houses The last thing I look at to dial in a final number is the other active homes that would be competition to yours. You don’t want to be in a position where your house is priced higher than another house on the market that is also in better condition. If your condition is slightly worse, you want to be priced right under that competing house. There are many factors that determine the value of a property and this is a general overview of my process in helping determine value. Click here if you want to discuss selling your home.

Are you looking for things to do in Nebraska? If you’re not a Nebraska Game & Parks pass holder, this might be your sign to become one. We’re firm believers that there’s nothing a little time outdoors can’t fix! The annual park pass offers holders access to Nebraska’s 76 state parks, state historical parks and state recreation areas. Did you even know our state had 76 places like these available to you? For the 2023 calendar year, a single permit for a Nebraska-licensed vehicle is $31 ($47 to get permits for two vehicles). Talk about a budget-friendly expense that offers endless opportunities for fun! Each state park or recreation area offers unique activities and things to do, but in general, you can do the following with your state parks pass: Hiking and walking the forested and paved trails Fishing Camping Getting involved in conservation efforts Birdwatching and wildlife viewing Hunting Boating and paddling Participating in education classes and events At some of these parks, you can even do things like zip-lining and “glamping”! We’ve been pass holders for the past two years and have yet to venture out to any state park areas further than a 15-mile radius. That’s because there’s been so much to do and see at the four state park and recreational areas close to our home alone: Schramm State Park and Schramm Educational Center Mahoney State Park Platte River State Park Louisville State Recreation Area At these parks, our favorite activities include: Mini golf (Mahoney) Activity center (a giant indoor jungle gym connected to an expansive indoor rock climbing center and an outdoor seasonal ice skating rink - Mahoney) Hiking the forested trails (you could spend all day just exploring and taking in the beauty of the parks) Having picnics with food and drinks that we bring The playgrounds (there’s an awesome one at Platte River State Park, but the other parks have great ones, too) Attending “Little Saplings” kids classes on the first Wednesday of every month (Schramm Education Center - for 2-5 year-olds) Feeding the fish at the ponds and hatchery areas (Schramm Park) Climbing the giant observation towers at Platte River State Park and Mahoney State Park to get fantastic views of the area Exploring all that Schramm Education Center has to offer (a huge toy and craft area, indoor aquarium and animal exhibits, a camping play area and more) Free kayaking on Fridays in September (Platte River State Park) Attending events (like Classic Christmas at Mahoney and participating in the Yule Log Quest scavenger hunt at Platte River State Park) Splash pad / spray ground at Platte River State Park and the Aquatic Center (a waterpark with wave pool, play area and water slides) at Mahoney State Park Exploring the crawdad ponds (Platte River State Park) There’s still so much we haven’t experienced at these four areas alone, but we’re also excited to expand our state parks passport in the near future. Within a short drive of Gretna are Indian Cave State Park and Ponca State Park, so we plan to check those destinations out this year. Even if you are already a passholder, we’ve found that many people aren’t aware of the extensive list of events put on by the various parks. Every event or class we’ve attended has been high quality, fun and more than worth our time. There are events for different age ranges and different types of hobbies or activities. You can check out the event calendar here. If you’re interested in purchasing a state parks pass, you can do so here. Happy exploring!