A4HB Homebuyer's Blog

Remodeled front view of house, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Home Improvement
A4HB Team

Creating Value Adding Curb Appeal

Creating Value Adding Curb Appeal by Shannon Weissleder Creating major curb appeal greatly increases your home’s value. When selling your house, you want to grab buyers from the moment they pull up to the curb. Most buyers are looking for a house that instantly looks like a “H-O-M-E”. Here are my top ideas for creating maximum impact: #1: Update the exterior with paint.    Choose a bright exterior color to warm up a tired looking house. In this example, I selected a classic white and black color scheme and accented with warmer wood tones through cedar fencing, cedar wrapped posts

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Neighborhood graphic, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Buyer Agency
A4HB Team

Open Houses are Not the Way to find a Home

Open Houses are Not the Way to find a Home By Claudia Lewis Open Houses are Fun but not a Good Idea For may folks, open houses are a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon. It’s interesting to see what your neighbor’s house looks like and possibly pick up some good decorating ideas. On the other hand, open houses are NOT a good way to buy a home. With all the information currently available on the internet, open houses are an entirely unnecessary way to look at homes for sale. Open houses are, in fact, responsible for selling only

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Finding your new home graphic
Buyer Agency
A4HB Team

Now that there’s Zillow and Redfin, do I really need an agent to find a home?

Now that there’s Zillow and Redfin, do I really need an agent to find a home? Since the beginning of the new millennium, Zillow, Redfin, Trulia and other web-based real estate search engines have become widely used real estate tools. These platforms help home buyers, sellers and real estate agents find each other. You might be asking yourself, “Do I really need an agent to find a home?” This is a buyer beware situation if there ever was one. Just who, exactly, benefits from using these sites? Are your best interests protected? Before you tap into one of these resources,

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Methamphetamine formula, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Home Buyer Issues
A4HB Team

Should You Get A Meth Test Before Buying a Home?

Should You Get A Meth Test Before Buying a Home? By Lindsey Wolf Lunney You Can’t Tell a Meth House by its Cover Meth labs can be found anywhere, and you cannot always tell whether a house is a meth lab by just looking at it. We advise all our clients to test for meth contamination during the inspection phase of the home buying process. Recently, we found a home in Arvada that had no visual signs of meth contamination, but the tests came back at 60 micrograms of meth in a 4 square inche space. The Colorado state standard

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House graphic, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Home Buyer Issues
A4HB Team

Common Home Buying Mistakes

Common Home Buying Mistakes Home Buyers in every age group run the risk of making common home buying mistakes. You can avoid making those mistakes yourself by becoming aware of what they are. Check out this article published in the Daily Camera for more insight.

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Happy school kids, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Communities and Schools
A4HB Team

Finding the Right School for Your Family

Finding the Right School for Your Family By Claudia Lewis Great Schools in our Area Many of our buyer clients list good schools as one of their reasons for selecting Boulder Valley as the place they want to live. In some cases, parents have already targeted the one school they would like their children to attend. However, if you limit your choice of neighborhoods this severely, it can be a recipe for frustration and possibly failure. Agents Cannot Offer Opinions Under Colorado Division of Real Estate rules, agents are prohibited from offering opinions about local schools to home buyers. Much

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Multi-racial family, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Buyer Agency
A4HB Team

Why Hire a Real Estate Professional in a DIY World? – Part 2

Why Hire a Real Estate Professional in a DIY World? In an earlier post, I talked about the disastrous home buying and selling experience my husband and I had the first time we bought a house. We did many things wrong and nearly lost our shirts. Ever since, I have been true believer in the value of a good buyer’s agent instead of going it alone. Here’s why. Why Not DIY? Today, you can find homes for sale and look up many things you need to know online. With all of the internet tools available today, there’s a lot of

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Ranch home, street view, after, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Home Improvement
A4HB Team

Top 5 Strategies When Flipping a House

Top 5 Strategies When Flipping a House By Shannon Weissleder Flipping houses has been a passion of mine for over a decade. I’ve been fortunate enough to purchase and sell 13 properties during that time. Each property needs its own special kind of attention and love. Here are my Top 5 bits of advice if you are itching to flip. #1: Creating curb appeal is essential A home without curb appeal is going to have trouble getting buyers interested in what is inside. Some properties need more work than others to become enticing to potential buyers. The exterior of this

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3D printed home
Housing News
A4HB Team

Can low-cost 3D printing solve housing shortages?

Can low-cost 3D printing solve housing shortages? by Claudia Lewis Download and Print a Home? It’s a somber reality that 1.2 billion people worldwide live without adequate housing. For the past several years, New Story, a housing charity based in San Francisco, has built over 150 homes in El Salvador, where tarps and scrap metal shelters abound. New Story has been working to provide houses that have proper roofs and floors but it’s slow, painstaking work in a country where nearly a third of the population is without shelter. They needed a better approach. Last year, New Story may have

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Confused couple, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Buyer Agency
A4HB Team

Why Hire a Real Estate Professional in a DIY World?

Why Hire a Real Estate Professional in a DIY World? This may be stating the obvious, but I am a real estate agent. It may also be obvious that I feel strongly that you should hire a real estate professional when you’re ready to buy a home. I became an agent in part because my first home buying and selling experience was such a disaster! My motivation for going to real estate school was to do whatever I could to prevent other folks from making the same mistakes my husband and I did. When You Don’t Know What You Don’t

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