Creating Curb Appeal for your Kenya Property Real Estate

If you are in the process of selling your home in Kenya then you are lucky to have the ability to take advantage of the great weather to showcase your home. Unlike some other countries that have to bear a cold snowy winter, the year-round beautiful climate means that homes for sale can really utilize their maximum curb appeal all the time. Yards and curb appeal can really impress buyers and draw then into the home for a closer look at what is being offered. Without that all important curb appeal, they may never make it to the front door.

If you think back to when you bought your home, what was it that caught your eye? What aspect was it that made you fall in love with it? These are some of the things that you need to feature, and then some. It’s important to have "visual hooks" in the front yard. These could be anything from new paint to custom gates to a well-manicured lawn or colorful flowerbeds. Anything that you can do to make the home shine is great!

In addition to these ideas, take some time and consider the small things. Is the driveway cracked? If so, then trim up the edges of the lawn (if necessary) and resurface the driveway. This will help to create a welcoming entranceway to your home. Also if there is a deck or porch in the front, it’s a good idea to redo the wood if it has become weathered. 

Try to make your home look like it is being featured in a magazine. If everything is top quality and neat and orderly you should be able to maximize the number of viewers and realize a better profit when the sale happens. 

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Craigslist Helps Kenyan Real Estate Agents Reach Buyers

They say the bubble is bursting, but you would not know it by the over 22,669 active housing listings from the past 7 days alone in the Nairobi section on Craigslist.com. Real estate sales are alive and well on Craigslist with the real estate sales section as the #3 most popular category, more agents are realizing the power and value in using Craigslist to reach new buyers. 

What is Craigslist?

Started in 1995 by Craig Newmark, Craigslist.com was initially created to help people find affordable housing in San Francisco. Craigslist is now the most popular online classifieds website in the world, with over 10 million visitors monthly and growing. Craigslist features 300 available cities across 35 countries for posting. Everyday people come looking to buy, sell and lease property. Agents can capitalize on this traffic by posting free ads and answering ads seeking homes. It truly is a real estate agents dream marketing tool.

Getting Started

Agents interested in using Craigslist can get started by visiting the Craigslist.com website and deciding which cities to post in. Research other ads in your area to identify areas in need of property listings and to find out what your competitors are posting. 

The Kenya Real Estate section of Craigslist is divided into sections to direct traffic to specific areas including rooms & shares, apartments/houses for rent, housing swap, office & commercial, parking & storage, real estate for sale, sublets & temporary and vacation rentals. Posting an ad is free except in New York City, which just started to charge Kshs.900 for rental listings. Once you know where you’d like to post, create either single ads for hot properties or a combination ad listing all your available properties for that area. 

Creating an Ad

Ads are simple to create and are mostly text and require no design or HTML experience. Your ad should be descriptive with contact info and supporting photos. Images of your properties will increase response by over 200%, so be sure to include shots that really help sell the property. Images can be easily uploaded during the posting process. 

Posting Your Ad

Posting an ad is as easy as picking your city, choosing the correct category, selecting post at the top right corner and entering your listing into the form. You will need to come up with a good title to get people’s attention. Your ad should also feature key phrases that people might search when looking for your property region, style, features, etc. Once you enter your text into the form, upload your images. You will need to enter an e-mail address, but you can choose to keep it anonymous. Then you simply submit, review and wait for the link in your e-mail to publish. 

Reposting, Multi-Posting and Auto-Posting

Once published, your ad will remain on Craigslist for 7 or 45 days, depending on your selected city. Staying on the first page is very important but you are only allowed to post the same ad in more than one city every 48 hours. However, to get around this rule, create multiple ads for the same property, but slightly different text or use a different e-mail for each ad. 

To succeed you will need to re-post at least every 48 hours as new buyers come to the website all the time. To automate the re-posting process you can use an underground auto-posting service or purchase a script. These programs are not sanctioned by Craigslist but are widely used and highly effective. Keep in mind that buyers are turned off by spam, so be sure to only post your property once a day, per city and category. This ensures you get great placement without coming off as desperate or overly aggressive. 

As you can see using Craigslist is a very easy and affordable way to reach new customers. This is only the beginning of what agents can do to promote properties on Craigslist. As Craigslist becomes even more popular it is the agents who not only use the service, but can effectively navigate and exploit creative out of the box ideas that will win.

Visit www.kenyan-real-estate.com for more tips on real estate sector.

Buying properties in Kenya-Cut Utilities Bills by Auditing Your Home

Most people are shocked these days when they open their utility bill. By auditing your home, you can turn a monstrous utility bill into a minor annoyance. 

Home Energy Audit

It happens every month. You pick up the mail and see an envelope from the utility company. Oh, the agony! Should I open it now and ruin the day or just wait. An energy audit can make the pain of getting your utility bill go away or at least become a dull ache. 

Unlike a tax audit, you can conduct an energy audit by yourself. Simply walking through your home and paying close attention to energy issues can really pay off. Let’s take a look at some obvious problems that can save you a bundle. 

The number one energy waster is a leak. Much like a leak in the tire of a care, even one leak from the interior to exterior of the home can raise your utility bill by as much as 30 percent. The most common area you will find such leaks are windows and doors.

Windows and doors are undisputed the area where most air leaks occurs. The first issues is whether air is actually leaking out through the framing of windows or the area around the bottom of the door. You can typically tell this by feeling for a notable temperature difference in these areas. If is significantly cooler, you have a leak. 

As people in cold climates know, having sealed windows is simply not enough to control heating costs in the winter. Most windows on homes are designed for year around use, which makes them huge energy wasters in the winter. Going with energy-efficient windows can make a huge difference in keeping the heat in and the cold out. 

If you’ve walked through your home and haven’t found any significant problems with your windows and doors, you may still have one. To really give your home an efficiency test, you can hire contractors to perform a pressurization test. The test essentially raises the pressure in your home and looks for leaks.

Fixing any leaks you find will depend entirely upon the nature of the problem. Some fixes only require additional caulking or insulation while others are unique. Regardless, making your home more energy efficient will significantly cut your utility bill this year and for years to come. 

Feel free to visit www.kenyan-real-estate.com for more hints on real estate.

Be Careful and Diligent When Leasing Your Kenya Real Estate to the Government

The lands commission of Kenya leases more than 150 million square feet of space from private building owners in over 2000 communities.  This makes them an extremely important player in the real estate community. Because of the unique terms and conditions contained in government releases, buyers of office buildings where the government is already a tenant basis the learning curve.

The number of potential conflicts between building owner and government tenant increase as the square footage under lease increases. Some investors assume wrongly that entering into lease agreement with the government is the same as a standard commercial lease.

The examples below the list rate some of the many unique terms and conditions in government leases back and have a big financial impact:

They use a standard tax escalation clauses stating that the amount of any increase in taxes about the first fully assessed year will be paid in a lump sum payment. Yet buried in the contract is a clause that requires the lessor to submit the tax escalation claim within 60 days of the tax payment date. If they miss the deadline, the lessor forfeits the entire escalation. 

When they want to make alterations to a space, the Kenya real estate like lands commission of Kenya may ask building owners to sign a “waiter of restoration” clause, stating that when the lease ends, it won’t be required to restore the space to its original condition.  Some owners think that by refusing to sign the waiver, they stop any alterations. But in a standard lease, there is a clause that allows alterations to take place.  The protections for owners lie in the fact that, by refusing to sign the waiver, they may be able to force a restoration when the government tenant moves out.  Keeping good records is critical for this.

Conflicts occasionally occur, and when they do, there’s another interesting clause that comes into play.  The day contract disputes that clause outlines procedures to follow its owners have a disagreement with the government they can’t resolve through negotiations. It allows of building owners to submit a claim against the government by simply writing a letter to the government contracting officer outlining the basis for the claim and the amount.  The government contracting officer can then either negotiate, pay the client, or issue a denial of claim.   

The denial of clay is in the form of a “final decision” which is misleading because the decision is not final. If the owner doesn’t agree with what the contract in officer decides he can appeal to a board of contract appeals which renders unbiased decisions. This is all done simply by mailing a letter.

Ultimately, there could things and bad things associated with government leases. To avoid any unpleasant surprises, owner should do their homework and understand their options in the event of conflicts.

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Real Estate Investment in Kenya-Budget for Closing Costs

Purchasing a home is a euphoric event. Once escrow begins, the euphoria can change to frustration, particularly if you are not ready for the closing costs that quickly accumulate particularly as real estate investment in Kenya is concerned.

Budget for Closing Costs – Home Inspection and Title Fees

Closing costs simply refer to the fees associated with various things associated with the escrow process in a real estate transaction. In the excitement of having an offer accepted for your dream home, you can easily lose track of the fact you are going to need to have some serious cash on hand to pay them. Many people make the mistake of only assuming they need the down payment money, and have to rush around town trying to come up with money for the closing fees. 

If you are buying a home, you need to get a professional home inspection. Doing so can reveal potential problems with the home that you wouldn’t otherwise notice. Problems can include things such as rot, termites, water leaks and a bevy of other issues. The time to do this is during escrow. Of course, that means you are also going to have to pay for the inspection. Depending on the size of the property, home inspections can run a few thousand shillings up to a few thousand. Make sure you have money set aside for the fees. 

Title insurance is something you absolutely must purchase when you buy any real property, a home, building, land or whatever. Title insurance protects both you and your lender. Title insurance is just what it sounds like. A title company will research the title of the home and essentially guarantee that the title is good. This means the seller actually owns the title and has the right to sell it to you. The title company will also make sure there aren’t any liens on the homes or other things that will cause you problems. Depending on the price of the home, title insurance can run you a couple of thousand shillings or up into the millions. Again, it is important to find out the cost and budget for it.

Title insurance and a home inspection are two things you should absolutely have when purchasing a home.

Just make sure you budget for them. www.kenyan-real-estate.com