Winter Problems & Preventative Maintenance

Part 1 

With the winter season officially here, every homeowner should be aware of common homeownership maintenance problems and preventative options for alleviating unexpected costs and time. Consider preparing your home for the winter season with the following suggestions that will be posted in parts of this preventative maintenance series: 

Reverse your ceiling fans

If you’re able switch your ceiling fan to reverse, the fan will naturally produce an updraft and push heated air down into the room from the ceiling.  You’ll save energy, especially in larger rooms where heat rises, and be able to keep your thermostat lower. 

Prevent ‘ice damming’ from your roof

Take important steps to prevent damage to your gutters, roof, and more if you experienced lots of icicles, or worse yet ice dams last winter.  Ice dams cause water to back up and flow into your house, are heavy enough to damage your gutters, and place unneeded stress upon your roof materials. A vast majority of these issues are caused from poor air flow, air leaks, or lack of soffit vents.  A weatherization contractor can identify and fix air leaks and inadequate insulation in your attic that can lead to ice dams. You may also be able to find a federal energy-efficiency tax credit, as well as state or utility rebates as well. 

Tune up your heating system

To achieve maximum manufacturer rating efficiency, hire a Heating and Cooling Technician for roughly $100 to inspect and clean your furnace. Remember to change your air filter regularly, and have a couple extra filters on hand in case you run out.  

Check back for Part 2 soon, and don't forget to see how Home Fax Inspections and Nationwide Home Fax help you Know the Home Before You Buy in the meantime! 

Home Fax Reports for Real Estate Experts

Nationwide Home Fax understands the importance, necessity, and value of quality real estate agents through the process of home buying transactions.  We also believe that information obtained from many popular public websites have negatively impacted this long-standing awareness and understanding. These resources have produced inflated self-confidence, on the part of the buyer, which has in turn created a lack of informed understanding for ‘Know the Home Before You Buy’.  Although our services are targeted towards home buyers, renters, and investors, we also intend to strengthen the relationship between ourselves and quality real estate agents -- enhancing public understanding of their importance, as well as how the necessary benefits of Nationwide Home Fax’ services create informed home buying decisions for our clients.

After speaking with multiple real estate agents, we have been asked to incorporate an additional service, ‘Home Fax Approved’ property reports.  A ‘Home Fax Approved’ report would be primarily conducted for real estate agents and private sellers, as well as insurance companies, lenders, or anyone who may have a vested interest in the property listing and want to provide peace of mind to potential buyers, enhance the appeal and value of a property, and market their homes more sufficiently!  

 

Nationwide Home Fax currently offers three flat rate Home Fax Report packages. A Home Fax Report is essentially a background check and pre-inspection for any residential or commercial property, including unique twists, such as direct contact with neighbors and the community, that help our client’s ‘Know the Home Before You Buy’.  We strive to help our clients make smarter informed home buying decisions by answering the most critical questions to the largest investment most people will make: What would it be like to live, rent, or invest in any prospective property? 

Although relative to one another, at first glance one might ponder whether or not our services actually benefit real estate agents.  A traditional home inspection is a touchy process, and sometimes very influential in the entire outcome of a transaction. Home inspectors can have a significant contribution of what happens following the inspection. There are two points to consider when it comes to a home inspector’s position in the process: they cannot control the condition of the home, but they can control how the message is communicated, delivered, and perceived.  Just as a good home inspector understands the importance of properly explaining minor to critical observations, so too does Nationwide Home Fax.   

Check out www.NationwideHomeFax.com today and see how we can assist your marketing needs for any prospective listing! We also have special pricing packages available for real estate experts as well. 

Due Diligence Research & Real Estate

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...We've all heard it, but sometimes we still fall for it. 

Have you ever seen the show on HGTV called 'Flip or Flop'?

My fiancé and I recently attended a real estate seminar from Tarek and Christina El Moussa's program, 'Flip Advantage'.  The program seemed to have high hopes for new information regarding real estate investments, and as the seminar was promoted from their TV series success, and was FREE, we did little research on the program prior to attending.

Shortly after arriving for the seminar, we realized that the presenters were only associates of the couple who were not there. Big deal, we wanted to learn more about real estate, we could care less about meeting celebrities. Within a short period of time, the presenters stated that for a small $2,000 investment they would be building an investment team with practically unlimited access to capital, promising up to $500,000.00 in immediate funding from their 'Investment Team' with 1-3% interest.

It sounded too good to be true, but so perfect for our business. We know how to identify houses, conduct research, make an informed decision, and present our findings to a team of investors, with our only limitation being capital.  As my mind started twirling at all the properties I could obtain for less than $500k, I couldn't help but start to listen more intently.

For the small (as they put it) $2,000 investment, you would be required to attend a 3 day seminar in the upcoming weeks that lasted approximately 27 hours over three days. Still interested, the presenters continued on that you were GUARANTEED to get your $2,000 back in one of two ways: 1) You would be required to find and complete one deal within 90 days, which would get your money back right away, or 2) After 6 months of not completing a deal, they would refund the $2,000 and basically tell you to walk away.

Fair enough, still interested.

After Selling the Dream and providing the audience with one or two small tricks on how to identify bad bank lists and properties, we were informed that we must pay for the seminars today to attend and begin having access to their abundance of networks and capital investors.  Oh, and the speaker had a flight that left town in an hour and a half, so we must hurry.  Still locked in mentally to the $500,000 capital access, I began to stand up after the speaker was finished to sign up for the seminar. 

Luckily, my fiance, and fortunate business partner, was not so amazed.

As we retrieved the registration and payment form, she had a check in her spirit. Me being more risky, tried to convince her that this was a good deal: all the capital we would need, with no risk of losing our money based on the guarantees, right? Wrong.

We left the convention without signing up, and decided to do a little bit of further research before proceeding. Thank God (sincerely) for her, because we found out that we were guaranteed NOTHING from the PAID seminars. If we would have signed up for the initial $2,000 we would have been attempted to be tricked into another $27,000, then in upwards of $50,000 after that.

Point being, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Do your research, and make smarter informed decisions and financial investments. When you find your next investment property, visit www.HomeFaxInspect.com and www.NationwideHomeFax.com to Know the Home Before You Buy.