Prepare Your Home for the Holidays with these Decorating Tips!

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The holidays are approaching. Today, we thought we'd do something a little different and share this festive video on holiday decorating tips from HGTV. Designer Angelo Surmelis shares several great ideas to spread holiday cheer throughout the home. Here are some of our favorites.

1. Pay attention to the mantle. If you don't have some already, buy some kind of garland to drape over the mantle. Next, use leftover ornaments and candles to add light and texture. When choosing ornaments and candles, ensure they are in the same color-palette. This helps make your mantle a great focal point! 
2. Use smaller Christmas trees. Every house has their main Christmas tree. In addition, you can also purchase smaller, inexpensive, eco-friendly trees to place throughout the home. Decorate these trees with strips of fabric from a T-shirt in holiday colors to save money for the main tree.
3. Use what you have. Be resourceful. Adding a plate charge and place mat to your everyday dining set adds some jazz to your table. Fresh-cut flowers and candles will help finish the look. You don't need grand, expensive candles -- a little candlelight goes a long way!

“

MAKE THE MANTLE A
BEAUTIFUL FOCAL POINT.

”

As you can see, it doesn't take much to make your home feel more festive. If you have any questions, give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to help you!

A Reason to Close Before December 31

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Around this time of year, people are always asking me questions about buying towards the end of the year. A lot of people have been asking lately if there is a taxable benefit to closing on a home by the end of the year. The answer is yes, and it’s called a homestead exemption.

With a homestead exemption, you can get up to a $50,000 reduction on your home’s taxable value if that home is your primary residence. Let’s use some numbers to give you a better example of what this means. Say you have a home that has an assessed value of $200,000. With the homestead exemption, your taxable value drops to $150,000. This lower taxable value will give you lower property taxes if the home is your primary residence.

The way it works, is if you purchase the home, close by December 31st and file on time and correctly, you will get that exemption for 2016, lowering your property taxes. If however, you don’t close until after the 1st of the year, you will not be eligible for the homestead exemption until 2017, and you’ll have to pay higher property taxes for a year.

If you have any questions about the homestead exemption, or anything else real estate related, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

Is Your Pinellas County Home’s Valuation Accurate?

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Today I want to talk a little about online home evaluations. There are a lot of different sites out there you can use to find the value of your home, but are they really accurate? These sites give you an automatic value of what your home is worth, but are they reliable?

In reality, they are not very reliable or accurate. They are all based on an algorithm that doesn’t take into account things like square footage, your home’s location, or any improvements you have made to the home. Those three things have a huge impact on your home’s value, and if the online site doesn’t know about them, your estimate may be much lower or higher than what you could actually sell for. There are only two ways you can get a truly accurate home valuation.
 

The first way is with an appraisal. That’s going to run you a few hundred bucks, but it’s important for determining the true loan value for your home, which will determine what kind of buyers look at it.

The second way to get an accurate home valuation is with a comparative market analysis, which we provide free, with no obligation. We will come out, take a look at your home, note any repairs, improvements, or unique features your home has, and use that to give you a true market value.

If you go online and your valuation is too low or too high, don’t pay too much attention. If you really want a true valuation, give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to help out. Talk to you soon!