Nearby Foreclosures Bring Prices Down, What To Do – Things are tough out there these days with a lot of people losing their homes. Of course a lot of people are keeping up with payments and for whatever reasons may think it is time to sell. The problem is that foreclosed homes in your area can affect the value of your home, or at least the price people are willing to pay even if it is valued higher! It is a real problem and there is no magic solution, you may just have to wait it out if you can stay put! Anyway I gave some ideas as to what I think you could consider doing in a post over on my lifestyle blog. Here is the post Nearby Foreclosures Bring Prices Down, What To Do republished in full. Enjoy and please leave a comment with your thoughts.

Nearby Foreclosures Bring Prices Down, What To Do

Sadly the value of your home isn’t just affected by how you treat it and what you do on your plot of land. The world around your home is a massive factor in the perceived value of your home which is after all the main reason why prices change and fluctuate up and down the country, area to area.

Some areas go up, some go down. Affecting factors include things like crime, quality of local schools, transport links, recent weather patterns and just about anything else you can think of! So it is no surprise that when foreclosure signs start appearing in your neighborhood that the value of your home could take a hit.

Local foreclosures are not really a factor you can easily control, sure you could band together as a community and help each other through financial problems but I don’t see that kind of community kinship forming anytime soon! The fact is that in this awful economy there will be foreclosures, sometimes massive amounts of them, in your local and surrounding areas.

Unless it’s a significant portion of the properties in your neighborhood they may not terribly affect the actual valuation of your home. However you may well find that buyers just are not queuing up and even when viewers do come along offers are not following up and making offers as much as one would expect.

Nearby Foreclosures Bring Prices Down, What To Do

Foreclosure is a terrible thing but it doesn’t always reflect on the quality of your area. The people foreclosing could be good considerate and hard working peoples, it’s not like having drug dealers and users taking over the area but I am sure from the outside in it has that kind of effect on people coming round to see the area, so what on earth can you do about it? Here are some of my ideas

Some foreclosed homes are wrapped up quietly, no big scary tape and boards, no massive signs, they are the kind of foreclosures you want in your area ideally so when a nasty one does go up it could be worth getting a group of concerned residents together to contact the foreclosure company and politely ask that they clean up the property. Failing that contacting your local representative and seeing if they can put any pressure on the companies to keep the properties presentable could be an option.

The land outside of the properties can start to get tatty too and this requires contacting your local government or maybe even dealing with it yourself and cleaning it up a little. While you are at it, it could be worth cutting the grass in the foreclosed properties front gardens (i’m not sure if this is legal so maybe inform the local police first and ask for permission).

If you are dealing with an estate agent and there is a longer way into your area that avoids the foreclosures you could ask that they bring in clients that way. If dealing direct you could direct them in this way. They will see the area eventually but first impressions count for a hell of a lot and if they can see the beauty of the area it may increase their likelihood to offer.

Slightly drop your asking price. If you just drop a tad off your price you may increase views significantly and broaden the chance of someone seeing that the foreclosures are not necessarily an indicator of a bad area.

Nearby Foreclosures Bring Prices Down, What To Do, Your Tips?

These are just my ideas and you should seek professional advice too, from local government and local estate agents, to see what they can do about foreclosures in the area from an appearance and an actual getting them sold on perspective.

I bet though that, even if you don’t have experience, that you have some good ideas and I would love it if you took the time to share them with us all.

Related: 29% Foreclosure Decline in 2011 is Deceptive

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