Southern Oregon Home Team

Selling your home can seem daunting, but here are some tips to help you get you started.

1. Learn about the market in your area. Real estate markets are local, so national or state level comments about the market being up or down are not helpful. You need to know what is going on in your neighborhood. Do some research and find out what similar homes have sold for in your area, the more recent the information the better. Knowing the local market and sold prices for similar homes is going to help you identify a realistic price range. Setting the sale price appropriately from the start is going to make the difference between a house that sells and one that lingers on the market.

2. Sparkle and Shine. Imagine going to a supermarket and seeing dusty fruit or aisles filled with old shelving and cans. It doesn't happen because the grocery store knows how to present its goods. Sellers must do the same. Get rid of things you don't want to move, organize closets and storage areas, and clean everywhere.

3. Mechanics count. Buyers expect everything to work. Home inspections are now entirely common and what buyers miss home inspectors will catch. Fix and paint things now and they won't be an issue in the future.

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Looking for another way to increase energy efficiency in your home? Tankless water heaters, also called instantaneous or demand water heaters, provide hot water only as it is needed. Traditional storage water heaters produce standby energy losses that cost you money. We do not leave our homes heated while vacationing. We only heat our homes when there is a demand for heat. In the same way, a tankless water heater is used only when there is a demand for hot water.

Tankless water heaters heat water directly without the use of a storage tank. Therefore, they avoid the standby heat losses associated with storage water heaters. When a hot water tap is turned on, cold water travels through a pipe into the unit. In an electric tankless water heater an electric element heats the water. In a gas-fired tankless water heater a gas burner heats the water. As a result, tankless water heaters deliver a constant supply of hot water. You don't need to wait for a storage tank to fill up with enough hot water.

For homes that use 41 gallons or less of hot water daily, tankless water heaters can be 24% - 34% more energy efficient than conventional storage tank water heaters. They can be 8% - 14% more energy efficient for homes that use a lot of hot water, around 86 gallons per day. You can achieve an even greater energy savings of 27% - 50% if you install a tankless water heater at each hot water outlet.

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