I just bought a home, and I want to make changes! What should I do?

Lori, one of our brokers at Jonesboro Select Real Estate, has purchased and sold many homes. Lori, her husband and their four children had many adventures across the country, moving 10 times in 20 years before settling in Jonesboro.  These experiences are great memories for Lori, and they were a tremendous training ground for her. Each time Lori purchased or sold a home, she learned valuable lessons that now as a Realtor she uses to serve her clients with excellence. This week she reminds us that we need to love our choices, but sometimes we need to focus on resale if a new home is in our near future.

The first one … it was 3 bedrooms, 1 bath. It was $36,000 and the interest rate was somewhere north of 12% and assumable! I’ll let you guess what year it was! I loved that house. It was my answer to an all-American dream.

We painted. We wallpapered (again you can guess the year). We pulled up shrubs. We planted shrubs. We came home on a Christmas night and found a busted water pipe in the attic and my new linoleum floor flooded with the ceiling laying on it in pieces. That was devastating, or so we thought. We brought our first baby home. We covered original hardwood floors with plush carpeting, because everyone prefers carpet, right? We made that house ours and that is what made it home! Sometimes, you walk into a home and there is very little that needs to be done to make it yours. In most cases, that’s a gift, unless you are that person that must put your full stamp on it! I may possibly be that person. 

We updated, and we maintained the entire five years we lived there. I cannot say that every upgrade we did added value – the pink (we called it mauve back then) bathroom comes to mind and the carpeting may seem a little less desirable these days!

So, lessons learned … think about how long you plan to live in your home. If it is for the long hall, by all means, put in the red shag carpet if that makes you happy.  If your time frame is not lifetime, make smart choices that you love – neutral colors that make you smile and timeless flooring that you adore. We sold that house for what we paid for it. A good Realtor could have gotten us more!  (I know a few if you are thinking of selling!) The loan was assumed because 12% looked pretty darn good at the time – can you believe that? That was the first one!