Cary Real Estate Blog

When I recently googled the phrase: How to keep your home in top condition the results I got were very interesting.  Here are the top four entries:

1. 74 tips to keep your car in top condition
2. Keep your pool in top condition
3. Keep your minnows in top condition
4. How to keep your hair in good condition

Wow!  Most people think about keeping their car, their pool, or their hair in top condition but what about their home.   Well, I’m not planning on selling my Cary NC home anytime soon.  Of course, but consider this - Your home is in many cases your largest financial asset - worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.    It certainly makes perfect sense to protect, enhance, and maintain such a valuable real estate investment at all times. 

The best standard to use for keeping your home in top condition is to keep it in selling condition. We all know how much work, improvement, maintenance, and cleaning we do right before we sell our home.  The problem is we never get to enjoy all this effort once our home sells.  

So how does one go about bringing their property up to selling condition now - when they are not planning on listing their home.  Here’s a suggestion - Have your home inspected periodically as if you were going to sell it in the next 90 days.  Hire a licensed North Carolina home inspector to gain a better understanding of the condition of your property. 

Home inspectors typically evaluate structural components (floors,walls,roofs,chimneys, foundations), mechanical systems (plumbing, electrical, heating/air conditioning), installed appliances and other major components of your property.  Home inspection reports range in cost or should I say investment from $300-$500 depending on the size of your home.  Once completed, you should review the report with the inspector and make the repairs necessary to keep your home in top condition.   By taking a proactive approach, you can keep your home in selling condition and protect one of your largest and most valuable assets.

Additioanlly, upgrading your kitchen, bathrooms, and making other improvements are vitally important in today’s real estate market especially with so many Cary new home neighborhoods.  Please review some of our other article on CaryAreaBlog.com which address these topics. 

In summary, investing in the maintenance, enhancement, and upkeep of your Cary NC home is money well spent.  Please share with us any tips or ideas you have used to keep your home in top selling condition.

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In listing a home in Cary, NC, one of the key questions for us to ask new clients who want to sell their home, is…

• Did YOU add on that deck? or
• Was that beautiful 3rd floor space always finished? or
• Did YOUR condo always have an elevator?

As listing agents, we at LG REAL ESTATE spend a great deal of time educating our sellers on the importance of getting a permit for many “innocent” or “common” additions or modifications. The lack of a permit can break a sale! We are not allowed to market any unpermitted space in TMLS, our Multiple Listing Service. And, today’s savvy buyers want to make sure that all improvements are permitted. The need to go back and get prior work permitted is so common, that the Town of Cary has set up a rather painless process in their permitting department to handle it.

You can get the all the details online at www.townofcary.org.

Here are the everyday items that need a permit per the town’s website:

• Converting a residence to a business.
• Constructing a deck, screened porch, or sunroom.
• Installing an irrigation system.
• Installing a swimming pool.
• Adding a ceiling fan. - Can you believe this one????
• Finishing an attic or basement. - THIS IS THE BIGGIE FOR US!
• Replacing a furnace or air conditioner.
• Replacement of water heaters in the same location with the same fuel source.
• Installing gas logs, attic fans, skylights

As you can see, some items would be easy to get a permit for. But an attic expansion could require the Town of Cary to tear holes in the sheetrock of your attic if they cannot verify the wiring was put in to code. They also require stair railings. Many do-it-yourself projects leave the stair railing out. Also, the stairs have to be a certian height. For one LG Real Estate client, we are unable to list the square footage for a 3rd floor expansion at this time because the risers were not built to code. These NC Building rules are in place to protect each of us as consumers.

If you are unsure if your project requires a permit, call Cary Inspections & Permits Dept at 919-469-4043 between 8am and 5pm weekdays.

Have you experienced any permitting challenges? We’d love to hear about them.

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