5% drop looks good compared with U.S.

Denver again fared much better than much of the nation as home prices dropped at the sharpest rate in two decades during the year ending March 31, a closely watched index showed Tuesday.

Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller said its national home price index fell 14.1 percent for the 12-month period – the biggest annual drop since its inception in 1988 – but prices in Denver fell only 5 percent.

The narrower indices also set record declines. The 20-city index tumbled 14.4 percent, the most since that index was started in 2001. The 10-city index plunged 15.3 percent, a record in its 20-year history.

“There are very few silver linings that one can see in the data,” said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee. “Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path.”

Nineteen of the 20 metro areas reported annual declines, with 15 of them posting record lows. Six metro areas lost more than 20 percent.

Las Vegas had the worst quarterly performance, falling 25.9 percent from the same period a year ago, followed by Miami and Phoenix. Only Charlotte, N.C., stayed above water, gaining less than 1 percent over the previous year.

In another report issued Tuesday, sales of new homes rose in April for the first time in six months, though the unexpected increase still left activity near the lowest level in 17 years.

The Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes rose 3.3 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units. But the government revised March activity lower to show an even bigger drop of 11 percent to an annual rate of 509,000, which was the weakest pace for sales since April 1991.

Downward trend

More bad news on the housing market: Released Tuesday, the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes showed home prices across the country fell 14 percent in March from a year earlier, representing the largest drop in the 20-year history of the indexes. Denver fared much better, dropping 5 percent.

* Here’s information from 20 metro areas Case-Shiller tracks:

Metro area Year-over-year change

Las Vegas -25.9%

Miami -24.6%

Phoenix -23.0%

Los Angeles -21.7%

San Diego -20.5%

San Francisco -20.2%

Tampa, Fla. -19.6%

Detroit -17.9%

Washington -14.7%

Minneapolis -14.1%

Chicago -10.0%

Cleveland -9.5%

New York -7.4%

Atlanta -6.5%

Boston -5.9%

Denver -5.0%

Seattle -4.4%

Portland, Ore. -4.0%

Dallas -3.3%

Charlotte, N.C. 0.8%

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/may/27/denver-home-prices-not-so-dire/

Home prices in Colorado generally fared much better than the U.S. market as a whole during the first quarter of 2008, according to an index considered to be the most comprehensive.

Nationally, home prices posted the sharpest decline in the index’s 17-year history, and analysts say housing has yet to bottom out. Rapidly falling home prices in California, Florida and Nevada skewed the U.S. results.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said Thursday that home prices fell 3.1 percent in the first quarter compared with last year.

It was only the second quarter of price declines since the index started in 1991. The price index first declined on a year-over-year basis in the final quarter of 2007, when it dropped 0.45 percent.

Grand Junction posted the second-highest appreciation among U.S. cities, with a year-over-year increase of 9.1 percent. Boulder posted a 4.1 percent increase; Colorado Springs 0.29 percent; and Denver-Aurora 0.9 percent. Colorado as a whole averaged 2.29 percent home-price appreciation compared with the first three months of 2007.

Analysts say the government index provides a more comprehensive reading of the nationwide housing market. That’s particularly true for Midwest states, where prices never skyrocketed and have been less affected by the real estate downturn.

“Most people don’t live in a Miami condo,” said Michael Englund, chief economist with Action Economics in Boulder.

Still, declines in the government index, which focuses on less-expensive properties and includes fewer houses bought with risky home loans that have gone sour over the past year, show the depth of the housing market’s troubles.

Prices fell in 43 states, with California and Nevada showing the biggest declines. Home prices dropped by more than 8 percent in those states.

The government index also fell 1.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, the largest quarterly price drop on record.

“The large overhang of real estate inventory awaiting sale continues to force price declines in many areas but particularly in places that had seen very sharp appreciation,” Patrick Lawler, the agency’s chief economist, said in a prepared statement.

The government index is calculated by tracking mortgage loans of $417,000 or less that are bought or backed by the government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/may/22/state-fares-better-than-us-on-home-prices/

Despite upbeat report, activity near the lowest level in 17 years  WASHINGTON – Sales of new homes rose in April for the first time in six months although the unexpected increase still left activity near the lowest level in 17 years.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that sales of new homes rose 3.3 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units.

But the government revised March activity lower to show an even bigger drop of 11 percent to an annual rate of 509,000, which was the weakest pace for sales since April 1991. Economists believe that new home sales will remain weak for some time as the housing industry struggles with falling prices and rising mortgage foreclosures, which are dumping even more homes on an already glutted market.

The Commerce report showed that the median price of a new home sold in April rose to $246,100 in April, up 1.5 percent from April 2007. Analysts were not impressed with the small price increase, noting that the numbers tend to be volatile.

Robert Kavcic, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, said that the price changes in the Commerce report do not take into account the various incentives major builders are offering to move their glut of unsold homes.

A separate report showed home prices falling during the first three months of this year at the sharpest rate in two decades. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the biggest year-over-year decline since the index began in 1988.

The Commerce report on new home sales showed the April rebound was led by a huge 41.7 percent surge in sales in the Northeast. Sales were up 8.3 percent in the West and 5.8 percent in the Midwest. The only region which saw a decline in sales in April was the South, where sales fell by 2.4 percent.

The inventory of unsold new homes edged down slightly to 10.6 months’ supply at the April sales pace, compared with 11.1 months in March. However, the April level was still about double the inventory level that was normal during the five-year housing boom.

That boom ended in 2005 and since that time the housing industry has been struggling in a tough environment with falling sales and prices and rising mortgage defaults.

Economists believe that home prices will remain under pressure until the sizable level of inventories is worked down to more manageable levels. Many analysts don’t expect to see a rebound in prices until sometime next year.

The Associated Press http://www.msn.com/

More foreclosures possible, thanks to a broken mortage lending system  A recent cartoon in The New Yorker magazine depicts a small cottage with frightened-looking little pigs staring out of three windows. At the front door stands a wolf in slacks, a tie and suspenders, intoning, “I’m not huffing and puffing. I’m foreclosing.”

The cartoon titillates with a strange combination of poignancy and humor. The key to its poignancy is one of timing: Even a year ago we wouldn’t have been so bathed in news of housing’s woes – including foreclosures – to have related to the about-to-be-ousted pigs. But now, there clearly is so much awry in the world of housing and homebuilding that I’m betting it’ll take far longer for a recovery than even most confirmed bears – or wolves – expect.

Let’s look quickly at four issues that must be resolved before housing can stop being a drain on our economy:

The pigs aren’t the only ones
RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosed properties, recently reported that default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions jumped 57 percent from its year-earlier pace. If you’re numbed to percentages, that’s 234,685 affected properties. One out of every 139 households in Nevada received a foreclosure notice, making the state the leading place in the nation for such actions. California and Florida continued in second and third place, respectively.

There are, of course, a couple of difficulties with foreclosures. First, they’re disruptive to families, neighborhoods and communities. But beyond that, every foreclosed property adds to the bulging inventory of homes available for sale, slowing the ability of homebuilders like Pulte, Ryland, and Lennar to resume the use of black ink. Most observers believe that, with the pace of mortgage rate resets still picking up, we may not have seen anything yet regarding the number of foreclosures actions.

The mortgage lending system is broken
It’s still possible to obtain a normal 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. (My wife and I did so a month ago.) But the days of lenders casually tossing mortgages to buyers who shouldn’t have qualified to finance a pencil are long gone. Although what’s left of Countrywide continues to muddle along, and the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are still making loans, there are far fewer pure mortgage lenders than was the case just a year ago.

In addition, the rest of the mortgage lending apparatus, from appraisals to securitizations, is a shadow of its former self. All this will make it tough for lending to contribute meaningfully to a housing recovery.

Consumer confidence is in the toilet
For April 2008, the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its index, which measures how enthusiastic you and I and our neighbors are about the economy, hit a 26-year low of 62.6. That compares to an average of 85.6 for 2007.

I’ll guarantee that, with crude oil prices more than $130 a barrel, gasoline going for an average of $3.87 a gallon nationwide and dire predictions proliferating of $200 oil within a year or two, every time a consumer – and that’s all of us – pulls up to the pump, the collective confidence level takes another hit. Folks who lack confidence in the economy or in their own financial situations don’t often buy homes.

There’s a bigger underlying inventory of homes for sale than you realize
We’re all aware of the number of homes available for sale from the homebuilders, and the Realtors’ association keeps us up to date on the pace and price of existing homes turnover, but those numbers don’t tell the whole story. How many of your friends or neighbors would list their homes in a New York minute if they thought there were any realistic prospect of a sale? I’m willing to wager that the underlying contingent of houses not yet technically on the market may dwarf the inventory we know about.

Conclusions
Beyond these impediments to a housing recovery, it’s easy to catalog a host of other aspects of the general economy that are feeling puny. For instance, there are the secondary effects of skyrocketing energy prices – the average airfare climbed 10.2 percent in March – the squashed dollar (which helps exports but hammers us in the inflationary pocketbook) and the broader curtailment of credit.

All this tells me that if you think you’ve found a bottom for housing that’ll keep the builders’ share prices from sliding lower, you just might be right. But the bigger consideration may be that the shares you buy may take far longer to rise from those bottoms than you’re expecting.

By David Lee Smith http://www.msn.com/

It seemed like a fantasy project to renovate their new home in an environmentally sensitive way. Reality is costing them more green than they could have imagined.

(Money Magazine) — As a girl in South Korea, HyoJung Kim did her schoolwork on brownish-gray recycled paper and rarely threw things away because government-mandated garbage bags cost $1 apiece.

Arriving in the United States for graduate school, she was stunned to see trash piled high on city sidewalks and documents printed on a single side of white paper. In her home country, with 48 million people jammed into an area the size of Ohio, HyoJung says, “Our attitude is, ‘How dare you waste that?’ “

With such an upbringing, it’s no surprise that HyoJung, now an urban designer in Washington, D.C., was “green” long before that term connoted “cool.” She married fellow architect and conservation enthusiast Seth Garland last fall, and they bought a four-bedroom Capitol Hill townhouse that they decided to gut and make as green as green could get: from energy-saving light fixtures and appliances down to the framing, plumbing and insulation.

But going green, the couple are now discovering, can quickly land you in the red. Seth, 37, and HyoJung, 34, thought the job would take three months and cost $70,000, with them shouldering some of the work. Six months in, they now estimate it will cost twice that much in money and elbow grease.

Seth says he was “shocked” by the cost of some green upgrades. “I found a more efficient tank-less hot-water system for $1,500, but the contractor told me it would cost $6,000 to install it.” They’re working late into the night laying bathroom tile themselves to save money.

Meanwhile, they have drained most of their savings and can’t afford to keep living in HyoJung’s condo in Gallery Place and paying the mortgage on the new house too. They’ve even got a third place: a house Seth bought in nearby Silver Spring, Md. years ago that is now rented out.

All told, the couple hold three adjustable-rate mortgages that add up to more than $1 million on a combined salary of just under $120,000 – and in a real estate market that’s only headed lower.

Plus, they’re underfunded for retirement, with a mere $75,000 in tax-deferred accounts. “Their situation is very worrisome, absolutely,” says Chuck Bender of the Financial Consulate in Lutherville, Md., who reviewed the couple’s finances at Money’s request. “They have very little margin for error.”

The perfect placeHyoJung and Seth met three years ago at her architectural firm in Silver Spring, where he was a summer intern. He looked so young she was surprised to discover that he is almost four years her senior and already had a career as a litigator before studying architecture. Both were recovering from divorces and in no hurry to get involved again, but eventually Seth moved into her condo. Last spring, as they took an early Sunday morning walk near the Washington Monument, Seth dropped to one knee and pulled out a ring. It wasn’t a complete surprise – knowing her strong tastes in design, he had already asked her to choose from several styles – but still, HyoJung burst into tears.

Hoping to start a family, they began looking for a larger home. In September, a few weeks before their wedding, they found a 1912 brick house with lovely bay windows and a basement they could convert into a rental apartment. At $550,000, it was about $75,000 more than they had planned to spend, but it had the advantage of being near several subway lines. They could get rid of their car. Seth, a big booster of mass transit, has helped design subway stations and light rail systems in Maryland and northern Virginia.

Taking on so much real estate debt came with risk, but Seth has had success renting out his house and HyoJung’s family did well as property investors in Korea. And the new place offered a dream project. “From the very beginning,” says HyoJung, “we said, ‘Let’s make it green.’ “

Green takes a lot of greenThe couple decided to turn one of the four upstairs bedrooms into a master bathroom. On the first floor they knocked down the walls to turn the living room, dining room and kitchen into one large, open space – both for aesthetic reasons and to allow cross-ventilation that will cut air-conditioning costs.

Some choices were obvious: They used studs from suppliers that employ sustainable timber-harvesting practices; applied spray-foam insulation on the underside of the roof to keep the attic cool in summer; installed energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting; and sprang for argon-gas double-paned windows (at $400 each) for better insulation. For subflooring they opted for oriented strand board, made of wood scraps, instead of plywood. They sold their old doors, metal pipes and radiators to salvage yards and installed water-efficient toilets and faucets.

But they were dismayed to find out how much they couldn’t afford. Seth had planned to install energy-efficient polyethylene tubing called PEX, but the plumbers who could work with the material would be too expensive. The couple had to settle for nonbiodegradable plastic pipes instead. They also had to give up radiant floor heating – tubes of hot water under the floor that can lower energy costs – because the insulation required would be too expensive.

Also scratched were a roof that would support a garden and keep the house cooler in summer, a $12,000 solar hot-water system and a solar electric system that would set them back at least $20,000 (costs only minimally off set by federal tax credits of $2,000 for each solar-powered system).

By April, Seth’s $70,000 in savings from his days as a lawyer had evaporated, and the $25,000 it would cost to get the house into bare-bones living condition would just about wipe out the cash HyoJung had put away. Meanwhile, each month they couldn’t move in and get a renter into her condo cost them another $2,000. The answer? Another loan. HyoJung took out a home-equity credit line on her condo.

With remodeling costs out of control, cherished green projects on hold plus an awful lot of mortgage debt, Seth and HyoJung sat down with a financial planner, an alternative-energy expert and a green remodeling consultant for advice about how they could become more green and more financially stable.

Sell Hyojung’s condoBeing so highly leveraged has not only disrupted Seth and HyoJung’s greening plans, it has also put them at serious financial risk, says Bender of the Financial Consulate. If one of their rental properties goes empty or unforeseen repairs crop up, they could easily slide into negative monthly cash flow.

The solution: sell HyoJung’s condo – fast. A year ago it would probably have sold for $430,000, but its market value has dropped to $415,000 and is likely to continue falling, according to Tom Murphy of Long & Foster realtors. Selling Seth’s house in Silver Spring makes less sense because it’s rented and the couple may eventually move back to that family-oriented neighborhood and its good schools.

The condo sale should generate about $140,000 after HyoJung pays off her mortgage and credit line, and the proceeds could be used for several important purposes: They would allow the couple to diversify their holdings so they’re not as dependent on real estate.

They can each fully fund Roth IRAs for this year ($10,000 total) and increase their combined 401(k) contributions for 2008 from $4,800 to $30,000. (With the condo expenses gone, that should be their goal in the future too.) Since they’re young, Bender says, the couple can afford to be aggressive in their retirement accounts, with an all-stock-fund portfolio that includes international equities and natural resources.

At the same time, though, Bender wants them better protected in the short term. He suggests they pay off their $10,000 in credit-card debt, put $30,000 into an emergency fund and set aside another $20,000 that could be used to offset some of HyoJung’s lost income if, as planned, she has a child and decides to stay home for a while.

Finally, they can put $25,000 toward completing the work that would make the house livable, which includes finishing the basement and master bathroom, as well as installing kitchen flooring and cabinets. That still leaves $20,000 for green renovations they had given up on.

Get greenerIt’s too late to do anything about the plastic plumbing and lack of radiant floor heating, but $20,000 would pay for several green improvements. Paul Wittemann, a solar power entrepreneur and certified energy auditor with Greenspring Energy of Towson, Md., suggests they start with a venting skylight ($2,000) over the second-floor landing, frequently a dark spot in older homes. That will create airflow to cool the house and will allow natural light into the second floor and staircase, reducing the need for electric lights during daytime.

Another $6,000 should go for a new boiler with an Energy Star rating. Seth and HyoJung had decided to save money by not replacing the existing boiler. But according to Bambi Tran, a green consultant with Sustainable Design Consulting of Silver Spring, that old boiler will end up costing them more in the long run. “The better Energy Star boilers could save them thousands of dollars in fuel consumption,” she says, “and would be much better for the environment.”

They would still have enough left over for a solar hot-water system. “That can produce 70% to 80% of their house’s hot water, saving substantially on energy bills,” says Wittemann.

Seth and HyoJung initially resisted the idea of a bunch of experts coming into their home and giving them advice about their area of expertise. But now they’re glad they did. “And we thought we knew everything,” says HyoJung.

The couple were also initially against selling the condo, hoping to weather the current downturn. Renting the place out proved harder than they thought, however, and HyoJung started getting nervous about covering all those mortgage payments. When an offer to buy the condo for $410,000 fell into their laps, they decided to take it. Bender was right, they realized, and it was a relief to know they could pay off their debts and fully fund their retirement accounts.

As for those green improvements they can now afford, “We’re not running out today to buy all that stuff,” says Seth. As of mid-April, the couple are still putting in long hours to make the house livable within a few weeks, when they expect the condo sale to close. “After we move in, we’re going to take a little rest and regroup,” Seth says with a chuckle. “Frankly, we’re a little tired.”

Realtors’ group says April sales by homeowners declined by 1%, while inventory jumped 10% and home prices tumbled another 8%.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Sales of existing homes slowed in April while inventory soared, according to a reading of the sagging housing market released Friday.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales by homeowners dipped in April to an annual pace of 4.89 million, down 1% from the revised March reading of 4.94 million.

The existing home sales rate – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – is 17.5% below the 5.93 million units sold in April 2007.

The 4.89 million sales figure came in slightly ahead of the 4.85 million estimate forecast by economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

The median price of a home sold during the month fell to $202,300, down 8% from $219,900 a year ago. Prices are being pushed down by the growing number of existing homes on the market.

Homes available for sale at the end of April rose 10.5% to 4.55 million, which represents an 11.2-month supply at the current sales pace, up from a 10.0-month supply in March.

“This was the latest in the long string of disappointing results,” said Mike Larson, real estate analyst for Weiss Research. He said he expected “relatively disappointing numbers for the next couple months.”

What a difference a few years make

Larson put the April existing sales number of 4.89 million in context: in September 2005, the annualized pace was 7.2 million units. That means the current rate is more than 30% down from the peak – the housing market is not booming.

Before the start of the current housing slump, it had been 11 years since prices had fallen compared to a year earlier.

“Some markets like San Diego, Calif., and Fort Myers, Fla., are experiencing rising sales after sudden double-digit drops in local home prices, so lower prices and low interest rates are starting to generate results,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist in a report.

Larson also said that in some markets, bargain hunters are starting to nibble where prices are down nearly 50% from their peak. “But what the national averages are telling us is that we have not reached that tipping point for the nation as a whole,” he said.

Single-family home sales slipped 0.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.34 million in April, which is 16.1% below the 5.17 million-unit level from one year ago.

The median existing single-family home price was $200,700 in April, down 8.5% from April 2007.

Regionally, existing home sales in the West actually rose 6.4% in April from March to a level of 1 million, propping up the national average. However, while sales in the West were up, they are still 15.3% below a year ago. The median price in the West was $285,700, which is 16.7% lower than April 2007.

Sales in the Northeast fell 4.4% to an annual pace of 870,000 in April, 14.7% below a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $262,000, which is 7.7% below April 2007.

In the Midwest, existing home sales were at an annual rate of 1.1 million in April, which is 6.0% below March and 19.7% lower than April 2007. The median price in the Midwest was $159,100, down 2.9% from April 2007

Tackling these basic, inexpensive improvements will help your home stand out from the crowd in a difficult market.

By Marilyn Lewis, MSN Real EstateWhen you put a home up for sale these days, you’re facing stiff competition. In most parts of the country, buyers are faced with huge numbers of homes for sale. Before asking strangers to trade hundreds of thousands of their hard-earned dollars for your little palace, make all the little repairs you’ve always meant to do but never had the time for.

These 10 basic repairs will help prepare your house for a buyer’s white-glove inspection:

1. Repair sagging screen doors and other entry red flags.

The entrance to your home is the key to first impressions. Carolyn Brake, a home-staging expert in Aurora, Colo., near Denver, prepares about 10 to 12 homes a week for market and she stresses the importance of creating a great impression right off the bat. “We’re not so much selling the house as we’re selling the experience of living in this house,” Brake says. Buyers will be alert to signs of neglect or deferred maintenance, since they want to avoid expensive hidden problems down the road.

Make sure everything at the entrance is in working order. If the screen door is sagging, you’ll probably have to install a new one, as aging aluminum parts often become too bent or broken to repair, says Charlie Hudson, a remodeling professional and owner of Hudson Remodeling, in Lynden, Wash. But first, try replacing any missing or corroded hinge screws and tightening the rest.Patrol the perimeter of your home, inspecting it with the critical eye of a stranger, advises Katherine Carroll, agent with Century 21 Mountain Lifestyles in Weaverville, N.C. Clear dead plants from flower beds, clip dead blossoms and stems, rake and haul the yard waste far away.

A fresh coast of paint on the front door goes miles toward establishing a great first impression. What color? Drive around for some inspiration and to see what colors prevail in your community. In some towns, a bright red door, or a deep plum, looks great. In others, it’ll seem over the top. Forest green, navy blue and black can be great door colors. The front door need not match the exterior colors of your house and trim, only look good alongside them.
2. Spiff up the roof.

Missing shingles and hanging gutters broadcast a loud, scary signal to potential buyers. “You want the house to look as presentable and nonproblematic as possible,” says Cathy Cowan, an agent with Windermere Real Estate Co. in Seattle. “There’s a great deal of fear when people go out to look at property. You want them to be able to focus on ‘Where does my bed go?’ and ‘Can we live here?’ rather than, ‘Oh my God, there’s a problem with the roof.’”

Get a roofer to replace any missing or broken shingles or roofing tiles. Moss growing on the roof signals neglect, so it’s important to get it cleaned off. Ask a roofing expert to remove moss or to recommend someone who can. Roofing professionals may suggest treating the surface of your roof with a chemical to kill moss or they may recommend installing zinc strips on the roof ridge. Water running over the zinc washes minute amounts of zinc carbonate over the roof, killing algae and moss, according to Z-Stop, which manufactures the strips. When hiring someone to work on your roof, it’s crucial to check their recommendations. Amateurs can damage your roof with the careless use of a high-pressure power washer.

3. Clear and caulk gutters.

On a dry day, climb up on a ladder and clear all the debris out of the gutters so water can flow freely. While you’re up there, recaulk the gutter end caps, advises Hudson. Seamless gutters are finished at the ends with a cap that’s crimped and caulked. Aging caulk allows leaks to drain water down your home’s siding.

Get started by drying the clean gutter; the drier the aluminum, the better caulk will bond to its surface, says Hudson. He recommends using flexible butyl caulk made for outdoor conditions. Its color doesn’t matter, since you’re caulking inside the gutter. Squeeze out a generous amount and use your finger to smear the stuff around inside the gutter cap seams. Don’t worry about appearances, since no one will see your work.

4. Patch nail holes and repaint.

Moving inside the house, you’ll want to patch up nail holes in the walls. Ask at a hardware store for lightweight putty. Apply it with a putty knife and fill in each hole, scraping the excess off the wall. Following directions on the package, wait for it to dry. Then sand the putty until it’s smooth and flush with the wall. Paint the repaired spots with primer. Call a handyman for anything bigger than a nail hole, as it’s not easy to blend bigger repairs into the wall and obvious patches telegraph the message, “I’m hiding something,” says Hudson. Repaint the entire wall — you’re unlikely to be able to hide a touched-up patch, otherwise — from one corner to the next.

5. Divorce your smoker and ship kitty to Siberia.

All right, just kidding. Sort of. The thing is, smells are a serious deal killer. When strangers enter a home, the first thing they notice is the smell. Don’t even try hiding behind scented candles, potpourri and plug-in room fragrances. Buyers, ever suspicious to problems, catch a whiff of those and conclude that you’re hiding something.

In the kitchen and bathrooms, deep clean with bleach, then regrout tiles and recaulk cracks between sinks, tubs, toilets, counters and floors to seal out the moisture that encourages the growth of smelly mold, mildew and bacteria.

If you’ve had smokers in the house, you’ve got extra work to do. To rid walls of smoke and nicotine film, some experts suggest washing the walls with cleaners using an alkaline builder, such as ammonia, and a glycol solvent (found at paint stores). Brake recommends painting an undercoat of Kilz primer onto clean, dry walls to seal in nicotine smells. Finish the job with a fresh coat of paint and change the furnace filter to further freshen the air in the house.

Then, “send smokers down the street,” says Brake. She’s not kidding: Ban smoking, even in the garden, because the smell clings to porches, decks and clothing. Gardens lose their appeal when littered with cigarette butts. If possible, board your cat off-premises while you’re showing your home; at minimum, clean the litter box daily.

6. Replace damaged vinyl flooring.

Inspect the vinyl flooring in your bathrooms. If it has discolored spots or is loose, moisture may be damaging the floor. You’ll probably want a professional to lay the actual flooring, which could cost $400 or more. But you can save as much as half of the cost by preparing the floor yourself.

Remove the baseboards by pulling them away from the walls with a small pry bar. Next, pull up the flooring using a larger pry bar — it will be glued and nailed or stapled. Also remove the next layer, called the underlayment, made of particleboard or layered plywood.

While your new floor is being installed, you can sand and repaint the baseboards so the whole job will look terrific when it’s finished. Another good choice for flooring material is linoleum, a green product made from linseed oil, pine resin, sawdust and other natural binders. It can add 30% or 40% to the cost of a $400 job.

7. Reseal the toilet.

Not all flooring installers will remove and reinstall the toilet, something that must be done to replace the floor. Pulling the toilet yourself can save you money. With plumbers’ fees running about $85 an hour (with a minimum hour and a half charge for a house call), you could save yourself $200 or more (for two trips) by pulling the toilet yourself.

Even if you aren’t replacing flooring, the seals may need replacing. How to tell? If the toilet rocks when someone sits down, or if the floor at the base is moist or discolored, the seal could be broken. Corroded nuts that hold the toilet to the floor are another sign that the toilet needs to be reinstalled. Before you begin, shut off the water supply at the faucet behind the toilet. Flush the toilet, holding down the handle to drain as much water as possible. Use a wrench to unscrew the bolts holding the toilet to the floor.

Don’t move the toilet alone. Get a friend to help, because toilets are heavy and cumbersome, and the tanks are easily cracked. Prepare a bed of old cushions or towels in the bathtub and set the toilet there gently so any drips drain into the tub. At a hardware store, find two wax toilet seals (also called gaskets, about $3 apiece). One seal is conformed to fit into the sewer pipe; the second is a plain wax circle that you’ll stack directly on top of the first. (Also at the store, purchase two new bolts — about $1.50 each.) Back home, remove the old gaskets. Fit the new shaped gasket into the mouth of the sewer pipe first; put the second seal directly over it so the toilet fits into the space with no gaps. Lower the toilet over the seals. Screw in the new bolts, tighten them, reconnect the water supply and caulk the base of the toilet.

8. Stop faucet drips.

A dripping faucet calls attention to itself, and it’s not hard to fix. Shut off the water supply to the faucets by turning the valves under the sink to the right. Then, test the faucet to make sure you’ve shut the water off completely. While you’re looking under the sink, check for moisture on the wall around the valves and on the floor of the sink cabinet. Also check the supply lines leading to the dishwasher and disposal. If those areas are wet, get a plumber.

If you’ve got a newer, rotating, single-arm faucet (through which both hot and cold water run), note the brand and purchase a faucet rebuild kit (roughly $50) at the hardware store. Inside the faucet arm is a metal ball on a stem that lets the handle swivel while allowing water to flow in any direction. The kit contains the six to 12 parts most likely to fail, including that metal ball, O rings, springs and gaskets. The idea is to replace them all rather than trying to diagnose the exact source of the problem. Dismantle the faucet, laying the parts out in order on a paper towel. Snap a photo or draw a sketch to help you with reassembly. Replace the old parts, put the faucet back together and turn the water back on.

For older faucets with independent hot and cold water faucets, shut off the water under the sink as before then dismantle each of the sink’s faucets separately. Remove the washers (rings made of rubber, plastic or brass), put them in a plastic sandwich bag and bring them to the hardware store to find replacements. Reassemble the faucets and turn the water back on.

If this seems like more trouble than you’re willing to tackle, call a plumber. With no complications, a plumber can install the new parts in an hour, though most will bill you for an hour and a half minimum.

9. Renew dinged baseboards.

Beat-up baseboards detract greatly from the appearance of your home, and they’re easy to spiff up.  ”All those little things tend to stand out,” says Carroll. First, clean them to remove scrapes and smudges left by clawing pets and toddlers on wheels. Brake says a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser sponge works great on painted surfaces. Fill in dents with spackle, sand the baseboards smooth and repaint them. If you’ve lost the name of the original paint color, chip off a coin-sized bit, slip it into an envelope and bring it to the paint store where you can have the color computer matched.

Use primer before painting. Don’t just retouch small areas; paint the entire piece of baseboard, from one end to the other. Choose a washable eggshell finish. White is a great choice for making baseboards and trim look crisp and clean.

10. Repair cabinet scratches.

You can quickly improve the look of unpainted woodwork and worn cabinets with an application of products that even out the surface color. Brake covers scratches on woodwork and cabinets with Old English Scratch Cover or a Tibet Almond Stick, a tight roll of cotton saturated in chemicals that the manufacturer, Zenith Chemical Works, says is a 100-year-old family formula. (You can find these at hardware and home-improvement stores.)

The almond stick goes on clear but covers scratches. “It’s amazing,” Brake says. Zenith owner Kim MacInnes says the almond stick works best with shallow surface scratches on dark finishes. It doesn’t work in every case, he says, and even a good result may fade with time and need to be reapplied periodically.

Old English makes separate formulations for light or dark wood. These are oily stains, so use them carefully. Try out any products first in a corner where results will not be noticed. Do not use the dark stain on light wood. Finally, polish wood cabinets to a glow with lemon oil.