Selling your home is difficult in today's buyers market. No matter what style your home is the buyers want to feel cozy. Spruce up your fireplace. Clean out the ashes from your last fire, if your have glass doors clean the glass. Remove clutter from the mantle and the hearth. If you have a log basket fill it with clean firewood. White birch logs if available create a dramatic clean look.

While many excellent articles exist detailing cost-versus-value of home renovations, the truth of the matter is... your home is only as valuable as the neighborhood it sits in. Period. Let me give an example. You buy a home for $200,000 in a neighborhood of $200,000 homes and dump $50,000 in a sun room, renovating the kitchen and bath, hardwood floors, and what do you have? If you're lucky, a $220,000 home. If you're lucky. Because the bottom line is, people who're buying a $250,000 home don't want to live in a $200,000 neighborhood. They want to live in a $300,000 neighborhood.

Seller financing, in whole or in part, has been used since the first time a homeowner decided to sell and could not find a buyer who could afford the house. In recent years, however, with the easy credit of subprime mortgages and 100% or more loans, seller financing had fallen on hard times. Today, however, because of the slowdown in the housing market and the subprime mortgage crisis, seller financing may be returning for another engagement.