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Seven Ways to Fall In Love With Your House… Again

By:
JR Hevron - MortgageLoan.com

You may wonder how you ever fell in love with your house. This Valentine’s Day, recreate the magic and fall in love with your home all over again.

Maybe it was love at first sight. Possibly it was a feeling that hit you the next day. Perhaps it was the kind of love that took time to grow. However your feelings developed, a home is just like any other relationship: emotions dull over time and it takes work to add new spark.

Here are seven things that you can do to breathe new life into your relationship with your home and feel good about it again.
 
1) Accept: Let’s face it, home values are still in decline and we may see an additional 5% drop in values in the upcoming year. Over the next few years, it’s likely that home values will remain flat. While it might theoretically be easiest to just “break up” with your current house by selling it, it’s not likely that you will be able to sell it (if you can sell it at all) at a price that will make you happy.
 
The best thing that you can do is to take advice from the 1970’s song “Love the One You’re With.” With that in mind, let past unmet expectations go, embrace the house you’ve got for what it is, and see what you can do to improve it.
 
2.) Declutter: Some of the main reasons that people get sick of their homes is that their tastes have changed and they feel that they have run out of space. Fortunately, these are two things that can often be accomplished by decluttering.
 
One of the best ways to mentally approach a decluttering project is to imagine that you are trying to sell your house. Take a step back and think about what you can do to make it appealing to a prospective buyer. Note: you are actually selling it to yourself.
 
First, attack all of the obvious piles of stuff. If they’ve been there so long that you can’t “see” them, have a friend point them out. Second, remove everything old and in disrepair: faded window treatments, ratty entrance mats, threadbare furniture, broken outdoor furniture, broken basketball hoops, etc. Lastly, box up all of the personal items on your walls and on surfaces like countertops and dressers. Put everything away for a week and see if you actually miss any of it. You don’t have to throw any of it away, but removing it will let you see the potential to reshape your home using your current tastes.
 
3.) Reinvent: Simple alterations and renovations can help you to instantly give your home a new look and feel. If you don’t have the cash on hand, look into getting a Home Equity Loan, Home Equity Line of Credit, or a Cash Back Refinance.
 
Again, mentally approach this project by thinking about getting your house ready to sell. Here are a few of the things that people commonly do when trying to make their house more attractive for potential buyers:
  • Add granite countertops to your kitchen or bathroom. This can be done for around $45 per square foot installed. 
  • For about $2500, you can replace all of your crusty, old kitchen appliances with sleek looking stainless steel appliances.
  • Remove wallpaper and give walls a fresh coat of paint.
  • Refinish your wood floors to get rid of scratches and to make them shine.
4.) Add On: They say that you should never have a child to save a relationship. However, when it comes to saving your relationship with your home, sometimes adding a new room or expanding a current room can give new life and flow to an old house with a bad layout. Again, if you don’t have the cash on hand, look into one of the many Home Improvement Loan options out there.
 
5.) Reevaluate: If an expensive mortgage is making you resent your relationship with your home, it might be time for a refinance. Refinancing can help you to lower your monthly payments with a lower percentage rate. What many don’t realize is that it can also allow you to change the type of mortgage from an adjustable rate to a fixed rate or that you can even change the length of your loan so that you can pay it off more quickly.
 
6.) Streamline: If high utility costs and a house that is too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter are making you hate your home, you have a few options. As a start, do simple upgrades that will make your house more energy efficient. These include adding weather seal to doors, exchanging light bulbs for newer CFL ones, and learning to use the timer on your heating or cooling system.
 
To make larger scale changes to your home, try to get an Energy Efficient Mortgage during a refinance. An EEM is like a second mortgage that is rolled into your primary mortgage where the money is earmarked for energy efficient upgrades to your home for things like insulation, new CVAC systems, and new windows. This will not only save you money, but it will make your home more comfortable. And if you are already doing a refinance, your monthly costs may not go up, especially if you are saving on utility costs.
 
7.) Get Professional Help: If you have had problems paying your mortgage due to financial hardship caused by the downturn in the economy, you are not alone. There are many people out there who are feeling as underwater as their mortgages. In those situations, it’s tempting to just walk away from the relationship, consequences be damned. Before you give up though, look into the various Mortgage Assistance Programs available in your state. For example, the Hardest Hit Fund has $7.5 billion dollars in funds earmarked to help people to pay their mortgages.
 
With our current economic situation, plenty of homeowners are finding it difficult to stay in love (or even in like) with their homes. Many are simply depressed that their homes haven’t turned out to be the investment that they grew up thinking they would be. While this is certainly depressing, it’s not worth focusing on. Chances are good that your home isn’t going anywhere, so you might as well accept it for what it is and see what you can do to make it better.
And along the way, you might be surprised when you fall in love with it all over again.

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