Property under 20k team, Author at all-real-estate.com

Working from home? No, working from Paradise!

Working from home has become the new reality for many of us in the past year. Many found themselves in this very new and – no doubt – challenging situation. Depending on the circumstances of each individual it could mean to either be alone at home or to find a quiet corner in your busy family home. Both situations come with their very own set of problems as well as advantages.

I found myself in the second scenario. The bedroom became my office as well as my husbands’. In each video conference we hoped none of our children would storm in to scream out the latest mischief one of her siblings did… To tell a long story short: I believe many of us homeworkers wished for better working conditions.

Buy a covid friendly home

Buying a new home that better suits our needs in this time definitely crossed our mind. Looking at all the complications though, made us soon realize that it does not seem to be a good time for that, not just yet.

I saw many articles popping up about covid friendly homes – meaning it is NOT friendly to the actual covid virus but rather helps people to live with the new situation. There is a lot of speculation going on how such a home would look like.

Others might also suggest that soon there will be a vaccine and everything will be back to normal again – just like the time before the outbreak of the coronavirus.

Another thing to consider is that your house might not be worth what it used to be due to the financial impact the pandemic had on the real estate market.

Therefore, it might be a hasty move to sell your home and get another right now.

What you can do

Many people did not go on their annual holidays abroad this year out of fear or due to complications, such as needing to be quarantined when they return to their home country. But what if you would get the chance to combine your holidays with your new working from home situation?

Speaking with many who worked from home even before the spread of the covid, you can be free to choose where you like to live. This is fantastic. I know some who choose really nice places where real estate is very cheap. They were able to keep their costs of living down and at the same time live in a great location.

If you like to get an idea where it would be very cheap to buy a house have a look at this map:

https://www.propertyunder50k.com/map_view.php?

Paradise Guaranteed

I recently came across the Barbados Welcome Stamp – basically it is a special visa for remote workers who want to work and live in Barbados for 12 months. So, if you are looking for a change and you like to try another country for a year why not have a look?

Looking to buy, sell rent real estate? Visit www.all-real-estate.com

Bio

Our Property under 20k team are the founders of www.propertyunder20k.com and www.listproperty4free.com with the goal to search the cheapest real estate in the world and make it easy for others to find. The team is made up of landlords, real estate investors, architects and builders from several different countries. We just love to have a good strong cup of coffee while we write our experiences in this blog.

How to avoid Real Estate Scams

Our real estate portal can be a great way to find somewhere to rent, to buy a cheap property or to sell your house. But with any online space there’s always a risk of hoaxers being active and attempting to trick you.

With thousands of live ads at any given time, it’s hard for our real estate websites to stop every fake ad or block every fake user instantly. Therefore, being aware of what to look out for is a big help to avoid real estate scams.

What does a Real Estate Scam look like?

Real Estate scams trick potential buyers or home sellers into thinking they are dealing with a legitimate contact but it is actually a scammer.

Unfortunately, there isn’t just one method that fraudsters use.

For Sellers

So far, the only known scam on our website are fake enquiries. This means someone sends a message to the advertiser through the contact form on our website.

Once the advertiser replies to the enquiry the scammer can use his email contact to spam him with emails.

He might tell a story of “being a soldier in Iraq that likes to invest in your country” or “being the widow of president so and so who likes to move to your country with all her millions”. Stories like that definitely ring a warning bell.

We also recommend that you discontinue communications with the enquirer if he/she:

doesn’t want to travel to see the property or asks you to come and see him
wants to buy the property for a higher price than asked
likes to know your bank details or to wire funds via money transfer services
wants to pay in advance

For Buyers

As we have no way to check the authenticity of an advertised real estate, we recommend caution before giving sensible information to anyone you don’t know. This is standard online practise.

Scammers will usually pose as genuine sellers and post fake ads. That’s why they are very difficult to spot.

The ad can be for anything, rental properties or real estate for sale. Most probable, it will even include pictures and other details – maybe copied from a genuine seller’s ad.

We recommend that you discontinue communications with the seller/landlord if he/she:

asks for rent payments or deposits in advance
seller claims to be unavailable and insists on payment before you can inspect the property
seller is very interested to get all your personal data

Also, if you are still not sure, you can do an internet search using the exact wording in the ad, many well-known cheats can be found this way. If the advertiser is a real estate agent you can also look up his business information to see if he is legitimate.

How to protect yourself from Real Estate Scams

Being informed about possible dangers in itself is already a protection. It helps you to be cautious and to look out for warning signs.

We all heard this many times, if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

We focus on advertising cheap properties for sale our website, therefore many times it looks too good to be true. But of course, that does not mean they are fake ads.

A good indicator is to search for similar properties for sale in the same location. Also see if the real estate needs major works. You might be looking at a fixer-upper. Only if the price seems far lower than the competition you may question its authenticity. Often the reason for one real estate being cheaper than others is its condition, location or legal problems.

Use a safe legal procedure to buy Real Estate

Fortunately, most countries have a certain procedure in place when it comes to buying properties.

This makes it almost impossible to go through with a Real Estate Scam until the end. For example, in many countries it is mandatory to use a notary or lawyer to deal with the sale. Even if the seller requests a deposit as a down payment before the sale, this can already be handled through a trust account of a notary.

Sticking to the official process is a simple and very effective way to safeguard yourself against real estate scams.

How to report a Real Estate Scam

Have you spotted a fake ad on our site? Please, drop us a quick message in our contact form.

Do you like to report a scam? Depending on the country you are from there might be different places that are best for you to report the scam.

Here are just a few

Australia – https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/report-a-scam

UK – https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/scams/reporting-a-scam/

USA – https://www.usa.gov/stop-scams-frauds

A cheap pool for your home

Summer means pool time. For many of us, a pool is the epitome of having a good time. Especially in summer holidays a pool is one of the things we don’t want to miss.

But if you usually visit a public pool or leisure centre, that might not be an option right now. On the other hand, building your own pool at your home is a big and expensive venture.

As we have around 39ºC (102ºF) right now, I happen to find myself desperately searching for a cheap pool solution. Little did I know I would find the hot trend of the summer.

What about a stock tank pool at your home?

What is it, you may ask. Well, it happens that these inexpensive farm items were originally designed to water livestock. Now, it seems people have discovered them for their own pleasure. They are appearing in gardens across the world.

It’s a great idea, inexpensive and has a certain charm to it. How can you get one?

Choose a “pool” size

First step would be to find your local farm item supplier and see what options are available. In most areas the biggest round troughs are the most popular. Naturally, they would offer the best swimming experience.

Pick the right spot

Next or at the same time you need to decide where to set it up. You will need a spot with a level foundation. This means it needs a solid, level base free of any rocks or sharp edges.

Add pumps and chlorine

Of course, you like to enjoy your pool for as long as possible. Therefore, you will need to add a few things to keep it clean and safe. I found a very detailed description on how to do it (it has very nice pictures of stock tank pools as well that might give you some ideas). Check it out at Hey Wanderer blog

If you rather buy a house with a pool, check out find cheap holiday homes.

You have a house for sale? List it with us for free.

Smart Home – what does it mean?

We encounter the expression “smart home” everywhere today. But it means much more than clever refrigerators and intelligent lighting. Smart home is when your house “thinks” and makes your everyday life as easy, safe and pleasant as possible. Thanks to a smart home, you save precious time. Smart devices organise annoying routine tasks for you. The goal is comfort, entertainment, energy saving and security.

Smart Home how does it work?

The principle can be summed up in the following; Various electrical devices and sensors are interacting and communicating with each other. Often, you can control Individual devices and even entire systems remotely. In this way, a simple and complex process can be automated.

How does the communication work?

Lying by the pool and starting the oven with a roast for dinner? Or making a coffee while still in bed with your smartphone? With Smart Home, such comforts have long ceased to be a vision of the future. At home, the devices communicate using standards such as WLAN, Bluetooth, KNX data cables or even directly via the power line.

All are proven standards and almost all current smart home devices and systems can be installed and operated very easily today – via an integrated display, smartphone, tablet or even a voice control.

Which devices can be controlled in a smart home?

In principle, every electrical device and system can be controlled smartly. Therefore, it is often possible to optimize comfort, safety or efficiency at once. Lighting, heating and air conditioning systems are typical areas of application for smart homes such as controlling canopies, blinds and shutters. Entire lighting concepts can be conveniently controlled and automated.

A message on your smartphone as soon as your laundry is finished?

Thanks to Smart Home, this is not a problem.

But it gets even better, entire home security systems can be controlled as well. While you are away, it is very easy to check that everything is fine at home using your smartphone. If someone rings at your door you can even see who it is and answer at the intercom. You simply access your intercom and cameras at home via the Internet.

Want to buy or sell your home? List it with us today.

Keep your home covid-19 free

Many things changed since the arrival of the Covid-19. This is also true when it comes to your home. Many took measures to make it easier to keep the house clean. Most important of all, many changed their behaviour of what they do first when they come home.

There are some basic procedures you should do to protect your home.

In order to do that, you need to organize the entrance of your home and observe a few guidelines. Traditionally, in some countries people already do this for many centuries.

It doesn’t need to be a big space, only large enough to be organized in a “dirty zone”, an “in-between zone” and a “clean zone”.

The “dirty zone”

There should be a space right at the front door, where we can take off your coat, leave your bag and keys, take off and put away your shoes. Ideally, you would clean the soles of your shoes with disinfectant.

In this area you always keep a rug on the floor, a hanger to hang your bag and coat, a trash can with pedal, a bottle of disinfectant or diluted bleach and a disposable paper roll (to clean/disinfect your shoes). If you like to add some comfort and you have some additional space you can put a chair as well.

The floor and the rug should be washed regularly.

The “in-between zone”

In the “in-between zone”, always keep some alcoholic gel. Here you disinfect your hands or even better, if you have the possibility, wash your hands with soap here.

The “clean zone”

In the “clean zone” you put on your slippers and maybe other comfortable clothes you only use at home. Now you are all ready to use the rest of your home.

What if you have a dog?

If you come home with your dog, you should also clean the animal’s paws every time.

Do not use alcohol or bleach to sanitize the dog’s paws as he might lick it.

Did you create different areas at your home? Leave a comment below and let us know.

Do you like to buy or sell your home. List it on www.listproperty4free.com

Make some space for microgreens

Microgreens are the new star that was born out of the covid-19 situation. They have been around for a while but got really popular now as a fresh food source that you can produce from the comfort of your own home. But what is it and how does it work? Here comes a short overview.

What are microgreens?

Basically, microgreens are baby plants, they are young vegetable greens that you can harvest 7–21 days after sprouting depending on what you were growing. Once the plant’s first true leaves arise, they are ready. You can cut them and enjoy the tender stems and leaves.

Best of all, they have a rich flavour and concentrated nutrients – some call them super food as often they contain higher nutrient levels than more mature vegetable greens.

Why should I grow microgreens at my home?

Not only are they cheaper if you grow them yourself but also a lot more convenient. Depending on the microgreen you decide to grow in your home you can really streamline the process.

Also, you have full control of the seeds, soil and water you use, you will know it’s 100% organic.

Why are microgreens so popular now?

Many people have limited their grocery shopping due to the COVID. Meaning they only shop once every one or two weeks.

Unfortunately, this means you might be running out of some fresh salads and vegetables. Growing your greens seems to be the obvious solution to this problem. Once you see how delicious they are it’s easy to get addicted.

A corner ready to grow your microgreens

You don’t need much space to grow your microgreens. You can grow them outdoors or indoors – where ever you have some space for a tray and some sunlight. Please make sure to use trays that are food safe.

There are many types to choose from

Lentils are one of the healthiest microgreens you can grow.

If you are also one of those who gets hooked on those microgreens, you better prepare a nice bright corner to grow them in larger amounts. You can get a shelve in order to have several trays in the same space.

Just give them a try

But before remodelling your house, or starting a big microgreens production – why not to grow a few different ones on your windowsill to see if you like them?

Happy growing.

If you rather like to grow something in your own garden, why not to check out propertyunder20k.com for some affordable homes with garden?

How to handle a multiple offer situation

With real estate markets heating up again after the COVID lockdown, many find themselves in a multiple offer situation. What is it and how can you as buyer or seller handle it the best way? Here is a short overview.

What is a multiple offer situation?

A multiple offer situation happens when several people make an offer on a property.

This often happens in a seller’s market when competition is high – meaning there are more buyers than there is real estate for sale. However, it can happen in any market and especially for houses within a reasonable price range or those that are a good deal for another reason.

multiple offer situation as seller

If you are a seller, multiple offers are great news. You are in a situation everybody dreams of.

Your real estate agent will probably explain various negotiating tactics for you to think about. For example, you could just accept the best offer. Or you could notify all buyers that there have been other offers to give them the chance to make a better offer.

multiple offer situation as buyer

As a buyer, how can you make sure your proposal wins when there are multiple offers on the table? Here are a few tips.

The best tactic would be to find out what the seller is hoping for. Is he looking for a quick sale, sell for the highest price or maybe he even prefers to get some more time before moving out…? Maybe he has a personal attachment to the house and is looking for someone who really appreciates it. There can be many different situations that made the homeowner put his house on the market.

Making an offer

When making an offer try to make it attractive, best a little above listing price to show that you see its value. You can also offer to pay a deposit as a down payment. Like this you show the seller that you’re really serious about closing the sale.

Some even suggest to write a personal letter to the seller.

A word of caution

Please note, it has happened that buyers were told by agents that there are other offers on a house in order to get a better price, when in fact this was not true. It has to be stated that there are severe consequences for agents who do this.

Free Real Estate Listings

If you like to buy or sell a house. List it on www.listproperty4free.com for free.

Real Estate Market heating up

After many weeks of heavy speculations, we finally have some proper numbers to work with. This is certainly good news for real estate agents and home sellers. More and more real estate news popping up declaring that the real estate market recovered and best of all, it seems some place even have a higher rate of competition than before. This means that due to high interest a home for sale receives multiple offers. That is a scenario every home seller is dreaming of!

For buyer its not so good news – but hold on, this all depends on where you are looking to buy. Situations vary depending on the location. Some markets are still low due to the covid-19 and have not come out of their historic price drop yet. Those would definitely be perfect grounds for bargain hunters.

Where are the hot spots?

In general, most locations that were in high demand before the covid-19 pandemic are heating up again, some are even described as being on fire. This is the case for the

Toronto Real Estate Market

reported here: https://torontostoreys.com/toronto-real-estate-market-hot-june-2020/

Another report talks about “Bidding Wars” in several states of the USA with

Boston metro area

having the highest rate of competition.

Locations with a bidding-war rate above 50% are Salt Lake City, Denver, Seattle, Austin, TX, San Francisco/San Jose, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Portland, OR. This information was found at https://www.redfin.com/blog/competition-increases-homebuyers-coronavirus-drives-housing-shortage/

It is also noteworthy to mention that offers for single-family homes faced higher competition than before the pandemic. To have your own place means more right now than ever, we can see this among all the new buyers who are trying to find a home with more privacy.

Also, the

Allegheny housing market

is picking up where it left off before the pandemic. It was part of only a few locations in the United States where real estate services were considered nonessential. Since the restrictions were lifted prices are back to where they were before with even a shortage in the housing market. This was reported here

Allegheny housing market rising with lifting of pandemic restrictions

Where are prices still low?

Some locations that were hit especially hard by the pandemic are still at a price low.

For example, this is the case for

Spain Real Estate Market

Although too early to make a certain prediction, there have been reports that are not sounding promising. As reported by ‘Bloomberg’ at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/spanish-real-estate-is-heading-for-its-second-crash-in-a-decade

it looks like Spain’s home market is heading toward another crash. Experts who study the property market reported that the hit to housing prices in 2020 could range from 6.5% to 15%.

If you were thinking to buy a home in Spain this seems like a good time.

Do you know of any other locations where we can find cheap real estate? Please leave a comment below and let us know.

Suggest a Topic for our Real Estate Blog

To maintain our real estate blog with fresh and interesting content we are happy to receive ideas from our audience. Maybe there is a real estate topic you would like us to cover. If so, please feel free to suggest a topic.

We are happy to write articles that are interesting for our readers

As we have real estate listings from all over the world there are endless questions from the buyer’s side as well as from the seller. This means there are limitless subjects to cover. Also, there might be some interesting developments on the real estate market you think our readers should know about.

If you inform us of some latest real estate news, please don’t forget to give us your source Of course, we will not publish anything where there is a chance of being fake news.

Contact us to suggest a topic

Please contact us at [email protected] to suggest a topic.

A word about links

We are fans of natural links – those happen “naturally” when website owners link to your content because they think is beneficial for their audience and adds value to their websites or pages. This being said, although we like you to suggest a topic, we cannot be pressured to cover your subject or to give a backlink to your website. We will only do so if we see that it is valuable for our audience.

This is not a paid service

Please note, although we are happy to receive suggestions, we are not selling any service to write articles to promote your brand. If we write an article about a subject that you suggested we do so free of charge. Please don’t be disappointed if we cannot write about your topic. We receive many suggestions and have to choose.

Do you want to submit a guest post?

There are some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. Therefore, if you are one of them you can send us in your unique article for approval. Please see our Real Estate Guest Post Guidelines for more details.

Thank you.

Find what you Search in Real Estate Listings?

These days, thousands of real estate listings are being scrolled in the pursuit of finding the best property deal. It is just a quick and easy way to get a first glimpse at the real estate market. Although, it’s easy to feel like you’re not getting the full picture of your possible future home.

Being just curious

For many, searching properties starts out as a curiosity. You may have heard about a great place with very cheap homes or you simply like to check out what is available in your area. Maybe you are considering to just move a few neighbourhoods away, where real estate is more affordable. This can open up new possibilities for having more space and comfort.

Online searching saves time

A lot has been done lately to improve the finding process. Especially the 3D viewings of houses are wonderful, I just love them. I think in this covid-19 pandemic I have been on more house viewings than all my life before, all thanks to the virtual viewings. They have been around for quite a while but this challenging time really increased their popularity.

It just saves so much time. Otherwise you would need to drive around all day long to see all the houses in person. It would take weeks and months what now you can see from the comfort of your own home in a few hours.

But in the end, seeing properties in person is really the only way you can find out if a property feels right and seriously narrow down your search and eventually get the buying process started. After all, there are more factors that need consideration before making a decision.

Scrolling millions of real estate listings

It can be very frustrating to see all the available listing and not finding what you are looking for. A good way to find the right deal is to sign up for search alerts on real estate portals.

This means, if you are looking for ads in specific countries or price ranges you can sign up to be notified every time a new ad is posted that fits your search criteria.

To set up your search alert on our website please visit https://www.listproperty4free.com/manage-my-searches.php

Want to sell your property?

Often people start searching properties online to try and gain an understanding of their own home’s value. Maybe this the case with you? If so, please remember that you can list your home for sale with us for free.