One of the major functions of the open house currently is utilizing it to showcase the home to other agents. It is amazing how many viewers can be gained by this. Not only that, but people working with other agents are usually qualified prospective buyers. The open house is also, to this day one of the most recognized ways to get the word out about your home. Some buyers will simply take a full day to go around their town and look at open homes. Another things that is a result of the open house is word of mouth advertising. Its amazing how the word of an open house can get around, simply by neighbors telling friends and soon.

When preparing for an open house make sure that your home is in the best shape it has ever been in. First impressions are critical to the open house. Home buyers usually walk through a home picking out the details that they like and the details that they don’t. Make sure that the first 5 things they see, they like. Before holding an open house it might be good to have the home professionally cleaned. Then make sure that no mess is created before the showing starts. Hiring a good home stager might also be a good way to ensure that your home shows well during the open house.

Think of it this way – would you feel comfortable with the idea of seeing a doctor if all the plants in his waiting room were dead? It sets up some negative emotions, doesn’t it? The same thing happens when people drive by a house that is surrounded by dying, weedy grass, overgrown bushes, and cracked sidewalks. Since the impression is on a purely emotional level, it may be difficult for your buyers to overcome.

There’s a good example of this problem right now, in my neighborhood. Although houses in my city are selling ast this summer, and they don’t stay on the multiple listing service for very long, a ‘For Sale by Owner’ sign has been in the window of a house down the street for months. The owner lives out of town, and probably purchased the house as a rental. Now that home prices are higher, he’s ready to sell, but he can’t take care of the yard himself because he lives too far away. He did recently hire someone to cut down the overgrown grass, but I suspect he did so only in response to a complaint from the city authorities.

This attitude on the part of the seller reminds me of that ancient saying “penny-wise, pound foolish”.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take a whole lot of money to get most yards looking good, and it can make a huge difference in the curb appeal of your house. It does, however, take time – especially if the grass has been neglected for too long. Some regular watering might revive it, but if things have gone too far, you may need to reseed the grass and start over. This might also be true in the back yard, if a large puppy or a team of budding football stars has worn ruts in the grass. The most important thing for the grass is to get it green again, and keep it mowed. If dandelions have taken over, a neighborhood kid might be willing to pull them out, if the price is right.

If bushes along your fence are badly overgrown, they may need a hard pruning. Some ornamental shrubs and small trees can be pruned at almost any time, but others must be approached with more caution. To see exactly how and when your shrubbery can be pruned, do a Google search for the particular type of plant, or find a good book on pruning at your local library. Overgrown Arborvitae growing near the house may need to be removed, as would any other fast-growing shrub that refuses to stay within its allotted space, and which would be nothing but bare sticks if it you cut it back.

If you do need to remove overgrown or dying foundation plantings, they can be replaced with fast-growing annuals or perennials. First dig the soil as deep as you can and add compost and plant food to improve the soil’s fertility. Then ask your local nursery for suggestions – they’ll be able to show you which plants will grow the fastest and fill in the empty space. If you put out a drip hose and attach a timer, you won’t need to do much more than pull an occasional weed to keep it looking nice.

A friend of mine recently sold her house, which was surrounded by a beautiful cottage garden that took her years to build. She knew that most people don’t have time to care for so many different plants, and would prefer to simply water and mow the grass – so she made sure to list her house when her garden was at its peak. Even if her buyer has to remove all those flowers because he can’t take proper care of them, they still helped to create a positive impression with all that color. Her home, surrounded by masses of color, was on the market for only a few weeks.

You can easily add a few spots of color to your yard without planting a perennial border of creating a cottage garden. One exceptionally easy trick is to buy a large planter that matches the color of your house, fill it with one small shrub from the nursery surrounded by fast-growing annuals, and place it just beside your front door. It doesn’t take much time, but it can add that little touch of life that makes your house feel more like “home” to your potential buyers.

However, I wasn’t just a buyer of cheap housing – I was also a supplier. I rented the other rooms in the mobile home. In this way I lived for free and even had a little extra income after paying the household bills. I also built a shed for $250, carpeted it and put in a light, and then rented it out at times for $50 per week – now that’s a good ROI (return on investment).

In Mexico, when I was 17 years old, a group of factory workers gave me a ride and let me spend the night in their extra bunk (I was hitchhiking). They had a futuristic plastic apartment, big enough for four bunk beds and not much more. In the bathroom, the floor, toilet and bath tub were all made out of one continuous piece of molded plastic. Outside, the grounds had tennis courts, as well as cement paths with benches, that wound through flower beds.

An efficiently designed 300-square-foot apartment works for single young people. If such construction was allowed in some parts of the United States (there was only one door and other code issues) these kinds of apartments could probably really solve some problems. With twenty of them on a small property, an investor could make money renting them out for $240 per month, utilities included. Split between four single young men or women, this would be just $60 each, or $15 per week. That’s really cheap housing.Other Cheap Housing Ideas

In those places where there is no big snow-load to worry about, tent-style housing, like that used on the Mongolian plains might be okay. Normal walls and roofs cost a lot, but insulated fabric would be a fraction of the cost. Even if it needed to be replaced every 12 years it might cost a lot less than using traditional walls and roofs.

There was an indoor ice rink in our local park for years before I noticed that its roof was held up by air pressure alone. It worked well enough, which makes me wonder if this kind of construction might be used for houses too. Think inflatable houses…

How about 10-by-12-foot cube-rooms that fit together easily in many different ways? A buyer starts with a bathroom cube, a kitchen cube and a bedroom cube, and then add more as he can afford to. Having them pre-made with a uniform design would keep the costs low. The electrical would be built-in and ready to plug into the next cube-room.

My friend was thrown out of the home he built on his own land, because it wasn’t large enough to meet the county building code. We discovered however, that it would have been legal for him to camp on his property in an Recreational Vehicle, even if it was smaller than his shack. This makes me wonder if an entrepreneur could buy 40 used RVs for $4,000 each, put them on a piece of land, and then rent them to low income tenants. Just call it “camping,” and this cheap housing idea might be okay with authorities.