Staging your home can allow you to highlight the best features of your home so that you can get it sold quicker. Even if you live in a tough housing market, staging your house could give you an advantage over other homeowners in the area. Keep the following things in mind as you spruce up the place.

• At a minimum you must clean up your property and make obvious repairs. Potential home buyers will automatically be turned off by a house that is dirty, cluttered, and smelly. If the cleaning job is bigger than you can handle on your own, invest a few hundred bucks in hiring a cleaning service. Also take time to repair all those little things you’ve been meaning to get around to that visitors to your home  will notice.
• Staging your home doesn’t require purchasing a lot of new furniture and accessories. You probably have an adequate amount of furnishings in your home that can be rearranged to make the place more appealing. Yes, there may be times when small purchases are necessary, but don’t go overboard. If you have too much furniture and knick knacks cluttering up a room, put some of them in storage.
• Giving walls a fresh coat of paint can do wonders for jazzing up your home. Avoid really bold, loud colors that might detract from other features in the home. Stick with a more neutral palate.
• Put away personal photos, knick knacks, collectibles and other items.  You want potential buyers to visualize themselves moving into the home, not focus on your personal tastes.
• Arrange rooms in such a way that they appear larger and more open than they are. Using natural light from windows to give rooms a brighter appearance is helpful, so take down heavy draperies or old blinds that make rooms appear dark.

It’s important to look at your home with a critical eye. Go outside and examine the exterior to see what areas need changing. Do whatever you can to give home buyers a reason to make a bid on your property.

What’s interesting about this deal plan is that real estate agents and brokers can also qualify for a bonus. Selling agents representing owner-occupants can receive a $1,500 bonus.

The incentive program is for properties listed on www.HomePath.com, Fannie Mae’s REO Web site. The deal is good for offers submitted on or after Sept. 23, 2010, and that close by Dec. 31, 2010. To qualify for the program, the home sale must close within 60 days of the offer being accepted.

The report also found that one in seven homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth.  While the government has tried to stem the tide of foreclosures and assist some homeowners, many people who are underwater on mortgages loans have not been helped for a variety of reasons. According to the report:

As of April 2010,  HAMP [Home Affordable Modification Program] had made 1.5 million offers that resulted in 637,000 currently active rial modifications and about 295,000 permanent ones. But even among those households able to qualify for this reduction in payments, the Treasury Department estimates that 40 percent will re-default.

Despite problems in the housing market, demand for housing rose in 2010, helped by many first-time home buyers claiming the governments tax credit 45% of home sales were to first-time buyers. Some repeat home buyers also took advantage of an expanded tax credit to purchase homes.

The housing report states that the housing recover is still at risk: 

In addition to the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit program, which may have temporarily jacked up home sales, the market faces threats from the severe overhang of vacant units, still high unemployment, and record numbers of owners with homes worth less than the amount owed on their mortgages.

You can read more about the housing report here.

Apparently mortgage lenders are giving the thumbs down to parents who are expecting a baby or are on maternity leave when they apply for mortgage loans, according to the New York Times. That’s because mortgage lenders want to see proof that a borrower’s current income is enough to cover mortgage payments.

So if you just had a newborn and are on maternity leave, it’s likely that you won’t qualify for a mortgage even if you plan to return to work soon. Even if you can actually afford to buy a home to accommodate your growing family and are guaranteed a job after a leave, you may be required to provide even more proof of qualifying income and assets than normal.

In some cases, banks are showing new parents to the door and instructing them to apply later when they are back at work. And don’t think that new moms are the only ones being denied. Workers who are on other types of leaves from their jobs and have a drop in income may also be out of luck when applying for a mortgage.

“Maternity leave or any other leave of absence often prevents a person from obtaining a mortgage. There are some who long for the days when such strict proof of income was not required,” John Councilman, president of AMC Mortgage in Fallston, Md., told the New York Times.

NAHB Chairman Bob Jones, a home builder from Bloomfield Hills, Mich, said:

The home buyer tax credit did its job in stoking spring sales and we expected a temporary pull back in the builders’ outlook after the credit expired at the end of April,” “However, the reduction in consumer activity may have been more dramatic than some builders had anticipated, which resulted in their lower confidence levels.

The HMI fell five points to 17 in June. The index had risen over the past couple months, but is now back to where it was in February. The monthly survey looks at whether or not builders expect sales of current single family homes to be good, fair, or poor over the next six months. It also asks them to rate their expectations for traffic of prospective buyers. An overall score of 50 and up means more builders believe that conditions are good rather than poor.