Holiday Decorations - What to Look for & Avoid when Buying or Selling a Home During the Holidays in Tampa Bay

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Andrew Duncan, Tampa Bay's #1 Realtor  has Randy Noon from Buyer Inspection Group, David and Arnie Diaz from Waterstone Mortgage Corporation as guests on The Duncan Duo Real Estate Show on 970 WFLA to talk about Holiday Decorations, what consumers need to avoid & look for when buying or selling a home during the holidays.

It's that time of the year again to take out your beautiful holiday decorations. However, if you are considering to buy or sell a home during the holidays, here are some things consumers need to look out for and need to avoid when decorating for the holidays.

Sellers need to be cautious when decorating for the holidays. They need to be aware of the mistakes they could make, the damage they could do to their home and how they can risk their home sale and home inspection. Putting in too much decorations could cause some problems during inspection like preventing the buyers/inspectors to go up to the roof. Using nails, staples and the like could also cause damage to the roof, the fascia boards or other parts of the house. The additional traffic on the roof could cause damage or more wear and tear especially if you don't know how to do it properly.

Here are some statistics shared by Randy about holiday related accidents - Emergency rooms treat about 12500 people every year for injuries from falls, cuts, shocks related to holiday lights, decorations and Christmas trees. The Consumer Product Safety Commission also warns consumers about candles because about 11600 fires each year, 150 deaths, $173M property loss are caused by candles.

One of the things Randy pointed out is the holiday lights that people use. A lot of these lights brought in from other countries that are not UL listed. Buying these types of holiday lights could be dangerous since you are not assured of the quality so make sure you are using UL listed lights.

Speaking from a Mortgage perspective, some of the things that have been damaged at one point because of the above mentioned could cause mortgage challenges, appraisal issues, inspections and alike.

David and Andrew talk again about the Escrow Hold back program offered by Waterstone Mortgage Corporation which would allow a lot of inspection condition issues that normally could cause a home sale not to happen unless the buyer is willing to fix it or cure it. And David adds that it allows the consumer to have it fixed after the closing with a net proceeds. Not all banks offer this type of program so if you want to know more about this awesome program, click here.

In addition to the above mentioned things to be cautious about when putting up holiday decorations are the extension cords. Randy suggests that if you plan to put in a lot of holiday lights, make sure you plan ahead and get an electrician to install additional outlets instead of running extension cords back to back. You can add ground fault circuits (GFCI) where you can have all your lights plugged in.

Andrew warns about putting up too much decoration because again it could cause issues with inspections. There will be parts of the house that the inspectors will not be able to get to which could raise a red flag and make the buyers think you're hiding something.

We hope these tips could help our consumers with the sale or purchase of their home and keep their home safe during the holidays.

For more Tampa Bay Real Estate news and advice, tune in to The Duncan Duo Real Estate Show on 970 WFLA - Tampa Bay every Sundays at 10 am.

*The Duncan Duo and RE/MAX Dynamic has moved. As of 10/11/2014, our new address is 6320 S Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33611