Are you planning on selling your home this year? Selling a home can be overwhelming, whether it’s your first time or your fifth, and there’s a lot of things vying for your attention before you can even put it on the market. One thing that is important is how your home is presented to potential buyers: how it looks, smells, and is listed online. Here’s a few things that can help you to narrow down what’s urgently needed done in your house and what can wait for the new owner.

The first thing a buyer typically notices for a home is the online listing. A real estate agent is usually the one who makes the online listing for a home, but you’ll want to make sure a good photographer is taking the photos of your home and that your home is well lit, clean, and possibly staged in the photos. You can choose to either stage your home yourself with your own furniture, borrow or rent furniture from someone, or even hire a professional stager to do the work for you. The important things to focus on when you’re staging a room is a minimal look with neutral colors and bright lighting, natural is usually best.

Second thing a buyer will notice is what they see when they first pull up to your house. How do the front yard and entryway look? Maybe you need to sweep, pressure wash, or touch up paint in the front; or plant some colorful flowers in your front planter and mow your lawn. Whatever it takes to be a pleasant introduction to your home!

For the interior: declutter every surface, remove family photos from walls, touch up paint, fix broken handles or dead lightbulbs, and clean! Hide any valuables you have laying around and check for smells, a bad smelling home can put off potential buyers even if it’s just a full trashcan or dirty toilet making the smell and not something worse. Try and make it easy for a buyer to look at your home and see themselves living in it, everything should be open and well lit. Don’t over-stress about all imperfections however, fixes can always be negotiated in offers if something is very important to a potential buyer.

Lastly, know when you want to sell your home! Get all your paperwork lined up, check your warranties, budget, and get in touch with a real estate agent. You’ll want to enter this time of selling your home with all the information you’ll need to sell your home at a price that’s worth it to you but reasonable in the market we’re in in 2026. Please reach out to us at TV Idaho RE and PM and we can start the conversation about selling your home this year!

Starter homes: properties with a few bedrooms and small lot size perfect for young couples starting a family. Maybe with a child or two already, these couples are looking for something affordable and manageable that fits their family, and they want to own something, not rent. These kinds of starter homes have been increasing in value over the past few years, making it almost impossible for many couples to afford a down payment, let alone the rising interest rates on their mortgages. Many couples are now opting to buy old homes, which can have many hidden costs and upkeep or fixes that don’t accompany new builds.

There could be some changes coming up that would make it easier for people to buy starter homes, however! New build sizes have been shrinking in the past few years, and our own Idaho government is working on legislation that would enable housing to be more affordable, open more land for building, and remove laws prohibiting existing homeowners to build on their own property. Lawmakers are hoping to enable churches and other religious organizations to build homes on their property and remove restrictions in place in HOAs to make room for specific starter homes or duplexes to be built in neighborhoods. Between these proposed laws and a hopeful balance in the economy, 2026 could look a lot different for new home buyers looking for a smaller start.

Home buying is not just for yourself and your family in the now, but you could also keep the home you buy now when you’re ready to move again and rent it out, building generational wealth for your family. It’s also better financially to put money towards owning something through a mortgage instead of paying for a rental every month. So even if it takes a little longer to fix the market than we hope it will, definitely stay informed, know your goals and finances, and don’t forget: date the rate, marry the house!

Let us know if we can help you in any way here at TV Idaho PM and RE, we’re always happy to answer questions and help you stay informed!

It’s 2026, a new year with fresh opportunities for new home buyers. If you are a first-time home buyer looking to buy in the Treasure Valley, you’ll want to know a few things before you start taking your first steps to home ownership. It’s better to be informed prior to making big financial decisions, and the real estate market can be tricky to navigate.

Something to keep in mind if you’re planning buy a home in 2026 is: don’t wait for the perfect rate. You don’t need to wait for mortgage rates to drop, or accurately time the market. Mortgage rates are unfortunately not going down right now. If you have a good financial situation and find a home you love, don’t wait around for it to get snatched out from under you; buy it and you can always refinance later. Minimal rate fluctuations can have less impact on your monthly mortgage payments that you would think, and if you have good savings and credit scores, that won’t be a problem.

If you’re planning to buy this year, you will want to start the process of getting loan qualified as soon as possible. It can take first-time home buyers up to a year to get loan qualified, and you won’t want to be dealing with the process and miss out on the home you want. Lenders want to ensure that you’re able to pay off the loan timely without issues so they don’t suffer, and it can take time to go through your finances.

Another thing you’ll want to keep in mind is that there are many different programs and market rules out there that could help you out significantly as a first-time home buyer. Lenders frequently won’t bring those up so you’ll want to stay informed and find a good lender so you can get the best deal you possibly can. Certain places stop investors from buying up new homes for a period of time to help balance the housing market, something like that could help you out since you can also get good deals from buying homes straight from builders. Know what information is applicable to you and make sure any decision you make comes from a place of wisdom.

One more piece of advice: make sure you’re working with a seasoned realtor during your home buying journey! You’ll want someone who knows what they’re doing and how best to help you, not someone who will take advantage of you and keep you uninformed. Do your research!

Don’t be afraid of buying a home, there may be a lot of things to do and information to process before you can move in, but owning a home is worth the wait! Let us at TVPM and RE know how we can help you achieve your dreams.

As we’re nearing the end of 2025 and looking over the horizon to 2026, you may be wondering what the real estate market will look like in this new year. While we can’t predict exactly what will happen, we can definitely look at trends and current events to see where we could be headed, making a type of real estate forecast, which can be beneficial for making your plans for your home and family.

Will homes become more affordable? We do believe so, but lower prices will be slow in the making. It takes time for an economy to settle and same goes for the real estate market. There were quite a few buyers in the market in 2025 and they had quite a few homes to choose from because the inventory was higher than its been in years. We had about three months of inventory, which is still a seller’s market, but it behaved like a buyer’s market in that buyers got discounts on prices, lots of repairs, and some compensation for closing costs or rate buy downs. Resale homes had to compete with new home sales and because builders often offer quite a few concessions, sellers of resale homes also had to give concessions.

Inventory is expected to increase, especially as we come out of the cold months and into the warmer seasons. Mortgage rates are looking to stay around where they’re at, about 6%, with the potential to dip below that current rate.

Wages increasing and the job market stabilizing will have a big effect on people being able to afford to buy and sell homes, so there is great hope that wages will indeed go up and home prices will remain steady to help balance out the market for the first time in many years. Existing home sales are predicted to go up by about 3%.

All of this of course will take time, we are not looking at a sudden drop but at a gradual slope towards affordability. The places in high demand will still of course be more expensive and have lower inventory than the rest of the US, but maybe the younger generations will finally feel like they have a chance to buy affordable homes for themselves. We will watch 2026 with hope and anticipation!

Happy New Year from all of us here at TV Idaho RE and PM, we hope your family will be blessed in this coming year.

2025 is quickly leaving us in its wake, giving us long, dark, cold winter days illuminated by Christmas lights and hopes for the New Year. As we prepare for a new season of home buying and selling here in the Treasure Valley, it can be beneficial to take a step back and see what the real estate market looked like during some of the highs and lows of 2025.

Nothing particularly unexpected happened in the market during 2025 except the steady interest rates. The average interest rates hovered around 6.5% for most of the year and as of November 2025 were hitting 6.19%. The median home price in Ada County for November 2025 was $562,900, as opposed to the median home price in May 2025 which was $579,900. There were 2,121 homes on the market in Ada County in May 2025 and 1,897 homes on the market in November, the drop in inventory is likely due to the winter weather and holiday season. About 690 homes were sold in Ada County in November and they were averaging around 49 days on the market. Of the homes sold, 457 of them were resale, which was an increase of 7.3% year-over-year.

The Treasure Valley real estate market performed well this year, although definitely not as well as it has in previous years. It wasn’t the worst year, but not the best either. With the drop in prices and a potential for interest rates to drop as well, we are hopeful for 2026 to be the start of a well-balanced market for both buyers and sellers. But more on that at the end of the year, for now, Merry Christmas from all of us at TV Idaho RE and PM! May you and your family have a blessed holiday season and may your days be merry and bright.