Unless you’re a millionaire, that is. Readers of Nolo’s homebuying books probably know that we recommend going to open houses for a wide range of properties in your area of interest, above and below your price range, as a way of getting to know that market and what justifies a higher or lower price tag.

However, there are some homes, at the uber-high end of the scale, that you can forget about visiting. Luxury home sellers are (understandably) wary about throwing their doors open to the curious public, and may not even hold an open house at all. Viewing the house will be arranged “By appointment only.”

Even then, if you were gutsy enough to make an appointment to see a house you couldn’t possibly buy, you might find another hurdle: a check on y0ur financial credentials. That’s apparently the case, for instance, with a $13.9 million home being marketed in Las Vegas right now. (With a 17-car garage?!) Los Angeles Times reporter John Glanna explains,”such top-end sellers [] take precautions, such as conducting financial background checks on any buyer before rolling out the red carpet for a personal home tour.”

Oh well. If it’s any comfort regarding your market research, these high-end homes operate in a different pricing universe anyway. Oddly enough, in a down market, they sometimes drop in price more precipitously than other houses, owing to the fact that even wealthy buyers are feeling uncertain and looking for bargains, and their investments may have recently dropped in value to the tune of what they’d pay to buy, say, a house.

For every story of a home seller who had a successful sale only after “finally” having had the home staged, there are multiple untold stories of buyers who either couldn’t see the house’s potential until it was staged, or were dazzled by the staging into overlooking its faults.

Take, for example, the May, 2012 issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, which contained an article called “How to Sell Your Home Fast,” by Patricia Mertz Esswein.

Esswein tells the story of the Barbers, in Minneapolis, who spent months trying to sell their high-end home in a hot location — without luck, apparently owing to the fact that their furnishings did nothing to minimize the house’s long, narrow living room. Only when they moved their furnishings out and got a stager to redo the living room with “smaller-scale” furniture did an offer come in.

So, were the early buyers unimaginative, or was the ultimate buyer fooled by a mini-sofa? Hard to say. But now seems like a good time to offer up another tip to buyers on how to scrutinize a well-staged home.

TIP: Remember, your office will never look as cute — or as clean — as this one.

Space for a home office, whether it’s in a converted garage, closet, or bonus room, can be an attractive feature in a home. But if your home office is anything like mine, it’s a thicket of electrical cords, equipment, and supplies.

Kind of makes you nostalgic for that typewriter on the desk, doesn’t it? (But I’d never go back to a typewriter, ever.)

With that lesson in mind, take a closer look at any potential home office space, particularly if this is an important house feature for you. Does the space have sufficient electrical outlets? Space for a printer, shredder, file cabinet, desk, bookshelves, table, and so forth? Make sure the basics meet your needs before you start planning where you’d put the little globe.

I live in one of those pockets of the U.S. where home prices never dropped as dramatically as elsewhere and in some instances, appear now to be rising. Other such pockets exist across the U.S. — just look at your local (not national) headlines to see whether you’re in one of them. But even if you’re not, keep reading to see what growing pains your own market might soon endure.

We’re only at the tentative beginnings of this mini-trend. And that very transition is leading to complications at appraisal time. The situation was summed up recently by Realtor Julie Scheff as, “multiple offers [] driving prices upward and conservative appraisals [] dampening them downward“ (in an April 20 article in the Montclarion called “Multiple offers signal a strengthening realty market”).

By way of reminder, most home buyers take out a loan in order to buy a home, thus making the bank or other lender a key player in closing the sale. What the bank says, basically goes. And the bank will nearly always require an appraisal, in order to make sure that the house is worth the amount of the loan in case it ends up foreclosing.

Appraisers, meanwhile, have become a conservative lot. They got burned in the real estate meltdown, collectively accused of having willingly gone along with insane levels of home price inflation. So they take a much closer look at properties now before proclaiming their value, and if they don’t see comparable sales supporting the amount the buyer wants to pay, they may not sign off on the magic number.

The last thing you want in a market that still isn’t exactly superheated is to have the deal fall apart because the appraiser, having looked around at all the low comparables, says that property isn’t worth what the buyer and seller have agreed upon. Fortunately, there’s no reason to just sit back and wait for that to happen.

Avoiding a low appraisal in advance. It’s possible to forestall a low appraisal by helping the appraiser recognize the property’s value. Whether you are the seller or the buyer, you can commission your own, independent appraisal of the property, and give those to the lender’s appraiser ahead of time.

You (or your real estate agent) can also research and advise the appraiser of any local short sales or foreclosures that might artificially bring down the numbers. (Contrary to rumor, you are allowed to speak with the appraiser, though the lender may not do so.) Give the appraiser a list (with before-and-after photos, if possible) of interior features, upgrades, and improvements, all of which can boost the property’s value. And by the way, sellers, keeping the property looking good through appraisal day doesn’t hurt, either.

Your real estate agent’s industry connections can help here, too. Your agent can speak to other agents with homes in escrow and ask for the sales prices, then — assuming they reflect rising values — prepare a list of these homes with their agents’ contact information for the appraiser.

Dealing with a low appraisal. If providing advance information doesn’t work, and the appraisal still comes in low, the seller and the buyer can call up the appraiser and question the bases for the appraisal, hoping for a reevaluation. You can also commission a second appraisal, and (assuming it’s better) show that to the lender — though the lender has no obligation to accept it.

If you’re the seller, your main hope may end up being that the buyer is willing to pay the original price (particularly likely if you were in a multiple bid situation) but increase the down payment and take out a smaller loan. That just heightens the importance of sellers carefully scrutinizing the buyer’s financials before accepting an offer, and asking for detailed information on the buyer’s income and savings. Yes, it may feel like the seller is delving for private information, but the buyer has good reason to consent to share it in this situation. (It’s also another good reason for sellers to prefer a buyer who offers a large down payment to begin with.)

Barring this, a price drop (or failed deal) may be your only option. But buyers, don’t be overly alarmed if an appraisal comes in low, particularly if you did your research or were in a competitive bidding situation. While the appraiser is a professional, and the process is backed up by evidence, every house is unique. A house’s value comes down to what a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to accept.

Wouldn’t you think that sensible home sellers would cast a wide net before selecting the agent who will help them market and sell their home — and to whom they will ultimately pay around 5-6% of the selling price, as a sales commission? (That’s $18,000 for a $300,000 home, folks — some people will be lucky to be paid that amount for an entire year’s work.)

And yet, two thirds of sellers interview only one candidate for the job, as reported by the National Association of Realtors and discussed by Patricia Mertz Esswein in the May 2012 edition of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. (See “How to Sell Your Home Fast.”)

Maybe some of these sellers so loved the agent who helped them buy their home that they couldn’t imagine hiring anyone else to sell it.  (That was the case with me, and it all worked out great.) But I bet it’s not true for a sizable number of home sellers. They meet an agent, they like what they hear, and that’s it — for better or for worse.

That gives the first agent a seller interviews a huge advantage; and unfortunately, an incentive to overstate buyers’ likely interest levels and the price you’re likely to obtain for the house. Setting the price too high is a problem in any market, but it’s fatal in the current depressed market, where buyers have learned to be leery of inflexible, unreasonable sellers who simply can’t believe their house has dropped so far in value over the last five years.

As Mertz Esswein notes, “In addition to a history of successful sales in or around your neighborhood, you want total honesty — even if it’s painful to hear that you must spend money in order to sell.”

Remember the days of stretching to buy as much house as you could possibly afford? Once upon a time, it made sense, given that you’d be sitting an a rapidly appreciating asset. But now that real estate appreciation is looking like a thing of the bubbly past, it may be time to shift focus to the advantages of buying less house than you can afford.

That’s exactly what Money magazine did in its April, 2012 issue, under the article, “Buy Less House Than You Can Afford.” (Note: The online version is much shorter than the print one.)  Money compared the long-term financial implications of two different home purchase possibilities:

• a 2,000 square-foot house, with a purchase price of $239,000, and
• a 3,000 square-foot house, with a purchase prices of $389,000.

They assumed a 20% down payment, a 30-year fixed-rate loan at 4% interest, and other costs, such as insurance, taxes, maintenance, increasing at 3% per year.

Meanwhile, they calculated how much you would earn if you took the money saved on the sale and upkeep of the house and invested it at 6% per year. (That rate of return may be a little optimistic, but hey, we’re talking about a 30-year window.)

The drum roll please: By buying the smaller house, Money found that you would, after 30 years, have socked away an extra $1,016,800. Of course, that assumes that you actually save the money. Spending it bit by bit will destroy the advantages of earning interest or dividends, not to mention ofcompounding those earnings.

Trying to draw visitors to a holiday weekend open house can be a challenge. But the owners of at least one home in Montclair, California (at 6100 Valley View R0ad) decided to turn this challenge to their advantage by announcing an Easter Egg Hunt during the Sunday open house. What better way for parents to get in a little house-hunting while keeping the kids entertained?

Not to mention that including an egg hunt offers visitors a great opportunity to not just look at the house passively, but interact with it, and imagine more fun family activities ahead — once they’ve bought the place and moved in, of course. (Just make sure to have enough eggs on hand, if you don’t want parents noticing instead how their child’s tantrums echo through the grand entry hall.)

In keeping with the holiday spirit, Realtor.com also offered a view of “Five Homes Perfect for an Easter Egg Hunt.” Actually, with all the color splashed around these homes, Easter might be the best time of year for them to sell!

The folks at the Motley Fool recently interviewed Yale professor Dr. Robert Shiller (co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and author of the new Finance and the Good Society) on the topic of the housing market’s current direction. As the Motley Fool’s Brian Richards pointed out in “Where To for Home Prices,” the signs appear confusing — home prices are on the decline, while homebuilder stocks are at 52-week highs.

Shiller quickly discounted the significance of confidence among homebuilders (they can, after all, choose where to build), then focused on what appears to be a nagging theme among reporters interviewing him: the idea that “there’s going to be a day soon and then it’s going to zoom up again.”

Hmm, time for a little self reflection here. The boom wasn’t so long ago, and we watched home prices rise with such inexorability that house appreciation came to look like a law of nature. No wonder it can be hard to imagine that the bust wasn’t just a long winter’s cold, after which we’ll all start feeling better again.

But, points out Shiller, “this recent boom and bust is unique. It hasn’t happened at such magnitude on a national scale before.” And, as he further details, comparable busts on a regional level did not turn around for decades.

The lesson seems to be that we need to think of the bubble as the temporary illness. In fact, Shiller states, “Bubbles are social epidemics, and are we primed for another one now? I don’t see it . . . .”

If you’re among the many would-be homebuyers looking for an affordable place among the vast stock of foreclosures, here’s an important tip: Factor into your research whether the foreclosure home in which you’re interested is owner or tenant occupied.

If the house is a rental, federal law gives the people living there certain rights, which may affect when you can actually move in. Specifically, the 2009 Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PFTA) says that:

• month-to-month tenants must be given 90 days’ notice if a buyer at the foreclosure sale intends to terminate their tenancy, and that
• tenants with leases can remain until the lease ends (but can be terminated with 90 days’ notice if an individual buyer intends to live in the property).

You’re looking at a minimum 90 days from the house purchase to its being empty and ready for you to start moving those boxes in the front door.

If you’re buying in California, there’s even more you should know: As explained by Nolo landlord/tenant expert Janet Portman, a March 2012 court decision from the Los Angeles Superior Court held that during the time that your newly acquired tenant lives in the house under the preforeclosure lease, the only way you’ll be allowed to deal with a failure to pay the rent is to use a 90-day termination notice — instead of the normal 3-day notice to pay rent or quit. The bizarre result of that is that the tenant would be able to live in your house for 90 days rent-free. For more on this issue, see “Termination for Rent Nonpayment after Foreclosure: 90 Days’ Notice?” and PNMAC Mortgage v. Stanko, Los Angeles County Superior Court Limited Jurisdiction, Case No. 11U04495, March 7, 2012.

Every house that wasn’t built yesterday has its own history: Perhaps a famous person lived there, or the house was one of few to remain standing during an earthquake, or it’s where the former owners always put up the best holiday display.

When a house’s history is dramatic enough, it can actually affect the property’s market value, for better or for worse. The court cases usually emphasize the instances of “worse” — for example, when sellers fail to disclose a violent murder on the property, which despite having no affect on its physical condition, creeps most people out enough that they don’t want to pay as much for the place.

But even something like the aforementioned holiday display can affect a buyer’s enjoyment of the property. A couple I know bought a house where the owners had accompanied their holiday light show with a “Santa’s workshop” setup in the garage — with the result that, for years after my friends bought the place, kids would show up demanding to see Santa. (Fortunately, the sellers had warned them in advance, so there was no need to drag Santa into court.)

The question when selling a house is, do you play up the history or not? I imagine this was discussed by the owners of a property sold last week in North Oakland. The house was once owned by Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale’s parents. Back in the 1960s, Seale, Huey Newton, and others met there — they apparently drafted the Panthers’ manifesto in the dining room.

Some prospective buyers, upon hearing this news, might have said, “Cool.” Others might have wondered what they’d tell the folks back in Peoria. Perhaps in response to this possible mix of audience responses, the sellers here took a low-key approach. They didn’t mention — much less play up — this bit of history in the house’s listing materials. It merely received a quiet mention in the disclosure packet. Instead of focusing on history, the sellers played up all the contemporary features they’d added to the house — maple cabinets, quartz countertops, and so on.

That didn’t stop the sale from becoming a local news item, however:

Here are the stories from the Huffingon Post (“Black Panther House Sold in Oakland“) and the San Jose Mercury News (“Black Panther birthplace flipped and sold as trendy Oakland showpiece“).

A column in my local paper by Arthur White, titled “Change is in the air,” describes how he and other agents at Red Oak Realty in Berkeley and Oakland have “noticed a swell of real estate transactions that encountered multiple offers.” They list ten examples of homes that received between two and 21 offers, which naturally leads to “pushing prices up.”

Meanwhile, I can point to plenty of houses around Berkeley and Oakland that are sitting unsold, or sport “price reduced” signs. How is a seller supposed to enter a market that seems to be simultaneously hot and cold — and how is a buyer supposed to place intelligent bids?

For sellers, the advice White offers is the same as has been true throughout this tough market — though the message is still not penetrating to every seller: “Remember, not every listing gets into a bidding war. The difference lies in the listing price: Buyers don’t compete for overpriced properties, they compete when a property is priced in a way that is ‘too good to be true.’”

I know firsthand how emotionally difficult it can be, not to mention financially worrisome, when you advertise a price for your home that seems like you’re ready to give it away. But it has been proven to work over and over again, as the years of slow-moving real estate sales have dragged on.

Meanwhile, for buyers, White advises “courage and prudence” in a competitive situation. Don’t lose your head just because you imagine that the other buyers are going to outbid you by some unknown amount. Looking at average prices of comparable sales in the past few months should continue to be your guide. And if you lose out on this house, well, the market is still far from super-hot — and another one will come along. (In fact, maybe you’ll find one that’s been sitting on the market so long that the once-unrealistic seller is ready for a major price reduction.)