Debt Free

Maybe you've never heard of the C.L.U.E. Report. That's okay. It's not really something that's common knowledge to many people outside of the real estate and insurance industries, unless you're a veteran of more than a few real estate transactions. If you're planning on buying or selling a house in the near future however, you should know about this report, and take advantage of it.

The C.L.U.E. report is the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange report. It lists insurance claims made against a property and can provide valuable information about recent problems in the home's history. A C.L.U.E. Report will list all the data associated with any claim made in support of the property, including the insurance company, type of loss, weather the loss was related directly to the property itself, dollars paid on the claim and the cause.

Needless to say, this kind of information can be extremely valuable to you when looking at a prospective home to buy. It will show such things as serious mold damage, damage from fire, flooding, accidents, and so forth. There are a few caveats to the report though. One is that it is standard industry practice to only have data for the previous 5 years. After that time period, claims are deleted from the report.

The other major caveat is that a C.L.U.E. Report is only available to the property owner or insurance company. To obtain such a report you or your agent must make a request to the property owner, and they must purchase the report for you. It'll set them back $19.95. One would think this is a small price for them to pay if it will facilitate the sale of their property.

If you're selling a house, and your house has a sparkling record for the last 5 years, you can use the C.L.U.E. Report as a marketing tool. It's just another method you can use to instill confidence in the prospective buyer. For you, as the seller, it just takes a simple visit to www.choicetrust.com to order your report. In many locations throughout the country right now, it's a buyer's market. Competition for home sales is getting tighter. The number of new home sales in April showed a decline of 2.6% over the previous month, ending at 5.99 million homes sold throughout the nation. Interestingly, that is also paired with a drop in prices of about 11% over this time last year, the largest drop in this indicator in more than 30 years. Nationwide, April was the 9^th consecutive month of declining home prices. This trend is not happening everywhere, but where it is occurring it is severe enough to offset the locations in which home prices continue to rise.

If you're a buyer, you may have less inventory to choose from, but as sellers clamor for buyers, you should use everything at your disposal to negotiate your best purchase, and ensure you're buying a quality house. If you're a seller, you need to differentiate your house from the others on the market. In both cases a C.L.U.E. Report may help you achieve your real estate goals.