Photo by Victor Freitas from Pexels

Having your own home fitness center provides a convenient place to work out. You don’t have to worry about fitting in exercise during gym hours or having to wait your turn to use the treadmill or rowing machine. With your own gym, you can work out whenever you want and use your fitness equipment as needed. The following tips can help you design an upscale fitness center that allows you to exercise in the comfort of your own home.

Location

The first decision to make is where to put your fitness center, which depends in part on the layout of your home. You can put your home gym in your basement or a back area of your home if you prefer having it in an out-of-the-way place where your workouts won’t disturb family members. If your home is surrounded by nature, consider putting your home fitness center in an upper part of your home that provides inspiring views while you work out.

Flooring

The flooring in your home gym should provide shock absorbency and durability for safe workouts. Rubber tiles or rolls are highly shock-absorbent and durable, making them a common choice for home fitness centers. Foam tiles and soft PVC tiles are more comfortable to stand and move around on, but they do not offer as much shock absorbency to protect you from injuries if you do high-impact exercises.

Equipment

Choosing equipment for your home gym depends on the kinds of exercises you like to do. You can include larger pieces of equipment, such as rowing machines, treadmills, elliptical machines and exercise bikes. Other types of equipment to consider include a weight bench and weights, a yoga mat, a balance ball and resistance bands. Keep in mind that there are many brands of luxury home fitness equipment available.

Adding a state-of-the-art sound system to your fitness center can provide you with an easy way to listen to music that helps you stay motivated during your workouts. For lighting, consider using a mixture of natural lighting from windows or skylights and artificial lighting, such as recessed lights or light fixtures with ceiling fans to improve air circulation in your home gym.

Indoor Pool

Your home fitness center doesn’t only have to include traditional gym equipment. If you enjoy swimming as a form of exercise, consider adding an indoor pool to your gym. You can include an indoor pool that’s specially designed for doing laps and add features to it, such as a heating system for comfort or underwater LED lighting for swimming at night without having to put overhead lights on.

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Months of searching, attending open houses, and viewing available homes finally paid off. You’ve found the perfect property in the perfect neighborhood for the perfect price. You’re ready to make an offer. Then, it happens, you get the dreaded call from your agent telling you there are multiple offers on the property. How does that happen?

Reasons for Multiple Offers

Re-marketing. Remember, the listing agent has the legal and fiduciary duty to the seller to seek the highest price possible. Not only does the higher offer pay the agent more, but it also gives the seller more to work with. As the listing nears its expiration, the agent has an incentive to market it more aggressively so that they can earn their commission. That means more open house events, changes to the listing to bring it back into focus even if it’s been on the market for a while, and other marketing tools.

Inventory shifts continuously. That means at any given moment, fewer houses on the market puts the home you want on more buyers’ radars. Even a house they looked past a month ago might interest them today. This is especially true when you use narrow search parameters because everyone else using those parameters sees the exact same homes.

Buyer demographics align. If you chose to wait until the end of summer, or after the holidays for family reasons, the chances are high that a bunch of other folks did as well. If you’re an empty-nester and waited for fall to start looking, so did other buyers in similar life situations. They’ll like the same things about it that you like.

New listings. Buyers that have lost out to multiple offers in the past now know better than to “sleep on it” when they see a new house available that fits their needs. The typical multiple-offer scenario happens within the first two weeks of a listing reaching the market. This is true particularly if the home is priced right, has curb appeal and desired upgrades or renovations in a preferred neighborhood.

Pocket listings. A so-called “pocket listing” is when a seller’s agent knows a home is going on the market but is not yet listed, and it that appeals to certain buyers to whom they give the head’s up. Some pocket “buyers” ask for notification when there’s another offer. Since the listing agent represents this buyer, there’s nothing stopping their agent from helping them present a better offer than yours. Ask your agent to learn if the other offer is from a client of the listing agent since it makes a difference in how you craft a counteroffer. Options include increasing your offer, your agent could reduce their commission, closing without contingencies, etc.

Trust your agent’s advice on preparing a counteroffer and whether submitting a personal letter with the offer is a promising idea. In some cases, it’s about the bottom line; but in others, it’s an emotional decision to sell a home.

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