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The numbers don’t lie; often well-staged homes can see quicker sales and higher offers than their messy counterparts. The key is getting an early start on the process of getting ready. By beginning the huge task of removing the clutter and doing a pre-pack now, you can reduce the stress of preparing for showings and make it easier to move when your home sells when you are already part way done.
Try these five staging and organizing tips to help you reach a faster sale.
Purge From Top to Bottom — Do a proper sort and purge, getting rid of outdated clothing, duplicate items and rarely used gadgets. To keep this task from turning into a source of serious frustration, tackle one room (or even one drawer) at a time. Go at it steadily.
Pack Up Everything but the Essentials — Start pre-packing your home, storing non-essentials or out-of-season gear in the garage or off-site. Garages and unfinished areas are great for this extra storage. The idea is to give potential buyers a sense of space, which can’t be done if your home is overloaded with clutter.
Fix Glaring Problems — Remove out-of-style wallpaper, replace broken light fixtures, update cabinet and drawer pulls, and refresh dated window treatments. Simple fixes like these can make your home stand out from the competition.
Depersonalize — Remove family pictures and personal collections, and replace them with neutral artwork and simple accessories. The idea is to give potential buyers a neutral canvas so they can imagine their belongings in your home.
Go for Polished — Research the latest design trends and stage your house to match. Professional stagers recommend tailoring the design style to your target demographic. For example, if you’re in a family neighbourhood, style the bedrooms for children, even if none live in your home.
A professional stager is a nice to have but not necessary. It can add to your cost of selling. If you follow other simple steps outlined above, you home will look much better and be ready to sell. We often do staging for our clients by arranging furniture, helping pick new flooring and paint when necessary or bringing in professional trades people when needed. Call us and we’ll show you what selling real estate through truly professional REALTORS® is like. (more…)
If you want to sell your home in Ottawa this spring, prepare for pent-up buyer demand.
Spring might be an even livelier home-selling season this year because home-buyers want to act before interest rates or home prices rise.
Even so, buyers insist on good deals. Even in a seller’s markets, where the supply of homes for sale can’t meet demand from buyers, the overpriced homes are at a disadvantage. We see competing offers for some homes, but houses with too-high asking prices don’t selling at all.
Three things sell a home in any season: location, condition and price. If one of those three is not good, a home may not sell, but you can always compensate for a less-than-perfect location with a better price.
It is important to have a professional that helps you but you should do thorough research when looking at hiring property management companies or an agency to manage your block. Property owners hire property management firms for various reasons. Some owners may have many rental properties in their portfolios but lack the time or expertise to maintain the properties and deal with tenants. Some owners only have an interest in owning rental properties and earning profits from them. When this is the case, they hire professional property managers. Absentee landlords also make use of property management services.</p>
Here are five tips to sell your home this spring.
1) Buyers decide within 60 seconds of seeing a home whether they want to consider buying it.
People know immediately if they are interested, so you need to make sure you don’t turn them off before they get in the door. We recommend trimming trees and bushes so buyers can see the house, pressure-washing the driveway, front walk, house and patio, clean and paint the front door because buyers will linger at the door while they wait for the agent to open the lockbox.
2) Go through all of your furniture and closets with a discerning eye to eliminate clutter and then go back again. Pare down your clothing to as minimal as possible so your closets look bigger. Pack up anything you want to keep, and put it off-site in a pod or a storage unit because you want your home to look like it always has plenty of space in all the closets.
3) Be mindful of your senses, especially sight and smell. If you have dark corners in the house, get rid of clutter in those areas, paint them a light colour and reflect the colour with lighting. If you have a pet, clean the carpets and open the windows to air out the house. If you give your pets a shower or bath in you bathroom and have custom glass shower enclosures, it is important check those areas thoroughly. Clean or get rid of your draperies and window coverings if they carry a pet odours.
4) If you know a home inspector is going to find something wrong with your house, go ahead and fix it! If you haven’t maintained your home, you may want to hire your own home inspector before your home goes on the market so that you can make appropriate repairs before you try to sell it. It usually costs less to fix things before a home inspection than to deal with an issue at the last minute and under stress. It makes more sense to do the repairs ahead of time rather than wait for a buyer to request it. Buyers may end up asking you to spend $300 on what should cost $100.
5) Even though prices are rising in some areas, sellers need to be reasonable and compare their homes to similar properties that have recently sold that are best compared. If you price too low, they’ll think something is wrong with your home. If you price it too high and have to lower your price, it will hurt you more than if you price it right the first time. Overpriced homes that stay on the market above the average, are extremely difficult to sell. Never hire a REALTOR® who guesses at a price. Genuine Realtors such as Alex Buys Vegas Houses make sure that he or she has done extensive research, finding homes as close of a match to your home that has recently sold and those that are presently on the market. This way you’ll have a complete picture of the market.
WOW! Our vacation plans have gone out the window! Too busy to leave town now! This summer has been unusually busy and we think we have the long hard winter and the short cold spring to thank for that.
Most years, the summer is a time that slows down for real estate sales. Not to the point of November and December, but slow considering April through June are normally very hectic. All this just goes to say that the experts seem to have gotten this one right! Most of our associates in the business have said that the market was delayed this year in the 45 to 60 day range and that is what we are seeing.
If you are thinking about selling, it should remain a good market for the rest of the summer. One warning though. Make sure your home is in tip top shape from roof to basement and all points in between. The buyers have lots of choice and many average and below average homes are being past over. Check your roof, windows, furnace, air conditioning and plumbing. These are areas most home owners don’t pay attention to until it’s either too late or a building inspection reveals problems that can cause the sale of your home to fall through. ExpertConstructionGuys.com | C&D Brooklyn Roofers can make all necessary repair to roof, windows and siding. BE PROACTIVE! Stay ahead of the game!
After a long, long cold and snowy winter Spring has arrived. Slowly, but it is here. With Spring comes some challenges to those in or wanting to get into the real estate market.
First, if your home has been on the market for a month of eve a few weeks, the look of your home from the outside has certainly changed since it was listed. Get new outdoor photos right now! Look at our listed homes. All have new updated exterior photos. Check out other site. Many homes still have photos with snow piled up to the roofs. This is not good as it gives the buyers who view website at a fast clip, the immediate impression (wrongly or rightly) that the home has been on the market too long. I can’t belive the number of newspaper ads out there at this time of year showing homes with pile of snow.
Pricing is also an issue at this time of year. Most agents feel (and the stats prove us right) that the Spring is an active market so when doing our evaluations, we often feel robust in what the market will do. This sometimes does not pan out so adjusting prices downwards in the Spring, despite what statistic says, can be something that needs to be done. When too many homes hit the market in Spring and the buyers have lots of choice, this put pressure on prices.
Finally, check your basements and attics for leaks. It’s a perfect time for leaks to be exposed. April Showrrs don’t only bring May flowers, they bring leaks into your home. Check your basement and attic. A leak may not penetrate into your home through the roof right away but sings of leaking may be visible. Before listing your home, get leaks fixed.
Have a question for us? Go to our contact page and send us an email. We’ll be happy to answer your questions! Click here for contact page.
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This is a great question and one of the most common ones we get. Sorry but there is not just one correct answer! As with so many other things in real estate, the answer is “It depends”!
First and foremost is the reason for selling. Are you being transferred? Have you been looking for a new home for a while and have found the perfect one? Is there a family situation that is causing you to sell your home?
These situation will determine when you will need to list your home and if one of these applies to you, then you’ll have to list your home when the situation demands. You can’t avoid selling your home in December if you have to be at your new job in Calgary in January.
Now if you want to sell your home but have urgency and are “testing the market” then waiting until a more active time of the year might be a better choice. So when would be a more active time? Usually the Spring is our busiest time of year so listing then will usually give you the most showings and activity but it will also be a time when you will have the most competition.
We like to suggest to our clients who do not have a “must sell now” situation to consider mid to late February as a target date. This has a great time of year as the pain from Christmas shopping is over and you can get onto the market just before the flood of other homes. Plus, buyers looking at this time of year tend to be more serious and less just shopping around.
No matter what your situations is or when you need to or want to sell, we can offer you a unique blend of experience, knowledge and honesty. Contact us by email or phone. We’
ll be happy to discuss our marketing plans with you.
Irwin & Mindi
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