Archive for category Home Sellers

5 ‘Hip’ Ideas for Do-it-Yourself Staging

The website Styled, Staged & Sold by REALTOR Magazine presents five “Hip Tipz” from professional stager Charlene Storozuk of DEZINGERDIGZ. Take a look. Some of these offer interesting ideas for a spring DIY project — no need to stage for a move!

A preview of Charlene’s ideas:

  • Paint bedroom furniture antique white and the walls a darker tint.
  • Frame a favorite tea towel for display in the kitchen.
  • Make the rooms off the hallway appear larger by painting them a lighter shade than the hallway.

You can view the complete report and the last two ideas by visiting the online article here.

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Ten Inexpensive Ways to Wow Buyers

From the REALTOR Magazine Website:

Now is the time for home owners contemplating a spring sale to spruce up their properties in anticipation of what Mike Larson of Weiss Research calls a potentially vibrant home-selling season. “If you have been beating your head against a wall, this is going to feel a lot better,” he jokes.

You can see the entire article by following this link to REALTOR.org

  • Improve First Impressions
  • Clean up the landscaping
  • Paint the interior
  • Refurbish the floors
  • Take care of the big problems
  • Buy warranties
  • Improve energy efficiency
  • Replace light fixtures
  • Buy a stove
  • Tidy up the bathrooms

Click this link to access the full text article on the U.S. News & World Report website.

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Home Selling Tips for 2010

Forbes recently published their list of tips for selling your home during 2010. According to Forbes, one of the best ideas is listing your home earlier than in more traditional years.

In their accompanying article “The Best Time of Year to Sell a Home”, Forbes discusses the various factors that are affecting the residential real estate market, and Forbes makes a case that the Spring of 2010 will be most effective for listing residential real estate. Of course, well known factors affecting the market today could vibrate and change very rapidly. These include interest rates, the federal tax credit, job security, home prices, unemployement, and general public sentiment. While not in-depth, these articles from Forbes do offer updated information for early 2010.

Forbes 2010 Home Selling Ideas

  • Resolution Buying in January
  • As Snow Melts, Buyer Competition Heats Up
  • Summer, a Seller’s Market
  • In 2010, Buyers Will Motivate Earlier
  • Frosty End-of-Year Sales
  • Different Markets, Different Peaks
  • Seller Beware: Check Local Real Estate Activity
  • Selling in a Slow Month
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Staging Your Home for the Holidays

Holiday Staging Ideas

Helpful ideas from HGTV’s FrontDoor website for listing, staging and selling your home during the holidays. Here’s a summary of their seven ideas, but visit the FrontDoor website to see the full slideshow and narrative.

  • Add holiday adornments
  • Complement your palette
  • Accentuate the positive
  • Go light on lights
  • Mind the tree
  • Crank up the heat
  • Offer tasty bribes
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Staging Tips for your Walls

It’s not often that you see information on how to dress up your walls, but Styled, Staged and Sold offers Five Rules for Tackling Walls, from staging professional Debra Gould, President of Toronto-based Six Elements, Inc.

Here are Debra’s five tips:

  1. Remove personal pictures.
  2. Pay attention to the condition of the walls.
  3. Hang mirrors.
  4. Get some art.
  5. Stay in proportion.

You can see the complete Five Rules article here. Or, visit Ms. Gould’s Six Elements website here.

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Front Door Eye Candy

Styled Staged & Sold Front Door Pic

Front doors are a perfect place to set that “first impression” and the holiday season gives us a tremendous opportunity to create a unique entry for our homes.

Styled Staged & Sold has created a short list of pictorial exmaples that are interesting and may inspire you this holiday season. The use of color, decoration and setting helps to create a different appeal in each example.

Follow one of these links:

to find the entire collection of photos and ideas.

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The Staging Diva’s Top Staging Tips

If you’re hoping to sell fast, these home staging tips from Debra Gould of StagingDiva.com will help buyers fall in love with your home:

  1. Decorate for your home’s target market
  2. Don’t try to sell an empty house
  3. Strategically use art
  4. Use brighter lighting to boost sales
  5. Update your home’s jewelry

You can see Debra’s entire article by visiting HGTV’s FrontDoor website.

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Analysis: Buying power is being reduced

Zillow, an online real estate marketplace, released a study today that shows residential home Sellers are slowly regaining some of their pricing power as selling prices are creeping closer to the Sellers’ listing prices.

A compilation of the data (See table below) shows that August was better than July for Sellers and that we’re gradually moving away from the recent bottom in January 2009.

Month Median
$ Diff
Median
Pct Diff
Aug-09 $6,525 3.0%
Jul-09 $7,018 3.3%
Jan-09 $10,096 4.5%

As shown above, Buyers nationwide paid a median of $6,525 below the listing price in August, which was a median 3% variance to the Sellers’ listing price. This shows improvement over July and big movement from January 2009.

Additional news and comentary are available here:

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20 Home Design Challenges

“Pepto Bismol” pink tile, high gloss walls and dark painted trim top this list of “Biggest Losers: 20 Home Design Features That Send Buyers Running.”

The top five from the list:

  1. Dated and excessively bold or dark paint and tile colors, such as “Pepto Bismol” pink, avocado green, deep plum, or jet black.
  2. Lacquered or high-gloss painted walls that are expensive to repaint and show all defects.
  3. Painted trim that’s very dark-and costly to remove.
  4. Wallpaper, which is a lot of work (and potentially expensive) to remove.
  5. Kitchens that lack any dining space.

You can find the remaining list of 20 design challenges by following this link to Styled, Staged and Sold.

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25% of Listings Decrease Asking Price

According to a recently released study by Trulia.com, 25% of those listing on the Trulia.com site have reduced the asking price for the home. Top cities for reduction are:

1. Jacksonville, Fla. – 36 percent
2. Tucson – 32 percent
3. Boston – 32 percent
4. Los Angeles – 32 percent
5. Columbus, Ohio – 31 percent
6. Dallas – 31 percent
7. Honolulu – 31 percent
8. Minneapolis – 31 percent
9. Austin – 30 percent
10. Washington, D.C. – 30 percent
11. Baltimore – 30 percent
12. Las Vegas – 30 percent

Source: Trulia.com (06/05/2009)

You can find more info from Realtor Magazine.

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Open Houses are a must

More than 90 percent of potential home buyers plan to attend open houses as they look for a home to buy, according to a survey conducted for Trulia.com.

Here’s how they find out about properties open to view:

  • 62 percent use online sites to find open houses.
  • 53 percent use information provided to them by real estate professionals.
  • 36 percent use neighborhood signs.
  • 31 percent use information in the newspaper or other printed source

We’ll be placing our open houses here in HomesForCincy, but while we build our inventory, please visit the Sibcy Cline site here: Open Houses

Open Houses are a great way to invest in your market knowledge and develop your eye for value.  Visit a few this Sunday.

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