Podcast-Making Your Home Market Ready for Sale

PODCAST SERIES-VIDEO

You’ve no doubt heard the term “staging” a home but there’s a lot more to getting your home ready for sale than just bringing in plants and re-arranging furniture. Rssjpg_2

The terms “staging” typically implies a professional designer has been retained to make a house look like a model home, yet there’s a lot more that goes in to “staging” your home for sale. Often times, a home will need a complete facelift as is often the case with trustee sales. Vacant homes always show better professionally staged, and even homes with modern amenities can use some detailing.

We break down staging into two categories. 1) Vacant homes for whole house staging and 2) Occupied homes for staging augmentation. Professional designers are akin to artists and often prefer a vacant home to an occupied one since they are beginning with a blank canvas or palate if you will.

But getting a home ready for the final touches of furniture, plants and pictures often requires weeks of renovation. We coordinate with our design consultant to first identify our market segment—the buyer who will likely purchase the home. Then we take instructions as to what color scheme to employ and begin the process of renovation. Some of the typical enhancements include:

·         Fresh Paint

·         Refinished hardwood flooring

·         New carpeting

·         New bathroom or kitchen tile, granite or other contemporary materials

·         Kitchen cabinet re-facing or replacement

·         Bathroom fixture replacement

·         Hall and entry lighting enhancement

·         Landscaping and fresh lawns

There’s no need to be anxious about the process of these renovation. We coordinate all enhancements with our professional team of property enhancement experts from tile people to painters, handyman, hardwood floor experts and carpet installers.

The video Podcast you are about to see highlights several homes we’ve staged for sale and shows before and after slides. If ever the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” rings true it’s in this video—enjoy.

                              

Download market_ready.m4v

You’ve no doubt heard the term “staging” a home but there’s a lot more to getting your home ready for sale than just bringing in plants and re-arranging furniture. Podcast

Listen your our Video Podcast to see and hear more…

Download market_ready.m4v

Lies,Damned Lies, and then there are Statistics…

The article titled "California’s October home sales slide 40%" reported by Inman News today evokes thoughts of Mark Twain’s famous saying there are "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Though the number of homes which sold is easily tracked, calculating the true median home price is a little more elusive. The size of homes which sell in a particular period can greatly influence this statistic. The median price has been used quite often as a benchmark for home values since all things being equal, roughly the same size homes sell each month. However, current lending conditions affecting first-time home buyers have skewed these numbers and in fact a disproportionate number of larger homes are selling; and since larger homes sell for more, this has created the appearance of an increase in the median sale price in certain areas.

For example, one of the cities sited in the article as one of the 10 cities and communities with the greatest median-home-price increases in October 2007 compared to October 2006 was Redwood City at 20.6 percent. But if one examines just the single family homes which sold in those two periods, it reveals that in October 2006 the median home price was $810,000 and a year later $1,100,500-a whopping $290,000 more! Pretty exciting news for sellers until you look further at the data and realize that the median size home sold in these two periods also grew; from 1330 sq. ft. to 1760 sq. ft. Calculating the price per square foot which homes sold for in October 2007 ($600.00) and applying that to the difference in the size of homes sold (400 Sq. Ft.) for these periods reveals that $240,000 of the $290,000 increase was simply due to larger homes selling-still an increase, but hardly worthy of making the news. And of course if this scenario is played out across California as a whole, one wonders if the 9.9% median home price dip isn’t actually much steeper than reported?

*Data retrieved from the REIL MLS system for San Mateo County.