Don’t Be Cheesey with Your Home Staging

Buyers want to be able to see themselves or their better selves in a new home.  Do you have a cupboard full of chips and chocolate bars, dust on your treadmill and a stack of Harlequin Romances on your night table?  Even if the can says cheese, there is none in those tasty little treats.  

Clean up your act.  Stage it so that Buyers think that your home is for healthy, active and intellectually stimulated people.  You know, people who eat brie on an apple slice while doing their cardio on the elliptical machine in front of a television playing the BBC.  

It may be an illusion that is worth the effort.  

Photo credit: cheese

Shopping at the Lansdowne Market – For the Birds!

Yesterday I bought a bird. 

We went to the Lansdowne Market.  Normally, the market ends in the fall but the Cattle Barn has been let to the local producers for a few Sundays.  The guidelines for the market are locally produced goods and food within a 100 mile radius – with the exception of fruit from Niagara.  It was a bit of a surprise to see how many crafters have rented booths.  It was the best of both worlds – shopping for food and for gifts.  There is one more Sunday (December 18th) left to go and get your baking, bread, meat, fall veggies and hand crafted goods. 

I found a wonderful booth of wire-made ornaments, wall hangings and free standing birds.  I fell in love with a gorgeous little crow.  This is the photo of the little guy settling into the bookcase.  The artist, Denise Atkinson, said that this was her favourite bird so far, that the irregularity of his wings is true.  I had to have him and know that there will never be another identical bird. 

I have noticed that we like to decorate with birds.  Since the beginning of time, man has used birds in his art – they symbolize energy and freedom.  There is significant symbolism for each bird, many that we seem to know intuitively.  When I looked around, I found that

If you are decorating or staging your home for sale, look at birds as part of the decorations and check what symbolism they reflect. 

It is a rare bird who is not attracted to avian decorations.

Haunted House Sale

Halloween comes only once a year.Why would you leave squeaky doors and drafty windows for Buyers to see and experience the other 364 days?   If your doors slowly close themselves or don’t close even when you pull them shut, it will look like a haunting. This is likely a level problem and not the intervention of the spirit world.  Adjust the doors and seal the frames around the windows. If you think your home has shifted, you may want to get a structural engineer in to take a look and provide an assessment before your home is on the market.

I love homes that are decorated for the seasons.  However, when you home is for sale, it may be prudent to reduce your decorations to a door wreath and pumpkins or vases of seasonal greenery.  Leave the For Sale sign on your lawn as the most important decoration.     

Don’t frighten a Buyer away.

Photo credit:  Halloween house

Jack of all Trays

If you have a counter in the bathroom or kitchen that has a lot of little containers, collect them and put them on a tray.  Your eye sees many little things such as tissues, cotton ball container and a soap pump as three things BUT if they are on a tray, they look like one item and less cluttered to the eye. 

The photo was taken in my kitchen.  I put the paper towel holder, the kleenex container (see the black item on the left), salt and pepper grinders, the dogs’ treat bowl and one or two little bags of treats all in that little tray.  It has freed up counter space and looks organized.  In addition to this tray, I also have three on the kitchen table – one for the condiments and serviettes and one for my husband and me (we put all those little things in them that just seem to float around the house like the mail, receipts, reading glasses, etc.

Collect and organize your clutter.

If you are blessed with deep window wells ………. Add Flowers

Most construction in North America does not lend itself to deep window wells.  Now, if your home was 300 years old or more, then the walls would be thick and the window wells deep.  If you have your home for sale, think of adding flowers, hanging, flower boxes or on your exterior window sills. 

Being the horrible wretch that I am, I had to add the signature and the location.  

Hope you like this collage.

Decisions, decisions

If you were a rich man,

You could build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen,

Right in the middle of the town.

A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below.

There would be one long staircase just going up, And one even longer coming down,

And one more leading nowhere, just for show.

But until you are rich, keep your house decisions simple and saleable. 

Don’t fiddle around with your future.

Wired Up for a Sale

 The challenge of flat screen televisions, especially those hung on walls and above the fireplace is what to do with all the cables.  You will have the electric cord, the cable cord and maybe the DVD player cord.  Okay, maybe there is the satellite cord with a PVR.  It is not a pretty sight.  Those cords dangle down from the TV cross the wall and snake over to the machines and outlets. 

Depending on your budget, the solutions include wireless cable, covering the cords by running them through a channel mounted on the wall, drilling into the wall and running the cords behind the wall or, if on brick, digging out a bit or mortar and wedging the cables in between the bricks (I don’t like this option).  You may need a combination of these.  All of them cost a bit of money and or effort but will improve the appearance of the wall mounted TV enormously.  

De-tangle a home sale with a well installed television. 

Photo credit:  Mimi’s TV

Makin’ beds in the hot sun.

Are you fighting to get a king size duvet in a duvet cover?  It is a Herculean task – too much sheet with too short arms.  Tempted to toss that duvet out the window?  Stop.  You too can have a duvet without the work. This tip will save you aggravation and minutes of time. 

To get that hotel look: 

To make it look clean and even more like the Westin / Soffitel, use plain white sheets and pillow cases.  The throw is actually just a strip of heavy beautiful fabric that is placed at the end of the bed from one side to the other.  Search the fabric stores for just the right piece of fabric and sew it into a srip.  Ah, lovely and the bed will look so inviting. 

I fought the bed and the sheets won.

Photo credit:  DSC_3270

Keyed Up – Oh where, oh where have my house keys gone?

KEYS

When you finally put your house on the market, the real estate agent is going to ask you for a set of keys that prospective Buyers and their agent can use to get in the house and the yard.  Well in advance of the sale, make sure that you have that set of keys made and then put away all the other keys that are scattered everywhere in your house.

Managing keys reduces time you spend every day locating keys that you need or looking at keys and wondering what they open.  Also, it is a security risk to leave keys all over the house when you have an Open House or unattended visitors.  Here are 5 tips on how to manage your keys.

  1. Always put your keys in the same spot in your purse or briefcase and, when you get home, in the same spot in the house.  This will save you months of time over the years that you would normally spend searching for keys.
  2. Tag all the keys in your house.  Sometimes we don’t use a key for a couple of years and then are left wondering what the key opens.  Especially tag the neighbour’s key and the key to your relatives’ homes so that you can find them in a hurry – should you get the emergency calls.
  3. Find a nice tin and put all the spare and infrequently used keys in this one spot.  You will be able to quickly find those tageed luggage keys, safety deposit box keys, locker keys, shed keys, cottage keys, your parents’ home keys, etc.  We do have a lot of keys to keep. 
  4. Many key shops sell fancy metals for their keys.  If you have trouble distinguishing keys on your chain, try having them made in leopard print, blue and the third one in flowers.
  5. Never leave your whole key ring at the auto repair shop.  Find a key ring where you can remove your key – or better yet – give them your spare key so that you will be able to keep a car key yourself.

Photo credit:  Keys 1

5 Photography Tips for Listings

 

This is a photo of a window in my house.  I am especially proud of my creative way of decorating this problem window but this photo should never be part of a listing.  At a recent Digital Photography course for real estate people (worth a couple of CE credits) and using this photo as an example,  I learned the following:

  1. Never shoot a photo towards the light.  As you can see the cream coloured walls look black.
  2. Use an external flash to fill in the room with enough light.  The built-in flash on the digital camera is not strong enough.  Again, the walls around the window disappeared.
  3. No fancy frames around a photo or soft focus edges.  A house listing is about seeing the rooms not the wonderful options available in Picnik or Photoshop.
  4. People love to see windows in a room.  You will certainly want to include them.  Try taking a minimum of 4 photos in each room, one in each corner.  If there are slate blinds, have the homeowner raise them as the blinds will give a moray pattern on the photo.
  5. Try to get 90% of what you want in the original photo.  Most listing services have standard landscape and portrait sizes to upload.  Anything unusual, like this square cropped photo, will not show well on the 10 or 12 photo spaces available. 

I like to take a few photos of homes that I list but I always hire a professional photographer for the all important MLS® photos and I use every allowable space. 

Don’t shoot your listing in the foot with bad photography.

Valerie Zinger  email: vzinger@royallepage.com  (613-723-5300)

Royal LePage Gale Real Estate,  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada  

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