First Impressions: Get Instant Curb Appeal With These 10 Must-Dos
By Christine Rae, Staging Expert
The Internet is the first source for viewing a property for most buyers, even before talking to a real estate professional. That means curb appeal is important because they are “driving by” the listing, and you don’t know it.
Here are 10 things to consider when assessing the curb appeal of your listing:
1. Pressure wash siding, decks, and walkways.
2. Clean windows and gutters, and check downspouts.
3. Check the growth of trees and bushes–ensure they don’t block light from any window.
4. Kill any mold or mildew around the property. Read more
Room Makeovers: What Could You Do in 2 Hours With $250?
Three real estate pros accepted REALTOR® Magazine’s staging challenge: They had 2 hours to transform one room for under $250. They tackled a home office, living room, and master bedroom. See how they transformed these rooms by being budget savvy and smart with their accessories and placement of furniture. Get ideas for your listings!
Pop Quiz: Name This Architecture Style!
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey
Hint: This architecture style is often known for being square or rectangular with one or one-and-a-half stories and steeply pitched, gabled roofs. In the mid-20th century these small homes were popular in suburban developments.
ANSWER: See if you are correct >
Bathroom Update: Maximum Impact on a Minimal ($71) Budget
By Charlene Storozuk
Let me start out by telling you that our home was the recipient of this quick and easy facelift. My husband and I bought our home as a fixer-upper. It’s taking longer than expected to finish because little things such as life, time, and money seem to get in the way. When it came time to update the bathroom, we had a decision to make. Do we totally renovate it, or spend the money on a new patio instead?
Since both of us love the outdoors, the patio won out. Here’s what I’ve done with the bathroom temporarily and something you can pass along as an inexpensive fix for those selling their homes.
You’ll see that the cupboards looked tired and were starting to peel. The previous home owner painted them before listing, but he either didn’t clean them thoroughly, or he used the wrong paint. Read more
Picture It: Create a Character to Guide Your Design
By Mary Cook, Mary Cook & Associates
Now more than ever, model homes are key sales tools for developers. In the current housing market crisis, people are weighing every factor in their decision on buying a home.
Beyond the typical questions on the quality of the finishes, school districts, and mortgage rates, those who are looking to spend their life savings on a place are looking for deeper psychological reasons to sign on the dotted line.
Does this home speak to me? Can I imagine my lifestyle being a fit here?
That’s why my firm spends so much time getting to know the prospective audience for which we design model homes. We design for specific people, often taking the time to create fictitious characters such as “John the Wall Streeter,” who lets his girlfriend decorate his place. Read more
Pop Quiz: Name This Architecture Style!
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey
Hint: This style of home is known as being narrow and rectangular with one and one-half stories, low-pitched gable or hipped roofs, and small covered porches at the entry. This home style was popular in the 1880s until the Great Depression.
ANSWER: See if you are correct >
Biggest Losers: 20 Home Design Features That Send Buyers Running
By Barbara Ballinger, Architecture Coach columnist and guest blogger
Design glitches draw attention away from a home’s best features. Don’t let out-of-date fixtures and unappealing decor cost you a sale. While some buyers may actually appreciate “vintage” features, home and design experts say these 20 features almost always serve as a turnoff.
1. Dated and excessively bold or dark paint and tile colors, such as “Pepto Bismol” pink, avocado green, deep plum, or jet black. “Dark can be cool, but it has to be a color that’s popular today,” says sales associate Jennifer Ames, crs®, of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Chicago.
2. Lacquered or high-gloss painted walls that are expensive to repaint and show all defects. Likewise, faux- and sponge-painted walls can be so passe.
3. Painted trim that’s very dark-and costly to remove.
4. Wallpaper, which is a lot of work (and potentially expensive) to remove. Most disliked: Dated flowered or striped patterns. Read more
Do Psychological Triggers Draw You to Certain Homes?
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey
Determining which home to buy goes beyond the number of bedrooms, square footage, or even location, according to Azevedo & Associates, a real estate brokerage in Granite Bay, Calif. Instead, the real estate company is asking its buyers to weigh the emotional and psychological pull of a home.
The brokerage believes such responses are a major driver for home purchasing and developed the Houseonality Quiz to lead buyers through an exercise to tap into those psychological and emotional triggers of homeownership. Read more
Making Sense of Green Home Certifications
By Erik Fowler, Green trends expert
This is the fourth article in a series designed to help you make sense of the green landscape as a real estate professional. REALTOR® Magazine’s Styled, Staged & Sold blog and I are excited to be covering green home trends in America. In the previous article, I provided a quick guide to green home trends. Here, we’ll highlight green home ratings and certifications.
As we discussed in the last few articles, when discussing green homes it’s important to avoid generalizations or greenwashing, and stick to specifics. As real estate professionals, we should always insist on third-party sources of reliable and verifiable information wherever possible.
When people make “green” claims, we need to know exactly what they mean.
Below are the most widely recognized national green building and/or energy efficient programs nationwide. Keep in mind there are local and regional green building programs as well.
For instance, the Austin Green Building Program was not only one of the first programs in the country to develop a regional green building standard, but it is still considered to be one of the very best programs and models.
Commonalities Among Green Programs
All green building programs should ideally share some common attributes, namely:
- Third-party verification;
- Performance (points) and/or a prescriptive path designed to set green “targets” in several green categories;
- Documentation;
- A resource center for the builder and the consumer.
The point to note is that a standard is followed, documented, measured, and verified. We all know what happens when standards are “self enforced” with no accountability (think latest mortgage crisis).
Also, notice below the various categories of green, what each certification addresses, and recall that green homes do more than address just energy use. While very important, energy is not the only measure of green or sustainability in a home or building.
Men From Mars, Women From Venus? Not So Much When Shopping for a Home
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey
Women and men home buyers don’t differ too much when it comes to what they look for in a home, according to a new survey by Coldwell Banker Real Estate, which asked 1,000 women and men about their home buying preferences.
However, women do tend to make up their minds more quickly about a home than men. In fact, according to the survey, 70 percent of women had made up their mind the day they walked into the house compared to 62 percent of men—who often needed two or more visits to decide.
Men and women mostly agree on how they would use a spare 12 x 12 room, if they had their choice. Their top choices: Read more
