Lee Morof's Real Estate Blog

Many people think that staging a home effectively is a matter of money, but there are easy ways to dress it up and make it shine that don’t come with a high cost. If you’re looking for some economical tips that will go a long way in making a positive impression, here are a few ways to get your home prepared.

Pack Away The Personal

There are certain unique features in any house that can have a positive impact on potential homebuyers, but personal items will actually make it harder for guests to imagine themselves in your home. For a cost-free save, ensure that you pack away personal mementos and pictures so that guests aren’t distracted by the details of your life.

Keep It Clutter Free

An untidy home will have an instantly negative impact on the perception of your visitors, so you may want to enlist the help of your entire family to clean it from top to bottom. Instead of keeping papers and magazines that have been sitting around for years, sift through any coffee table piles and bedroom corners and discard all the things that will catch the eye too easily.

Take Out The Toolbox

If you’ve been postponing a few minor fix-ups like a damaged shelf or a loose door, now is the time to head to the hardware store and get these jobs done. Potential homebuyers will be looking at every aspect of your home, and maintenance will figure heavily into how interested they are, so an inability to deal with the small details can cue them to a home they shouldn’t invest in.

Do A Deep Clean

Cleaning the house, especially a sizeable one, can be the bane of many a homeowner but there’s no other time that cleaning properly is more important than when you’re staging it. While a dirty, dusty house may mean your guests won’t pay attention to your home’s best features, a newly clean home will provide visitors with a blank canvas from which to draw their conclusions.

From major overhauls to unique decorations that draw the eye, there are many great ways to stage a home, but making the small fixes and doing a deep clean are easy to do and don’t require a lot of cash. If you’re preparing to put your home on the market, you may want to contact one of our local real estate professionals for more information.

Many people think that staging a home effectively is a matter of money, but there are easy ways to dress it up and make it shine that don’t come with a high cost. If you’re looking for some economical tips that will go a long way in making a positive impression, here are a few ways to get your home prepared.

Pack Away The Personal

There are certain unique features in any house that can have a positive impact on potential homebuyers, but personal items will actually make it harder for guests to imagine themselves in your home. For a cost-free save, ensure that you pack away personal mementos and pictures so that guests aren’t distracted by the details of your life.

Keep It Clutter Free

An untidy home will have an instantly negative impact on the perception of your visitors, so you may want to enlist the help of your entire family to clean it from top to bottom. Instead of keeping papers and magazines that have been sitting around for years, sift through any coffee table piles and bedroom corners and discard all the things that will catch the eye too easily.

Take Out The Toolbox

If you’ve been postponing a few minor fix-ups like a damaged shelf or a loose door, now is the time to head to the hardware store and get these jobs done. Potential homebuyers will be looking at every aspect of your home, and maintenance will figure heavily into how interested they are, so an inability to deal with the small details can cue them to a home they shouldn’t invest in.

Do A Deep Clean

Cleaning the house, especially a sizeable one, can be the bane of many a homeowner but there’s no other time that cleaning properly is more important than when you’re staging it. While a dirty, dusty house may mean your guests won’t pay attention to your home’s best features, a newly clean home will provide visitors with a blank canvas from which to draw their conclusions.

From major overhauls to unique decorations that draw the eye, there are many great ways to stage a home, but making the small fixes and doing a deep clean are easy to do and don’t require a lot of cash. If you’re preparing to put your home on the market, you may want to contact one of our local real estate professionals for more information.

The spring is the most popular time of the year when it comes to real estate, and it’s a good time for a few fix ups if you’re putting your home on the market. While you may have a lot of different things to do before you’re ready for your first showing, here are the four things to keep at the top of the list.

Complete The Forgotten-About Fixes

If you’ve lived in your home for a while, it’s entirely possible that there’s a damaged baseboard or broken door latch that you haven’t gotten around to fixing; however, these are the things that a potential buyer will quickly notice. Instead of leaving it to chance, make a note of the little fixes and complete them before you set a date for a showing.

Do A Spring Clean

Packing up all of your stuff for a big move can be quite a gargantuan task, but taking advantage of spring-cleaning to clear out some old stuff will make the selling process a lot smoother. Not only will this force you to look at your home with new eyes, it means there will be little less to organize and de-clutter when it comes to staging time.

Break Out The Paint Cans

It’s important to stay away from colors that are too bold, but taking your brush to the paint can bring a lot to what viewers will take away from your home. Instead of a dull coat or chip marks, potential homebuyers will see your home in its best light. As painting your home can be quite a sizeable task, make sure you take this on well in advance of putting your home up for sale.

Check Out The Exterior

There’s often enough cleaning to do inside the home that the exterior is forgotten about, but this is the first thing a new visitor to your property will see. Instead of sticking to the inside, make sure that your lawn is mowed, any flowers beds are well groomed, and make sure that nothing appears out of place or disheveled.

There’s a lot to be done before putting your home on the market, but by following these tips you’ll be well on your way to a positive home staging. If you’re almost ready to sell and are weighing your options, contact your trusted real estate professional for more information.

From the cleaning to the organizing to the small fix-ups around the house, there can be a lot of minor details that go into staging a successful open house. However, there are a few essential items you should be sure not to forget about when you prep your home for an influx of potential buyers.

Choose The Right Time

If you happen to be selling your home in the busy season, it’s important to set your open house at a time that gives potential buyers room to breathe. While weekends are a popular time for open houses, you may want to choose a day or time that is a little different from other homes in your area. This means visitors to your home will be able to take their time and really see the details that make your home distinct and worth a second look.

The Exterior Speaks Volumes

With so much cleaning and so many small maintenance duties, it can be easy to forget about the first thing that guests will see when they show up at your doorstep, the exterior. However, this will provide the initial impression so you’ll want to ensure that it’s a positive one. Before organizing your open house, make sure the lawn is cleared and cut, the hedges are trimmed and your doorway is well maintained.

Make The Marketing Count

If you’ve primed your home for your open house, it’s important to ensure your marketing efforts are up to snuff and will get people through the door. While your real estate agent should feature your home and some professional photos on their website, you should also consider handing out flyers to your neighbors and advertising on social media to reach anyone who might be interested.

Engage All The Senses

It might sound strange, but a house that smells and sounds good in addition to a house that looks good can actually work wonders in swinging a buyer in the direction of your home. While having a clean, clutter-free place is ideal, you may want to consider baking beforehand or even leaving a little music on so people will feel relaxed and right at home.

There are a lot of little tricks that go into a successful open house and it’s important to utilize all of them to get the best results. If you’re putting your home on the market, contact your trusted local real estate professional for more information.

If you have a great house at the perfect price point, you’re already on the right path to selling your home successfully. However, there are still many tricks of the trade you can utilize to bring potential homebuyers to you. If you’re working with a real estate agent and are looking for great ways to grab attention, here are a few that may garner added interest.

Create A Video Tour

Open houses are great for giving potential homebuyers a look at your place, but posting a video of your home online can bring in a few more interested candidates than the typical staging. Find a professional who will be able to adequately highlight your space so those who can’t visit in person will get a sense of its special features up close.

Give Your Home A Website

With so many people hitting the Internet first to search for homes, having your own personal page on which your home is featured can be a great way to drum up interest. Whether it exists at its own web address or on your real estate agent’s page, this kind of spotlight can get people in the door.

Utilize Email Marketing

Many real estate professionals are using email marketing to share tips and bolster their business, but these emails can also be a great place to feature client homes. Instead of having to hand out flyers or rely on passive listings, your home featured in an email blast will easily reach a broad range of potential homebuyers.

Invest In Professional Photography

Lighting has a lot to do with the way your home will appear in an image, so hiring someone that can highlight its best features is key. While subpar photos on a website are not going to captivate anyone’s interest, some well-lit photos with a focus on unique details can work wonders.

Post On Social Media

There’s a good chance that your real estate agent has a Facebook page or Twitter account, and these can be ideal forums for marketing your home and finding unexpected leads. The power and prominence of social media means a wider audience and an even better opportunity for the right buyer.

With so many homebuyers flocking to the Internet to find their next home, it’s a great opportunity for real estate agents everywhere to harness its power and market online. If you’re preparing to list your home, contact your local real estate professional for more information.

Why The Added Incentive?

It may seem like keeping your home in good condition and pricing it according to its market value is good enough, but in more difficult market times many people have opted for extras that may boost the appeal of their home. While the wrong incentive strategy can make it look like you have a home that is not worth the asking price, there are classy ways value can be added that can still engage the right buyer.

Determine Your Ideal Buyer

If you’ve already decided that your ideal offer is a perfectly fair deal, you’ll want to consider what kind of incentives will successfully attract the buyer you’re looking for. Instead of merely dreaming up something that will be ineffective, determine a profile for who they are whether it’s young or old, single or family oriented so that you can offer benefits that will be marketed to them. By using incentives that are linked to their interests and lifestyle, you may be able to pique their curiosity enough that they’ll make a visit.

A Few Incentives To Consider

There are a lot of great opportunities for snagging new interested parties with an incentive, the bonus being that you won’t need to offer it up until the time you sell your home. If you’re located close to a beach resort, you may want to give away a surfboard or kayak; providing a gift card for a local restaurant or a golf membership can also be a great idea. While most people will not want to go to the extreme of giving away their transportation, some have gifted their luxury car in order to seal the deal.

A home in good condition and at the right price can often snag a purchasing offer, but if your home is lingering on the market, incentives can go a long way too. If you’re still trying to sell your home and are considering your options, contact your local real estate professional for more information.

Many people rely on the price they paid for their home as a starting point for selling, but with the ever-shifting tides of the real estate market, the price paid is not always the best metric to go by. If you’re putting your home up for sale and are looking for the ideal price point, here are some ways you can arrive at a number that will keep potential buyers interested.

Check Out Your Neighborhood

Your house may have a lot of different features than the homes of your neighbors, but checking out what real estate in your area is selling for can still be a good means of determining the price you’ll be able to ask for. Instead of just perusing the pricing, ensure you’re looking at the listings for what’s been successfully sold in your neighborhood as only this will allow you to determine the conditions of the market and what people will be prepared to offer.

Complete A Home Inspection

Instead of being surprised by repairs that need to be completed after an offer price has been accepted, organizing a home inspection before your home is sold can make a difference in the price you’re able to ask for. Not only will this provide you with a determination of what needs to be repaired or overhauled, it can be a boon to potential buyers who won’t have to worry about your inspection revealing any hidden flaws.

Utilize Your Agent’s Advice

Even if you’ve done your research and carefully considered the value of your home, it can still be complicated to come up with the right price, so be sure to enlist an agent who will be able to determine a fair amount with you. Since your agent has no attachment to your home, they’ll be able to objectively strike the right balance between what won’t sell and what’s too low. The right price, after all, may mean you’ll get to spend a lot less time selling it.

There are a lot of factors that go into arriving at the proper asking price for your home, but by organizing a home inspection and being aware of what’s going on in the market, you should be able to arrive at a reasonable sum. If you’re planning on putting your home on the market soon, contact your local real estate professional for more information.

With the real estate market going through constant fluctuations, it can sometimes be a matter of strife to sell a home. Some will take the familiar road of staging and hope the offers come in, while others will do some crazy things to prove their home is worth buying. While you may not want to take the risk of making these bold moves yourself, here are the unusual things that some people did in hopes of getting their home off the market a little sooner.

The Perk Of Added Incentives

While there are a variety of goods that can be an added incentive to purchasing a home, one homeowner in Virginia Beach offered a 42-inch flat screen television to the lucky person who would make them an offer that couldn’t be refused. While this owner managed to sell in just a couple of weeks, other offers like expensive cars and gift certificates have long been attached to houses in the hopes of getting a more spontaneous sale.

A Real Ingenious Raffle

In the state of Maryland, log cabin owners Tom and Diane Walter opted to host a raffle so they could raise enough money to pay off the loan on their home. While the winning raffle ticket buyer would go away with a new home for only $50.00, the profits from the raffle would go to a local non-profit and the Walters loan fund. With the toughness of the real estate market, it’s a tactic that has gained popularity given the excitement of getting a house at a very economical price.

Testing Out The New Home

It’s certainly the case that being able to test something out might lead to more sale success, but a local builder in Portland, Oregon took it a little bit further than usual. Instead of offering up a staged suite, potential buyers were provided with a stay in a home at Atwater Place that was free of charge and included restaurant gift certificates, a gym pass and a lovely view of Mount Hood.

Staging a nice home at a reasonable price is always a great way to achieve selling success, but some have gone out on a limb to offer things that went well beyond the benefits of a new home. If you’re interested in things you can do to increase your chance of selling success in the market, contact your local real estate professional for more information.

It can be easy to forget, but the first thing people will see when they come to your home is the outside, so it’s important to have a well-maintained and picturesque property that represents the inside of your home positively. If you’re looking for a few ways to boost your outdoor space, here are a few tips to help with curb appeal.

Plant A Flower Bed

Whether you decide on a tiny plot or a much larger space, a splash of flowers is great for adding a warm, homey atmosphere to your front yard. This can easily be done by going to your local nursery, picking out some easy-to-maintain perennials and watching the blooms begin to appear.

Trim The Hedges

It’s entirely possible that you have a few trees or shrubs in your yard that have gotten a little bit unruly, but a little time with the snippers for some shaping and the look of your yard will be automatically improved! If you have any shrubs or small trees that have seen better days, you may want to remove and replace.

A Fresh Coat Of Paint

It’s quite common to hear how much a layer of paint can improve things but this is especially true when it comes to your front door. While a tired and dull looking door can reflect poorly on the house within, a new coat of paint will add instant shimmer to your exterior.

Keep It Tidy

Whether you have kids who love to play in the yard or you’ve been doing a little lawn maintenance, leaving out toys or shovels and wheelbarrows can really take a lot away from your property’s look. While you may only be planning on keeping these items out for the short term, a quick pick up at the end of each day makes a marked difference.

Make A Stone Pathway

It may not be something you need, but a whimsical walkway with flattened stones can add a nice touch to your property and make it stand out. If you’re feeling ambitious, you may even want to add a bench or a birdbath to make for a unique escape for your family.

There are a lot of simple fixes you can utilize that will instantly boost the look of your home’s exterior. If you’re fixing up the outside of your home in the hopes of putting your property on the market, contact your trusted local real estate professional for more information.

Whether you’ve done a lot of research on the real estate market or you’ve sold a home before, you may be aware that there can be a lot of trepidation around how long your house remains up for sale. If you’re concerned about your home’s market potential, here’s what you need to know about “Days on Market” and how it can impact your home sale.

“Days on Market” Explained

A fairly no-nonsense phrase, Days on Market (DOM) refers to how long a home has been listed on the real estate market. The DOM stat can be found on many Multiple List Systems (MLS), and this can be seen as a signifier to agents and buyers of a home’s overall popularity. The way days on the market is determined varies from listing to listing, but the common belief is that after a certain period of time, a home’s valuation can be diminished.

What It Means To Potential Homebuyers

When it comes to real estate, the general hope is that a home will sell within the first 60 days of being put up for sale, and this is why the DOM can say a lot to potential buyers about your home’s value. While people may assume that a home that’s been sitting on the market for longer than this timeframe is either overpriced or in poor condition, there are ways the seller can get past this hiccup and still have selling success.

If “Days on Market” Are Adding Up

In the event that the first 30 days are drawing to a close and you haven’t received any offers, you may want to sit down with your real estate agent and decide on a new strategy together. While a home without offers can be a sign that your price is too high, you may also need to switch to an agent that will take a more assertive approach to selling. It can even be a good idea to remove your home from the market so the DOM can go back down to 0 and you can start from scratch.

A DOM in the double digits can often signal to buyers that there are issues with your home or asking price, so it’s important to keep this in mind when your home is on the market. If you have questions, contact your trusted real estate professional for more information.