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It’s Curtains for Curtains
Quick, what can you easily do without when selling your home?
Not your realtor.
Not you handyman.
Not your stager.
It’s your curtains!
I routinely recommend that clients remove curtains or window treatments when getting ready to sell. Clients are usually horrified.
- Won’t people be able to see in? Maybe
- Won’t the buyers be able to see the (less than ideal) view? Yes, but they already knew it was there.
- Won’t the buyers miss the carefully chosen (dated, dusty, and dark) curtains? No.
Window treatments are both costly and highly personalized. Updating to a more neutral choice is prefered, but it can easily cost the seller $100 per window and up to outfit a window. Per window. And it is not unusual for the curtain hardware alone to be as costly as the window treatment.
So what’s a homeowner to do? Often, the best choice is to remove the window treatments altogether and leave the window bare. Most home buyers can evaluate the house better without any fashion statements hanging at the windows. Showing a property as light, bright, and well-maintained will always win out over decor that is personalized, sacrifices the available light, and might be regarded as “another project” that the new homeowner will need to deal with.
Home stagers agree. We’re happy to update or add window treatments if the budget allows, but if there are more pressing updates needed, curtains should be simplified or removed for an instant facelift.
Your professional stager is the best person to recommend the lean look or to fashion a low-cost, on-trend solution that coordinates with the decor.
Best wishes with selling your home this spring!
Thanks to realtor Stephanie Newcomb of EveryHome Realty for her involvement on this post.
Good News for The Housing Market: Home Staging Not Optional
Forget Greece and the European debt crisis. Did you hear the good news? The housing numbers have been good and improving quietly across the nation. Here’s a summary from www.Realtor.org and www.NPR.org :
Pending Home Sales Up in May, Annual Gains Strong
June 27, 2012 Pending home sales bounced back in May, matching the highest level in the past two years, and are well above year-ago levels, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Both monthly and annual gains were seen in every region. http://www.realtor.org/news-releases/2012/06/pending-home-sales-up-in-may-continue-pattern-of-strong-annual-gains
Home Prices Tick Up, Housing Market Recovery May Be Strengthening
June 26, 2012 The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed gains in nearly all major cities during April. While prices are still down from their boom-time highs, a recovery may be building.
New Home Sales Pace Fastest Since 2010
June 25, 2012 Americans bought new homes in May at the fastest pace in more than two years, adding to evidence of a slow housing recovery. Sales of new single-family homes jumped 7.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 369,000 homes.
Signs Of Strength In Latest Housing Data
June 19, 2012 There was a 7.9 percent jump in the number of construction permits issued to home builders in May. And construction began on more single family homes than in April.
Yes, there is still a flood of foreclosures across the nation, and but the situation is improving. I’ve seen a slew of new real estate listings and SOLD! signs just this month.
So, what does this modest housing recovery mean to buyers and sellers?
As the market improves, and more sellers who have been holding off on listing come into the market, there may be more homes available. In some markets, buyers can afford to be choosy, and they will most often chose the homes that are maintained and presented well. Of course, since prices are improving, that means that buyers may pay more for homes than they would have during the last few years, but mortgages are still at historic lows and home prices have apparently market-corrected in many regions. Buyers have been trained to look for nice houses, and they are getting choosy. If faced with a fixer and a move-in ready property in the same price range, buyers will almost always choose the move-in ready property.
Sellers, on the other hand, will have the chance to sell at higher prices than recently, but they might also face more competition. Gone are the days of putting up a marginal house and hoping a “flipper” will pay top dollar. Easy mortgage money isn’t available to the buyers anymore, so sellers really have to work to present the house that qualified buyers want to see. Buyers always want a well-maintained house that is stylish, light-filled, super-clean, move-in ready, odor free, and updated. If that sounds like a pretty long list to check off, then it’s probably time to check into home staging.
In the words of that great housing economist, Nate Berkus, “Home staging is no longer optional.”
A good rule of thumb is to expect to spend up to 3% of your home’s price prepping it for competitive pricing. History proves that staged homes sell in about half the time of non-staged homes, both in an up market and a down market. So investing a small percentage on you real estate can save you big bucks, since the first price reduction can be up to 10% of the price of the home.
Yes, you can DIY your home staging, but it is super hard to do on your own house, take it from me. You are just too close to it. But if you just need the plan, we can provide you a detailed, customized personalized plan with a 2-hour visit.
If you want us to do the heavy lifting, we can stage as little as one room starting at $525, all the way up to an entire house, inside and out. We can work with you immediately or over several years so you can enjoy the changes you make before you use them to attract your next buyer.
Photo Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos
Moving The Easy Way with These Tips
Summer is high time for moving. A friend asked for moving tips today, so I thought I’d share them with you. If you aren’t moving this summer, but know someone who is, please pass along this link. (You can hit one of the little buttons at the bottom of this post and it will automagically send it along on your favorite network. If you don’t see those magic little buttons at the bottom of the post, just click on the article title at the top, and then you should see them at the bottom.)
Moving Tips
First, declutter. Yeah, I know, duh. But it’s really important to take a minimum of 2 days to go through and toss/donate stuff. It really stinks to unpack stuff you know you don’t want to keep, because then you start with clutter in the new place. Do this sooner than you want to. The goal is to have no extra trash at the curb on move day.
Keep written records of your donations for tax purposes. It may not seem like much, but you can earn a couple of hundred on taxes next year if you donate your goods and document properly. You can use this template form to document tax deductible donations.
If your layout between the old and new places is changing, be sure to pack stuff for the space you are moving into. For instance, if you don’t have a playroom now, but you will in the next place, pack all the playroom stuff in boxes labelled “playroom”, so it is easier to find and unpack.
Pack a “red cross” box that goes last out/first in. This should have toilet paper, extra meds, clean sheets, and anything else your family can’t live without for 24 hours. Mark it with a huge red X on ALL sides, so it is easy to find. I like poster paint markers for this kind of identification.
Keep your tools out till the VERY. LAST. MINUTE. You always need an allen wrench at the end to take something or other apart, and most movers don’t carry tools. Unbelievable but true.
A shout out to my friend Stephanie Anderson from www.moderndaydonnareed.com with her excellent point that I have used many, many times, even when I’m not moving: “Take the legs off of things like tables, chairs – break it all down – and put the screws/bolts in baggies that you duck tape to the furniture so you can put it back together when you arrive.” Actually, I also write on the baggie with a Sharpie what the screws belong to, so if it doesn’t get put together immediately after the move, they don’t get forgotten.
Working with Professional Movers
There are also a few things you should know specifically when you are working with a moving company. Check out these tips at my post on How to Work with Professional Movers. Keep in mind that interstate movers are regulated, and you must receive a written quote, which is protection for you. Don’t try to cheap out on this, since the hassle with lost and broken goods isn’t worth it.
If a move is in your future, I wish you the best.
Why Remove Pictures when Staging
Removing personal pictures from your home is one of the first and easiest things you’ll do when staging your home for sale. There are three reasons you want to remove personal pictures from your home when it’s on the market.
1. You want to leave room for the buyer to imagine their family, not yours, in the home. First impressions happen very quickly, and it’s just easier for a potential buyer not to have to erase an image of your family so they can picture themselves at home. Only about 10-20% of buyers can imagine the changes they want to make to your home. Don’t stress the other 80% who can’t.
2. Buyers love to wander over to your wall or table of family pictures to see if they know you. It’s only human; we want to connect. They’ll want to see if they know you from high school, if you look like them, or if your kids are about the same age as their kids. Any time they spend trying to make these connections with you, they aren’t making the connection with the house, which is exactly what you need to have happen.
3. It’s just prudent to safeguard your family. Buyers are strangers, after all, and there is no reason that you need to let strangers know how old your kids are, what activities they participate in, and what your family likes to do in your free time.
Most sellers don’t want to remove family photos because they think that means removing the frames and necessitating a new paint job. Not so. One easy trick is to replace family photos with landscape art that goes with your decor. In this shot, you can see that the homeowner doctored a family hallway montage, and now it features some peaceful seaside shots. Still pretty, still framed, but now something that draws you through the space to the next beautiful room, instead of slowing you down in the short hallway.
If your home is on the market, and you haven’t yet taken down or swapped the family photos, what are you waiting for?
Kitchen Remodel vs. Facelift
Did you know that Remodeling Magazine produces a helpful Cost Vs Value report every year helping homeowners to determine the relative value of their home remodeling projects? One interesting fact is that a “Minor Kitchen Remodel” has typically recouped greater (72%) return on investment (ROI) over a “Major Kitchen Remodel” at 66%. Those numbers have been consistent for at least the years I’ve been watching them. So when another mom friend with two children about the same ages as mine was asking my advice on updating her kitchen, I asked her to seriously consider what the advantages to complete gut would be over a cosmetic remodel.
In the end, she decided to go with a minor remodel, updating the oak cabinets and oddly added crown molding with an antique cream finish. She used the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations product that has been getting some attention over the last year.
We both love this outcome because they saved a ton o’ money, and because their perfectly solid oak cabinets are still in use, not in the landfill. And, check out how the paint unified the crown molding, and made it look like it belongs to the cabinets.
She’s currently working on painting the island and swapping out the island counter for something a bit more updated. But, wow, what a great transformation! And I love the new cabinet pulls. Great choice, for a bit of contrast.
Here’s what she said about the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation product: It took me about 1 week to do, mostly while the kids were sleeping. It isn’t hard, just very time-consuming. The kit said it would only take 2 coats of the base coat, but it actually took me 3. It is totally well worth it in the end. My only minor concern is durability. I noticed a couple of chip on the cabinet by the trash can…..it is very easy to touch up though. I will say that I did drop a few of the cabinet doors on the garage door when I was trying to carry them in the house to reassemble. Amazingly, they were okay! Last night I started the island. I was waiting to figure out what color but I ended up doing it the same color. I didn’t feel like getting a new kit for an accent color since this is temporary. All in all, it only took me 1 large kit to do the kitchen.
This would also be a great, economical option for staging an older home to sell. This antique cream finish is very current.
If you have any questions about doing this kind of project, or any firsthand experience with this product, I would love to hear it.
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