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Posts tagged selling a home in spring

Boosting Buyer Interest in Spring

Apr05
2010
Leave a Comment Written by Alicia

green for spring

If your home has been on the market since the cold, inactive months of winter real estate, now is the time to step it up. Warm spring weather tends to reactive the real estate market and adds numerous new home sellers to the market, causing your home to fall to the bottom of the pile. Home buyers are also most active in the coming months, and they are interested in the new rather than the old. What can you do to reestablish interest in your home? Here are five starting tips:

  • Add a significant upgrade or minor upgrades to your home. A major upgrade could include adding an Energy Star refrigerator, repainting your entire exterior or interior, upgrading your countertops to granite or replacing old carpeting with hardwood flooring. Minor upgrades could include adding a new front door, repainting the deck or adding a keypad entry to the garage. Then, have your advertisement updated with these new improvements.
  • Redecorate. It’s the perfect way to spend your spare time while waiting for interested home buyers. That way, when you do host an open house or show the house to potential buyers, you can rave about the contemporary colors of paint you added. Or, you can remain silent and just allow the buyers to breathe in the scent of the spring flowers on the table.
  • Include an item with your home sale to perk more interest. While keeping the price the same, update your advertisements to say that you will leave your rider lawn mower, your chic chandelier, your designer curtains or your vintage rug. If you’re really desperate to sell, you could even offer the home fully furnished.
  • Keep the outside of your house looking immaculate. Try mowing your lawn diagonally for visual appeal and to make the yard appear larger. Trim the edges of the lawn along the driveway and walkway. Trim all the trees and bushes, rake the yard and pull weeds from the gardens. If the outside of the house looks appealing, potential home buyers will want to see the inside.

These tips will get you well on your way to gaining potential home buyer interest!

Posted in Selling Tips, Tips and Ideas - Tagged fsbo, real estate, selling a home, Selling Tips
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Incorporate Spring into Your Decor

Apr03
2009
1 Comment Written by Alicia

decorating-patio

The drab days of winter are headed out to make room for the bright, green days of spring! Celebrate this time of nature’s rebirth by sprucing up your home’s décor. Even on rainy days you can still enjoy the beauty that is erupting around you. Incorporate the sights and scents of flowers, trees and freshly cut grass by bringing them inside! These new features will lift your spirits and remind you that summer is right around the corner. Here are some decorating ideas to get your creative juices flowing!

Before the redecorating process, participate in a quick spring cleaning. Brush away the winter dust and cobwebs to make the interior brighter and fresher! De-clutter by forming a pile of unneeded items to give to charity or to sell in a future garage sale!

Attempt to create a room with a feng shui personality. A feng shui room displays an open, uncluttered space with balance, positive energies and soft colors. For more information, click here.

Color reappears in the form of blossoming trees, fresh green grass and lush flower petals. Bring this happy energy inside by painting an accent wall in a citrus color or by adding bright throw pillows or a throw rug. Or store your area rug away during the spring and just show off your hardwood or ceramic floor! Hang floral patterns inside frames for the wall or swap a neutral lampshade with a bold patterned shade!

If your outdoor furniture has been stashed away all winter and isn’t quite ready to reaffirm its outdoor placement, bring it inside for now. It’ll add new texture to a room and remind you of upcoming barbecues or pool parties to look forward to!

Spring fills the warm outdoor air with an abundance of fresh scents! Bring these smells indoors with candles or scented plug-ins that remind you of spring. Fall asleep to the calming scent of rain, get ready in the morning to the scent of jasmine and throw together a healthy salad to the scent of lilac or lily of the valley!

Integrate spring into your interior by adding nature accessories. Hang a bird house on your wall, accent house plants with bird feathers, line a mantel with a green vine or keep a vase of vibrant flowers on the dining table. If using fake flowers, fill the vase with colorful pebbles or grass.

Bring the natural elements of the outdoors as close to your interior as possible! If you don’t already have screens on your doors and windows, add them! This will allow you to open your interior to fresh air even during rainstorms and bug disruptions. For the sound of chirping birds, throw some bird seed onto your patio or front porch.

Replace window blinds with thin, pastel-patterned curtains. These curtains still block the light when needed, can easily be opened and will always remind you that the sun is making a comeback!

Introduce crystal and glass vases or silverware to any area for style that attracts the sun! Replace the heavy winter blanket that’s been draped over your couch with a soft, satin sheet and switch the old tablecloth with sheer linen.

Instead of buying new accessories, just move around what you have! Moving a decoration from one room to the other or switching the layout of the furniture can appear as significant as buying a new item. Store some of your furnishings away for a more open, brighter environment.

If you decide to only add one spring attribute, opt to turn a regular mirror into a room’s audacious showpiece! Purchase a mirror with a flat frame and then cover this frame with a vivid, artistic pattern! Every time you look into the mirror, the pattern’s dazzling energy will absorb into you.

Posted in Home Improvement, Tips and Ideas - Tagged home decorating, spring, spring decorating, springtime
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How Not to Sell Your Home This Spring

Mar09
2009
Leave a Comment Written by Shanna

How Not to Sell

Throughout most of the country, the weather is warming up, and along with it, the interest of buyers. Spring tends to bring buyers out of hiding, so it’s a very important time in terms of home marketing.

Are you prepared for increased interest? Is your home?

As you make the important decisions in marketing and attempting to sell your property, take a look at this tongue-and-cheek list, and don’t make the same mistakes.

Here are the ways to keep your home on the market and not sell this spring:

Price It Too High
Nothing will scare potential buyers away faster than a home that’s overpriced. Rather than examining the market and comparing your residence to similar ones in the area, choose an asking price that you just wish you could get. If you advertise your home for more than two months without any interest at all—especially this time of year—don’t weaken. Just wait out the busiest selling season with a too-high price tag, and you’ll be sure to keep your home.

Ignore the Competition
Don’t just ignore the pricing of your neighbors and other similar homes in the area; overlook their features, upkeep and amenities, as well. Just because potential buyers will know about these other properties doesn’t mean you need to. If the neighbors added an extra bedroom or remodeled their kitchen, especially while keeping their home at the same price as yours, don’t let that worry you. Just ignore it.

Live Like You’re Staying
Remember this motto: It’s still our house. You don’t have to clean, declutter or showcase anything yet. Keep living like you always have. If buyers find it hard to imagine themselves living in your home, that’s their problem.

Skip the Internet
When it comes to marketing your property, don’t put anything online, where potential buyers from all over the world can find you. Skip going with Buy Owner®, where you can customize your advertising to your needs. Don’t use photographs or virtual tours, and don’t highlight your property’s features. Let buyers figure things out for themselves.

Show It on Your Schedule
When a buyer wants to schedule a showing, tell him or her it needs to be on your timetable. Emphasize your schedule restraints, and tell the buyer to work around them. When buyers arrive, hover over them throughout the tour; then, as soon as possible, push them out the door.

Remember, selling a home—in spring or any other time of year—is a big decision and one that requires planning and preparation. If you follow the above tips, you could very easily push interested buyers away and see the spring and summer months pass by without an offer. Don’t let that happen to you!

Posted in Selling Tips, Tips and Ideas - Tagged how not to sell a home, how not to sell fsbo, how to sell fsbo, sell tips
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Spring Means Declutter!

Mar06
2009
Leave a Comment Written by Shanna

Get-Rid-of-Clutter-NOW

Ah, spring. In many parts of the country, after months of protracted winter, spring signals the arrival of many long-awaited benefits: green grass, thriving flowers, a week of school break, the drawing near of summer. And this is truer nowhere than in real estate.

As lawns and landscaping begin to flourish, homes look better than they have in months. And even in areas of the nation where beautiful weather runs year-round, spring still brings increased interest in buying homes.

So, beyond planting flowers and trimming your hedges, what do you need to do to prepare a home you’re selling for spring interest?

In a word: declutter.

Now more than ever, it’s time to get rid of unnecessary clutter in your home, and here’s how.

1. Organize. This task will be easier if you break it down into manageable steps. So start with one room, any room. Then, in that room, start with one section: a bookshelf, a dresser, a cabinet, whatever. Pull everything from that section out and put like things together. (Example: all DVDs together and all CDs together.)

2. Evaluate. After you have all the items from that section pulled out in front of you and grouped into categories, figure out what you need to keep. If you use things (or legitimately plan to use them), keep them. If you don’t, get rid of them.

3. Purge. The stuff you will toss can go to several places. Does it have resale value? If so, look into eBay, Amazon or Craigslist. Would someone you like to have it? Give it away. If you can neither sell it nor give it to a friend, then the item should either go to Goodwill or a similar charity, or, if it’s in especially poor shape, it should be thrown away.

When you’ve finished with your first shelf or closet, congratulations! Step one, done! Now, move to the next section of your space, and repeat the steps. One area at a time, you’ll be able to work through your home and get everything in organized, efficient shape.

It hardly needs to be said, but the benefits of this task are numerous:

1. Order in your life. Imagine how wonderful it will feel to look for a book and know exactly where to find it, to go for a box of cereal and be able to pull it from the neatly stacked cereal shelf. Organization makes for a less stressful life.

2. Usefulness for your things. Through this process, unused possessions are either being discovered and used or given away to people who will want them.

3. Maximized selling appeal. Organized, clutter-free living spaces give your home’s quality characteristics the opportunity to shine. And make no mistake: sellers notice.

4. An easier moving process. After all, the whole reason you started this decluttering activity was to sell your home, right? When you do sell your home, you’re going to need to go through all of your things, packing them up, anyway. Why not shorten that process by doing a lot of the work now?

Posted in Home Improvement, Tips and Ideas - Tagged clutter, declutter, getting rid of clutter, real estate tips, selling a home, spring, spring selling tips
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