Real Estate Terms of the Week

Home Market Analysis  
The Home Market Analysis presents an opportunity to review and evaluate the facts before you decide the price you will ask for your home. It also helps you look at your home from a buyer’s perspective. This process will establish a realistic listing price and increase the percentage of qualified buyers who look at your property.

REALTOR®  
An active member of a local board of realtors. Local boards are affiliated with the National Association of REALTORS®.

 PITI  
Principal, Interest, Taxes, and Insurance – the four elements of a monthly mortgage payment; payments of principal and interest go directly towards repaying the loan while the portion that covers taxes and insurance (homeowner’s and mortgage, if applicable) goes into an escrow account to cover the fees when they are due.

Source: GMAC Real Estate

Staging In A Buyer’s Market

Staging is the act of preparing your home for sale.  Whether you are currently living in your home or if it is vacant.  Staging works in a sellers market and a buyers market.  In a buyer’s market there are a lot of homes to choose from.  In order to make a good impression on potenial buyer’s you need to have your home professionally staged.

At the very least hire a Stager for a consultation.  The Stager will walk through your home and make suggestions on things to fix, pack up, minimize and DE-CLUTTER, DE-CLUTTER, DE-CLUTTER.  Once you have that list you can do the rest, if  you want to do the work yourself, or you can hire the Stager to take care of the staging details for you.  Vacant or lived in, a Stager will make your home look it best to the general public.  Whether they use what you already own or if they bring in furniture and or accessories. Neutralizing where possible, so anyone who walk in your home could say, “My dining room table would fit nicely in that big dining room,  this would be a great place for my _____, I think our _____ would like fantastic here, etc.”  If there are too many distractions (clutter, collections, extreme colors and even too many family photos) people tend to look at the distractions instead of the home. 

Before and after decluttering and then bringing in some staging furniture.

Before and after a little paint, furniture placement and bookcase design.

Some Stagers will tell you to remove all of your photos.  I don’t think that is necessary.  A few family photos showing happy people makes people feel good and think “look how happy they look in this house”.  However, if you have a hallway, stairway or wall of photos … MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE!  When there are too many photos people feel like they are intruding in your personal space, and they will spend less time in your home and that’s not the goal!  We want them to feel comfortable, take there time so they can imagine themselves in your home, and then want to make an offer.

Here’s a list of some more things that should be done:

Keep your kitchen and bathrooms CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN.

Keep your personal bathroom items out of site and keep wastebasket empty.

Declutterand pack up your knickknacks, trophies, souvenirs, collections, political and religious items.

Clean out and organize ALL of your cabinets. (People will open them and look inside.)

Remove all unhealthly plants.

Remove worn throw pillows and replace with fresh, updated ones.

Remove/Organize clothes, shoes, purses etc) from your closet so that garments are not touching each other.  

Too many books looks like clutter, so minimize your books.  (Look through some magazines to get ideas on how to arrange your bookcases in a decorative way.) 

If you have painted any unusual or bold colors (inside or out), consider painting a neutral color. Potential buyers won’t necessarily have the same taste as you, and we want them to be able to imagine living there.

I hope this answered at least some of your questions.  Do you have any questions?  What did I miss?

Jill Denton ~ Changing Spaces, serving the san Francisco Bay Area