North Shore Views

Archive for the 'Selling a home' Category

Does Your House Have Halitosis?

Nothing can turn off a potential seller like a house that smells.

Trouble is, when we live in a house, we get used to its particular “aroma” and we may not even realize that others find it noticeably unpleasant. And I know of what I speak. With 3 large dogs, 5 chinchillas and a guinea pig, my house is somewhere between farm and zoo on the olfactory scale. If I ever sell my house, I will have to do some serious odor remediation.

There are several smells that you want to avoid when your house is on the market: cooking aromas, cigarette and cigar smoke, pet odors, garbage and, last but not least, that stale smell typical of a vacant house that’s been closed up for an extended period.

The best way to know if your house does give off an unpleasant odor is to ask a trusted friend to come over and take an objective whiff. Remember that old air freshener ad where the neighbor comes over, sniffs the air and  and says, “Fish for dinner last night?” Of course, no one would actually say that to you, but in this case you really do want her to. Promise her you won’t be offended.

Here are some ways to minimize bad smells in your house:

• Take the garbage out every day and especially right before a showing or an open house.
• Quit smoking. You’ve been wanting to since forever. Well, now you have another good reason to do it. But there will still be smoke smell lingering on all the curtains and upholstery (which you probably won’t notice, but others will), so it might also be a good time to call the Stanley Steemer man.
• Watch what you cook while your house is on the market, and always use the exhaust fan in your kitchen. Certain foods have smells that linger: fish, lamb, broccoli, garlic, onions, curry and fried foods. If you want to eat those things while your house is for sale, go to a restaurant.
• Wash the dog and his bed often.
• Stash the litter box in the garage when people are coming through the house.
• Use a de-humidifier in the basement, especially in summer.

Before you run out and buy all those plug-in air freshener thingies you see advertised on TV, be warned that using them can backfire. First, because the scent may be overpowering, and some people are actually allergic or hyper-sensitive to the fragrances used in those products. And second, because if the scent is really noticeable, people will think you’re trying to cover up something (which you are).

Instead, try these ideas to freshen up your home:

• Open the windows for an hour every day and let fresh air circulate.
• Cut up some lemon wedges and run them through the garbage disposal before showings and open houses.
• Use an odor eliminator like PureAyre which eliminates rather than masks odors. It is completely safe to use around food, babies and people with allergies. It doesn’t cover up odors. Instead it breaks down odor causing compounds. It’s not cheap, but it works. You can buy it at Petco, Whole Foods or online.
• Put a small reed diffuser in the bathroom with a vanilla scent. Vanilla is one of the most universally appealing scents.
• You can bake cookies or you can just heat up some water and throw fresh cinnamon into it. Just turn it off before buyers come though, so it’s not overwhelming.

Related articles:

• Home Staging Works. Here’s Proof.
• How Photos Can Prevent Your House from Selling
  

Tags: eliminating house odors

Home Staging Works. Here’s Proof

If you are planning to sell your North Shore home and wondering if spending money to stage it first makes sense, you might want to take a look at the report issued annually by the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA), the home staging industry trade group. The report looks at how long a staged home takes to sell vs. an unstaged home. The conclusion: staged homes sell around 75% faster. Granted, this is not a representative sample of homes across the US, and there is no way to have a side by side comparison of homes that are exactly alike in all respects except whether they are staged. Still the huge difference in average time on market does make a pretty compelling case.

Here are some of the highlights:

After being on the market unstaged for 277 days on average, vacant homes then sold within 63 days after being staged.

After being on the market unstaged for 233 days on average, occupied homes sold within 53 days after being staged.

284 homes that were staged before being listed sold in 40.5 days.

You can read the  full RESA report here.

If you’d like to learn more about staging your home to sell, please give me a call at 847–687-5957 or email me.
I am a certified home stager and staging is part of my service for all of the sellers that I represent.

Related Articles:

• Beyond Cleaning and Decluttering
• Painting Your House to Sell

Tags: home selling tips, Home staging

Beyond Cleaning and De-Cluttering: 7 Staging Tips You Haven’t Heard

Any North Shore homeowner who is planning to sell their home has heard the mantra: Clean and de-clutter.  For sure those things are critical, but hardly constitute a news flash. Here are seven things to do in addition to cleaning and de-cluttering that will help sell your house:

1. Spend your money where you can see it.

When you go to sell your house, you normally have a long list of things to do to get it sale-ready. Some of these are fixes, some are updates and some are replacements. If anything is broken or damaged or not working properly, you need to get it fixed. Otherwise it will show up on the inspection report and could end up costing you the sale or dragging out the negotiation. But beyond the fixes that are absolutely necessary, you need to be strategic about what you do and where you will get the most bang for the buck. Spend your money on the things that the buyer will see. Don’t replace the hot water heater (unless it’s broken) or put on a new roof (unless it leaks) or buy high-end bathroom fixtures – because the buyer won’t know the difference between the $150 faucet and the $800 one.

Instead, spend it on removing the wallpaper, repainting, or on new knobs to replace the dated hardware on your kitchen cabinets. Spend it on curb appeal: mulching and edging the beds, planting flowers, painting the front door. Spend it on the things that will help your house win the beauty contest. Spend it on the things that will make buyers feel good.

2. Don’t offer credits.

Short of remodeling the kitchen or putting on an addition, don’t expect your buyer to do anything you don’t want to do. In a nutshell, your buyer doesn’t want to trade their dirty carpet for your dirty carpet. And (unless they are dyed in the wool do-it-yourselfers), they will have a hard time imagining that a house with peeling paint and stains on the carpet could be the kind of house they want to pay good money for. They’ll reject your home and move on to the next one. There are plenty to choose from right now. Besides, you will probably end up spending more on credits than you would if you went ahead and got the work done yourself…and the buyer will still make their offer based on the current condition of the house. So you pay twice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: home selling tips, Home staging, preparing your home to sell

Quick! Add Curb Appeal and Get a Leg Up on Your Competition

Spring has finally sprung on Chicago’s North Shore. The sun is out. It’s warm (for Chicago). Trees are in bloom. Buyer activity has increased dramatically.  But it’s still a buyer’s market and there are lots of houses to choose from. What’s a seller to do?

Right now you have a narrow window of opportunity to get a leg up on your competition when it comes to curb appeal. Put planters full of bright blooms on either side of your front door to welcome prospective buyers. If you have beds in front of your house, add some flowering annuals.   Since the weather will be “iffy” for a while yet, most people (including the home sellers you are competing with) don’t get serious about their yards until mid to late May. This is especially true when it comes to planting flowers, since there’s still a good chance we’ll have a frost that can kill most annuals. If you are the only seller with freshly edged and mulched beds and planters filled with welcoming blooms, your house will win the battle for curb appeal.

So, what about the problem of frost? You certainly don’t want to have a bunch of dead plants in front of your home. The answer is to select hardy annuals that can withstand a frost without being killed. Some that can take the unpredictable North Shore climate are: cornflower, foxglove, larkspur, pansy, stock, sweet alyssum and viola. The easiest, most readily available and most reliable is the pansy. They come in several colors, are available at all home centers and garden centers and are extremely cold tolerant.

Make sure you buy big, mature plants that will provide strong impact NOW.  They are more expensive than the little ones but you don’t have time to wait for the little ones to grow. Besides, once the weather gets hot, they will wilt and get leggy, and will need to be replaced by heat tolerant flowers.

Color psychologists suggest that yellow is the best color flower to use because it makes people feel happy and positive. Some go so far as to say that it puts people in a buying mood. The main thing is to choose colors that stand out against the background so they are visible from the street. You can add height to your planters by combining flowers with a taller plant, such as a boxwood (see photo above) or by adding a few pussy willow or curly willow branches to the arrangement.

Tags: home selling tips

Top 10 Paint Colors to Sell Your North Shore Home

Yesterday I shared some tips for picking wall colors if you are painting your home to sell. Today I’ll share some of my go-to wall colors that will make any home more appealing to potential buyers. I tend to use warmer neutrals in the main “social” areas of the house, because warm colors tend to stimulate the senses and elicit positive emotions. I use cooler neutrals in bedrooms and bathrooms because they tend to soothe and relax.

Warm Neutrals for Main Living Areas

Benjamin Moore Powell Buff (Hc-35)
A warm & rich neutral that works well with greens, browns and reds.

Benjamin Moore Lenox Tan (HC-44)
A mid-tone neutral in the Pottery Barn collection.

Benjamin Moore Windham Cream (HC-6)
A very subtle yellow that feels warm and works well with other colors. This is also a great color to brighten up hallways with little natural light.

Benjamin Moore Hepplewhite Ivory (HC-36)
A creamy butterscotch that is warm and welcoming.

Cool Neutrals for Bedrooms and Baths

Benjamin Moore Stratton Blue (HC-142)
A muted blue-green that’s neither too bold nor too bland. It’s great for a master retreat, a beach house or a west-facing room that needs cooling down.

Benjamin Moore Nantucket Gray (HC-111)
A soothing gray-green.

Benjamin Moore Gray Owl (2137-60)
A pale, soothing color that’s a little more sophisticated than blue. It works with almost any color scheme.

Benjamin Moore Rosemary Sprig (2144-30)
A sage green with a hint of yellow.

Trim Colors

Benjamin Moore White Dove  (OC-17)
A warm white that’s not too gray, not too yellow.

Benjamin Moore Cloud White (OC-130)
Works well with warm neutral wall colors.

These have worked well for me. Anyone want to add to my list? I’m always looking to try colors that have worked for others.

Related Posts:

• Painting Your House to Sell

Tags: Home staging, interior paint colors, painting your home to sell, preparing your home to sell

Painting Your House to Sell: Tips for Picking Colors

Giving your home a fresh coat of paint is one of the easiest and least expensive things you can do to make it more appealing to potential home buyers. If you have painted in the last couple of years and the colors are fairly neutral, then you can probably get away with some touch-ups here and there.

On the other hand, if your home is filled with wallpaper, is painted with vivid colors or hasn’t been updated in awhile, you should seriously consider repainting. It can have an enormous impact on how well your house shows and how quickly it sells.  Your goal is to make it as broadly appealing as possible, which is why home stagers and real estate agents tell you to go with a neutral, non taste-specific color.

Neutral Does Not Mean White

But people often assume that neutral means white or off-white.  Problem is, white tends to be cold, harsh and not very inviting as a wall color. And, contrary to popular belief, it will NOT make a small room appear larger. It will just make it look like a small, sterile room. Likewise, painting the entire interior of the house the same bland beige color may not offend anyone, but will guarantee that your home is totally forgettable unless it has some very distinctive architectural features.

What you’re going for is a color scheme that elicits positive emotions and enables potential buyers to visualize themselves living in the house with their own furnishings.  It should look stylish and up to date without being too taste specific. One way to achieve this is to select a paints in the same color family for the main rooms so that the rooms flow together visually.

Warm Colors Make People Happy

When staging a house for sale I recommend warmer neutrals for the main living areas like the family room, dining room and kitchen, because warm colors stimulate the senses (as well as the appetite). Buttery, creamy, buff and tan colors will warm up any room and will to work well with red, green or brown furniture.

Cool Colors Soothe and Relax

For bedrooms and bathrooms you should be trying to create the feel of a spa retreat. Using cooler neutrals like pale blues, sage greens and grays will help accomplish this.

When selecting colors from a paint strip remember that the color will look darker on the wall than on the strip so it’s usually safer to go lighter. The best thing to do, however, is to get sample jars of 2-3 color choices and test them on a section of wall at least 2′ x 2′.  Make sure to test and compare colors in daylight hours, as that is when buyers are most likely to see them. Remember also that the same color can look dramatically different from room to room depending on the room’s exposure and how much light it gets.

Related Posts:

• Top Ten Paint Colors to Sell Your North Shore Home

Tags: home selling tips, painting your house to sell, preparing your home to sell

The 5 Pitfalls of Overpricing Your House

These days I am finding that the “pricing talk” is one of my least favorite parts of the job. I feel for my clients when I have to tell them that their house is not worth what they thought it was or what it used to be. It’s especially hard when I have to tell them that it’s worth less than they paid. And I know how they feel because I am in the same position as they are. Luckily for me, I don’t need to sell my house.

Usually, after I deliver the bad news about where I think we should price the home, I hear one (or more) of the five “buts”:

1. “But the other agent  said it was worth x” (a higher number)

2. “But my neighbor sold his house for x” (a higher number)

3. “But my house is much nicer than the ones you’re comparing it to”

4. “But if I price it that low now, then the buyer will still negotiate it down and I’ll make even less money.”

5. “But why can’t we just start a little higher? We can always reduce it later.”

All of these are natural reactions under the circumstances. But these “buts” can lead to pricing decisions that will ultimately cost you money. Here’s how to avoid these five pricing pitfalls:

“But the other agent said it was worth x”.

I don’t want to say that there are agents who will inflate the price to get the listing, but it can happen. More likely the agent is throwing out a ballpark figure without having (yet) done an in depth competitive market analysis. Don’t ever hire an agent based on the price he or she gives you. Your choice of agent should be based on experience, track record, knowledge of your specific market and the marketing plan for your property. Above all it should be based on trust and confidence that the agent has your best interests at heart.

“But my neighbor sold his house for x”.

When? Three years ago? The fact is, unless his house is almost the same as yours and he sold it last week, it’s an irrelevant comparison. The market has changed and the hard reality is that your house is almost certainly worth less now. You need to do (or make sure your agent does) the research to determine the value of your house today. You should only be looking at comparable homes that have sold in the last three months. AND you should be looking carefully at the homes that are on the market today, as this is your competition.

“But my house is much nicer than the ones you’re comparing it to”.

We all become emotionally attached to our home. It’s our refuge and our haven.We’ve added our personal stamp. We’ve made lots of wonderful memories there. But when you go to sell your house, you have to emotionally disconnect. This is not your home anymore. It is a product for sale and you need to look at it objectively vs. its competition. Then price it accordingly.

“But if I price it that low now, the buyer will still negotiate it down and I’ll make even less money” .

This is one of the most common “buts” and I have to admit I’ve been guilty of it myself.  The problem with pricing a house higher than it should be because you “can always negotiate” is that it will attract less buyer interest because it doesn’t measure up to the other houses at that price point, and you won’t end up having anyone to negotiate with. It seems counter-intuitive, but pricing it lower may actually net you more money in the end, because it will attract a lot of interest and potentially multiple offers and a bidding war.

“But why can’t we just start a little higher? We can always reduce it later.”

This is the slipperiest slope of all if you are in a depreciating market, because you end up chasing the market down and are always higher than you should be. You will end up months later with an unsold house at a list price that is much lower than the price you could have sold for if you had only priced it right from the beginning.

The other thing to keep in mind is that a new listing gets the most buyer interest and activity in the first 2-4 weeks after it goes on the market. If it is priced too high, you are only helping one of your well-priced competitors make a sale. And your home will be invisible to those people who are its most likely buyers, because it is out of their price range. When it doesn’t sell after a few weeks it becomes “stale” and people begin to think there’s something wrong with it. So you reduce it, but you’re still behind the market, and so on.

Like it or not, in this market pricing will be the deciding factor in whether or not you sell your house.  If you really need to sell your house, then you need to price it so that it is the best house at the best price, and not a penny more. End of story.

Tags: Home prices, home selling tips, Pricing your home to sell

What Home Sellers Can Learn from Lenny Briscoe

I’ll admit it. I love cop shows. I went through a big “Without a Trace” phase a few of years back. And I still catch” The Closer” whenever I get a chance. But my all time favorite is the original “Law and Order“. We watch reruns while we cook dinner (Ed cooks; I chop).  Anyway, the other night as I chopped onions I was watching an episode I’ve probably seen ten times, and I realized there was something we Realtors could learn from Detective Lenny Briscoe and company.

Usually, about halfway through the show Lenny and his partner solve the murder and arrest the suspect. They read him his Miranda Rights and drag him off to the interrogation room for questioning, where they roll into their “good cop, bad cop” routine. Sometimes the perp is smart and lawyers up right away, but often he is (inexplicably) so eager to please the “good cop” that he ends up spilling his guts and incriminating himself.

That’s when it struck me that agents should read their sellers their Miranda Rights before they are allowed to talk to prospective buyers or their agents. Sellers want so badly for buyers to like their home, and are so eager to build rapport with them, that they divulge information they shouldn’t. We need to remind them that “Anything you say can and will be used against you”.

Here are some things that sellers will reveal that can undermine their negotiating position with a buyer:

• They’ve already bought another house and are closing on it next week.
• They’re being transferred to …(distant city).
• Their mortgage is all paid up.
• They’re facing foreclosure if they don’t get their house sold soon.
• They hate all the barking dogs or screaming kids in the neighborhood.
• They can’t go below x on the price (or they need to make x)
• They’re getting a divorce.

Any knowledge that can give buyers negotiating leverage should be kept under wraps. Savvy buyers will ask innocent sounding questions in an attempt to find out about your situation, why you are selling and how desperate you are. One of the agents in our office even had a buyer tour her listing, see (and read) a letter from a divorce attorney lying on the desk, and then try to use the knowledge of the sellers’ impending divorce against them in negotiations.

Obviously you need to be honest when answering questions about the condition of the house – it’s the law – but otherwise it’s a good idea to keep mum and refer questions to your agent. Better yet, be gone when buyers are touring your home. Things will work out better all around.

Tags: home selling tips, Law and Order, Miranda Rights, negotiating with buyers

St. Paddy’s Day Parade of Homes – How Broker Opens Help Sell a House

Broker opens are one of those tools in a Realtor’s marketing toolkit that we don’t think too much about. Unlike most of the standard tactics this one is not aimed at the buying public but at the other agents. Broker opens are a great way for agents to efficiently familiarize themselves with what’s new on the market. If done right, an agent can see 10 or 15  houses in the 3 hour window each week. You get the list. Map out your route. Spend 10 minutes in each house and move on to the next one.

For listing agents, broker opens are a good way to make sure their listing stays top of mind with other agents. It’s also a good way to showcase features of the home that are not easily explained in the listing remarks.  Agents use a number of tactics bribes to attract other agents to their open houses and get them to linger longer. The most popular bribe is food. Gourmet lunch is to Realtors as Dunkin Donuts is to cops.  Feed them and they will come. Another typical tactic is giving gift cards to everyone who shows up. Starbucks and Panera cards are pretty standard bribes around here.

My partner, Maureen, never does anything “standard”. She prides herself on her creativity. Her newspaper ads don’t look like other Realtor ads. They always have a humorous theme or clever hook that makes people notice and remember her. Her broker opens are not like other agents’ either. She always tries to make them special and fun, so that her listings stand out from the others. Her “events” are always memorable, and so are the houses that are the venues.

Maureen is also Irish (2nd generation) and she takes great pride in her Irishness. So it didn’t surprise me to hear her idea for this week’s broker open: a St. Paddy’s Day Parade of Homes. She put four of her listings on the “parade” and sent out a flier to all the North Shore agents letting them know how the tour would work: at each home there were tickets to a drawing for a pot of gold ($100 in gold dollar coins) at the last house. If you went to all four houses you would collect four tickets, meaning you would have four chances to win the pot of gold. At each house there was also a grab bag of silly St. Patrick’s Day trinkets to get everyone in the mood. And at the last house there was a big Irish feast for lunch: yummy corned beef sandwiches, Irish soda bread, cookies decorated with shamrocks, Green River…you get the idea. And, of course, we had the drawing for the pot of gold.

The result:  all four “parade” homes had a better than average turnout and everyone lingered at the last house eating, chatting and soaking up all the features of that lovely and unique home.  And, as the agents enjoyed Maureen’s hospitality, they were thinking about which of their clients this might be the perfect home for.

So, when you get ready to list your house for sale, ask your agent what creative marketing ideas they have that will set your home apart.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

May your pockets be heavy and your heart be light.
May good luck pursue you each morning and night.

Tags: broker open house, marketing your home, Maureen Spriggs

How Photos Can Prevent Your Home from Selling

By now most of us are aware that home buyers start their search online. According to the National Association of Realtors that number is currently 87% and growing. And 80% of people using the Internet rate photographs as the most important feature of their online search. In fact, these days, with large supply of homes available, most people see online photos as the easiest way to filter all the listings down to a manageable number. Here’s how it works:

If I like the pictures, the house stays on my list.

If I don’t like them, I click away, never to return.

Common sense, right?

So…it baffles me why home sellers and their agents (who should know better!) continue to commit the three deadly sins of real estate photography:

1. No photos when a listing goes onto the MLS

Here’s a common scenario: an agent gets a listing and immediately puts it into the MLS, even before taking photos of the property, figuring that the pictures can be added later. Or, the sellers pressure the agent to get their property into the system as soon as possible, thinking that the sooner it’s in the MLS, the sooner they’ll have an offer.

Here’s why that’s a mistake: most people beginning  the home-buying process set up online searches with automatic daily alerts for any new listings that hit the system. So, in the case of the aforementioned new listing, they get the alert but, since there’s no picture, they immediately eliminate it from consideration. Later, when the photos are added, they don’t get another alert, so those buyers never see that property again. Yes, agents will show the home to their clients if it meets their search criteria, but the sellers have inadvertently cut their buyer pool in half. The sad thing is, they don’t even realize it.

Give your home its best shot at finding the perfect buyer. Make sure you have your photos, floor plan and virtual tour ready before your listing goes in the MLS.

2. Not enough photos

In the old days, each real estate listing had one photo of the front of the house. But then again, in the old days people relied on their agent to show them all the homes that met their search criteria. Now, since home buyers are ” touring” homes online first, they want to see as many pictures as possible. At a minimum they expect to see the main rooms: kitchen, family room, living room, master bedroom. So, if they notice that some of these rooms are missing, guess what?  They assume that the seller is hiding something…that there must be something wrong with those rooms… and poof! The house is eliminated from consideration.

Make sure your house gets on the “must see” list of every target buyer by including great photos of all the key rooms of the house.  Try to include at least 9. You can also include some photos of your garden, neighborhood or nearby parks, beaches and other local features. Remember, you are not just selling a house, but a lifestyle, so use the photos that can accomplish this.

3. Bad photos

Bad photos come in two flavors: photos that are  bad because they’re dark or blurry and photos that are bad because the rooms are not staged or properly prepped for photography. Heck, some people don’t even bother to straighten the room they’re photographing. I’ve even seen one MLS photo where there’s a dog in the foreground licking himself.

I am always amazed at some of the pictures that people will include, thinking that these will help sell their home.

Do yourself a favor. Make sure your agent hires a professional photographer to shoot your listing photos. Believe me, it is worth every penny. A professional photographer has both the equipment and the expertise to show a home off to its best advantage.  A good agent will often include the photography as part of his or her marketing package.

The bottom line: think of the Internet as your first “showing”.  Just as you’d make your house shine for an open house or a showing, make sure your photos shine for that first virtual showing.

Tags: home selling tips, preparing your home to sell, real estate photography