Curb Appeal: It Makes a Difference
July 17, 2010
You have done everything right in preparing your Rockland house for sale. You have packed away your Aunt Louise’s doll collection; repainted all the trim; replaced the dated Tiffany glass fixture over the kitchen table; removed the heavy living room drapes and washed the windows till they sparkle. Your room photos look great on the web. Your house is ready for a quick sale. Or is it?
If prospective buyers are turned off when they see your front yard, they may not even get out of their car to come inside. All your interior prep work is useless if your yard says “This house has not been well-maintained. Better go elsewhere.”
Here are some tips to help you make a good first impression when buyers drive up:
- Straighten the mailbox post, and repair/paint/replace the mailbox if it’s not in good shape.
- Keep the lawn mowed, and put away toys, bikes, old pots and other debris.
- Weed and mulch the garden beds, and replace any dead shrubs.
- Repair the cracks in your front walk, and use Roundup on weeds or grass coming up between bricks or stones.
Does it make a difference?
We were hired by the owner of a Rockland County house to remove barriers to sale without spending a fortune. It had been on the market for 3½ months and had neighborhood competition. The house sold in 12 days after we repainted the interior, installed new kitchen appliances, and cleaned up the front walk. The exterior cleanup, with its modest cost, boosted the curb appeal and made the most dramatic change of anything we did.
Before our cleanup, prospective buyers were not keen to look inside the house. Those who came in were already convinced that the house would disappoint them, so they were unable to see anything but faults. The large, bright rooms, fieldstone fireplace, and great views were not sufficient to erase the first, bad impression.
On the other hand, when the buyer gets a favorable first impression, he or she may excuse even obvious faults. “I can live with that.”
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Fear of High Deficits Sending Mortgage Rates Up
April 17, 2010
Just after World War II, due to war spending and rebuilding Europe, our national public debt reached 108.6% of our gross domestic product (GDP), America’s total annual output of goods and services (according to the Office of Management and Budget). It declined steadily to 25% by the 1970’s as the economy boomed, and stood just under 40% in 2008. But the good times appear to be over. By the end of this year 2010 it will be about 67%, and by 2020 it is projected to reach 90%, as reported last month by the Congressional Budget Office,.near the record level reached in 1946, and not far from the level just reached by Greece (115%).
Our deficits have never been a serious problem, but…
For years our annual deficits have been financed by borrowing – by the Treasury’s issuing bonds. And for years a large percentage of bond buyers have been foreign governments attracted by our political stability, now especially China and Japan, which have amassed large quantities of dollars by selling us their goods.
Deficits were never a serious problem in the past because our entrepreneurs with new ideas were encouraged to start businesses that hired new workers and expand. Businesses and working people pay taxes, and economic growth and low unemployment have tended to keep the deficits and total debt manageable. Continuing economic growth and low unemployment, together with raising the retirement age, might have been sufficient to solve the long-term viability problems of Social Security and Medicare.
Americans in the business world and labor markets tend to be hard-working, self-reliant and optimistic. Why is this so? Several reasons:
* Our can-do attititude dating from colonial times leading to our rapid geographic expansion in the 19th century and the exploitation of our rich natural resources. Our frontier spirit and “manifest destiny” fueled the push to the Pacific coast;
* The expanding horizons of scientific inquiry in the 20th century (landing a man on the moon, among many other outstanding successes in chemistry, physics, biology and medicine);
* A steady flow of immigrants who brought inexpensive labor and new ideas, and assimilated American culture because they wanted the opportunity to work hard and give their families a better life; and
* The recognition — encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence – that equal opportunity is an essential human right (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”)
Collectively, these factors represent or are largely responsible for American exceptionalism — which has made our 234-year-old nation the world’s most dynamic.
What is different now?
There are two problems with today’s high annual deficits: 1) They are higher than ever before and are projected to remain high. As our deficits accumulate, the US Treasury needs to sell more bonds, and foreign governments need a greater incentive to buy and hold them. And 2) at some point, we will have so many bonds outstanding that it may hurt our credit rating because the debt service will require a larger percentage of our annual output. A lower credit rating makes buyers feel less secure and demand higher interest rates to compensate for the higher risk of default. Higher interest rates mean a higher borrowing cost for the US Treasury, slow the economy, and cost us the business investment and new jobs we need to reduce the deficits.
Impact on mortgage rates
How does this impact mortgage rates? On March 25, the US Treasury auctioned off $118 billion in notes, and bidders were not enthusisastic about taking them. They wanted a higher interest rate to induce them to buy. “Treasuries fell, pushing 10-year note yields up the most since December, as lower-than-average demand at $118 billion in note auctions raised concern that investor interest is waning as the deficit climbs to a record.” (Bloomberg.com, March 26, 2010)
While the Fed is holding its discount rate low to stimulate the economy by making demand loans inexpensive, mortgages are not demand loans — they are long-term loans that issuers hedge with bonds. So when interest rates on bonds rise, as they did in late March, mortgage rates rise too, as they did in late March. This adversely impacts home buying.
The demand for higher interest rates by foreign bond buyers has just started, not coincidentally with the passage of the massively expensive health care law, and, with high deficits continuing for the foreseeable future and probably beyond, the growing expense of debt service will -become a serious problem. Printing money to pay debts will compound the problem as bond buyers demand higher bond interest to compensate them for loss of buying power as well as for higher risk.
Growth hurt, unemployment up, and our sovereign credit rating cut
We can expect further upward pressure on interest rates. Higher interest rates on growing debt will inevitably lead to lower economic growth and higher unemployment. Will the US go bankrupt as a result of the growing cost of servicing the national debt? Hopefully not, but there is a risk, and this risk is the reason that Moody’s rating service has warned that the US may lose its AAA bond rating. “The U.S. and the U.K. have moved “substantially” closer to losing their AAA credit ratings as the cost of servicing their debt rose, according to Moody’s Investors Service.” (Bloomberg.com, March 15, 2010) Through the auction results, the bond market is already pointing out the problem.
We can expect further upward pressure on interest rates. Higher interest rates on growing debt will inevitably lead to lower economic growth and higher unemployment. Will the US go bankrupt as a result of the growing cost of servicing the national debt? Hopefully not, but there is a risk, and this risk is the reason that Moody’s rating service has warned that the US may lose its AAA bond rating. “The U.S. and the U.K. have moved “substantially” closer to losing their AAA credit ratings as the cost of servicing their debt rose, according to Moody’s Investors Service.” (Bloomberg.com, March 15, 2010) Through the auction results, the bond market is already pointing out the problem.
It gets worse: Higher taxes
With a limited appetite of bondholders for more US debt, higher debt service will also lead to higher taxes (starting with “tax the rich” and then spreading to the middle class). As taxes rise, fewer entrepreneurs will want to start new businesses and hire new workers – the engine of America’s economic growth. Government revenues will be stunted over the long term, while expenditures will remain high to provide for the existing entitlements and the new healthcare regime, as well as welfare for large numbers of chronically unemployed, and to pay the rising debt service. A typical but ineffective government response would be to attempt to control the problem through increased regulation and broader, higher taxes.
The markets are the most democratic institution we have — everyone can participate. And broad-based markets don’t lie. This scenario, which is already playing out, is not good for our country’s future.
“I Can Stage my Own House”
January 1, 2010
Some sellers think staging is just decluttering, missing that its goal is to foster a potential buyer’s emotional connection to the house.
A problem that sellers usually have in staging their own houses is that all the experiences that have gone into making their house a home can interfere with the objectivity needed for staging. Sellers are often emotionally attached to their homes, and this attachment will make it difficult for them to make the changes needed to seduce a buyer into seeing the house as his home. You may not want to pack up a favorite collection or change a favorite room’s color or remove a wallpaper border that matches your favorite comforter. The result: houses that you are competing with get sold ahead of yours (or instead of yours).
Professional home stagers are objective. They are specially trained to help homeowners sell their houses by making them attractive to unknown buyers. Visit The Staging Prince’s website for information on the benefits of professional home staging.
Prepare your House (or Cut its Price)
November 11, 2009
When you want to sell your house, you have two rational choices: Prepare it properly for sale to maximize what you sell it for, or cut the price below comparable houses to entice a buyer who isn’t looking for perfection.
If you neither prepare it for sale nor cut the price, it will be overpriced for the market, and you should expect that it will be waiting for offers for a long time. Many buyers won’t make offers on overpriced houses – even lowball ones. If you want to get the most for your house, you will choose to prepare it properly for sale, which will preserve your equity.
What does “prepare your house” mean in today’s market?
6 Essential Steps to Prepare a House for Sale
1. Repair: To get top dollar, your house must be in tip-top condition – outside and inside. Important components that should be in good repair include the roof, gutters, exterior siding/paint, foundation, deck, front door, windows, weatherstripping and insulation, floors, woodwork, ceilings, and the heating, plumbing and electrical systems. If defects are known, you will have to disclose them; and if they are not known, they will likely be discovered in a home inspection.
Why bother to do the repairs? Because relatively few buyers today are looking for a fixer-upper, and because repairs will generally cost you less to fix than the buyer will demand in compensation. Most of today’s buyers are looking for a house in move-in condition. They neither want to do a lot of work, nor finance the cost of repairs. So, to appeal to the broadest market, your house must be in good repair when you show it.
2. Update: To get top dollar, your home must be appealing to younger buyers, typically in their 30’s. Most want a modern home with an open plan that they can show off to their friends. Homes with dated wallpaper, dark wood kitchen cabinets, colored bathroom fixtures, poor lighting or dark and claustraphobic rooms, heavy draperies, worn carpeting or paneled family room should be updated. Updates don’t need to be expensive. There are many cost-effective solutions that will pay off in a higher price and faster sale.
3. Declutter: “Clutter eats equity.” Buyers want spacious rooms, spacious closets and lots of storage space. Clutter makes rooms look small and also distracts a buyer from seeing the attractive features of a house. So pick up and pack up.
What is clutter?
- Too much furniture, making moving through a room difficult – in fact, more than a minimal amount of furniture in any room constitutes clutter when you sell because the excess will make the room feel smaller.
- Collections of all types are clutter, even though they may be valuable and unique. They are distractions that should be packed up for your new place.
- Anything that makes a room look crowded or messy is clutter, including things on the floor rather than being put away in their places: toys, clothes, pet bowls, boxes, and so on; stickies and magnets on the fridge; and fake greenery over windows, to name a few.
A buyer wants to know the purpose for each room and also wants to be able to visualize his own belongings in the room. It is essential to pack up, throw out or sell off all the excess things that interfere with the buyer’s ability to think of himself or herself living in your house.
4. Clean: When you have sold your house and are ready to find a new house or apartment, will you be happy with a place that’s dirty and looks like it hasn’t been well cared for? Nor will your buyer. Every room of your house must be thoroughly cleaned. The kitchen must be spotless, and baths must look like they’ve never been used. Clean your driveway; sweep your walkway; pick up laundry; vacuum pet hairs from furniture – every day while your home is on the market. Eliminate smells by cleaning, washing, airing – and sometimes by repainting. Selling a house is without a doubt inconvenient for you, but a dirty house is a real turnoff for a buyer.
5. Stage: Staging is an art that highlights the best features of your house, minimizes its problems, and helps a buyer see your house as his own. It typically involves rearranging furniture to highlight a focal point or making a room seem more spacious, and adding accessories to make a room harmonious. In addition to staging, a professional stager will also review all the elements in a house to identify barriers to a sale, including items visibly in need of repair, updating, decluttering and cleaning (yes, steps 1-4). Stagers identify other issues, too, like lack of curb appeal, walls that should be repainted, poorly lit rooms, crowded closets, even dirty switchplates; and they make recommendations to improve the likelihood of a sale. Stagers act as advisors to sellers, telling them tactfully but straightforwardly just what they need to do to sell their house. They also can accomplish any of the tasks in steps 1-6.
6. Take photos: When the staging is done, when every room looks great, when the house is ready to show and entice buyers to make offers, it should be photographed and the photos posted on the web so potential buyers will want to visit. A house that hasn’t been updated, decluttered and staged will turn buyers off when they search, and they will never visit and never make an offer. See our article on photographing a house for sale: “On-Line Photos Sell Your House”.
You can sell you house quickly, even in a buyers’ market, if you prepare it properly, price it right and market it well. A house that hasn’t been well prepared will get less traffic and will wait much longer for an offer.
On-Line Photos Sell Your House
October 18, 2009
Make sure your photos are helping, not hurting.
Nearly all buyers look for houses on the web, so your home has to show really well in on-line photos. If your home doesn’t show well in photos on the web, buyers will weed it out and never visit. This is a fact of life in a buyer’s market. And if buyers don’t visit, you’ve lost any chance of getting an offer from them. Here are two simple rules that will help you sell your house and may make the difference between its selling fast and near its listing price, and languishing, waiting for a price cut:
Rule #1: Since a professionally staged home looks better than one that hasn’t been professionally staged, don’t take photos of your house until it has been professionally staged. Makes sense, right?
Rule#2: Since you want a potential buyer to see how attractive your house is, don’t post photos on-line that aren’t of excellent photographic quality. Also makes sense. Let’s see what this means.
Take a look at the on-line photos of other homes for sale. How many are of really good quality? What problems do your see?
- Some photos are so dark that you can’t make out the features of the room. Dark photos don’t entice a buyer to visit.
- A buyer wants to see the whole room as well as the focal point (such as a fireplace) set in the room. A kitchen shot should show the cabinets, some appliances and the table in an eat-in kitchen. A bedroom should show not just the bed but light and space. To take these interior shots requires a camera with an ultra-wide-angle lens. The 28mm equivalent lens of a standard point & shoot camera won’t show what a buyer wants to see. There are several suitable compact digital cameras available with a 24mm equivalent lens, high-resolution and good low-light capabilities at reasonable prices.
- The photos of some homes are mostly exterior shots – with just one or two rooms shown. This doesn’t give buyers much information about those homes, and they’ll select other homes to visit instead. At least 10-12 interior shots are essential to give the buyer a good sense of what a home looks like inside.
- Too frequently the photos are arranged haphazardly: duplicates or even triplicates, and in no particular order. This carelessness virtually assures that a buyer will look elsewhere. You want a buyer to see the home as in a visit: first the front of the house, then the entry, living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, and the bedrooms – or at least the master bedroom and bath – and then the backyard.
- A virtual tour – whether a video or pan and zoom stills — can be very useful to show how spacious your home is. On the other hand, some viewers find that stitched 360-degree circular views of a room make them dizzy because the two side walls are closer to the camera (which is set up in the exact middle of the room) than the end walls, and the resulting distortion induces motion sickness. Not likely to attract a buyer.
Ignoring either of our two simple rules means that most buyers will weed out your house on the web and never visit it in person. Few buyers’ visits means a long wait for an offer. That also makes sense, right?
Clutter eats equity.
There is a saying among staging advisors: “Clutter eats equity.” Even when a photo is of good quality, if the room is cluttered, most on-line buyers will go on to the next house.
You can do two things right now to help sell your house:
1. Have your home professionally staged before you show it on-line.
2. Make sure that you or your agent knows how to take top-notch photos.
Or kill two birds with one stone: Ask your home stager to take photos after he or she stages your home.
A Hudson Valley Home Staging Grand Opening
September 12, 2009
The Staging Prince is pleased to announce the Grand Opening of its homeowners’ consulting business — preparing and presenting homes for sale in the lower Hudson Valley. Based in Rockland County, The Staging Prince’s goal is to maximize the homeowners’ equity on sale.
The Staging Prince is also pleased to announce its affiliation with veteran staging consultant Maureen Henry of Rockland Home Staging (who wrote most of these blog posts). Ms. Henry, through her vision of what will grab a buyer’s imagination, lit the way to a sale for many Rockland homeowners. Now she is moving on to a career in teaching and passing the torch to Jerry White of The Staging Prince.
“The Staging Prince’s timing is excellent,” Ms. Henry noted, “since the value added by staging (beyond simple decluttering) is becoming recognized in Rockland as it has been in Westchester. Many agents recommend that their clients hire a professional stager because staged houses typically sell faster and for more money than unstaged ones. Buyers’ agents like to show staged homes because they can count on their looking good.”
“I expect that professional staging consultations will become de rigueur in Rockland,” Mr. White said, “and that agents will offer to sponsor them to help them win listings. Some Rockland brokerages now pay for initial staging consultations as part of their listing service, splitting the modest cost with the listing agent on closing. Any further costs for needed home repairs, upgrades and staging itself is paid for by the homeowners, an investment that will pay off for the seller in a better price and a faster sale.”
While it is advantageous for homeowners to stage their home before the first open house so it will be 100% ready to show, The Staging Prince will also provide consultations after listing, focusing on barriers to sale.
Call The Staging Prince today to arrange for a professional consultation at 845-875-4561 or 201-505-0005.
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$100 Dining Room Transformation
July 20, 2009
Sometimes transforming a room is as simple as adding a coat of paint $50, Replacing the lighting $50 and decluttering $0. You don’t need a ton of artwork, accessories and distractions. Staging is about showcasing the space, the floors, windows and architectural details. In the after pictures below the space is the star.
BEFORE AFTER
Call The Staging Prince to sell your home quickly and for top dollar. Let us take the guesswork out of getting your home ready for sale.
Fasten your seatbelt, you are now leaving 1970
May 8, 2009
Many of the homes in Rockland county NY were built in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and have not been updated since. Thes homes are often characterized by dark paneling, velvet couches, matching custom window treatments and brass fixtures. While these furnishings may have been perfect for the 70’s they hold no appeal for today’s young buyers.
Sometimes all it takes is a coat of paint, a slip cover and a few throw pillows to update this look of the home. This home was transformed for under $400.00. These simple inexpensive changes have brought this home into the 21st century.
Home staging does not need to be expensive to create dramatic results. We will work within your budget. in most cases we can work with things you already own to create a look that will appeal to a broader range of home buyers.
Call The Staging Prince today to take the guesswork out of getting your home ready for sale: (845) 875-4561.
Home Seller Open House Check List
August 29, 2008
As a home staging advisor I want toreview a few things to do before you show your house in order to make the most of your potential buyer-traffic and appeal to all of their senses while creating “Emotional Connection Points” for them to respond to throughout your home.
Curb Appeal
- Park cars down the street and away from driveway or front of house to give buyers a clear view.
- Remove any front lawn debris, toys, trash cans, pet debris, etc.
- Sweep the walk and place a plain welcome mat by the door.
- Lower garage doors open front door wide.
Interior
- Quickly go through your home and pick up any extraneous stuff like toys, clothes
- Turn ON every light. Make a fire in the fireplace if appropriate.
- Open all blinds and window coverings for maximum light (unless there are privacy or view issues)
- Spray and wipe bathroom and kitchen counters CLEAN
- Quick vacuum high traffic areas
- Close TV cabinet doors
- Turn on interior lights in china cabinet or shelves
- Set out dress towels in bathroom
- Toilet seats down
- Fluff beds and pillows in all bedrooms
- Keep music on low – uniform in every room if possible
- Have fresh flowers on hand
- Make sure the home is a comfortable temperature
- Ceiling fans should be on low
- All interior doors except closet doors should be wide open
- Remove any pet blankets, dishes, litter boxes
- Empty all garbage cans (especially in kitchen)
When listing your home for sale in Rockland County NY it is important to have it in show condition. Realtors and home buyers will be impressed with your home and home staging will set your home apart from the competition.
Take the guesswork out of getting your Rockland County NY home ready for sale by calling The Staging Prince for a professional consultation today: (845) 875-4561.