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Whether you live in a more expensive or less expensive neighborhood, you can differentiate your home from others by incorporating nice finishes and design elements which give the home style and personality. Be creative with the space you have.

Finishes which add to the home’s value and personality include solid, high-quality windows and doors and higher ceilings, as well as interesting exterior details such as pergolas, awnings and landscaping. One of the hottest trends right now is the outdoor room. It’s generally a room that is open-air and substantially covered. Many people are using fire pits and water features to create a charming outdoor environment. What’s fueling the popularity of the outdoor room is that people are entertaining at home again.
Another tip: Create a great backyard space with a “pavilion”. How about a very modern structure for your backyard?

I came across this idea today when reading a post about the Pavilion by Richard Schultzon on EquityGreen blog, “Definitely cool looking…done right, you could even add a little value to the house.” Americans are spending more time outdoors, and it’s a trend reflected in our outdoor spaces. So leave the dinosaurs in storage and make that backyard the upscale, up-to-date, uptown gathering place it should be. It may mean a big raise in neighborhood social status and, if that doesn’t convince, a jolt in your home’s resale value. Easy to set up pavillions are available from high-end designers like Schultz, through his company. No pavillion? Let hedges, water features, or flowering vines climbing lattice define your space, and your furniture will do the rest. Then, when your indoor summer gathering gets too heated up, just tell your guests to take it outside.

Another key central home area for entertaining is the kitchen. Seeking to modernize and personalize their kitchens, homeowners are adding new flooring, solid surface countertops, cabinetry, appliances and center islands.

It doesn’t make any difference how large or small your kitchen is, people who come into your house will hang there. It’s so important that the kitchen be a warm, inviting place. Tip: The rule of thumb if you’re remodeling kitchen space is fifteen percent of the value of the home. That figure is approximately ten percent of the home’s value for master bath renovation, according to national guidelines.

When it comes to updating flooring the trend has been away from carpet. Most people are choosing hard wood flooring, tile and laminate. Laminate is like the third party because it’s durable and has the look and feel of wood but none of the maintenance problems.

With the change in the economy over the last few years and the appreciation of home values in the market, people are either trading up or remodeling their homes. People are upgrading their homes by about 25% more. When you look at the values of the homes, you can understand why they’re choosing to maximize their values.

Tip: When you’re redoing a home and putting money into flooring and furniture, use a neutral palate because if you get bored you can add splashes of color in other ways. Neutrals include greens and beiges and not only the walls but the main piece of furniture should also be neutral but very textured, and then you can easily change the look with new accents and accessories.

The trend in tile flooring is large tiles. People are under the impression that small tiles should be used in a small room; but less grout lines are easier to keep clean and the look is more spacious. Tip: The rule of thumb is a minimum of three tiles across an area should determine the size, and putting tiles on the diagonal visually expands the space.

Other tips include using paint colors ranging from deeper to lighter in the same spectrum such as cool colors (water colors or blues and greens) or warm colors (earth colors like reds, greens, tan and khakis) and de-cluttering before you show your home.

Tip: If you have collections, put them in one spot like a table, shelf or mantel, and use different frames for photos.

Tip: Warp Your Room

The wallpaper you see in the above picture is not an artist’s rendition of a hallucinogenic experience; it’s actual wallpaper from a German company called Surrealien. I read about these magic wallpapers on Inman’s blog yesterday in the following post and decided to add it as a tip for those who is looking for maximizing home’s value. So how it works. German custom-made warping wallpaper technology accounts for fixtures and frames in the room and then warps the wallpaper pattern around it. You need to send them a detailed technical plan of your room, including doorframes, hangings and outlets, and the company then sends you back specially designed wallpaper. The patterns wrap around objects in the room, giving your crib a unique look. How wicked is that? You decide.

Economists predict decline in home prices in 2007. The National Association of Realtors said it now sees the median price of existing homes sold falling 1.3 percent this year. That’s almost twice the 0.7 percent drop forecast just two months ago, and is worse than the 1.0 percent drop in prices it estimated in May.
 

“Overall housing levels are historically strong, but sales remain sluggish compared to the recent boom,” Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ senior economist, said statement in the latest forecast. “Home sales will probably fluctuate in a narrow range in the short run, but gradually trend upward with improving activity by the end of the year.”
 
I read about it on CNN, here’s the source of the article So is the housing slump really that bad?
 
Just came across another post on a real estate blog that says home prices continue to fall: “Prices are down 1.5 percent in 10 major cities in the past year, the fastest decline in 13 years.” Indeed, the Crazy market…

Money magazine has some useful tips on how to help you sell your home.

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Enjoy!

5 reasons it’s a bad idea to leave rooms empty when showing your house:

 
1. People don’t buy houses, they buy homes.
 
2. It’s hard to understand how large a room is when there’s nothing in it as a reference point.
 

3. People can’t visualize how furniture will fit in an empty space and if they’re unsure, they don’t buy.
 
4. When a room is empty prospective buyers focus on negative details instead of falling in love with the overall space. Instead of looking at the flow of one room to another, they get bogged down in questions like: Is the drywall smooth? Will those bumps in the carpet come out? How come the closet doesn’t have a hanging bar yet? Why doesn’t that molding fit perfectly? How come the light switch is in the middle of the wall?
 
5. When a house or even a few rooms are empty prospective buyers can get distracted from looking at the house. Instead of focusing on whether this is the home for them, they may be busy wondering: Is this a divorce? Have they left town? Are they selling because they have money problems? This train of thought will take them where you, as a vendor, don’t want them to go! They’ll start thinking, “maybe I can put in a low ball offer since the seller might be desperate.”
 

Have you ever heard about home staging? Actually I like the British English variant more - House doctoring
 
The goal of staging is to sell a home quickly, and for the most money possible by attracting the most amount of potential buyers. Staging focuses on improving a property to make it appeal to the largest amount of buyers by transforming it into a welcoming, appealing, and attractive product for sale. A STAGED home is a SOLD home.
 
Staging often raises the value of a property by way of reducing the home’s flaws, depersonalizing, decluttering, cleaning, improving condition items, and landscaping. For vacant homes, rental furniture is used to create a living space the buyer could “see” themselves in. Properly executed staging leads the eye to attractive features while minimizing flaws.
 

Home Staging in US

 
Since the 1970s, real estate professionals have used Staging as a marketing tool in the US and Canada. Not until the 1990s did staging became a separate endeavor adopted by professional designers and decorators and home based career seekers. More recently, the trend of do-it-yourself home staging has become widely popular, as many books have been published on the subject. Staging is viewed by some as a necessary step taken prior to selling a home, and many real estate professionals and home sellers alike hire a professional Home Stager to stage their homes prior to sale. Statistics show that it makes a dramatic difference on the amount of days a property is on the market and how much it sells for.

 
Home Staging in UK
 
In Britain Home Staging had been a relatively new concept but the techniques have been televised by Californian home stylist Ann Maurice in the popular television show House Doctor on Five.

1. Make “Less is More” Your Mantra
 

 
A cluttered look comes from too much furniture. People tend to line their walls with furniture–one piece after another. Take a hard look at what you have and ask yourself what you can live without. You really only need two pieces of furniture per wall: A bed and a nightstand, say, or a dresser and a chair.
 
Another rule of thumb: If you don’t use it regularly, lose it. While you’re doing this sometimes painful pruning, remind yourself that every square foot you free up is prime real estate.
 
2. Make a Splash with Color
 

 
Painting is the cheapest, easiest way to give your home a new look. Even if you were weaned on off-white walls, take a chance and test out a quart of paint in a warm, neutral hue (you can always paint over it if you don’t like the effect).
 
If you’re too timid to whip out the paintbrushes, add punch with richly colored accessories, pillows, and throws. Bonus: When seasons change or you’re ready for something new, these couldn’t be simpler to switch out.
 
3. Let the Sun Shine In
 
Window-treatment tips: If windows are narrow, extend curtain rods a foot or so on each side to suggest width. If your ceilings are low, hang rods right at the ceiling line and consider window treatments with vertical stripes to create the illusion of height.

A picture is worth a thousand words:
 

 
Home staging is the process of preparing a home for sale, with the goal of getting the most money in the shortest amount of time possible. Home staging is proven to work - if it didn’t, builders wouldn’t spend thousands of dollars decorating model homes.
 
Most buyers decide in the first 30 seconds whether a house is right for them. That is the time a seller has to capture their interest, and staging your home will help maximize the impact of those seconds to ensure a quick sale!
 
It is crucial to stage your house BEFORE you list, so you can impress buyers the first time they visit. Otherwise, they may not come back a second time.

Want your home to sell fast, but too busy working and raising three children? Stagers help put best face on slow-moving houses. Turn to a home stager, who will rearrange furniture and add flowers and rugs to make your home more appealing to prospective buyers!
 

 
Professional stagers curb clutter, rearrange furniture and perform minor makeovers aimed at boosting sales prices and shaving the time it takes to sell properties.
 
About a quarter of homes nationwide were sold last year after being staged by a professional - up from 10 percent five years ago, according to the International Association of Home Staging Professionals.
 
The trend toward staging has been fueled, in part, by the proliferation of home improvement television shows and the challenge facing sellers seeking to distinguish their houses in a crowded market.
 
The average charge for a consultation is $100 to $300, which pays for a stager to take photos of rooms and compile a report that lists suggested improvements. Costs rise - $5,000 and up for staging multiple rooms and renting furniture for a couple of months - depending on the number of projects undertaken.
 
Remember, you have about three to five seconds to grab buyers, and it’s critical because buyers right now don’t want to do a lot of home improvement work.
 
Homes staged before being listed sold for almost 6 percent more than homes that were listed, staged and then sold, according to a study by stagedhomes.com. Several stagers have noticed a growing willingness among sellers to spend money preparing their home for a sale. The investment, which can range from $86 to paint a room to more than $1,000 to rent and stage furniture - is minuscule compared to the potential drop in a home’s asking price after lingering unsold on the market, stagers say.
 
You can’t afford not to invest. If you don’t, your house is going to sit on the market. The potential return is worth the investment. In a better housing market, sellers could list their homes with unpainted rooms or dingy carpet. No more now. With more competition, you have one chance to make a first impression.

Top 7 Questions For Buyer Feedback
 

The most important question a home seller can ask a buyer who has just finished viewing a home is “What did you think?” Yet, many sellers (and their agents) hesitate to get buyer feedback after showings. Why? Some people don’t know which questions to ask, and others, most likely, are afraid to hear the answers.
 

Buyer feedback is essential. Without it, home sellers won’t know what they are doing right and what could be improved upon. Because after all, it doesn’t really matter what the seller thinks. It’s the buyer’s opinion that matters.
 

Here are sample questions that you can use to get buyer feedback:
 

1. What is Your Overall Impression of This Home?

 
Buyers will tell you the truth but pepper it with compliments they think you want to hear because nobody wants to offend you.
 

They might use weak adjectives or make statements such as “It’s nice,” or “I liked it,” which is why you will need to probe deeper. In any case, whatever responses you receive, don’t become combative or argue with the buyer, just thank them for their input and for viewing your home.
 
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In a buyer’s market, it is twice as important to increase traffic over other types of markets. If you aren’t getting enough showings because the exterior of your home looks like every other home in the neighborhood — whether it’s a single family home or a townhome / condo, it might not be price. It might be because there is an abundance of inventory on the market, and buyers have too much to choose from.

 
Here are some ways to Increase Traffic:
 
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