Durham Region Real Estate Blog

Selling your home in today’s market can be tricky. It’s not that the market in the Durham Region is bad, in fact statistics are showing us the the market here is really holding its own.  The difference that we are seeing now is that competition is stiffer.  Your home really needs to shine in order to stand out among the competition.  Buyer’s realize that they are holding all the cards and they are expecting to purchase a home that really shines.  So, to stage or not to stage.

There is a lot to be said by having a home stager come in to look at your home with a fresh set of eyes.  Eyes that have been trained to show a space in the best possible light.  Stagers will spend between two and three hours going over the smallest detail of your house and at the end of it, they will provide you with an approximately 150 point list of their recommendations.  No one is expecting that you will complete all the items on the list, it is just there so you can pick and choose the changes and repairs that you feel you can complete in the time frame you have before you need to list your home.  The stagers tell you what they feel are the most important changes you should make and the final decision rests with you.  Of course, a short discussion with your realtor wouldn’t hurt either.  Realtors can tell you how the changes you are considering will affect the sale price of your home.

In the end, staging is all about putting the clutter away (even items you don’t think are clutter) and making your home appeal to the widest array of buyers as possible.  Stagers also have access to furniture, artwork and accessories that can make your home shine.  Maybe you should give one a try next time you are thinking about selling your home.

We get calls every day.  “Please come by my home on Thursday to have a look and let me know the current market value.”  We call these CMA’s for Current Market Assessment.  There are occasion where this is a fairly simple process. If your home is located in a subdivision with several like homes surrounding it, we just pull up the most recent sales and the value becomes clear.  However, how do we evaluate a home that is unique?  This is a much tougher job, and the time where you want to make certain to choose a well establish agent who really knows the market in your neighbourhood. 

The basic steps are the same, pull as many comparable sales as you can find and go through them, item by item, adding value where your own home is superior and subtracting when the comparable has additional features.  Add up all the figures and you should have a pretty good idea of the value.  Of course, this is just an opinion garnered from the past market – sales.  The real value is determined on the open market, when you list your home and a buyer decides to purchase it. The buyer actually sets the price, because in the end, the buyer is the one who decides how much they will pay. 

Of course, you can help increase the value of your home by maintaining it well and updating the decor at least once a decade! And cleaning helps a lot.  Clean rooms, closets, baths, windows and garden all make your home show better and buyers will want to live in it.

Effective June 20, 2009 Blair, my husband, and I have moved from the Re/Max Spirit Inc, brokerage office in Oshawa to Coldwell Banker R.M.R. Real Estate, brokerage in Whitby.  It is an exciting move for us, one that we thought about for a long time.  We don’t have anything negative to say about our old office, it was just time for a change.

And change is good!  Coldwell Banker has several exciting tools available to us that will allow us to sell homes in the Durham Region.  Their systems attract more qualified buyers, get the most exposure for our listings and are just plain fun!  Websites and blogging are an important part of the future of business and Coldwell Banker has all kinds of systems to help us take the steps we need in order to keep up!  And they have their own You Tube channel.  We’ve only been with them for four days, so I’m not ready to take on all that they have to offer, but I can’t wait to get in there and get my hands on training!

Blair and I look forward to this new adventure and hope you’ll stick around for the ride.  It should be fun!

I bet this is a question that is asked in every city across Canada, every day. How do you know when it is a good time to sell your home? Can you really get good advise from a real estate agent?  Should you just read the newspaper and listen to the evening news to make your decision?

I’d like to think Blair and I give good advice to each person who asks us this question.  Most of the time, the answer depends on your personal circumstances. Just because prices are up, doesn’t mean it’s a good time to sell.  Usually, when you sell high, you also have to buy high, so where is the savings? 

The saying goes, sell high and buy low.  So let’s assume that the market for your neighbourhood is hopping right now. (and there are plenty of markets that are hopping now!) So you sell your house and figure on renting for a while until the market bottoms out and you can buy low.  Not a bad idea if you can rent for free, or really cheap, from your Mom!  Otherwise, your rent payments are lining the pockets of your landlord and doing nothing to get you further ahead.

You need to look at your own circumstanses.  Is your house too big or too small?  Do you have a lot of equity in your home that you would like to liquidate? Has there been a loss in your family? All these factors should be considered when thinking about moving. In the end, it is you who will decide whether or not to sell now.   If you’d like to sit down and pick our brains to see what we think, just call or email and we’ll help you out.  Blair and I hope to be real estate sales representatives for a long time.  We’re not interested in just selling now and hoping to be able to find clients in the future.  We’d like to build a trusting relationship so that when any of your friends or family are thinking of buying or selling, you’ll remember us and pass along our name.

So ask away! I’d love to answer your questions.

p.s. (can you do a post script on a blog?) I’d like to say that Blair and I will answer your questions, but have you met Blair?  Can you really imagine him sitting at the computer blogging?  How many of you think he knows what a blog is?  However, note that your questions about technical home matters (renovations, etc.) will be answered by Blair.  I will type them, but he will provide the knowledge!

Saturday, June 13 is my anniversary.  Blair and I, the Lord willing, will be married 12 years.  The only reason I know it will be 12 years is because I missed our tenth anniversary.  On June 13, 2007, I told everyone we had been married 9 years.  Two of my sisters were together and they called to wish us a happy 10th.  I was quick to let them know we had only been married for 9 years.  They argued a bit, but then conceded defeat.  Who wouldn’t?  Can you really argue with the bride? 

Yes, you can!  I got a great phone call about 2 hours later.  My eldest sister had dug up my wedding invitation and immediately called me so she could read it to me.  We invite you to our wedding on June 13, 1997!  So much for my big mouth!  Always one to prefer the bright side of things, at least I would never again forget the year in which we were married.  

So, this year what should we do for our anniversary?  Dinner? Movie? Vacation?  Someone has to have a great idea.  Something we haven’t thought of and likely wouldn’t dream of doing.  Bring it on.  I can’t wait to read what you have to say!  I do know this though, if you are looking for real estate advise on Saturday, June 13, 2009, it’s going to take me a little longer to respond!