Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Signature Service

Haunted Homes can Hassle Home Owners

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 03:41:26 -0700

You remember that scary house on the corner? The one that all your friends always said was haunted? I guess not everyone had one of those in their neighborhood, but my street had a doozy! It was the first house on the street, but just past it was a fairly large drainage ditch that was at least equal to two or three home lots before you got to the next house on the block. The street sloped down past the home, so it really was the scary house on the hill. It loomed above us – an architectural oddity compared to the other homes in the neighborhood. Arched windows, gab¬les and a sinister looking balcony on the side made it really stand out from the rest of the homes on the street. People lived there, but because their driveway was on the cross street, you never saw them come or go.

The stories we told about that house! For a half dozen 8 year olds, that home was the scariest ‘haunted house’ you could imagine. Through the power of Google Maps, I’ve even gone back to take a peek at it once again. Maybe it isn’t quite as sinister as it was in my memories, but it still gives me the shivers to look at it.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, there are just some homes that stand out from the rest. You know what I mean - those homes with the sounds that you can’t quite place or that have unexplained drafts. Maybe even a home with a dark past.

But when you’re selling or buying that home, can those unexplained phenomenon have an effect on your ability to complete the sale? Do you have to explain to potential customers that there is an apparition in the attic or poltergeist in the powder-room? How about if you’re buying? Should you ask about any grumpy ghosts or mysterious manifestations?

Hauntings fall under the term ‘stigmatized properties.’ Stigmatized Properties are properties or areas that may have a historical or non-physical reason that would cause a buyer to reconsider buying a home. Death, murder, hauntings or even local conditions can all potentially effect the sale of a home. Do people really want to move into a home where a murder took place or a neighborhood where children were kidnapped? While most stigmatized properties have a verifiable history that can be researched and proven, ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night are not universally believed in. What is one person’s knocking furnace is another’s fumbling phantom.

So what should you do? Tell or not? I can’t tell you what to do since every region and every property is different. The Amityville Horror house, in New York, is absolutely stigmatized. Murders, hauntings and fame have made that house far more than a simple home. But few homes are that awash in bloody history. If you live in a home that has some oddities, is it enough to have to tell potential buyers? Where is the line in the sand where you need to disclose or not?

There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to stigmatized properties. Each situation will differ as will the rules of your community, local Real Estate boards, and Provincial Real Estate associations. When in doubt, talk to your Real Estate professional. They are the best person to research the law and decide how to proceed.

If you’re buying, make sure you ask the questions that are important to you. As a buyer, it might not be a bad idea to meet your potential neighbors ahead of time. Whether the home owner is saying anything or not, I assure you that someone on the street knows and is willing to tell you all about the home in question. Google or local law enforcement are also great resources to find information on your future home.

The last thing you want to do is find the things that go bump in the night AFTER you move in.

Staging Your Home Step 1

Mon, 09 May 2011 04:30:02 -0700

One of the most effective and inexpensive tools in today’s Real Estate market is "staging" your house. It doesn’t matter how hard your sales agent works to bring buyers to your home, if your house does not look like the dream home they imagined, they simply won’t buy it.

“Staging” means furnishing, decorating, outdoor clean-ups and ultimately arranging homes in such a way to attract increased buyer interest

A recent national survey indicated that staged homes sold on average in 13.8 days, while non-staged homes sold in 30.9 days. That’s a difference of a mortgage payment! Starting with the curb appeal, the buyer looks at your home and considers the value weighed by the amount of work or maintenance they will need to apply to the property, once they own it. The percentage of list versus sale price is another strong reason to favour staging your home. In the next few blog posts we will address many areas of a home that can be staged on a minimal budget with maximum results. Today let’s review some quick tips for improving curb appeal, the first in-person impression a buyer will have:

•Your flowerbeds should be turned, weed free, and properly edged. Mulch is usually a great addition to a flower bed. All hedges should be evenly trimmed and the lawn regularly maintained. If you’re not into gardening, paying for a quick landscaping job might be well worth the investment.

•Check to make sure all outdoor lighting is in good working order. Consider leaving them on slightly longer than normal to encourage potential ‘drive-by’ viewings from interested buyers during the evening hours.

•Ensure your front entryway is presentable. A great exterior accent piece is a freshly painted front door, which, when combined with a few seasonal potted plants, will create a more welcoming entranceway for prospective buyers.

•Polish the front doorknob or handle and replace a dented or tarnished mailbox and door mat. Make sure your home address numbers can be easily seen from the street to facilitate potential viewings.

•Check if your aluminum siding or brickwork needs washing or your gutters need cleaning. If dead leaves are spilling over from your eaves troughs, buyers tend to get a negative impression.

•If you have a wood deck, make sure the stain or paint looks fresh. Good-looking patio furniture will contribute to the look of the backyard.

•Clean up yard clutter and put away the kids’ outdoor toys to help enhance the size of your yard.

•A free consultation is always provided when you ask to meet with a Signature Service Real Estate Professional about selling your house.

Wandering Blind

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 04:49:55 -0700

Grab a friend and get a blindfold. Now, go find yourself a large empty field. Blindfold your friend and have them walk in a straight line to the far side of the field. What you’ll find is that they will start to drift to one side or the other until they are literally walking in circles.

www.npr.org

Scientists have done these types of experiments over and over and it turns out that people aren’t able to walk in a straight line while blindfolded. Now, I’m guessing that eventually someone might circle around and around until they get lucky enough to pass over their target, but is that how you want to spend your time? Walking around in circles blindfolded, hoping you’ll stumble onto your goal?

There are three likely endings if you’re walking blind through that field. It’s very possible you’ll wander aimlessly walking everywhere but never really getting anywhere. You might get very tired and give up. Or you might walk yourself right into a tree.

Many people attempt to buy or sell their home without an agent and find themselves in a similar situation – wandering blind, hoping to stumble onto a qualified buyer.

So what is likely to happen? Wandering aimlessly? The seller is probably going to spend much longer trying to sell their house than if had an agent to lead them to their goal. REALTORS® can market a home on many buyer visited sites, such as REALTOR.ca or the MLS®. I promise that a seller’s listing on these sites will get many more hits than a listing that is shown on Kijiji or a ‘for sale by owner’ sign in the window. When it’s time to sell a house, it’s better to sell quickly, so why would a seller risk not getting the most visibility?

What about wandering around until giving up? No one sells their house because they just happen to feel like it. A house can be sold for many reasons: financial troubles, needing more (or less) space, job transfers, etc. There might be hundreds of reasons, but no matter which it is, there is always a reason. For many it’s not feasible to just give up, but what else is a seller to do? Is the house priced to high? Is there something that people don’t like about the home? Are there just too many listings for the house to get the right number of interested buyers? A REALTOR® has experience with all those problems and can be the best person to find the answer. Because it’s their area of expertise, they are much more likely to discover the problems with a listing, whether it is price, market or blinkers.

The worse scenario is running into a tree. Who wants to do that? But when a seller chooses to go through the process alone, there are many ways for them to do just that. When is the best time to show a home? Who is going to be there to show a potential buyer the home at 9 a.m.? What about 3 p.m.? Work can make this difficult, but even if there is someone who can be there to show the home, who is the person who’s coming to look? Are they a real buyer? Are they someone who’s not interested in buying at all, but instead is just a look-e-loo? It could be worse; someone with nefarious intentions can be in your home alone with your wife & children, pretending to be an interested buyer. A REALTOR® knows who they are taking into your home. They are better able to make sure that the people who come through are real buyers who are interested in the house.

That’s not the only tree.

What are the legal roadblocks that must be passed in order to sell?

What happens if there is a problem with the home inspection?

What happens if there is a problem with the property, such as zoning issues?

All of these things could make it extremely difficult for a do-it-yourselfer who is selling their home.

The fact is that REALTORS® are professionals whose job is to find the right buyers and sellers for their clients. They have the experience and knowledge to take the home sale from the first day on the market to closing.

Some people wander and get lucky.

Do you want to sell your house that way?

Let a REALTOR® help you to get the best for you and your family. Give a us a call for a no-obligation consultation and let us help take that blindfold off.

Don't Let it Go to the Dogs!

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 02:55:11 -0700

I have two dogs- two very well behaved large dogs. One is an eleven year-old border collie and the second is a 15 month old Catahoula leopard & lab mix. The city of Medicine Hat is a dog owner’s heaven. With the parks and the off-leash areas, any dog owner would be thrilled to live here.

Since moving to town, we have walked at almost every park in and around the city. Sometimes it’s just the pups and me and sometimes my 12 year-old daughter tags along.   It’s an amazing experience to be the only person walking dogs at Kin Coulee Park on a Saturday morning. You can hear the snow crunching under your feet in the otherwise silent morning air.

It’s during the quiet moments of my walks that I think about life’s little challenges. Last weekend, as I was walking, I was thinking about the difficult time we had locating the perfect house- not only for my family, but also for my dogs. We needed a big fenced back yard with a mud room for them to come in and go out of to avoid dragging melted snow all over the house.

I know I’m not the only one to be in this situation. I have three neighbours who have chairs perched in their front window area, piled with a nest of pillows or blankets, so that their pups can lounge away the day while looking out the window.   You see, we all do crazy things for our pets- baby talk, special pet beds, cute toys, etc.

After all, we love them!

Unfortunately, if you are thinking about selling your home, there is an important fact that we should consider as pet owners. 35 percent of the population is allergic to, or afraid of, pets. So if you place your home on the market today and you have showings with your pet still in the house (crated, sequestered or worse, loose in the backyard), you will appeal to only 65 percent of the buyers who are looking for a house.

A reduced number of potential buyers means that you will need to lower your asking price by at least 20 percent below other homes in similar size and value just to help a buyer over the threshold. Once the price has been lowered, you may see an increase in the appeal to offset the 35percent won’t consider buying a home with a pet. Additionally the potential buyer will more than likely negotiate a lower price, as they feel there should be compensation for the pet dander/oder/existance.

So how do we remedy this? As a dog owner and real estate professional I can tell you that there is only one real solution.

As a real estate professional I know this is the best solution.

As a pet owner it seems unfair.

The solution is to place your furry family member with a friend or relative while your home is on the market. If you don’t have anyone who can take them, you can place them in a boarding facility for the time needed.

You will sell your home quite a bit faster and you will obtain a higher offer.

Every agent at Signature Service Real Estate is not only a Dog and/or Cat lover, but also a great problem solver. As professional REALTORS® it is our duty to offer you solutions that will help you sell your home more quickly, at the highest price, and in the least amount of time.

We would love to hear your feedback in our comment area. Tell us about your pets and if you have had to sell or buy real estate while being a pet owner. If you are not an animal lover, please share with us how you feel about buying a home that is inhabited by a dog or cat.

By: Yvonne Thomas

Don't let your 'blinkers' distract your buyers

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 10:22:26 -0700

When I was a kid, I used to call it ‘taking a left around the world.’ You’ve seen them – Those people who can’t seem to remember to switch off their turn signal.

As I’m headed to work this morning I found myself behind a car whose left turn signal was happily blinking and winking away at everyone around it.

There wasn’t a left hand turn ahead of us for quite a few miles, and they probably were not giving me REALY early notice on their driving decisions, but instead they simply hadn’t noticed their blinker was on. While I tried to ignore it, my eye kept coming back to the flashing light. Remember, these are devises that are designed specifically to draw a driver’s attention, and it certainly drew mine.

It’s wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t hurting anyone and really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Yet…

I noticed it.

I continued to notice it.

And it was distracting!

When you are selling your home, what little insignificant signals are you showing your potential buyers? What little problems have they noticed that they now can’t stop looking at or thinking about? Do you have some baseboards that were never painted? A small patch of water damage on your ceiling from a leak repaired years before? How about a bit of torn weather stripping around a door? These are all easily solved problems that usually only cost a few dollars to repair. They certainly don’t have any bearing on the overall value or quality of your house. They are just blinkers.

But your buyers are noticing them and they are thinking about them.

They are thinking “If these little problems aren’t taken care of, what big problems haven’t been taken care of?” or “If I can see these problems, what problems are there that I cannot see?”

Will a buyer immediately make a decision based on these little ‘blinkers?’ Probably not, but when they go to make that big decision, those little problems are going to come back and they will carry a higher value to the buyer than the minimal cost you would spend to fix them. Will it mean that the buyer will offer a bit less, or, worse, will the buyer decide to buy the other house that they were considering? You know the one down the road that didn’t have any blinkers?

What do you have that needs to be fixed? What are your eyes missing that your buyer’s eyes aren’t?

The problem is the little things that you’ve lived with for the past few years aren’t even visible to you anymore. You aren’t seeing them because those small details are what makes this house a home for you. Your relationship with the house has become more like a close friend, whose small imperfections have become the character you love.

Buyers who walk into your house don’t have any problem seeing the blinkers. They don’t have the memories of Holiday dinners or first baby steps. They are looking for an unblemished canvas to paint their own memories.

Sometimes it takes a fresh, and preferably well trained, set of eyes, to find the perfect balance of blank canvas and positive blinkers in your home. Give one of our experienced REALTORS® a call today for a free consultation and make sure you don’t have any negative blinkers that will send buyers to your competition.