One way to ensure that you get top dollar when selling your house is by home staging. Before we get ready to build our new house we have to get our current home ready for sale. Selling your house in an uncertain real estate market can be nerve racking, especially when our new house build depends on us getting our current home sold in a timely manner and at a reasonable price.
Home staging is all about making your house look bigger, brighter, and more inviting so that it will stand out to potential home buyers. When I worked in the hotel industry we did this all the time when we toured the hotel with prospective clients.
Related: 4 Hidden Costs When Buying And Selling Your House
By selecting a few key rooms in the hotel and ensuring that the cleanliness, lighting, decor, and other details in the rooms were perfect, we were able to highlight the most positive aspects of the hotel while hiding any potential negative features to the clients.
Preparing Your House For Sale
Home staging is about more than just preparing your house for sale. Before you even think about home staging you need to clean, declutter, paint, and make any necessary minor repairs to your home.
Walk through your house like a prospective buyer would, and have a really good look around for anything that stands out. Better yet, get a friend or relative to do this since they won’t be as likely to overlook unusual things in your house that you may have become too familiar with.
Buyers want to know that your house has been taken care of before they make an offer.
According to Barb Schwarz, founder of home staging, there are a few tips to tackle each room in the house:
- Living areas should be spacious and light.
- Kitchens should be light and bright with all counters bare.
- Pantries should contain a minimum amount of neatly arranged canned goods and bottled water. No bags of pet food.
- Create an open, airy and romantic master bedroom.
- Clean and polish foyer floors.
- Remove stacks of mail & overstuffed coat trees.
- De-clutter family room or den.
- Set the dining room table with chargers, china and centerpiece. No flatware because people steal it.
- Involve children. Make their closets roomy and unclutter shelves.
- Buy pretty hangers for your closets and show lots of space.
Hiring a Professional For Home Staging
These days many real estate agents recommend home staging when selling your house. Once you’ve prepared your house for sale you may want to check out a professional home stager.
Related: Saving Real Estate Fees: Is It Worth It?
A home stager will bring in a variety of items to spruce up your house and help define your space to potential buyers. They should stage the house to play up the features that make it unique. Professional stagers have skills of a top-level designer and they can create scenery that appeals to all five senses.
Here are some of their secrets:
- Arrange sparse pieces of furniture in an appealing grouping known as a vignette
- Showcase a generous usage of soft fabrics such as silk, lambswool, satin
- Display unusual knickknacks in units of 1, 3 or 5
- Drape window coverings with simple lines
- Add unique elements to shelving, bookcases and fireplace mantels, which draw attention to predetermined areas
Whether you use a professional for home staging or you want to do it yourself, be prepared to spend between $500 – $5,000 depending on your square footage and number of rooms being staged.
When it comes to selling your house, appearances matter and home staging can make all the difference between getting a full priced offer on your house or settling for an offer below market value.
Have you ever used home staging techniques to sell your house? What are your best house selling tips?
I recently took a trip to our local Antiques Mall to go antique shopping. I had never been before and I was interested in seeing what kinds of antiques were available in our neck of the woods. Imagine my surprise when I saw items that I had received for wedding presents.
I always thought that something had to be 100 years old to be considered an antique. The items I see when I watch The Antiques Roadshow, especially the British version, sometimes date back to the first Queen Elizabeth.
Related: Will The Gifts You Give End Up At The Thrift Store?
Antique Shopping
I can understand seeing things I remember my parents or grandparents owning, but not things I’ve purchased brand new myself for goodness sakes!
I even still own some of the items I got back in the day and they are made a lot better than any replacement I could buy now. My 35-year-old stand mixer (avocado green, no less) still works great. It sounds like I’m at a monster truck rally, but I warn my husband when I’m about to use it and he just turns up the volume on the football game he’s watching until I’m done.
I know retro is in style – I see shag carpets are back for example – but they are usually made from modern materials and/or have an updated look. So, my question is: Why would anyone actually want to purchase these old items voluntarily? And for the prices they are asking?
Related: Have You Checked Out A Pawn Shop Lately?
I think back to my brown and orange plaid living room furniture (pretty hideous in retrospect), my Harvest Gold appliances and the multi-colour kitchen flooring that I can’t even begin to describe (it was no-wax though).
I feel like I should put on a housedress, wrap myself in a nice warm shawl, sit in my rocking chair and watch the world go by. I’ll complain about today’s young’uns and tell everyone I see about the “good old days.” (Oh, wait, I do that now already!)
I think I’ll go through all my closets and cupboards and see what I can find. Maybe I’ll put them on eBay and make a mint. Or, maybe I’ll leave these “valuable antiques” to my kids in my will. I can just see the amazed and excited looks on their faces. 🙂
This is part two of a four part series on how to invest your money. The main focus of this series of articles is to discuss the psychology of investing, how to get started, finding your strategy, and building your portfolio. I hope this can be a resource for many people who are looking for information on how to invest their money.
Getting Started
Once you have filled out your investor profile, assessed your risk tolerance, and learned about the psychology of investing you can get started with your investment plan.
Now is the time to identify your investment goals. Depending on your age, income, debt load, and current financial situation your goals may vary over time. Establishing an emergency fund, saving for a trip, setting aside money for a down payment on a house, or planning for your retirement all require a different approach.
Although you may be eager to get started with an investment plan, you need to determine the following 3 things before moving ahead:
- How much do you need to save?
- What is your time horizon for accessing your money?
- What level of risk are you willing to take to achieve your goal?
Since everyone’s situation is unique, it helps to break this down and identify your short term and long term goals.
Short Term Goals
An accurate time frame for short term investing goals is between 0-60 months. With a short term goal, you want to ensure that your principle is protected, while earning you more interest than the average personal savings account.
The best way to do this is to put your money in a lower risk investment option such as a high interest savings account or a GIC. Remember that you will need this money within the next few years. Don’t take unnecessary risks. The stock market is no place to park your money for the short term because it’s simply too volatile.
Compound interest is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t benefit you very much over such a short period of time. You aren’t striving to be rich within a 1-5 year time horizon, that just doesn’t happen.
The key to any short term goal is a disciplined savings approach (paying yourself first) and watching those contributions add up until you achieve your goal. Again, safety of principle is of utmost importance here.
If you have $10,000 to invest over a two year time frame and you place it in a 2.5% high interest savings account or GIC, you will end up with $10,506.25 after two years.
If you took that same $10,000 and bought a mutual fund or ETF with the intention of earning 8% a year for two years, you could end up with $11,664 after two years.
Sure, that $1,150 difference sounds like a big deal. But you also have to take into account the risks associated with the mutual fund investment. The fund could just as easily lose 8% each year and leave you with $8,464.
With such a short time horizon you are much better off preserving your capital and focusing on increasing your savings rate rather than trying to chase a few extra percentage points of returns.
Long Term Goals
A long term goal can be classified as something greater than 5 years. For the majority of working adults, the ultimate long term goal is to save for retirement. If you are just starting out and want to set up a retirement fund, I would recommend following similar rules that were outlined in the short term savings goals.
You are not going to earn much for capital gains in the beginning, so you want to focus more on regular contributions while preserving your principle investment. For some market exposure you could set up a pre-authorized purchase plan through your financial institution and invest in a low cost index fund.
Once you have accumulated between $25,000-$30,000 you can start to build your own equity portfolio by purchasing individual stocks. Open up a discount brokerage account and transfer your savings or mutual funds into this account.
The reason I recommend starting with at least $25,000 is because that is the minimum balance you need in order to waive the annual fees at the big discount brokerages.
You will also want some diversity in your portfolio. This amount will allow you to purchase 8-10 individual stocks while keeping your costs per trade under 1% of your total purchase.
Trading can be expensive unless you have a sizeable portfolio or want to open an account through an online brokerage like Questrade.
The process of opening a discount brokerage account is very simple and the trading platforms are relatively straight-forward to use. It is true that almost anyone can be a do-it-yourself investor.
Investing wisely is important to achieve financial stability. Consider other options such as FXCM and learn why foreign exchange
could be the right move for you.
In part three of this four part series on how to invest your money I will talk about finding the right investment strategy for you.