Community Newsletter - Home Staging

Home Staging Worth the Money, Effort? Yes.

Nearly every home seller hopes to get their property sold quickly and at top dollar.

Staging may be just the thing to help in that quest, according to the National Association of REALTORS’^® 2017 Profile of Home Staging (http://bit.ly/2tGmtXe).

Using things like furniture, color, lighting, and accent pieces, professional stagers transform for-sale homes from ho-hum to oh-ah and work to make a property appeal to the largest number of prospective buyers

And their work has an impact: 39 percent of sellers’ agents said that staging a home greatly decreases the amount of time the home is on the market, according to NAR’s report.

Here are some of the report’s key findings:

Additional findings include:  

• The most commonly staged spaces include the living room (83 percent), kitchen (76 percent), master bedroom (69 percent), and dining room (66 percent).
• Staging the living room was found to be most important to buyers (55 percent), followed by staging the master bedroom (51%), and the kitchen (41 percent).
• Seventy-seven percent of buyers’ agents said staging a home made it easier for buyers to visualize a property as a future home.

Being Prepared for Wildfires

Wildfires already have been raging in British Columbia, and that’s good reminder to do everything possible to protect yourself and your house should a fire start in your region.

PreparedBC has helpful resources like the “Homeowners’ Manual: FireSmart Begins at Home” http://bit.ly/27EJ5Gb   

It illustrates the steps you can take to reduce the risk of fires destroying your home, including using zones to make your outdoor space more fire resistant.

For instance the area closest to your house should be free of all materials that could easily ignite. It also shows you how to create fire breaks; prune and properly space trees; and choose trees and plants that are most resistant to fire.

Another guide, the “Household Preparedness Guide” http://bit.ly/1ZlHbF9, gives you tips on how to react to and prepare for an emergency.

It includes everything from creating phone lists and establishing meeting places, to understanding how to cut your utilities and what to pack in a grab-and-go-bag if you have to leave your house quickly.