Getting your Home Ready for the Photographer!

Fashion models don’t pop out of bed and get in front of a
camera.  Houses shouldn't either!   When your home goes on the market, the buying public will truly scrutinize the photos of your home as they determine whether or not they even want to visit it.  



 Here are a few guidelines for getting home
ready for a photo shoot.  As you go
through each room, remember less is more because even the

Rochester Real Estate Seeing Multiple Offers

The last five purchase offers I've written have had competition.  And yes, at the first inkling that there will be multiple offers, my heart rate goes up and the adrenaline starts pulsing through my veins and I get giddy with excitement but then the reality sinks in.  Multiple offers suck.

There really isn't a win-win with multiple offers.  Someone has to lose. And the nice person in me

Showing Stress

I work hard when I take a listing.  My days are filled with putting out signs, taking photos, verifying tax bills, writing ad copy, calling utility companies and much, much more.  But my job is much easier than most homeowners.

When a house is on the market, a home owner must clean the gutters, manicure the lawn, paint the front door, hind the trash cans and that's just with hopes to have

Staging! How to Make the Perfect Bed

If you're like me, no matter how hard I try I can't get the bed to look like they do in the magazines and showrooms.  Here's a nice little clip that demonstrates how to make the perfect bed.  I'm going to try it and I hope you will to.  Having a beautifully made bed is important for photo day and showings when you house is on the market.

What is "Broom Clean" Condition?

The purchase contract used in the Rochester, NY area requires that a home be in 'broom clean' condition at the time of possession.  After a recent final walk through in which the floor was clean but the rest of the house was a wreck, I figured it was time to chat about this subject.



Moving day is stressful, both for the people moving out as well as the people moving in.  And even thought there

The Kiss of 'Real Estate' Death

The house has been just sitting on the market.  No one has come to see it in weeks.  It's time to make a price adjustment and so I
begin that dreadful conversation with the sellers.



"Well, we are not in a big hurry to sell.  We are willing to wait for our price,"
they tell me.




 UGH!!!!  GROAN!   And a few other words that I don't dare
publish.




More than ever before, buyers are

Coffee Table Decorations: Organizing Coffee Table Books and Trays | Pott...

With a difficult real estate market, almost nothing is more important than stagging when you are getting ready to sell a house. I was quite excited to find this clip from Pottery Barn (after all, what's more exciting than a house described as a Pottery Barn decor !) but was left a little unimpressed. Is it just me? What do you think of these coffee table decorations???

Low Ball Offer

My clients cleaned and painted and staged. Finally, we put a ‘for sale’ sign in the front yard. For weeks, they walked on egg-shells trying to keep the house ready to show at a moment’s notice. And finally we got the call! An offer was coming in. As soon as I picked up the offer, I knew my clients would not be happy. It was $30,000 off asking and this was not an expensive house. What I didn’t

Real Estate During the Holiday Season

Every year it is a debate whether or not to leave a house on the market during the period between Thanksgiving and New Years. I tell my clients that it is a personal decision. First off, it is very unlikely that their house is going to get an offer if it is not on the market. Second, traffic should be light but those that are looking are most likely serious buyers. But if you struggle with keep

Celebrating the Holidays

With a few more houses on the market than what is normal for the holiday season, the question keeps coming up about decorating. My advice, over and over, is to keep it simple and elegant. That goes for inside decorating as well as outside.Speaking of outside decorating, the Democrat and Chronicle has put together a map of notable holiday light displays. To check out that map, go here: http://

Getting Ready to List Your House

Right now, I'm getting more phone calls from people wanting to sell their home than individuals that want to buy a home. That's a change and I think it's been brought on by the federal tax credit for repeat buyers that have owned their current resident for at least 5 years. Of course, there are a million things to do to get your house ready for the market....cleaning, organizing, de-cluttering

Mrs Clean Does Not Live Here!

Wow! I've seen some dirty houses on the market in recent weeks. I'm not talking dust bunnies, I'm talking dust gorillas. And these aren't cheap houses either.At one of these houses, my client turned to me and said I feel like I'd just be buying their mess. I assured her we could require that the house be professionally cleaned at closing but the husband shook his head and said, “If they can't

Lobbyist For a Day

I spent the day in Albany yesterday with approximately 50 other Realtors from both Rochester and Buffalo to meet with several of our state legislators to discuss upcoming legislation that affects local homeowners and the real estate market.The most important item on our agenda was the need for property tax relief. New Yorkers pay an exorbitant amount of property taxes and Western New Yorkers pay

Assessed Too High!

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the town of Henrietta assessor's office. They asked me about a former listing that I had that was assessed at $145,200 but sold after 18 months on the market for $115,000. "The house didn't appear to be distressed. In fact, looking at the old listing it looked quite nice. Were we that wrong," the assessor asked?My professional opinion is that the house

The Butler Did It!

Whether you are staging your home for sale or just getting ready to entertain, a properly set table is impressive. And if you want to set your table properly, take it from the pros.....professional butlers. that is. I found a cool web site....The International Guild of Professional Butlers http://www.butlersguild.com/ with complete instructions on how to set a table plus at least a dozen ways to

A Temptation

It's bound to happen. I spend many of my days dashing in and out of homes, most staged to make a visitor fall in love, so it should come as no surprise that from time to time I get urge to move. Well it happened again. But when I mentioned it to my husband, he gave me one of those stern looks and said it's to close to golf season to even kid about moving.I didn't have the nerve to tell him I

A Good Picture's Worth Thousands of Dollars

Yesterday, I wrote about some very bad photos in the Rochester MLS. Today, I'd like to provide a few tips to get your home ready to be photographed to put on the market.Looks are everything in today's real estate market. The current public watches tons of HG-TV and their expectations are often unrealistic. A colleague recently described the current Rochester market as a beauty contest. And just

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

A client I'm currently working with suggested that I put together a course to teach fellow Realtors how to photograph houses. The first thing that went through my mind was that he felt I need to supplement my income. After all, things are pretty slow. But this afternoon I took a hard look at some of the stuff that's in the MLS and they are just to funny not to share.This first gem is from a

Closets - Clear Away that Clutter!

I recently went on a listing appointment in Irondequoit where the sellers had done all the right things. In the five or so years that they owned the property, they had installed new energy-efficient windows, replaced the old oil fired furnace with an efficient natural gas model plus added central air. The roof was newer, the interior was painted in tasteful colors and the yard was meticulous

Why Do I Blog???

Something about the first of January brings on soul searching. A time to look and analyze the year that just finished and to make plans, goals and resolutions for the new. And since it's been about a year that I've been blogging, it seems a good time to explore why.Writing comes natural to me, kind of. I come from a family of journalist. My dad was a sports writer and my uncle recently retired