Real Estate of Greater Atlanta

As an Atlanta resident and certified Home Staging Expert I’m proud to say I recently sold my house within 60 days and $5000 of my asking price. While this was admittedly not the easiest process given the uncertain market we’re currently faced with, it is certainly possible with the right packaging and elbow grease on the part of the seller. In fact, I’m 100% confident that home staging - the art of preparing a home for sale so it’s as appealing as possible to every potential buyer in the market – is the one and only reason I was able to sell my house before the 20+ other homes in the neighborhood I was competing against. And while hiring a professional home stager is the best way to ensure your home is prepared to it’s absolute fullest potential, there are many things you can do on your own to achieve big impact in the eyes of the buyer.

1. KITCHENS SELL HOUSES
Granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and travertine tile are beautiful additions to kitchens, but don’t think that sprucing up a kitchen has to be such a massive investment. A fresh coat of paint on the walls, updating of hardware and faucets and simple accessories on the counters can give the kitchen a major facelift. Before you replace the cabinets consider having them re-finished or re-painted and add some updated hardware in a brushed nickel or bronze finish to give them a like-new look for a lot less money.

2. CURB APPEAL IS CRUCIAL
Your house should excite the buyer from the moment they arrive – hedges should be trimmed, grass mowed and pine islands manicured. Replace tarnished exterior sconces, doors and hardware, place eye-catching potted plants on the steps leading to your door and put a fresh welcome mat out to greet guests as they arrive. With over 80% of people searching the internet before ever stepping foot in a house, that first exterior photo that pops up on the MLS is crucial to encouraging buyers to explore further.

3. PAINT, PAINT, PAINT
Busy wallpaper, nicked walls and ultra dark or bright colors should always be painted over. Nothing gives an easier, less expensive facelift than a fresh coat of paint in a nice neutral color, and it can help curb odors at the same time. But don’t let the word neutral lead you to painting your entire house taupe – variety of color in a natural palette will give your house a memorable warmth and charm. Use colors you see in nature such as beige, sage, soft yellow and gray-blue.

4. LIGHTEN AND BRIGHTEN
Lightening and brightening is the cheapest thing you can do with the biggest return on investment. Pull open your blinds and curtains and turn on every overhead light and lamp in the house before all showings. Still have those heavy window treatments you put up in the 70s or 80s? Pull them down and let the light pour in – you’re selling your windows and the view, not the dressings surrounding them.

5. AVOID LINING THE WALLS WITH FURNITURE
This is one of the most consistent mistakes I see when staging for clients. Not only do most rooms have 1-2 pieces that are simply not needed, everything that’s in the room has been pushed to the walls so there is a big, empty, unusable space in the middle! Pull sofas off walls, remove extra furniture that isn’t serving a necessary purpose and allow buyers to see the peripheral of the room. This will add instant visual square footage.

6. DE-PERSONALIZE
When searching for a home, the goal is to find the one you can best envision yourself living in. That being said, buyers need non-personal style and décor in order to feel “at home” as they are walking through. Pull down the personal photos, deer heads or plate collections and replace them with a beautiful framed mirror or landscape artwork. Flip through Pottery Barn and West Elm catalogs, then do your best to implement that style in your own home.

7. BUYERS NO LONGER WANT BATHROOMS, THEY WANT SPAS
Ensure your bathroom has a soothing color on the walls and place a stack of fluffy towels by the tub and a basket of soaps and lotions by the sink. Again, updates don’t have to cost top dollar – consider painting or re-finishing the vanity, hanging a new framed mirror and updating the faucets and light fixtures.

8. FRESH BEDDING = MAJOR BEDROOM MAKEOVER
In the bedrooms, and especially the master, the bed should be an inviting, beautiful focal point that beckons buyers to come in and take a load off. An updated bed-in-a-bag can be purchased for $40 - $100 at TJ Maxx, Linens-N-Things, Marshalls or Target. Purchase bedding that ties in with the feeling and color of your room in updated patterns such as jacquard or damask. Or play it safe with an elegant white duvet with a few throw pillows that bring in the color of your walls!

9. KNOW YOUR BUYER
Are you trying to sell a two bedroom townhome in Buckhead, or a five bedroom house on an acre in East Cobb? The location, size and layout of your home are good indicators of who will most likely be looking at and eventually purchasing your home. Once you’ve identified your buyer, cater to them with the style of furnishings, colors and overall lifestyle you present in the house.

10. DECIDE YOU’RE GOING TO SELL
While staging your home is necessary to ensure you get top dollar as quickly as possible, you should not simply stage your home, put it on the market and then sit back and wait. You can never be sure what action will actually secure a contract – so do it all. Print your flyers in color, not black and white, and keep the box full. Ensure every inch of your house sparkles for every showing and that there is a fresh scent when buyers walk in. Open your doors for an open house when you’re available on Saturdays and Sundays. Send out an email to friends and family in the area with photos and specs on the house letting them know you’re on the market. Decide you’re going to sell and then do everything in your power to do so.

Good Luck!

Written by:

Tasha Moody, HSE
President, Simply Staged
Atlanta Home Staging
www.TheSimplyStagedHome.com

Get Your Georgia Home Listed Today

Victorian Houses

There are few housing styles that evoke such an emotional response from buyers.
By Barbara Ballinger | March 2009

At a time when the economy boomed and industries began mass producing architectural elements for affordable prices, home owners became fascinated with a variety of styles that fell under the umbrella term “Victorian.”

Named after England’s Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, the look of the homes varied widely—from the kooky Second Empire mansion featured in TV’s “Addams family,” to the more straight-laced Carpenter Gothic home that Grant Wood painted in “American Gothic.”

Despite their differences, houses of the Victorian genre shared an optimistic spirit, manifested by complex rooflines, rambling front porches, detailed ornamentation, and asymmetrical layouts. These design idiosyncrasies appealed to a growing number of constituencies—developers trying to outdo one another with curb appeal, construction professionals showing off skills with emerging technologies, and home owners displaying new wealth and individuality, says architect James B. Garrison, an associate principal at the New York-based architecture firm RMJM.

As a real estate practitioner, your role is to help buyers and sellers understand the Victorian home’s variations so they can evaluate their options in the marketplace. You also benefit from the knowledge of how to best remodel, furnish, and stage Victorians for resale. Some buyers may also seek advice about building a Neo-Victorian house.

A Time When More Was More

In Victorians’ heyday, generally said to be the 1870s-80s, elaborate ornamentation signified an owner’s wealth and status. Many equate this golden age with French Second Empire homes with mansard roofs and applied ornaments.

“Sometimes every square inch sometimes covered and it became an anything-goes architecture style,” says Miami-based designer Marianne Cusato (www.cusatocottages.com) and co-author of Get your House Right (Sterling, 2007). “Previous constraints were thrown out the window.”

These homes also had larger rooms with bigger windows and higher ceilings, and were among the first to have modern conveniences such as central heating and indoor plumbing, says Garrison.

Regional variations diminished as railroads delivered parts far and wide and as an increasing number of catalogs informed home owners of styles previously not known beyond their borders. “It was the first time you saw the same house built in San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston,” says Garrison.

After the Civil War and the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the American Shingle, Stick, and Romanesque variations replaced the European-inspired Italianate and Second Empire in popularity, says Garrison, author of Houses of Philadelphia (Acanthus Press, 2009), which has an 1885 Queen Anne on its cover.

By 1900, most Victorian-era homes lost favor, replaced by Colonial Revivals, which “celebrated American history but were also a reaction to immigration,” says Garrison.

Practical for Modern Families

In the 1960s and 1970s, Victorian-era homes regained followers, who found the style’s optimism and quirkiness appealing, says Garrison. “They also worked well for modern families because of their spacious interiors,” he says.

If your buyer is interested in Victorians, experts say it’s important to pay attention to the details on the inside and outside—especially if they want a home with authentic features.

Study what’s on the surface. Because few rules governed what was stylistically correct, many Victorian-era homes reflected a free-for-all exterior, says Cusato. What matters most is that the proportions of parts—windows, doors, siding, porches, brackets—share a complementary scale. Windows were among the most important features since glass had become easier to ship and was another status symbol, Cusato says. Any additions should have been added in the right scale and place. “You wouldn’t want a three-car garage to be a dominant front feature,” Cusato says.

Check beneath. Advise buyers to consider hiring an expert to examine the home’s bones to know if the structure is intact—that no termites are dining on porch railings—and that no lead paint, asbestos, radon, or mold lurks, Cusato says.

Caution about upkeep and changes. While it’s easy to be charmed by a Victorian-era home, Duffy warns that it’s important to advise buyers that it can be pricey to keep the home in working order. But Jacob Albert I, an architect with Boston-based Albert, Righter & Tittmann, who’s also active with the Society for Architectural Historians, says the homes can be easier to make energy efficient than many 1950s modern houses because of solid walls and good infrastructure. He believes it’s important that remodeling reflect the home’s original design. “We’ve remodeled to remove unsympathetic details and put back something more in the home’s spirit,” he says. Homes in an historic district must heed other guidelines.

List Wisely

To help sellers present their listing in the best possible light:

Be sure systems are a go. Rhonda Duffy, owner & salesperson with Duffy Realty in Atlanta, says an older home in any style should always be presented in working order, with functioning appliances and energy-efficient windows and HVAC systems, unless it’s being sold “as is.” But even then, a seller should provide information on how the buyer might make it more functional, says Duffy, whose Web site offers useful tips.

Play up historical significance and greenness. People buying older housing stock like the idea of being connected to a prior era when homes didn’t come from the same cookie cutter, Duffy says. She advises sellers to share a home’s history by building a story. “I have owners write a letter to buyers telling details about who lived there and what occurred in the home and neighborhood. They might research at an historical society. I also tell them to print it up with photos and allow lookers to take a copy,” she says. Garrison recommends emphasizing that the available supply is small and getting smaller. In addition, he says, “There’s nothing greener than keeping an old house.”

Stage properly. In showing the house, Duffy advocates focusing on special features and making sure rooms aren’t overcrowded, which is a tendency of Victorian-era homes. “You don’t use as many furnishings and accessories as you would if you lived there,” she says.

Neo-Victorians

While Victorian-era homes are not the most common style to replicate today, there are some exceptions. Shingle houses have become prevalent in coastal vacation communities such as New York’s Hamptons because they connote a leisurely bygone era.

Folk Victorian farmhouses have been built in traditional new development neighborhoods to provide old-fashioned, affordable charm, says Georgia Toney, a certified professional building designer who helped develop the Vinyl Siding Institute’s Designing Style guidebook. The element that stands out most as the hallmark of a modern Victorian home is a front porch. “It immediately says the house is part of a community,” says Garrison.

Whether new or old, Victorian homes have charm and a historical connection that’s uncommon in architecture today, writes Witold Rybczynski in his book, The Look of Architecture (Oxford, 2001). “They remind us of who we once were. And of who we might be again, for old buildings also inspire,” he says.

Barbara Ballinger is a freelance writer for REALTOR® magazine.

At Duffy Realty of Atlanta, We do something special with home buyers who have seen our properties more than once. Make sure you are aware of this as a home seller because your window to do this is slim. Please notify us of the name of the agent and or potential buyer when they see your home for the 2nd time. Watch the Video below!

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