Four Staging Tips to Get Your Home Sold Quickly

There are many great Montgomery County area homes for sale. Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (215) 576-8666 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Learn more about the following 4 Hot Secret Staging Tips and much more at my next Home Seller Shark Seminar on March 21st at 9:30am at the DoubleTree at Plymouth Meeting. We give out door prizes as well as free t-shirts to reward you for surviving the Home Shark Seminar. 

My father used to sell new homes, so when I entered the real estate business 22 years ago selling resale homes, I always tried to position them in such a way that they resembled brand new homes. I'll be revealing four of my most secret staging tips to you today, but if you want to learn all of them, then you'll need to attend my Home Shark Seminar. 

1. Paint: Paint can go a very long way, and of all the remodels you can do on your home before selling, repainting may have one of the highest ROI's. I suggest painting one color throughout, and earth tones usually work well. White trim often highlights the nice features of a home, and you can add a lot of value by repainting in this way.
2. Paint your garage: We recommend painting the walls of your garage and the floor gray, or coat the floor with an Epoxy paint. Buyers like to see nice, big garages that they can store things in. You can net a few extra thousand dollars by cleaning out and repainting your garage.
3. Invest in your basement: Basements are big home sellers. People often forget about basements, but you can keep a lot of money in your pocket if you invest the time, energy, and money into renewing your basement. We like to paint basement floors gray or tan, and if any concrete floor is showing, we recommend that you paint that as well. Ideally, your basement should be as spotless as your kitchen. You may need to move some things into a storage unit, but the money you save by doing this might make the costs well worth it.
4. Six panel doors: This is an inexpensive fix, and it is a major upgrade over old, wooden doors. It's an easy step you can take to make your home feel much more new and modern. 

We hope you find this information helpful. Give us a call or shoot us an email if you would like real estate assistance of any kind, we're always here to help!

Where Is the Montgomery County Market Heading in 2015?

There are many great Montgomery County area homes for sale. Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (215) 576-8666 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Hello, and welcome to the 2015 edition of the Hot Off the Press Real Estate Market Report! As far as we can tell, this is going to be yet another great year for real estate here in Montgomery County. 

The existing home sales report shows there was a drop in November of last year, which is normal because the winter months often cause many people to back out of the market. Many of the talking heads in the media like to report that the market is down right now, but that's simply not true. In fact, so far, this winter has been one of the best we've seen in a decade! 

When taking a look at pending homes over the last few years, you'll notice that they plummeted in November of 2013. When looking at pending home sales for 2014, pending home sales remained high even though we usually see a significant drop during the winter months. They dropped a little bit, but they didn't crash like they did in 2013. 

Now, let's take a look at home prices. Appreciation, year over year, is slowing down. The headlines you've read about falling home prices are incorrect - prices are simply rising at a slower rate than they were in previous years. According to Case Schiller, prices were up 13.2% in January 2014 over January 2013; by August they were only up 5.6% year over year, and by October of last year the year-over-year price change was at 4.5%. So, home values are still on the rise, but their value isn't going up at the same rate as it was in years past. 

Although we have seen a slowdown in appreciation over the last 12 months, we're expecting the appreciation rates to be higher in 2015 than we saw in 2014. Most experts are predicting home prices to rise an average of 3.7% in the coming year. That will bring us much closer to steady levels, which is some great news!

Where do we expect interest rates to go, you ask? Taking a look at the first quarter of January 2013, you'll see that rates were under 3.5%, before skyrocketing toward the middle of 2013. They've been falling ever since, trying to find that equilibrium point. Remember, part of the reason the government wants to keep interest rates low is to spur the economy and keep people spending. At this time last year, people thought rates were going to jump in the near future, but because the economy never recovered the way they expected it to, rates have remained low!

If rates do rise soon, it will have a significant impact on your purchasing power. If you're looking at a $300,000 home when rates are 3.75%, a rise of just 1% will cost you 10% of your purchasing power (that's $30,000)! We'll keep you updated on where rates are heading, but you need to be wary of waiting to make your move.

We hope you find this information helpful. Give us a call or shoot us an email if you would like real estate assistance of any kind, we're always here to help! 

Thanks, and have a wonderful day!