Recently in Selling your home Category

By: Marcie Geffner

Published 2010-06-10 09:53:36

Consider before you ignore or outright refuse a very low purchase offer for your home. A counteroffer and negotiation could turn that low purchase offer into a sale.

Read more: http://buyandsell.houselogic.com/articles/fielding-lowball-purchase-offer-your-home/#ixzz0ute9Ihko

So this is hilarious in a very sad way.  Anxious homeowner's who have vacant properties face many challenges, the least of which is protecting their vacant asset.  Break-ins, burst water pipes, and leaking roofs are just a few catastrophes that can devalue their home by tens of thousands of dollars.  The Reno-based FastWrap may offer a solution for seller's who want to wait out the market:  home shrinkwrapping. 

Fast Wrap applies a film (available in white and several other colors) that takes the shape of the property to which it's applied. The company increasingly finds itself wrapping incomplete homes and larger developments to protect the properties from the elements and keep out the unwanted.

We have yet to see this happen in the Indianapolis housing market or the Carmel housing market.  However, I can't help but think that some of the now defunct Davis homes developments or some of the blighted downtown markets could have benefited from this process.  What do you think would happen to your property value if your neighbor decided to shrink wrap their home? 

Yep.  We can't say it enough.  Buyers today start their search on the internet and they use the pictures they find on the listing sheet to eliminate those properties they don't want to waste their time going out to see.  Personally, I think those photographs are so important that I don't even trust myself to go out and take them.  I bring along my professional photographer who has a keener eye than I do and a much wider lens, important for giving buyers a fair idea of the scope of each room.  Here are a few gems I've seen recently:

Look here!  We don't rake our leaves!

 


Instead of looking at our pretty updated bath, look at the skanky sheet hanging over the window!



Seriously.  This is the actual picture cropping used in this picture.   This is exactly how it appears on the internet.

No, no. Don't bother to clean your kitchen before I come to take photos.  It will be just fine.  What's that?  Cheetos?  Nom nom nom.




Time to play "Who wants to guess what's in the bottom of the toilet!"

It's no secret that most home buyer's begin their search for a new home on the internet.  More importantly, they use internet pictures to eliminate listings from those that they want to visit personally.  The current inventory of empty homes continues to rise and sometimes those pictures just don't help buyers visualize the home.  That answer to this problem may be virtual staging.

Virtual staging involves digitally enhancing a picture of a room by adding furnishings, artwork and other items that give the home an inviting feel.  For cash-strapped homeowners who are already anticipating getting much less for their homes than they would like, traditional staging may be out of their financial reach.  Virtual staging offers them a more cost-effective opportunity to present their home in its best light.
 
It's important to keep in mind that digital enhancements should never attempt to cover up a major concern with the home.  At the same time, it's hard to know where to draw the line.  Erasing the dandelions in the yard or that junker in the driveway from the picture seems much different to me than say covering a gaping hole in the wall that the seller has no intention of fixing.  Sure, you would see the hole when you went to visit the home but if the buyer's aren't fixer-uppers these types of digital enhancements could waste the time of both buyers and Realtors.

Are you exploring a short sale because you mortgage payments are too high and you're underwater on your mortgage?  There's an emerging option out there that might allow you too stay in your house.

Al Hackman has created a program called a seamless short sale.  A seamless short sale means that homeowners sell their home to an investor.  Then, rather than homeowners being forced to leave their houses after a short sale, they instead rent back the property plus continue to pay taxes and insurance, but for less than they were paying per month to the bank.  They may even negotiate to repurchase their property at a pre-set price two or three years down the road.  The home owners stay in the house they really never wanted to leave and investors get tenants who'll take care of the rental property as if it's their own.  Investors typically can look to annual internal rates of return of 7 to 8 percent, plus a gain on the eventual resale.

Many salespeople and stagers say neutral beige or off-white walls are what sells listings--but a touch of color may be just what you need to revive buyers' interest in a languishing listing. And although beige may offend no one, the right color on a home's walls or spotlighted in the accessories can trigger positive physiological and psychological responses among potential buyers.

 

"Color can change how you feel; it has an instantaneous effect," says design psychologist Constance Forrest, principal of Forrest Painter Design in Venice, Calif., who incorporates psychological techniques in the design of interior spaces. "If people walk into a space and sense a warm color, they immediately get a sense of a cozy home and will probably reactive positively."

 

White, on the other hand, "makes the room invisible," Forrest says. "White is a missed opportunity to create a feeling in the space. It doesn't help buyers imagine themselves in the home." (Not to mention, in Asian cultures, white is associated with death and can add a certain doom to listings.) Forrest says that pastel colors--which have a mostly white base--can have a similar, invisible effect.

 

Responsive Hues

 

Research on color responses has shown that warm colors, such as orange and red, can increase excitement and energy, whereas cooler hues, such as blue, can be calming and relaxing. Indeed, research shows color can influence a person's senses--even body temperature--and make scenes more memorable. Knowing the responses colors evoke offers insight into where and when you should use color in a home to appeal to buyers.

 

Go Green, Cautiously

 

"Many studies have been done on the impact of color in packaging on purchasing decisions," says Debbie Zimmer, spokeswoman for The Rohm and Haas Paint Quality Institute, a research and education group on decorating and color techniques. "You can take that concept of color and paint and apply it to a space to create a mood in a home."

 

So what color can lift a buyer's spirits? The most potent color is green, Forrest says. In light-spectrum research that focused on treatments for season affective disorder, she notes, subjects exposed to green colors were in better moods than any of the other subjects tested.

 

But before you start splashing green on all your listings, take caution. Not all shades of green are a safe bet. For example, lime greens--or any yellows with green undertones--"look sickly to most buyers," says interior designer Jeanette Fisher, an author of 22 books on design psychology. Fisher has used color techniques to redo and sell homes for more than 20 years. Medium shades of green such as sage--and bedrooms painted in creamy tones of green--can be a good choice, she says. Fisher also favors buttery yellows inside and out, complemented with white trim accents.

4 Steps to Selecting a Color

 

To select the right color for each room of your listing, design experts recommend applying the following strategies.

 

1. Coordinate with the room's use. Certain colors lend themselves to certain activities. For example, studies show that kitchen and dining areas painted in "food colors"--such as celery green or red--increase appetite, whereas blue acts as an appetite suppressant. On the other hand, the tranquility evoked by blue makes it ideal for bedrooms, Fisher says.

 

2. Paint for the season. Color directly impacts your senses, making a room's temperature feel cooler or warmer. For example, bring in warm colors--such as reds, oranges, and yellows--in the fall and winter months, and cooler colors--greens, blues, and purples--during the spring and summer. To save yourself some hassle, paint just one accent wall in a room, or bring out the season-appropriate colors using accessories such as throw pillows or a vase of flowers.

 

3. Use a directional approach. The effect of color on perceived temperature also means that the direction a room faces should influence color choices. North-facing rooms may not feel as warm and inviting to buyers because they don't get as much sunlight, an impression that can be lessened by painting them a warm color. "If you have a very warm room that is facing south, and you want to cool it or calm it down, use cooler hues of blue or green," Zimmer suggests.

 

4. Harmonize. You can also use color to provide a sense of order and balance in a home. Using variations of the same color throughout a house, rather than painting every room a different, contrasting color, provides a sense of flow from one room to another and doesn't distract buyers' eyes.

 

"Color is always a very personal choice," Zimmer adds. "So color choices can be subtle. A color doesn't have to be McDonald's yellow or Red Roof Inn red to be noticed. It can be a derivative or a subtle tint or tone of those particular colors to create the warming effect buyers want in a home."

Use the Color Wheel to Mix & Match

 

Remember learning about the color wheel in grade school? This 12-step circular rainbow graphic shows the relationship among colors and can serve as a helpful guide in choosing what colors to mix and match in a home to get pleasing results. Here's a refresher. 

 

The color wheel is broken down into three main categories: primary (foundation colors used to create all other colors), secondary (created by combining two of the primary colors), and tertiary (formed by combining a primary and an adjacent secondary color). 

 

To mix and match colors easily, you can use the color wheel in one of two ways:

 

1. Complementary Two colors that fall directly opposite one another on the color wheel (e.g. red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple). They create a maximum contrast and can be visually intense.

 

2. Analogous Color schemes that consist of any three colors located side by side on the color wheel (e.g. yellow, yellow-orange, and orange). One of the three colors usually dominates. This color scheme can add depth and energy to a room.

 

Source: Color Matters, www.colormatters.com