Fixing Bad MLS Photos

Remember yesterday’s post about staging the entryway of your home? (OK, so it wasn’t yesterday. I got a little busy.)

A few subtle photo fixing tips can make all the difference in the photos that go in the MLS.

First of all, if your home is priced above about $225,000 or so, your Realtor should hire a professional photographer. A pro’s photos won’t need any of this fixing.

If you’re doing the FSBO thing (for sale by owner, aka Fizzbo) or your Realtor doesn’t hire a professional photographer, at least make sure you or your Realtor do a little minor photo-fixing. I’m not talking about photoshopping in a lush green lawn where it doesn’t exist, or deleting a telephone pole in the middle of your yard, mind you.

Nothing deceptive, just make the photos look as good as the house. See the before and after below. It’s a really minor change. Photo fixing won’t overcome the fact that the seller didn’t spend a couple hundred dollars to fancy up the front entryway, but it helps.

Before

After

More Before and After photos. I used Google’s freeware photo editing software, Picasa. I highly recommend their “Straighten” feature.

Before

After

Before

After

In each case above, the “After” photo has been cropped, straightened and “Sharpened” using Picasa. For the living room shot I also used Picasa’s “Warmify” tool to take out the bluish tinge to the white walls. It all took about 90 seconds.

Will that 90 seconds sell these homes? No, of course not. But in a market that’s as tough as the one we’re in, sellers need every advantage they can get. The “After” photos might get a couple more people to come look in person. A couple more people looking in person might equal 1 offer. And one person making an offer is all you need.

Related Post – Good MLS Photos

Staging Tips For Entryways

Staging is vital in making your home as appealing to potential buyers as possible. However, staging effectively can be a challenge in tract houses, which by nature are uninteresting square white boxes. Metro Phoenix is filled to bursting with tract housing, especially in the price ranges in reach of the average working family. Here’s a tip or two for making the entryway in an average house stand out.

Great Entryway!

Put up a really cushy, plush welcome mat. It should be thick enough and large enough that visitors to the house stop for a moment to notice the plushiness of the doormat. Slap a fresh coat of paint on your entryway door while you’re standing there admiring the new doormat.

If the front door has sidelight windows, clean them inside and out so they sparkle. The trick here is to make potential buyers stop for just a few seconds while they notice how lovely your exterior entryway is. If the outside is great, potential buyers will automatically think better of the inside.

Picture Number 1 is is an inviting outside entryway on a 1950′s brick ranch. Number 2? Not so much.  The homes are the same size and about the same floorplan. Granted, someone in home number 1 spent a chunk of change to switch out the front room windows and add landscaping. But the entryway of home number 2 could have been made more appealing with a few simple steps.

Entry Needs Help

First, lose the mobile basketball hoop. It’s tacky. If your kids play with it every single day, you can leave it in the driveway. But at least take 3 minutes to move it out of the photo frame.

Second, go to Target, WallMart or Home Depot and spend $250 on a bench or some chairs for the front door. While there, grab a plastic planter pot and a fern. Better yet, grab a plant that’s flowering. It’ll provide extra punch in the photo. Reds and yellows show up extremely well in online photographs.

Finally, make sure your Realtor zooms in on the front door when taking the photo. Buyers aren’t buying your driveway, so it shouldn’t be the focus of the shot.

Tomorrow – how a little photo fixing can go a long way.

Home Staging Demystified – Bedrooms

Bedroom staging can be tricky. Here are a few tips that have worked for me with my listings.

Master Bedroom
The message you want to convey here is sanctuary. The master bedroom is probably the second most important room to potential buyers, behind the kitchen. Your goal is for the master to appear as a retreat, a getaway from the stresses and cares of the world. Think luxury, comfort and ease.

Buy a new, plush comforter or bedspread in a neutral color and pattern. Good colors are beige, green, and blue. Beige goes with everything; blue & green are soothing. Patterns should be medium sized and gender neutral (no cabbage roses! no petunias!). Wash and iron the bed ruffle if you’re using one.

Buy 2 new pillows if yours aren’t fluffy and luxurious looking. Use the pillow shams if the set you have (or just bought) comes with those. Buy and place a selection of decorative pillows in varying shapes and sizes.

If the master bedroom is simply huge, you can stage a sitting area with two chairs and a small table between them.

Other Bedrooms
The message for these bedrooms is space. You want the potential buyers walking through to be amazed at how much room there is in your extra bedrooms – plenty of room for their  stuff. All you really need to effectively stage a bedroom are

1. a bed,
2. two night tables,
3. two lamps,
4. and nothing else. 

Unless the room is enormous, this is enough. If the room is very small, you can use only one nightstand. If you’re living in the home while you’re trying to sell, the closer you can get to this ideal, the better. I realize that sellers with children are going to struggle over this. Enlist the kids’ help and try to make it an adventure. If you stage it right, and price it right, and your chosen listing agent markets it right, you’ll only be living like this for a month or two. Besides, you’re going to have to pack the stuff once you sell, so you might as well start now. Buy a new bed-in-a-bag set in a neutral color & pattern.

If you’re painting the whole house anyway, use a pale bluish off-white in one bedroom and a pale pinkish off-white in another. Set it off with sparkling white trim and baseboards. Dunn Edwards’ Coy and Romantic are great pale pinks; use Clear Skies or Distant Horizon for bluish off whites.

Staging Bedrooms in Vacant Homes
If you’re trying to sell an empty house, it will pay to rent a bed set at least for the master bedroom. For the other bedrooms, let your budget guide you. Contact my favorite staging company, Staging  Solutions LLC

Of course, if you’ve chosen the right Realtor, I’ll be doing all this for you. Thinking about selling? Give me a call.

Related Posts

1. De-Cluttering
2. The Ice Cream Analogy

Staging Demystified – Behind the Curtain

I could just as easily have called this “Behind the Cupboard Doors” but I’m a child of the 80′s when the Iron Curtain still existed (remember it?) and so Behind the Curtain has a certain zing to my ears.

In any case, when your home is for sale, potential buyers will visit it. And believe me, buyers will open your cupboards, pantry, linen closets and medicine cabinets. You may feel like those things are sacred, but they’re not. So open ‘em up yourself and straighten ‘em out.

Start in the pantry. Open up wide and discard anything you didn’t remember was in there. Food banks are nearly always in need of donations. Try St. Mary’s Food Bank, my own church which maintains a food bank, or this list of Arizona food banks. Now that you have a little room in the pantry, straighten and organize what’s left. Facing is important. This is simply lining up all the canned goods so their labels face out towards your eye when you open the door. It’s a silly little simple thing but it’s effective. It gives people a sense of orderliness. Buyers think that if you had time to face your pantry items, your house has probably been well cared for too.

Next, tackle your medicine cabinets. Take out your prescriptions! I can’t stress this enough. Even if you only put them in a shoebox under the bed, it’s better than leaving them in the medicine cabinet. Folks will open it and snoop. Rarely, scripts have been known to disappear from homes for sale. While you’re at it, you should also remove any non-prescription meds that have a street value like Sudaphed (used in making meth), cough syrups (an easy high for youngsters) and aerosol canisters (huffing, another easy high for kiddies seeking a thrill).

Visit your linen closet. Fold everything neatly and stack it all by size or color.

Face and organize your fridge & freezer. I know it sounds ridiculous. But it won’t seem ridiculous when your house is 1 of the 6 that sold out of out of 100 on the market in your area. (Needless to say, you must remove any fridge items that are unrecognizable and/or are ready to walk out on their own.)

Finally, tackle the kitchen cupboards. Remove anything you don’t need to use in the next 6 months. Box it up and put it in the garage, storage shed, a hall closet or even a rented storage space if necessary. You’re going to have to pack it anyway; you might as well get an early start. Now that you’ve created some room in there, go back to my 3rd paragraph about facing the items in your pantry. You want to re-arrange everything until you have a neat sense of orderliness in the cupboards. When buyers open the cupboards and see some neatly arranged things surrounded by plenty of empty space, they’re going to be struck by how roomy your home is. Why, their stuff will fit in here no problem! They’ll have room to spare! They can buy more stuff! Never mind that you just spent an afternoon removing your excess stuff.

Bottom line: if buyers open your cupboards, pantry and closets to find some neatly arranged stuff and lots of empty space in which they can imagine putting their stuff…. well the job of selling them on your house is at least half done.

If the thought of all this organizing makes you want to poke your own eyes out, rest assured there are staging and packing companies who will do it all for you. Call me for their contact info. And put down the sharp scissors.

“Real Estate Beige” Explained

One of my favorite sayings is “They call it real estate beige because it sells houses.” Don’t know where it came from. Brilliant as I am, I’m 100% certain that I’m not the first one to say it. But it is true. The most inexpensive high-return thing you can do when selling your home is slap on a fresh coat of paint. Do the baseboards, trim and doors while you’re at it. Expect it to cost about $1.15 to $1.30 per square foot (use your home’s total square footage here).

So what’s Real Estate Beige? These are some good beige tones from Dunn Edwards.

Swiss Coffee, Pearl White, Pale Wheat and Cottage White are all going to look like a nice off-white once the job is done. Same with the old standby Navajo White.  Swiss Coffee & Navajo White are in the taupe-y color family. Pearl White has a bit more yellowish undertone and Cottage White has a beige-tan undertone. If the room you’re painting gets lots of sun, you might be happier with Swiss Coffee, Pearl White or Najavo White.

Whisper and White Beach are nice yellow whites. Whisper is paler, White Beach is a creamy color about like a manilla folder. Little sun and/or a north facing room? The yellow undertones in Whisper and Pale Wheat will help warm up the room.

Ready for a bolder beige that’s a notch above off-white? Try Quicksand (yellowish undertones), Sandcastle or Inside Passage (mustard-y undertones), English Scone (brick red and pink undertones), Sandy Beach (peachy undertones), or Golden Gate (grayish beige undertones).

Want bolder still?! Try Gourmet Honey or Warm Buttersotch which are the darker hues of Inside Passage (yellowish brown tones). Or for beige with a little ruddy, reddish undertone try Travertine, Stonish Beige or Colorado Trail (listed in order from paler to deeper). Finally, Brichwood, Trail Dust and Mesa Tan are good taupe-y grayish beiges with a deeper tone than Sandcastle.

Want help choosing a color? Noelle Carpenter is a fabulous estimator for local company Certa Pro Painters and she offers excellent color-choosing help. You can contact me for her phone number or email her at nCarpenter@CertaPro.com.

Staging Demystified

Staging a home for sale is pretty close to vital these days in metro Phoenix. For most folks the professional stager’s recommendations will include de-cluttering. Here are some of the most common de-cluttering tips.

• Remove half of everything on bookshelves
• Remove half of the clothes from each closet
• Make sure remaining hanging closet items are neatly arranged by season and/or color
• Make sure other remaining closet items are neatly boxed and/or stacked and labeled
• Straighten up your pantry with labels facing out, items alphabetized and neatly stacked
• Remove all family portraits from walls & fridge
• If you’re leaving the fridge, straighten and declutter it too. No mystery leftovers!

Tips for Bachelors Only
Guys, I’m sure you’re exceedingly happy in your bachelor life and I celebrate your desire to remain unhitched. But it’s a weird truism  that most homebuyers are single women or married couples. And you know from watching your married buddies that the wife makes all the decisions. So cater to her when you’re trying to sell your swingin’ bachelor pad.

• Borrow some women’s clothes and hang them in half your closet
• Put a few candles and fake green plants on dressers and side tables
• Talk to a professional stager or Realtor who’s a Certified Home Marketing Specialist to discuss ways to disguise your ginormous TV
• Do laundry frequently so the closet doesn’t smell like a high school gym locker
• Wipe down the bathroom counters and shower daily to remove hair and water spots
• Hide to Keg-erator fridge and put some real food in your fridge (condiments and beer do not count)

This sounds like a lot of work, no? And a  big pain in the neck. But the bigger pain in the neck is sitting on the market for months and months and never selling. There are no guarantees in life or real estate, but staging your home will exponentially boost the odds that you’ll sell while others don’t.

I’ve recommended a good deal of packing. Where to put the stuff??! And why do I have to pack before I even sell the house!?? First, you’re going to pack it anyway so you might as well get a head start. Second, Pods.com and BoxCart.com will help you with portable storage needs. And if you sign up with the Valley’s best Realtor (me!) I can get you 3 months of storage free with one of Coldwell Banker’s participating Concierge moving companies.

So that’s it for now. More on staging later. Happy packing!

Home Staging Demystified – Exterior Entry

A good first impression is worth thousands of dollars in the home selling business. Most potential buyers will make up their mind about your house in the first 10 to 15 seconds. Maximize that microburst of time by completing the following:

• Well trimmed lawn, or weed-free rockscape
• Clutter-free look
• Freshly painted door and trim
• Sparkling clean windows and lighting fixtures
• Brand new, cushy doormat
• Dust-free entry
• Consider adding a little color

A little color near the front entry draws the eye in from the street to the door. Where the eye goes, the buyer follows. Try potted flowering plants, painted shutters, or even raised flowerbeds or rockbeds. Of course, you must  consider your home’s style when adding these accents. Shutters on a Santa Fe style adobe home look ridiculous, but they’re perfect on the red brick homes built in the downtown areas in the 40′s and 50′s. With flowers and flowering plants, reds and yellows are beautiful for photographs, while any color works for in-person viewing. Ask your Realtor or a certified home stager for more advice here.

Don’t skimp on the doormat. A good thick doormat makes folks pause for an instant or two. That instant allows the potential buyer to think about how much nicer your doormat is than theirs. Sounds silly, no? But you’ve already got the potential buyer thinking your doormat is a step up so they’re likely to assume your house is really nice too. Never forget that home buyers may be shopping for 2000 square feet with 4 beds and 2 or 3 baths, but they’re also shopping for a lifestyle makeover.

Finally, don’t forget to dust your front door area. The Arizona climate kicks up a lot of dust (and pollen this time of year). Your front door is probably covered in a fine coat of dust which you probably don’t even notice. After all, how many of us actually use our front door?  That’s for company, we use the garage or carport entry for day to day. Well when your home is for sale, company’s coming! Grab a microfiber cloth and give the door a quick once-over every couple of days. Wipe the dust from the windows, the door (especially if your door has raised panels or other detailing), and the threshold. Sweep the concrete at your entry while you’re out there.

Next in this series – Behind The Curtain

Back By Popular Demand – Ice Cream and Real Estate

I’ve been looking over my blog stats as part of my New Year’s resolution to reorganize and fine-tune what I do. It seems that my post comparing selling ice cream with selling your home is the most popular post by far.  Dunno if there’s a whole lotta people Googling for pictures of ice cream or what, but I’ll repost it here for everybody’s enjoyment. They are really purty pictures of ice cream, after all.

.

Most home sellers these days in the Valley are savvy enough to realize there’s a lot of competition out there. They know they’ve got to spruce up, clean up, organize, and stage their house so it stands out from the competition. The process of doing this is a whole other post that I’ll get to in the coming days.

Here, today, I want to talk about my Ice Cream Analogy. I whip this one out when I’m talking to sellers who are resistant to the idea of painting, carpeting, or snazzing up counter tops. The usual refrain I hear is, “We don’t want to waste money updating that when the buyer might not like the color or style anyway. Why bother? Just let them do it once they move in.”

Folks, that mind set is a cop-out. Why do I say that so bluntly? Here’s where the ice cream comes in.

Let’s imagine you & your neighbor both stand in your front yards offering free ice cream. Your neighbor offers vanilla ice cream. You’re offering almond nut crunch with chocolate sprinkles and caramel sauce.

Whose ice cream offering do you think will get more takers? Vanilla! More folks will choose the vanilla ice cream, every time, no matter how yummy the almond nut crunch looks and tastes. Why? You can dress up a vanilla scoop any way you like. Add chocolate sauce, rainbow jimmies, chopped peanuts, Oreo cookies, strawberry topping or anything else to make it all yours. But the almond nut crunch w/ toppings is an option which is hard to un-do. You can’t easily turn that confection into anything else. It would take time, patience and some creativity.

Time, patience and creativity are qualities most buyers are lacking or are unwilling to exercise, for a variety of reasons. Today more than ever, buyers want a blank canvas that they can just spend a little money & effort personalizing. Most are turned off by a home that needs a lot of “un-doing” before they can get to the personalizing stage.

Need to sell? Vanilla-ize your digs. It’s called “Real Estate Beige” for a reason – it sells real estate.

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Is Your Realtor A Good Photographer?

When was the last time you heard anybody recommend that you ask a prospective Realtor how good they are at taking photographs?  Probably never. It’s not something that most people think about asking in the process of interviewing a couple of agents in order to choose a Realtor.

But, with nearly 90% of today’s consumers starting their home search online (and a whopping 24% actually buying a house they found online) it’s crucial that your home’s online presence be pretty near perfect.

You can check out a short and sweet post explaining the critical nature of photographs. Click here. It’s from the GeekEstate bloggers. I love those guys! Basically, this photograph is a problem. (I didn’t want to infringe on any copyrights, so you’ll have to click on it to see what I mean)  The front-of-home photo in that link will almost certainly make you instantly uncomfortable. The vertical lines of the house look crooked because the agent who took the original either had the caffeine shakes when s/he took it, and/or didn’t photoshop the image before posting online. 

Ooops, I’ve probably offended the Photoshop people by using their trademark as a verb. I’m a former trademark paralegal and I know that just makes TM lawyers gnash their teeth and tear at their clothes.

While you’re at it, ask your Realtor how many photos s/he posts online. The metro Phoenix MLS allows 6, and Realtor.com allows up to 25 pics!  NAR studies (from 2005 I believe) show that homes with multiple photos get 299% more views than those with only 1. Wow!

In the metro Phoenix area, potential online buyers clicking next because your photos aren’t gorgeous is a big problem. We’ve got over 55,000 homes for sale. It’s common for buyers to have 200, 300 or even 400 homes to choose from that suit their needs. It’s crucial that your online photos, virtual tour and written description capture as many interested parties as possible.

If you’ve hired a Realtor who posts subpar photos or only 1 photo, you’ve shot yourself in the foot before you begin. But hire a Realtor who takes time with her photos and online browsers will see this - the same house with crooked vertical lines all fixed up.  Ahh, much better.

10 Tips for Pet-Owning Sellers

1. Remove photos of pets from the walls, shelves, or refrigerators.

2. Clean food and water bowls regularly, and hide them when not in use.

3. Stash away pet toys, crates, carriers, and leashes.

4. Vacuum carpets, upholstery, and wood floors.

5. Keep litter boxes clean and out of sight, and remove signs of doggy potty pads.

6. Open windows to let in fresh air.

7. Neutralize odors with fresh-smelling candles and air sanitizers.

8. Hire professionals to remove unsightly pet stains.

9. Board or crate animals during open houses.

10. Repair visible signs of pet damage, such as scratched walls or floors.

Source: Newsday, Aimee Fitzpatrick Martin (12/29/06)