Design's for You: 2010

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Top ten things to do every day…

1. Make your bed, you know the feeling you get after coming home from an exhausting day at work to walk into the bedroom and seeing that you didn’t make your bed. LOUSY, that’s how you feel. My mom always made her bed before leaving the bedroom.

2. Manage Clutter… when leaving a room, take a quick look around for anything that isn’t where it ought to be. Pick it up and put it in the right spot.

3. Don’t let mail pile up. open it, read it and sort it as soon as you bring it into the house.

4. Track expenses, If you’re on a budget, carry a notebook and write down what you spend as you spend it.

5. Clean as you cook, I have always done this, run a sink of hot, soapy water and clean the stove and articles that you don’t need anymore, that will help when it comes time to cleaning up after dinner.

6. Wipe up spills when they are fresh, ever tried to get something out of a pan that if you had soaked in hot water would almost be clean when you are finished? Yep, and I hate it.

7. Make your lunch or the kids lunch at night and the coffee for in the morning. It is so nice not to have to run around in the morning doing these chores.

8. Sweep the floor, every night after you are done with the dishes sweep the floor and if you see any spots wipe them up.

9. Plan your outfits, again if you have to do this in the morning sometimes you just don’t have the time. If it helps, set out your weeks worth of clothes on Sunday, iron what is needed and forget about it.

10. List tomorrows to-do’s, ever try to go to sleep with a million things running through your head? Might as well give in and write them down; I can promise you will go to sleep faster.

Okay now we all know this is in a slightly perfect world but if we even adapted most of these our lives would be much less stressed out.

Hope these hints helped, Martha Stewart and I composed them.

Ciao~

Thursday, January 21, 2010

What is Home Staging?

Home staging is "curb appeal" for the entire home.
A proven real estate strategy, used by successful home sellers and Realtor's across the United States and Canada. Home staging is the art of preparing and packaging a home for sale.

Once a home is listed for sale, it becomes more than just a home; it becomes a product on the market. Just like any other consumer product, there's a lot of competition, ranging from new homes with carefully appointed display suites to the multitude of resale properties in a similar price range.

Through professional home staging, sellers can gain a competitive edge in the market place. Combining expert merchandising with a thorough understanding of both current design trends and the psychology of the home purchasing process, Designs for You, creates an inviting space with broad appeal to a wide range of buyers.

At Designs for You, strict attention to detail, as well as budget restrictions and tight schedules are paramount to my business and reputation.

I wish all sellers and Realtor's would engage in the newest of trends in marketing properties for sale. Just as real estate changes so does the marketing of homes, we now have another tool to help us help the sellers to be able to get the property on the market, sold in a timely manner, and for more money.

CNN rated "home stagers" as one of the fastest growing business's. Builders have used home staging to sell their properties faster and for more money for quite some time, now seller's/Realtor's can do the same.

We all know that in a buyer's mind even a small flaw gives them license to take thousands of dollars off a sale price, too much furniture, misplaced art hung at the wrong level, home not being "glove clean", walls painted the wrong color, and of course personal items causes a buyer to rule out that home to purchase.

So be one of the first Realtor's in your area to have a home stager on board, it will set you apart from the other's, gives you more of a competitive edge. I know how hard you have worked to be where you are today. You worked hard to get that listing, spent advertising dollars on it, sat weekends on open houses taking time that you could have spent getting more listings, all of this work to have it expire and them (seller's) re list the home with someone else. Too much work, too much time and way too much money.

Instead, let's take a look at the home, see what needs to be changed, get those items taken care of and when that buyer walks in that house they fall in love, WHY? because after closing they don't have to do anything. They can move in and start enjoying their home right away. We know with the market today that buyers do not have a lot of money to make changes, so let's do it for them. Let's save your time, your expertise and of course your advertising dollars and get onto that next listing.