Accentuate Home Staging Design Group Blog » real estate sales figures

Happy New Year from Accentuate Home Staging!

accentuate — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 18:02:30 +0000

Happy Holidays from Accentuate Home Staging!

accentuate — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 21:58:24 +0000

Selling in a today’s Buyers Market? Home Staging SELLS!

accentuate — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:01:29 +0000

Are you selling in today’s Buyers Market? Home Staging SELLS!

With so much inventory in the Vancouver market, and fewer sales since the same period in 2009, sellers are definitely feeling the impact of a BUYERS MARKET. Multiple offers are no longer the norm. Days on market have been increasing. See what the Vancouver Sun has to say about our current ” Buyers Market”.

So how do you actually sell YOUR house when there is so much competition AND get the highest price possible that you’ll feel good about?

By working with a expert realtor that understands the market, understands your expectations, markets to the hilt and represents YOU.
By setting your price realistically & competitively in todays market ( remember that you’re competing with a load of other fine properties )
By preparing your house to sell with EFFECTIVE HOME STAGING.

With so much competition, EFFECTIVE HOME STAGING is a top real estate strategy to ensure that your property STANDS OUT IN THE MARKET, gets noticed and SELLS !

Put yourself in the role of a buyer.

You view two (2) properties in the same neighbourhood. All things considered equal (size, layout, neighbourhood amenties, price) which property would you most likely pick?

…the house that you’ll need to clean, paint, upgrade before you can really feel at home.

….or….

…the house that is move in ready and already feels like HOME?

How about two (2) properties in the same condomium complex. All things considered equal (size, layout, neighbourhood amenties, price) which property would you most likely pick?

….the “bowling alley” condo that looks impossible to furnish?

….or….

… the “Liveable” Room with a View?

The choices are clear and proof that STAGED HOMES SELL! By portraying a “liveable” lifestyle that sellers want, your staged property will sell faster and for a higher price than the competition.

Here’s the facts:

63% of buyers will pay more for a property that is move in ready!
Staged homes sell up to 50% faster than un-staged homes
Staged homes sell for up to 7% more than un-staged homes

EFFECTIVE HOME STAGING ensures that the property you are selling STANDS OUT IN THE MARKET. Make it memorable, make it STAND OUT and it’s as good as SOLD!

For more details about Home Staging, Vacant Staging, Occupied Staging or Interior Design, call Accentuate Home Staging Design Group today at 604-328-6479 or visit our website at http://www.accentuate.ca/.

Preparing your Investment Property to SELL

accentuate — Sat, 15 May 2010 01:46:49 +0000

Has your property seen better days after being occupied by tenants over the past years?

One thing is certain. Most buyers will pay more for properties that are in move-in condition.

Whether you’ve been renting out your property for investment purposes or renovating it to sell, implementing just a few key real estate strategies will ensure that you’re property is market ready and will Stand Out in today’s competitive environment.

Try these top makeover tips and your investment property will transform from shabby to CHIC and for minimal cost”

1. A fresh coat of PAINT.

Often the most overlooked upgrade. This is certainly the most cost effective solution with the biggest bang for your buck. A fresh coat of paint, in neutral tones will do wonders to ramp up the market appeal of your property. Do it yourself or call in the professionals….but do it properly. Prep the walls, patch holes, remove switchplates and vents before painting. You’ll be glad you did….and buyers will notice. It’s the best investment you’ll make.

2. Clean or New Flooring .

Buyers are quick to notice the floors….the wear, the tear, pet odours, you name it. The thought of cleaning them and, even worse, replacing them after move-in can be a deal breaker. So have your carpets cleaned just prior to your open house. And if they are in real disrepair, consider replacing them with mid range carpeting, laminate, tile or hardwood. No need to break the bank….just select mid range products in neutral colours. Beware the urge to install budget products. If they look too budget, buyers may think you’ve done nothing all and your investment is lost.

3. Kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities.

Are your kitchen cabinets or bathroom vanities dated, showing wear and tear? Consider the following makeover solutions, depending on your budget and your energy:

paint, reface or replace
replace handles and door pulls with updated ones in brushed nickel or similar
replace worn laminate countertops if necessary

4. Landscaping

The curb appeal of your property is the 1st true impression of your property. MAKE IT COUNT ! Consider these tips to give your house curb appeal that SELLS !

new mailbox
polished or new house numbers
clean yard
powerwash siding and sidewalks
add attractive flowering planters

5. Clean, Clean, Clean

And I mean CLEAN ! Nothing can be a bigger distraction to a potential buyer than a house that not clean. Pay particular attention to your appliances, bathrooms, floors….and don’t forget door and appliance handles. Just finished renovating?….then pick up after yourself and leave the place spotless. Now is the time to show buyers your handywork.

Call us at 604-328-6479 to learn how Accentuate Home Staging can help you prepare your Investment Property to SELL?

Staging a Vacant Property – “The PARTIAL Stage”

accentuate — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:31:33 +0000

Staging a Vacant Property - ”the PARTIAL Stage” is your guide to a key real estate strategy that will ensure that your property is market ready and Stands Out in the Market.

In our previous article Staging a Vacant Property – “The Full Stage” we reviewed the benefits of vacant staging. These benefits still hold true:

Staged homes can sell up to 50% faster than unstaged home
Staged homes can sell for up to 7% more than an unstaged home

Emotions and first impressions play a key role in buyers decisions to make an offer. Furnishing and accessorizing vacant properties is – hands down – one of the top real estate strategies to ensure that your property Stands Out in the Market.

Make your house APPEALING and MEMORABLE to potential buyers and you’re as good as SOLD !

But what it your budget simply doesn’t allow you to stage your entire property?

Perhaps most of your bedrooms are actually quite generous in size or that basement suite simply speaks for itself?

You may even be in the midst of relocating homes. You’ve already sold or donated your living room or dining furniture ( for example) in anticipation of starting fresh in your new home. While you continue to live in the house during the selling process, your key rooms are now bare and unfurnished.

Whatever the reason may be, you’re best bet may be to opt for a Partial Vacant Stage. Any staging is better than no staging if you want to maximize the market demand of your house in a competitive market. So consider staging just the necessary key rooms of your property ( the living room, dining room, the master bedroom for instance ). Presenting your house and especially your key rooms with show home style will do wonders and give you the market edge.

Make it APPEALING and MEMORABLE to potential buyers and you’re as good as SOLD !

Call us at 604-328-6479 to learn how Accentuate Home Staging can stage your vacant property so that it Stands Out in the Market.

Staging a Vacant Property – “The FULL Stage”

accentuate — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:04:58 +0000

Staging a Vacant Property - ”the FULL Stage” is your guide to a key real estate strategy that will ensure that your property is market ready and Stands Out in the Market.

Did you know that stage homes can sell up to 50% faster than unstaged or homes?
Did you know that a staged home can sell for up to 7% more than an unstaged home?

With increasing activity and competition in the Vancouver Real Estate market this spring, can you afford NOT to stage your property?

We all know that buyers emotions and first impressions play a key role in their decisions to make an offer. Furnishing and accesorizing vacant properties is – hands down – one of the top real estate strategies to ensure that your property Stands Out in the Market.

Make your house APPEALING and MEMORABLE to potential buyers and you’re as good as SOLD !

So now you’re ready to stage your vacant property. Do you opt to stage the entire property or maybe just key rooms only?

Let’s first explore the benefits of a FULL PROPERTY STAGE.

You don’t need to look too far to find the recipe for vacant staging success. Take heed from every new development SALES home that you’ve ever toured. Each and every room has been furnished.

Why?….to create a MEMORABLE portrayal of a lifestyle that buyers want. No imagination needed, no tape measures here. Buyers see first hand how their furniture can fit in that home. More importantly, they experience an emotional connection to the space, as if they’ve “come home”. “I CAN live here”….is music to our ears!

Consider also the impact on todays downsizing baby boomers who are often moving from full scaled homes to 1000 sq.ft condominiums. This desire for high density urban living has made it’s mark…leaving many potential buyers touring properties that are seemingly impossible to furnish and entirely “un-livable”.

By staging all rooms of a vacant property you will leave nothing to the imagination. Buyers will see that:

YES, that small and narrow room CAN accommodate their bedroom furniture or their dining room suite.

That’s a CRUCIAL selling point for any interested buyer and potentially the key to their decision to make an offer.

Stay tuned for our upcoming article: Vacant Staging : “The PARTIAL Stage”

Call us at 604-328-6479 to learn how Accentuate Home Staging can help you stage your vacant property so that it Stands Out in the Market !

Higher home sales, smaller inventories posted in Vancouver for October

accentuate — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:55:00 +0000

Home sales and homes values are increasing. Keep that momemtum through the holiday season – with effective Home Staging ! Check out this latest article published in the Vancouver Sun.

The benchmark price for all Metro Vancouver property types in October hit $553,702, which is a 6.8-per-cent increase from the same month a year ago. Photograph by: CNS files

Lower Mainland home sales continued riding high in October, with prices continuing to rise, according to reports from the region’s major real estate boards Tuesday.

In Metro Vancouver, covered by the Real Estate Board of Vancouver, realtors recorded 3,704 sales through the Multiple Listing Service, up 172 per cent from the doldrums of October 2008 and 22 per cent above sales levels in October 2007.

The benchmark price, the average price for a typical home sold, hit $749,808 in October, which was almost eight-per-cent higher than the same month a year ago, though not quite up to the pre-correction peak.

In the Fraser Valley, including Surrey, realtors saw 1,704 sales through the Multiple Listing Service in October, a 122-per-cent increase from the same month a year ago.

The benchmark price for detached homes was $491,128 in October, 0.4-per-cent higher than the benchmark of October 2008.

“I still think low mortgage rates are the key to this that has really been driving [sales] activity,” Scott Russell, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, said in an interview.

Russell said he has heard anecdotal evidence that foreign investors are once again playing a larger role, but it is rising confidence among local buyers, coupled with low mortgage rates, that has driven sales and prices.

Inventories have shrunk in a relative sense. In Metro Vancouver, the number of new listings in October was higher than the same month a year ago. But the total number of active listings in inventory in October shrank by four per cent compared with September and by 37 per cent compared with the same month a year ago.

In the Fraser Valley, October’s new listings increased seven per cent compared with September, but overall inventory shrank to 8,807 units compared with 11,715 in the same month a year ago.

Russell said realtors in his board area don’t expect the unseasonably high level of sales to continue through November and December, when markets traditionally experience a seasonal slowdown.

However, Robyn Adamache, a market analyst with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said she is forecasting that Metro Vancouver sales will remain relatively robust until the middle of 2010, depending on what happens to mortgage rates.

“I think we are going to see some increase in mortgage rates as the economy improves, which is a bit of a two-sided thing,” Adamache said in an interview.

“It’s a good sign that the economy is improving if [banks] start raising rates a bit, but on the other hand, that will have an impact on what happens in the real estate market.”

Adamache is not expecting a dramatic increase in mortgage rates. Her forecast is for the five-year-posted mortgage rate to climb to an average of 5.75 per cent over 2010 from 5.55 per cent over 2009.

Another factor will be rising prices. Adamache said many of the enthusiastic first-time buyers who were motivated by the combination of lower prices and record low interest rates have bought homes.

Now, “prices are rising, and a lot of those people have done their thing already.”

Tsur Somerville, director of the centre for urban economics and real estate, in the Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C., said there are already some slight signs that the frenzy of sales is beginning to slow.

Somerville said the pace of sales in October, compared with the pre-correction years of 2007 and 2006, slowed somewhat from September.

And the rate of month-to-month price growth in October from September was the lowest it had been since May.

“I’d say it does suggest things have taken a little bit of step back from where we were in September.”

Somerville said the rapid rebound in the Lower Mainland’s real estate markets may be a sign that the economic recession in the region was not as severe as in other regions.

The high level of sales is the result of putting “the low interest rate environment and renewed optimism on a base of a not particularly severe recession in terms of employment [losses].

By Derrick Penner, Vancouver SunNovember 3, 2009

depenner@vancouversun.com

BC Housing Market Gains Momentum

accentuate — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:59:14 +0000

Here’s some encouraging news from the BCREA about the continued upward momentum of BC real estate sales in September. With more and more buyers entering the market, competition amongst listings is also increasing. Ensure that YOUR listings STAND OUT IN THE MARKET with expert staging.

Vancouver, BC – October 15, 2009. The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports that Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) residential sales in the province climbed 68 per cent to 8,576 units in September compared to the same month last year. The average MLS® residential sales price in the province climbed 15 per cent to $474,169 from $412,149 in September 2008.

“Upward momentum in consumer demand continued unabated in September,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA Chief Economist. “Low mortgage interest rates and renewed confidence in real estate assets has propelled BC home sales to a level not seen in two years.” September posted the highest number of BC MLS® residential sales for that month since September 2005, and the third highest ever recorded for the month of September.

“While Victoria and the Lower mainland are exhibiting strong sellers’ market conditions with rising prices, housing markets in the rest of the province are experiencing a more gradual recovery,” added Muir.

Year-to-date, MLS® residential sales dollar volume increased 6 per cent to $29 billion over the same period last year. A total of 63,521 units were sold in the first nine months of 2009, up 6 per cent from 2008, while the average MLS® price declined 1 per cent to $457,389.

For more information, please contact:

Cameron Muir	Damian Stathonikos
Chief Economist	Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Direct: 604.742.2780	Direct: 604.742.2793
Mobile: 778.229.1884	Mobile: 778.990.1320
Email: cmuir@bcrea.bc.ca	Email: dstathonikos@bcrea.bc.ca

House Hunting goes Mobile

accentuate — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:20:05 +0000

Here’s an interesting article in today’s Vancouver Sun…..a mobile house hunting option for iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android phones. As potential buyers gain even easier access to view properties on-line, the need for effective, attention grabbing photos becomes even more important…..and Home Staging can help you do just that to stand out in the market.

Read on for more:

Starting the house hunt in Metro Vancouver no longer needs to be a static pursuit.

A couple of firms have joined the technological wave of text-messaging and map-location to launch services that deliver property information to consumers on their wireless devices.

It is the thin edge of making property searches completely mobile, although not a lot of consumers may be aware they are available.

“There’s no doubt that mobile is where it’s at,” says Kye Grace, a tech-savvy realtor and consultant in Vancouver. “From searching right down to a realtor [website] having a mobile option for iPhones, Blackberrys and Android phones.”

The logic for realtors, Grace said, is that “you want to be where the consumer is. And in all reality, the consumer is going mobile.”

From the consumer’s perspective, Grace said regardless of how much time consumers spend looking up property listings on their computers at home, they still wind up driving around to see the offerings, so its more convenient and efficient if you can deliver information to them where they are.

RealtyText is one program created by the Vancouver-based firm RT RealtyText, which uses text-messaging to deliver information to house-hunting consumers.

Company president George Haddad said realtors can subscribe to the service, which allows them to upload their listings to RealtyText’s system, then put an addition to their property signs printed with the realtor’s special code.

The consumer who sees that sign texts the code to the RealtyText system, which sends back the listing information — including specs, photos and an option to contact the listing agent to set up a viewing.

“Business has been really, really good,” Haddad said of his company’s initial sales campaign.

“What [realtors] like is that they’re providing information to clients 24/7,” he added. “As well, they love the fact they can monitor activity on a property,” by seeing how many people request information.

Haddad, an active developer, said he got the idea for RealtyText out of his own frustration at not being able to get information quickly while he was on the road.

And from watching American Idol and registering the show’s method of text messaging for viewers to vote for favoured contestants, Haddad thought that text would be the way to do it. After about 18 months of development, he launched RealtyText earlier this year.

The technical experts at Myrealpage.com dreamed up a more comprehensive search tool that marries Google Maps with the Multiple Listing Service databases of B.C.’s real estate boards, and provides a search tool accessible through a mobile version of a subscribing realtor’s website.

“With the mobile product, it gives consumers their first opportunity to go and shop for a home away from their home computer,” Ray Giesbrecht, Myrealpage.com’s sales and marketing manager in Vancouver, said in an interview.

The service uses the iPhone’s GPS navigation system to show consumers MLS property listings within the vicinity of their location on a Google Map, and set it to follow them around, plotting more listings as they travel through neighbourhoods.

This gives homebuyers “a more realistic context of the property vis-a-vis its neighborhood,” he added.

Giesbrecht said the system also has options realtors can access for users to flag favourite listings, grade them, and make comments on them for future review at the realtor’s office.

The Rogers-owned search service Zoocasa.com does offer a similar mobile application for the iPhone, but Giesbrecht noted that it aggregates listings from sources other than MLS databases, so its listings are limited compared with Myrealpage.com.

Grace, while he is not a user, offers a favourable review of Myrealpage.com’s offering.

“As far as individual products go, Myrealpage is the best,” he said, “but I don’t think they have any competition either.”

The difficulty right now, Grace added, is accessibility. At this point, consumers probably aren’t aware that the tools are available.

depenner@vancouversun.com

Home Sales Climb for 5th Consecutive Month

accentuate — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:23:55 +0000

Now’s the time to increase the demand for your property. Home Staging will help you STAND OUT IN THE MARKET!

The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports that Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) residential sales in the province rose 40 per cent to 9,970 units in June 2009 compared to the same month last year. Activity in the month of June marked the fifth consecutive month of rising sales and the highest level of activity since January 2008, on a seasonally adjusted basis.

“Housing markets around BC continued to post higher sales in June, fuelled by attractive mortgage rates and lower prices,” said Bryan Yu, BCREA Economist. “The larger urban regions of Greater Vancouver and Victoria exhibited balanced market conditions in June, while others have recorded improved market stability. Stronger demand and a decline in home listings are stabilizing home prices in many BC markets.”

Year-to-date, MLS® residential sales dollar volume was down 20 per cent to $16.3 billion over the same period last year. A total of 36,329 units were sold in the first six months of 2009, down 15 per cent from 2008, while the average MLS® price declined 5 per cent to $448,381.