Coldwell Banker Apex Blog

Fresh New Look

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:08:59 -0600

A new design for the coldwellbanker.com home page

Today we released a new look for our award winning website, coldwellbanker.com. The home pages has been updated with a much warmer and home-related look than we’ve ever had before. When you visit coldwellbanker.com you’ll notice that when you click on the home search tab or the agent tab the visuals in the background highlight what it is you’re searching for. We’ve also simplified the menu options, updated our highlighted sections and added a few other touches here and there.

It’s kind of like we repainted our entryway, installed some brass hardware to the front door and added a few nice accents from Crate & Barrel to brighten up our main foyer.

This is just the first of a number of changes coming from Coldwell Banker Real Estate in the coming months. Coming in March we’ll unveil what we believe is a significant and timely change in the real estate conversation. More to come, but for now we hope you enjoy this new design for coldwellbanker.com as you look to buy, sell or just dream about that new home.

Here’s to all the things that make a house a home.

Seven Staging Secrets

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:47:20 -0600

I recently heard some great tips from Susanita de Diego, broker/owner with Coldwell Banker Your Calgary Home Selling Team; about simple staging tips that could help boost a home’s appeal and give homeowners a competitive edge when selling their home. Your own agent will likely suggest a lot of similar things, so I wanted to share so you would gain some insight into why these ideas make sense.

Stage rooms with one purpose. Rooms that have many uses can confuse or even deter homebuyers, so staging rooms with one purpose is vital. Determine who your most likely target market will be, whether it’s young professionals with no kids, families, or even empty nesters. Then present your areas to fit their needs. If you’ve been using a room as a guest room/kids playroom/home office, pick the one use that best suits your buyers.
Tackle the easy “do-it-yourself” projects. Spruce up your home by updating kitchen and bathroom fixtures and updating cabinet hardware. Add a fresh coat of paint in a neutral palate that won’t distract from your home’s features.

A fresh coat of neutral paint goes a long way
Focus on the living areas. Potential buyers should envision themselves entertaining friends and family in the living areas of the home. Make sure those areas feel as spacious as possible by removing any unnecessary furniture to allow for easy traffic flow.
Make sure the master bedroom appeals to both sexes. Remember that the master bedroom is a room that a couple will be sharing, so the décor should appeal to both sexes. It should feel like a calm and peaceful refuge, not a frilly boudoir. Remove any feature that seems too gender-specific and paint the walls a neutral colour.
De-clutter & depersonalize. Buyers want to picture their family living in a home, not the previous owners. You’re going to be moving anyway, so start now by packing away family photos, personal mementos knickknacks. Store away valuables under lock and key. Some property owners find they need to store some of their belongings off premises to create an open feel.
Furnish the home, but don’t overdo it. While an empty house may look spacious, it’s often hard for buyers to visualize their belongings in a home if they’re just looking at bare walls and floors. Leave the basic components that allow the viewer to define each room.
Don’t forget the outside spaces. First impressions can play a key role in a consumer’s decision-making process, so don’t neglect your home’s curb appeal. Make sure the home’s exterior is inviting by trimming the bushes, mowing the lawn and painting faded window trim. Buyers will appreciate the seller’s efforts with the yard work, and will tend to assume that the same attention to detail has been

Honestly People ARE Buying Houses!

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 01:39:57 -0600

I love my iPad. And one of my favorite apps is Zite. If you don’t have it, get it! It pulls articles of interest to you and essentially creates a daily online magazine with sections of interest to you. And what’s really cool about it is that it doesn’t only pull content from mainstream outlets, but allows me to read “off-the-beaten path” articles or blogs I might not have found before.

My “real estate” section routinely pulls blog posts from an outfit called The KCM blog. Yesterday I saw this great post and thought I’d share it. As a math guy, I loved the simple presence. The author broke down the National Association of Realtor’s estimate for annualized home sales for 2011 and determined that nearly 14,000 homes are being sold every day.

I’d like to break it down a little more. With 22% of all August sales being to investors, that leaves 10,749 homes being sold every day to “regular” people. Those with a lifestyle need. Births. Marriages. Job promotions or transfers. A myriad of other reasons.

Why is that figure important? Because it showcases that those with a lifestyle need and the financial viability to do so ARE buying homes. They are taking advantage of the lowered – yet correcting – prices, increased inventory affording choice and all-time low mortgage rates. These nearly 11,000 “regular” homebuyers a day are really smart.

I know there are many, many people who would love to enter the home buying process today but can’t. The economy is tough, unemployment is high and consumer confidence is low. And, I know, we as people are almost pre-wired to follow the herd.

But in homeownership today, I caution you to make sure the herd has your individual best interests at heart.

No matter where I travel and no matter how many people I meet – both inside and outside of real estate – I continually hear stories of people who just bought a home. These people looked at their individual situations and made the determination that was OK for them to be an active participant in the home buying process.

Is it home ownership for everyone today? No. But for nearly 11,000 “regular” people a day it is!

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Coldwell Banker Apex Homebuyer Ready Follows New Thinking

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:39:32 -0600

I have taken a moment to repost the article below from Inman News. At Coldwell Banker Apex, we offer one of the most effective marketing tools to help our sellers homes stand out in a crowded market. One of the aspects of a Homebuyer Ready home is that it has had a pre-inspection. The article below from Inman News, addresses all the reasons this is a GREAT way to sell your home! Enjoy!

REPOSTED FROM INMAN NEWS:

Q: As a seller in this tough market, I asked our agent about doing our own inspection that we could present to the buyer. Our home is 60 years old; we know there are issues; have fixed what we can afford; and adjusted the price to reflect what we can't afford to change. Our agent is completely against it.

Our contract with him is almost up, so should we go ahead and do this before we sign a new contract? We're not trying to hide anything but think it would be a plus to be able to present a buyer with complete information from the beginning. --Kris H.

A: There are certainly widely varying opinions within the agent community on the issue of presale inspections, by the seller, to be disclosed in advance to prospective buyers. I, personally, am a big fan -- here's why:

If your home is old, as yours is, and there are things that are wrong with it, as with yours, buyers are likely to see or suspect these property ailments, so to speak, too. But buyers tend to walk into a property, see things that need fixing and do one of the following: (a) mentally overestimate what it will actually cost to fix the issues, (b) mentally underestimate what the repairs will cost, (c) decide that the place will just be too costly or take too much work to repair and/or (d) see the list price as a starting point for negotiations.

As a result, sellers like you tend to either get (a) lowball offers, (b) no offers or (c) get into contracts that the buyers later want to renegotiate.

When you provide a pest or even a general home inspection that lists out the issues the home has, you add a layer of reality on top of buyers' sometimes irrational beliefs about what actually needs to be done, and, almost more important, what it will cost. You create a sense of order and eliminate any unreasonable overwhelm that buyers are just making up in their heads.

(To be fair, there are certainly buyers who might see the reports and decide based thereon that the work is too expensive and that your home is not for them, but it's best to weed those folks out upfront -- before you get into contract with them.)

Providing this information, coupled with some other items I'm going to recommend you include, also creates a sense of calm at your willingness to fully disclose the home's issues, and can help manage buyer's understanding of your pricing strategy.

If you do decide to provide some advance reports to your home's prospective buyers, I'd suggest you make sure to include all of the following along with them:

1. Bids or estimates from licensed contractors. Inspection reports without repair estimates up the fright factor that repairs can cause. Most pest inspections will include a bid, but general property inspections most often do not. Get a licensed contractor (or several) to provide you with written estimates to do the work indicated in the advance reports you obtain.

This can be an especially useful strategy in cases where one inspector calls out a scary-sounding big fix or puts a big price tag on a repair, and you can find other reputable contractors who can do the work for much less.

Ideally, you'd make sure the contractors are going to be OK explaining the estimate to the buyers, if they decide to call up and inquire.

This strategy also enables your agent to market the list price as already reflecting a discount for the needed repairs, for the buyer who will take the property in as-is condition.

2. Recent, comparable sales data. If your list price truly is discounted, show the buyers this by pointing out all the other sales in the area of homes in superior condition, but otherwise similar to yours, that sold for more. This adds much credibility to your contention that the list price is already discounted.

3. A summary sheet with a receipt for the buyers to sign. You can eliminate some of the overwhelm of looking through a book of reports by providing a packet, covered with a sheet that provides bullet points of the more major items, the repair bids for fixing them, and a note about the list-price discount with a receipt for the buyers to sign and include with their offer.

4. A caveat that the reports are "for their information" and a recommendation that the buyers obtain their own inspections. You don't want the buyers to think that you've rigged these inspections, or paid the vendor off to make them favorable to you. You also do not want to create any sort of warranty that these inspections have found every single item that could be wrong with the home.

Let them know that you are still advising them to obtain their own inspections, and will make your home available for that if the buyers and you enter a contract for the sale of your home.

Often, inspectors will extend their insurance or warranties to the side that did not order the inspection if they pay for the inspector to come back out and walk them through the property and their findings at a reduced rate from the full inspection rate.

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of "The Savvy Woman's Homebuying Handbook" and "Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions." Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

Going Beyond Square Footage

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:33:52 -0600

The size of a home is one of the first things that I looked at when buying my current home. Is it big enough for kids? Will we have enough room? Can we grow in this new place? But honestly, the square footage of a home isn’t what’s really important. Take a look at this video to get an idea of what are the real questions you should be asking and the important details to turn that house you’re interested in into your new home.

The Future Of Home Technology

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 03:13:20 -0600

Over the years Hollywood has produced some great visions of what the house of the future will be. From The Jetson’s computerized home to the talking, interactive house on SyFy’s Eureka to the living spaces in Star Trek, these visions of how we will live all focus on improvements in our home that make life just a bit easier than it has been before.

Last month in London, the CEDIA Home Technology Event was held that showcased some of the next great innovations that will soon be making a way into our homes. Five years ago did you think that you’d never need to go to Blockbuster? How about streaming photos and songs to your TV entertainment center without spending thousands of dollars? Those are all common things today so I enjoyed this highlight video produced by AV News that showcased a few of the more interesting pieces of tech at the show.

If you jump to the 7:45 mark you’ll see what my wife think we need: a flat screen TV that doubles as a mirror when it’s turned off. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the video. Plus everyone in it has a British accent which makes it that much more interesting. Share what tech you’d most like to have in your home in the comments.