Real Estate Information Archive

I know that pictures say it better than words so I am going to show you an example of a house I sold with before and after photos.  The house had been on the market for a while and did not sell.  I was hired to come in and make it happen - get the house sold.  It was a beautiful house, well cared for and very cheery with a lot of yellow walls with blue accent colors in pillows and fabrics.  But, as I explained to the seller, when you are selling, your house has to appeal to a lot of different people with different color pallets of their furniture and belongings.  We went with a warmer neutral color - the blues still popped but now it appeals to a broader population.

Please note how we had the seller remove quite a few items from these book cases and regroup them in a more interesting manner.  Looks much better, don't you think?

After changing the walls colors, the house sold almost immediately.  Another thing we did to make the house more attractive from the outside was to change the angle we shot of the front of the house - making sure we had a pretty day - even though it was winter - the shadows from the tree in the front yard show some depth and makes the traditional ranch view a little more interesting.

I hope these visuals give you an idea on how you can neutralize your house and yet still keep it charming and interesting to a buyer.  One of the things the Pat Wattam Team offers our sellers is help in deciding what to do to the house to maximize the appeal to a buyer.  We also offer a variety of videos to help you prepare to sell.  Call us today!

AS we leave the dreary days of winter, flowers start blooming, grass turn green, and as the weather gets warmer our thoughts turn to summer when the kids are out of school. There is a reason we have the majority of real estate closings in the summer - it's when children are out of school and moving is easier! For you sellers to get ready to capitalize on this, there are 3 main things you need to do to get your house ready for the spring market.

1. Have the home pre-inspected.  You want a professional to look at your house objectively. All of us live with little quirky things in our house, but the next buyer doesn't want your problems.  The main areas to concentrate on include the air and heat, foundation, roof, and mechanicals including plumbing and appliances.  It's better to find out the issues before you negotiate a price with a buyer and THEN they have a home Inspection and you now have to spend thousands of dollars on things that should have been taken care of earlier! I have seen this more often than not!  Once this is complete you can move on to the more fun items!

2.  Next, time to de-clutter and de-personalize the house.   Remember, you don't need to show the buyers all your special, personal 'stuff'. You want them to be able to visualize themselves and their stuff in your home.  Be brutal. Get rid of all that stuff!  Once I had a decorator at my home tell me that I didn't really need to display ALL the little knick knacks I bought on vacations!  In fact, in staging we call anything smaller than a bowling ball 'house dandruff'!!!! I have a LOT of dandruff in my home!!!  So that special group of collections you have - whether it's snow village or all those family photos - all of that needs to be put away.  Counter tops need to be cleared off, 90% of the stuff in the bookshelves needs to be boxed up and put away. And those closets! If yours looks like mine, then box it up, move it to climate controlled storage until it's time to bring it to the new house.  Once you have de-cluttered and cleaned take a photo of each room with your cell phone.  Take a hard look. This is how your house will look on the internet.  Does it still look cluttered?  Do you need to remove some more furniture, take more things off the wall?  If not, move on to the next, really fun step!

3.  Now it's time to stage the house from outside to in. The outside has to be inviting to lure a buyer inside. Fresh mulch and flowers can make the front of the house fresh - as will power washing or freshening up the paint with current colors (Please, no mauve, pink, blue, etc).   Then, with the help of a stager or professional decorator you can make decisions on color.  I have beautiful red walls in part of my house but my house isn't for sale!  No weird or bight colors. You can't go wrong with warm neutral wall colors.  You just have one shot a hooking a buyer so make sure that everything is ready before going on the market.  Your house needs to be prettier than the competition.  The neutral colors will help the buyer see their own furniture and decoration in the house and generate an offer for you!  You want to make the buyer feel compelled to make an offer before they let it slip away!  And give yourself a time frame and a budget to get the house ready.

The Pat Wattam Team is here to help you make your dreams come true.   Let us come take a look at your house with you and give you some tips and suggestions. We can show you what the other homes for sale look like so that you can decide how much of the house needs to be redone in order to sell.  Give us a call and take advantage of the spring market!

Having curb appeal can either improve or diminish the chances of selling your home. That’s why the first impression of a home is essential in getting a potential home buyer's attention. Your landscaping can be the advertisement that gets the buyer in your door. If the buyer likes the outside of the home, they will be more inclined to see the inside. Did you know that having a well maintained landscape can add up to 10% to the value of your home. I hope these tips will be of use to you.

YOUR LAWN Cleaning up the lawn should be the first thing you do when working with your landscaping. Why? Grass takes the longest time to perfect or improve. Healthy green grass is the first thing that will attract a potential home buyer. If your landscape isn't maintained, it may drastically alter their opinion. They may even think they the inside of your home matches the outside. You also want to make sure you keep leaves and debris picked up and just keep the appearance clean in general. If you have brown patches, rake it and seed it until you have the desired effect. If your yard is in really bad shape, you may want to consider hiring a landscaping professional.

TRIMMING An easy way to clean up your landscaping is to trim any trees, bushes, or shrubs you may have. This can be very important in making the architecture of your home a high point. It will also keep your plants healthier.

COLOR Having color will help attract attention and help sell your home. Colorful flowers will do the trick. You might want to consider adding mulch to your garden beds. This is an easy and rather inexpensive way to brighten up your landscape. It also can be added very quickly in case you have a home showing coming up.

DECORATION Decorating the entrance is another way to brighten up your home. Place a welcome mat out or add a wreath to your front door. You want the buyers to feel as if they are already at home!

I hope these tips will be of use to you when selling your home.

A lot of our clients have friends or family who have been home owners for quite some time or are in the repair industry for things in the house.  These are the people they want to help inspect their new home purchase - not only because they respect their opinion but also because it's FREE!  What's wrong with this?  First, Louisiana Inspectors are licensed and there are specific things they are trained to inspect.  Not only will they tell you what they find wrong with the house, but will give you tips on maintenance or things to keep you eyes on in the future.  No one is perfect, but an impartial 3rd party can help you make sure you aren't buying a lemon!  Also, a licensed home inspector knows that the job you hire them is not to make this home into a new home again, but to alert you to items that need attention - then it's your job to determine which things need to be addressed in order for you to move forward with the sale. 

This is one of the most expensive purchases you will ever make.  Trust your home Inspection to a licensed inspector so that you have the best chance of getting a total over all view.

And those of you, who like us, have owned your house for several years, might want to have a home inspection done on your own house to see if there are items you should be aware of.  We recently had a structural engineer check out our house as I had seen some movement in the brick.  Well, what I thought was foundation issues were really termite issues - and I never saw the evidence - even though I look for that stuff all the time!!!  The professional recognized it immediately.  Guess that's what they are the professionals!!

If you never need a list of inspectors to call on, just let us know.  We keep a list handy - just for you!

Spring is finally here - as evidenced by the storms we had last week!!  If you are thinking about selling your home, this is the perfect time to prepare the outside of your house.  This is an area a lot of sellers skimp on but if you don't have the curb appeal to attract the buyers then they will never see what a great house you have inside!!  The the Baton Rouge Real Estate Market, and surrounding areas, the buyers have plenty of homes to choose from.  They will pass your house up if the outside isn't inviting.

Unless you have a green thumb, go to your local garden center and get advice on what flowers to buy - find some that bloom a lot and don't require a lot of maintenance!  Of course, this would be a good time to put in an inexpensive sprinkler system which would also make a good selling point.  When choosing the flowers, you want to have enough to be noticed, but not so much that it looks like caring for them will be a lot of trouble to the new buyer! 

Once you have the front looking inviting, remember, after the buyers look inside your home, one of the last places they look at is the back yard.  i see so many people who have a beautiful front year, then no landscaping in the back!!!  That doesn't leave the kind of last impression you want!  A easy way to dress up the back yard is to fill large pots with flowers.  The plastic pots that look like clay are great, inexpensive. I tend to kill plants because I busy and forget to water them!  When you have them in pots, you just throw out the old and put in some new ones (better pick inexpensive flowers if you are doing this!!)!  Also, you might want to get ride of your old patio furniture and get the new stuff you will want for your new house - just get it now so that it helps make a great last impression on the buyers!!

And, as always, if you need me to look at your house to help determine what needs to be done to get it ready for market, just give me a call!

Prior to the days of Hurricane Katrina I used to suggest to all my sellers to get their home pre-inspected so that we wouldn't have any surprises when the buyer had their home Inspection.  Then came the hay days after Hurricane Katrina where buyers were just glad to have a home to purchase.  Now that the market has shifted back to the norm it's time to consider making an investment in your home prior to putting it up for sale in the form of a home inspection.

The reason most sellers don't want to do this is the cost.  A home inspection can run from $250-over $500 - depending on size.  Let's say you spend $500 and find out that you have some wiring issues that are not up to code - and with FHA (government backed loans) being so popular the house does have to be to current code - and it's going to cost you $2000  to make repairs.  You can now factor that into the price you accept on the sale of your house.  To an appraiser, that $2000 is just maintenance so he isn't going to give you anything extra.  But, in a negotiation, wouldn't you rather know up front that you need this work done than wait until after you have negotiated a price on your house with a buyer AND THEN have to spend an additional $2000 you hadn't counted on.

One of the questions a lot of sellers ask me is why do they need to make repairs to their home when the condition existed whenever they purchased the home.  All I can say is that times have changed.  With the mortgage lenders looking harder at the houses they are doing the loans on, they don't want any possibility of problems in case they foreclose on this home in the future.  You may have lived with this condition for years, but that condition may no longer be acceptable to a buyer.

A home inspection won't take all the surprises out of the sale because the buyer's inspector might find something else, but at least you will have a heads up on the most expensive items.  An extra benefit of the pre-inspection is that you can advertise that this has been done so many buyers won't want to spend the money to have a second one performed, and if you have any major repairs, you can use that as a bonus to buying your house over your neighbors!!!! 

If you are contemplating selling your house in the next couple of years, now is the time to start preparing for that day by starting now to do that maintenance you have been deferring for years!  If you are planning to sell soon, call me and I'll get you a copy of a brochure called 'Passing the Home Inspection".