Guest blog by Emily Frey and Audrey Hinson, our home staging NABors.

It’s springtime and you’ve decided to put your home on the market.

You are de-cluttering, making repairs, and washing windows. You’ve decided to freshen up the interior with paint. You adore bright, bold colors and in honor of Easter decide to paint each room a different vibrant hue. How can red and orange and blue and green possibly go wrong?

Now, before popping the top off those cans, put down the paint rollers and step away from the wall.

Why? As stagers, we’ve found the most successful homes have modern, neutral colors. Too many bold, contrasting colors can take away from the space and instantly turn a potential buyer off.

Still not buying that less is more? Make a smart compromise instead.

Bring in your bold colors with the following accessories:

o Decorative pillows
o Vases
o Artwork

The house will flow much better and the prospective buyers’ eyes will be drawn to the space (and not the fire engine red walls).

Obviously there are exceptions to this rule. Some houses can handle bright wall colors. Victorians, Tudors, and Bungalows, to name a few. Just remember – not every wall has to resemble the rainbow.

Need more color guidance? YOU’VE BEEN STAGED! tip of the month:

1. Bring in colors through accessories. The top three? Black, white, and green.

• BLACK is the color of authority and power. It is also stylish and timeless. (This does not mean black walls – I repeat, no black walls.)
• WHITE reflects light and is considered a summer color. Its popularity shines in its light and neutral tone. Another bonus? It goes with everything (except dirt – it tends to show dirt more easily, so keep the children’s hands away from those beautiful, plush throw pillows or white walls.)
• GREEN is one of the most popular decorating colors (not just because it’s the color of money). It is calming and refreshing. It symbolizes nature, is the easiest color on the eye, and can even improve vision.

Whatever path you choose, think with an objective eye. Experiment with neutral colors and bold accessories and watch your space transform into a salable commodity.

So until next month, happy painting!

For more tips or if you are seeking a professional home stager, contact Emily or Audrey at info@youvebeenstagedTN.com, or visit their website.

Guest blog by Emily Frey and Audrey Hinson, our home staging NABors.

Okay, in spite of some positive economic signs, the real estate market is still challenging, especially for sellers. Right now it’s a buyer’s market, and buyers want it all (including your furniture, your pets, your dishes, and in some cases, your lifestyle).

If you are contemplating putting your house on the market, it needs to stand out above the competition. Staging can give you that competitive edge.

YOU’VE BEEN STAGED! tip of the month:

1. Try to look at your house “through a buyer’s eyes,” as though you’ve never seen it before.
o Start in the front yard. Does it have curb appeal, does the trim need touching up, or is the house in need of a new paint color?
o Stand in your front door. What do you see? Clutter, too many large pieces of furniture, family photos everywhere?
o Take the emotion away and start looking at your home for what it is—an asset.
o Begin thinking about what you need to do to maximize its potential as a marketable product.

Too overwhelming? That’s where stagers come in. If you decide to hire a stager, it will cost money. But consider this: the cost of staging will almost always be less than your first price reduction (not to mention the added bonus of having someone else do all the work).

Get it right the first time. Be objective. De-clutter. Hire a stager. Get it sold.

Until next month…

Happy staging!

For more tips or if you are seeking a professional home stager, contact Emily or Audrey at info@youvebeenstagedTN.com, or visit their website.

Guest blog by closing expert Steve Morris.

Whether you are buying or selling a home, the culmination of your transaction will be an event called the closing. At your closing, the Realtor, mortgage lender (if you’re getting a loan), title attorney and client work together to properly transfer property from the seller to the buyer. Your closing should be a CELEBRATION that your deal is done, the details of home inspections and appraisals are behind you, and the excitement of moving to a brand new place is about to begin. To make sure that as closing day approaches you are able to focus more on the moving truck waiting outside and less on last minute details of your purchase or sale, we’ve put together a list of things that will be important to your title company in almost every transaction.

If you’re a buyer…

…what we’ll ask in advance

If you’re a buyer, we’ll call you before closing and ask for the information listed below. I’ve put beside each item a little explanation of why we care about it:

• Your current address. This info is required to complete a form from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
• How you would like the house to be titled? Will it be just you, or you and another person?
• Who is your homeowner’s insurance agent? One of the requirements for getting a mortgage is having current homeowner’s insurance in place. We’ll contact your agent and confirm that the policy is in place, and then send payment after closing.
• Who is your mortgage lender? As a title company, we coordinate with the lender to receive and distribute the money from your loan.

…what to bring on the day of closing

As a buyer, you have just two really important things to bring to closing, in most cases:

• Photo identification. Please bring a driver’s license or other state-issued identification. It’s also good practice to have a second form of ID, and in some cases might be required.
• Cashier’s check or wire transfer for your down payment. Tennessee has a law called the Good Funds Law that requires any payment to the title company at closing that is over $1,000.00 to be in so-called “good funds” such as a cashier’s check or wire transfer.

If you’re a seller…

…what we’ll ask in advance

If you’re a seller, we’ll have similar requirements, but a few more questions. Most of these relate to making sure that we handle the transfer to the buyer properly so that he or she receives clear title to the property.

• Are you married or unmarried? As you probably guessed, everyone who is listed on the title to a home must sign the new deed in order to finalize the sale. However, Tennessee law also gives ownership rights to spouses, even if they are not mentioned on the title, provided they lived in the home as their primary residence.
• Do you have a homeowner’s association? HOAs have the right to place a lien on a home for back dues. As part of our due diligence before closing, we contact the HOA to make sure that dues are up to date, and to collect any transfer fees on their behalf.
• Do you have a current owner’s policy of real estate title insurance? This is a document you would have received after you purchased your property. If that was in the last 10 years, I can save you some closing costs this time around if I can get my hands on it.
• Have you done any work on the property recently? This question also relates to our job of making sure the buyer gets good title to the property. In some cases, people who work on your house can gain lien rights over your property. For this reason, there are a couple more boxes we need to check when there has been recent construction.

…what to bring on the day of closing

Like the buyer, please bring photo identification. However, unlike the buyer, hopefully you will be taking money WITH YOU rather than bringing it in. You should also bring keys to the house and any garage door openers unless you or your Realtor has made prior arrangements for how to get them to the buyers.

When I’m driving in my car, the trip always seems shorter when I know where I’m going and what to expect along the way. Hopefully this list will make your next real estate transaction seem a little bit more familiar. Remember – your closing attorney is there to make sure you feel comfortable and understand what is happening at your real estate closing. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Take care!

Steve Morris is a licensed real estate attorney in the state of Tennessee and works at Wagon Wheel Title in East Nashville.  For more information or to schedule a closing with him, have your REALTOR contact steve@wagonwheeltitle.com.

By Brian Copeland

Feedback seems to be the measuring stick for every seller and agent today.  I have to say I have a different take on feedback, however.

The ultimate feedback comes when selling your home when and if a contract comes through.  Your REALTOR should be someone who has been tough enough with you from the get-go to give you all the obstacles you could face in the buyer’s eyes, which is usually price, condition and location.

Keep in mind, many times a buyer’s agent gives feedback like, “Buyer didn’t like the slope of the backyard.”  If we play through the scenario and were to contact the agent telling them we’d spend the $10,000 to correct the slope into the buyer’s dream yard, likely they’d find another reason why they didn’t like it.  If we overcame all 10-20 objections, at the end of the day, the buyer ultimately wouldn’t buy the home at all.

Also, as a business professional who has a fiduciary duty to guard and protect your interests and confidentiality, feedback could potential violate some privacy.  Say you’re a buyer who is interested in a home after seeing it. When an agent receives a feedback response request and it asks SPECIFIC questions, your agent should NOT answer those.

Feedback and certain questions are asked to poise the seller and seller’s agent knowledge. This is dangerous PERIOD for buyer’s agents. When a buyer is interested in a home, the seller’s agent has NO right to the inner workings and opinions of their brains. The ultimate feedback is patience followed up with an offer. The safest feedback is “Thanks for allowing us to show. The buyer has many options and must weigh those options. My job is to show the buyer the options and give him the tools to make his transaction come together. Congrats on making the initial options list. Once my buyer decides on his direction, I’ll be in touch.”

And by the way, direction happens AFTER closing. Nothing is a guarantee. The seller’s agent doesn’t need to know that! Keep in mind, I’m looking through BUYER agent mind. A smart selling agent, of course, wants this information.

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Guest blog by Emily Frey and Audrey Hinson, our Home Staging NABors.

Staging has become a term you hear more and more (thanks in large part to HGTV). But what exactly is staging?

Example: Have you ever been in someone’s home and all you could see was the “stuff?” Your eye doesn’t know what to take in first – the million appliances, dishes, and bottles on the kitchen countertop or the overabundance of antiques, blankets, pillows and photographs occupying every spare inch of the living room. When you walk into a space crammed with trinkets and collectibles, it’s very difficult for buyers to really see the space (or the potential of the space). Usually, you just walk right back out again.

This is where Home Staging comes in.

However, most people associate staging with decorating, but it’s really quite the opposite.

Home Staging is professionally preparing homes for sale so that they appeal to the most amount of buyers and generate the highest price in the least amount of time on the market. What does this really mean? That we detail, de-clutter, de-personalize, and prepare a seller’s home to give it a “model home” appearance so that the potential buyer can see themselves living in the space.

Home Staging is NOT:
• Decorating
• Fluffing (no jokes, please)
• Interior design
• Redesign

If you are thinking about selling your home—try to start thinking of it as a marketable product. Buyers need to see and understand the purpose of each room (not how much you enjoyed Suzy’s wedding or who your favorite sports team is).

So, here is our staging tip for the month (yes, you can thank us later):

Clear all unnecessary objects from furniture throughout the house. Keep any decorative objects on the furniture restricted to groups of 1, 3, or 5 items (pets don’t count as items, FYI).

Generally, a sparsely decorated home helps the buyer mentally “move in” with their own belongings. You want your space to “breathe” and show its maximum potential.

Sound easy? It is. Get to de-cluttering!

For more tips or if you are seeking a professional home stager, contact Emily or Audrey at info@youvebeenstagedTN.com, or visit their website.

Today’s home buyers have more access to knowledge than ever.  They do their research on the internet, they pick up tips from HGTV, and we’ve all learned from the mistakes that were made several years ago.  First time buyers are especially conscientious of their decisions.  They understand that they are benefitting from one of the most amazing opportunities to become a homeowner, with record low interest rates, great inventory, and extremely competitive prices. Plus they often pay less to own than rent.  

One of the things that both repeat and first time homebuyers are expressing by their decisions is that bigger is not necessarily better, not anymore.  Living beyond our means will have this affect on people.  We were able to make purchases for things we had no ability to pay for just a few years ago, and the outcome of that is stress and heartache.  We bought bigger and we spent more, because we could.  Then people started losing their jobs, those who kept their jobs stopped getting raises and bonuses, housing prices started falling, and we all realized we really don’t need all this big grand stuff.

This has lead to more and more repeat buyers coming to us to sell their homes so they can downsize, either by size, mortgage, or both.  We are all asking ourselves, do we really need all this space and all this stuff?  We are seeing more and more first time buyers who are pre-qualified for a lot higher amount than they actually end up spending.  We see tons of renters wanting to buy because it will actually decrease their monthly housing payment in so many cases.  And the trend seems to be leaning toward slightly smaller homes.

“I grew up in a large home, and my paternal grandparents built a 6-bedroom home back in the 1920s in Abilene, Texas, but my favorite home is the one I now live in (972 sq ft),” says homeowner Penny Lynn. She adds that “A smaller home certainly lends itself to less clutter–when a new item comes in, an older item leaves to be recycled, if at all possible”, and points out that using less gas and electrical resources is one way of being “green”.

One of our clients who also owns a small home has a plaque on her wall that says “Simplify Your Life”.  To me, that says it all right there.  Get rid of all the STUFF and JUNK that is bogging us down and holding us back from other pursuits and dreams, and keep what is essential and beneficial.  Our clients who decide to sell their McMansions often comment that they just don’t need all that space.  Maybe they are becoming empty nesters, maybe they bought because they thought bigger was a better investment, maybe they were trying to keep up with the Joneses.  I realize there are instances where you are a large family, work from home, maybe have a music studio, and simply require more space than most.  And we still have tons of buyers who are transitioning from their first bought homes to larger ones as their families and budgets grow, and needs change.  But many repeat buyers are deciding lately that less is more.

Although our numbers here in Nashville don’t necessarily reflect an enormously growing trend toward smaller homes, the mentality of our clients certainly has.  The Small House Movement that has swept parts of the country has not hit us yet, but we are experiencing our own downplayed version of that.

Benefits of a smaller home are not just in a lower mortgage payment, but it also usually means lower utility bills, less cleaning, and less upkeep all together.  Low maintenance living.  ”Unused space most likely equals wasted space. Who wants to pay for a space they never use?” wonders homeowner Beth Schackne, who loves her East Nashville cottage that is less than 800 square feet. “Once you start to rid your life of things you no longer need, you’ll never want to go back. Lack of clutter leads to peace of mind, and that is something on which you cannot put a price tag.”

For the first time since 2006, home sales in the Greater Nashville area were up from the previous year.  December 2011 home sales ended with an 18.2% increase over December 2010, with 1,773 closings according to Greater Nashville Association of Realtors.  Fourth quarter closings were also up from fourth quarter 2010, by 17.9%.  December marks the sixth consecutive month of increased home sales.  For the year, there were 20,624 homes sold.  Although that is only a 1.8% increase over total sales for 2010, it is still a great sign of things to come.  January has started off well too with pending sales being up.

We are seeing Nashville all over these “best in country” surveys recently.  Not that any of us are surprised.. we know how much our city rocks!

In MSN Real Estate’s Best Old-House Neighborhoods for First Time Buyers, East Nashville is naturally on the list, described as “Mayberry with a twist” by East resident Carol Norton.  The article goes on to say the reason to consider buying here is “the sense of community — one seldom seen in cities or suburbs — and the creative energy and camaraderie of its residents and small-business owners.” I couldn’t agree more.

Read the full article here.

For the fourth consecutive month, home sales in the Greater Nashville area are up from the same time period last year, this month by 15.6%.  Closings for single family homes in October 2010 were 1,284, compared to 1,446 in October 2011.  Condos were 144 in October ’10 and 188 this October, multi-family homes remained almost the same, and farms/lands/lots increased from 49 to 77.  In addition, there were 1,742 pending sales this October and 1,439 last year.  Inventory is down from last year, 20,165 compared to 22,826.  So there aren’t as many choices for buyers right now, but the incentive of taking advantage of record low interest rates along with depreciated pricing are pretty motivating factors for eligible home buyers.

Nashville also continues to be a very attractive market for many relocating buyers. According to Alice Walker, President of the Greater Nashville Association of REALTORS, “Many of these new residents are coming from markets highly affected by the economic downturn.. Newcomers seem pleased with buying opportunities, both in inventory and price, available to them here in the Middle Tennessee area.”

I hear this on a regular basis from many of my clients moving from out of state. While we have experienced a depreciating market here and unemployment rates are not as low as we would like them to be, our economic and housing market as a whole is still far stronger than many other areas. And we continue to grow and add jobs. Nissan recently advertised need for over 1,000 employees for its Smyrna plant, and with Opry Mills reopening and the anticipated opening of the new convention center downtown next year, thousands of additional positions will be filled.

Use your iPhone to help update your home!  HouseLogic, from the National Association of Realtors, has chosen its six favorite home improvement apps for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod.  Some of these work for Android as well.

ColorSnap by Sherwin-Williams is free, and matches real world colors with paint colors.  So see a color you really love and would like to duplicate?  Take a picture and the app will identify it.

Home Improvement CALCS has more than 115 calculations that can help you determine, for example, how much mulch, attic insulation, block wall, volts, or tile you need.  And the list goes on and on…

Ruler 2 is there for you when you forget your ruler (best for smaller objects).

iHandy Carpenter includes a plumb bob, surface level, bubble level bar, steel protractor, and a steel ruler.

Dream Home helps you bring the latest interior design trends into your own home.

I.D. Wood contains information on over 200 different woods from all over the world.  It also includes lumber cutting techniques, dimensional lumber conversions, nail size reference, and more.

Full story here.