Home Staging

From time to time, everyone wishes they could change the décor in their home and create a more personal atmosphere. However, this task is often one that brings on confusion as to how to decorate without spending lots of money.

This task is really easily done just by adding new items to the various rooms in your home. Some of the items you can add range from wall plagues, mirrors and furniture, to lighting or other items. Just adding a tabletop figurine to a room gives it a certain awe that will surely enhance the atmosphere of that room. Depending on your preferences, a unique crystal figurine in the shape of an eagle, a stallion, dolphins, or a wolf might be just the touch you were looking for.

Of course, if you have a certain theme already in place, you might want to decorate accordingly. A “Western” themed room could include such items as a stallion figurine, southwestern styled mirror, metal cowboy wall hooks, or a feathered hand axe. Not only will you be able to use wall plagues to add to the western theme but such items as southwestern themed lamps, clocks, vases, pots, candles, candleholders, and photo frames can also be great ways to accentuate the feel. In just a few short minutes, you have given your guest bedroom a southwestern atmosphere.

If you are going for a nautical theme, the dolphin table would also be excellent in a bathroom. You could place the table in the corner and place bath sets such as the spa bath set or the pralines & honey bath basket to decorate. Along with these items, you can find other under the sea figurines and accessories to enhance the feel and give your guests a beautiful bath time experience along with providing them all the essential bath accessories.

Instead of hiring an interior decorator or throwing out everything in a room and starting over you can find all kinds of unique items that can be added to any room in your home such as decorative screens, wall décor, clocks, vases, bookends, figurines, photo frames, linens and even various accent furniture pieces. Just by adding or replacing a few items with new ones, you will be able to decorate your home without the added expense of redoing the entire room.

The idea, when it comes to decorating, is to choose a theme or atmosphere you would like the room to have such as a wild safari, under the sea, country, southwestern, or even just a calm and relaxing mood. Then you can find items to add that will ultimately change the room, giving it a unique, exciting, and fresh look with only a few items.

The fun comes in when you can envision the room the way you desire, begin adding all the items associated with your theme, and then watch it come to life before your eyes. Each room can have its own personality and awe instead of being the same throughout the home. Have fun! Enjoy finding the unique items to decorate every room in your home, or just create your own little getaway with one room.

Ron Jan Stager
http://www.articlesbase.com/interior-design-articles/home-decorating-tips-726533.html

Expired listings are the hottest “cold lead” you can find. These people tried to sell their home, and the market unapologetically told them it didn’t want it, which creates a more motivated seller with a dose of realism. If you’re in a reasonably busy market, you could probably make a healthy living from just expired listing marketing alone.

There are several people representing their system as the magic bullet for this booming market. In this article, I’ll show you how to leverage some off the shelf parts and very quickly, and efficiently create your own expired listings marketing system. Our goal for you is creating a very turn-key system that simply delivers leads to you with minimal to no work.

Any expired listings system will require several parts:

First, you’ll need source data of expired listings. Typically this coms from your MLS, but there are 3rd-party providers of this as well, which will attempt to run a name-match on the address, and will send you data in a format easier to deal with. One such company is TheRedX (no affiliation), though you can certainly get this data free from your MLS. What one pays for is ease-of-use, as they will email you a CSV file. My opinion is this service is definitely worth the cost, but for those concerned more about money than time, you can certainly pull this data yourself, then key it into a reverse-address-lookup to try and get a resident’s name.

Second, you’ll need a way to get in front of these potential listings, which will require using postcards. In most cases, a phone number is not available or the resident is on the do-not-call list. It’s not enough.

Here you have a few choices:

a. You can wait until the listings stack up to 100 or more, then use a postcard service to print and send them all at once. This is inferior because expired leads depreciate in a matter of hours, and within a few days are pretty much worthless. You need to reach the potential seller very quickly. You need the right information seen by the right people at the right time.

b. You can deliver them to the house, or have someone else do it. This is the best for timeliness, as if you’re first in line, you can “lay a bear trap” for other real estate agents, as I’ll show you in a bit. This helps you get the listing, but is time-consuming, or costly if you hire someone else to deliver these for you.

c. You can pre-print the postcards, then hand-address them as you get the data. This is a bit of work to set up, but low cost overall. The biggest drawback to this is that it will require your time every day, and most people quickly fall off doing this as soon as they get busy. Also, if you use multiple cards, this can get complicated quickly, as you’ll have certain people on day 1, others on day 2, others on day 3.

d. You can purchase a postcard automation system which will print, stamp, and mail, in your own handwriting, even multi-card campaigns for roughly $.52 per postcard. This is especially effective for postcard campaigns, where doing it oneself would get horribly complicated and time-consuming. This card automation system allows for pre-created campaigns and typically includes scanning of your handwriting to turn it into a font. One upside to this is if you subscribe to a 3rd-party data source, you can even, with a bit of work, make this 100% hands-free.

Third, you’ll need your message. This can be a bit tricky, because it’s easy to fall into being the bearer of bad news. Personally, I’m a big believer in using video, because people are busy, and sometimes lazy. If they need to read a lot, you’ll need to catch them with a killer headline, or your postcard will go straight to the trash. Two proven techniques I’ve seen work are to first, tell them it’s more than just about the price, and second to make it clear “the Market” has told you the house isn’t worth that. Using a video, phrased as a 3rd party, can also deliver news the seller doesn’t want to hear – which is that the house was probably overpriced.

Only 1.5% of all agents follow up over 5 times, yet 60% of sales happen after the 5th contact. See the pattern? Now you know the reason for the 80/20 rule, about 20% of the real estate agents outselling the other 80%. The trick: automated followup, via email sequential autoresponders and card campaign automation.

Your expired listing marketing system should let the potential seller know it’s about pricing, promotion, and presentation. They may be able to leave the price as-is, provided they increase how the home is presented (read: add staging, re-paint, cosmetic repairs, etc.), and promotion (read: reach a wider audience). If you are the one to tell them their house is overpriced, they’ll shoot the messenger. Don’t be that casualty. Instead, try “the market of supply and demand has told us in it’s current condition, the price requires adjustment.” I like to remind people I’m like the weatherman – I don’t make the weather, I just let you know how to prepare. Expired listing sellers are probably frustrated, so use caution in your language.

Our company, has produced a customizable video called “Help! My Home Won’t Sell” or “Why Didn’t My Home Sell?”. If you decide to produce your own video, be sure to have a crystal-clear “call to action” for them to call you at the end, and illustrate the value by doing so.

Whatever course you choose, I hope this helps you get more business. Real estate marketing is competitive, but can lead to many closed transactions and millions in income. Investing just a few hours to set up your turn-key expired listings marketing can provide a pillar of business for years to come.

For more information about our product, please visit http://www.Movoxo.com/expired-listing-marketing-system You’ll find a free “expired listings success” video and e-book, and more information out our expired listings marketing options.

Roger Vetruba
http://www.articlesbase.com/real-estate-articles/expired-listing-marketing-system-how-to-build-one-736778.html

With the huge boom in interior designers and home decorating stores and businesses it is easy to feel unqualified to take on the decoration of your own home. The only thing is, people have been decorating their own homes for years, it isn’t until recently that we suddenly needed the help of interior designers and such to make our homes look like we want them to. You just need to know what you want and then think like an interior designer.

You first need to pick a space or a room that you are going to work on decorating. Only do one at a time, spreading your time over several rooms may lead you to become frustrated since the progress will seem very slow. Once you have your area choose a color that you like. If you are going with a bold or bright color it is better to make that an accent color rather than covering the entire wall. An entire room of bright red or deep purple can make the room hard to relax in since your eyes will constantly be trying to adjust to the extreme colors.

After the color, find yourself a theme. It doesn’t need to be anything crazy like cowboys or space ships, but decide if you want the items in the room to be modern or antique. Then head out and find a few items that fit into that theme. It is necessary that you don’t cram the room with figurines. Once you try to fit too many things in one room, whether it be too many colors or too much stuff or more than one theme the room just looks messy and unorganized all the time.

If you can’t come up with any ideas for what to put in your home, walk through a dollar store or craft store or simply search the web for interior decorating ideas.

Gabriella Carrera
http://www.articlesbase.com/interior-design-articles/home-decorating-less-is-more-674670.html

Its something that realtors have told me I would be very good at. I have a good eye and a knack for this type of thing. I want to know more about the business without investing first in one of those on-line courses. I want to do this, I just need to know more about what is involved.

Go to your local library or bookstore. There are many books on staging. There is a lot to learn and you need to pay attention to detail with EVERYTHING. From the type of bedding on the bed, to smells, to even the patio chairs outside.

You would need to meet up with a lawyer and tax advisor to go throught the process of starting up your business and getting your tax ID number.

Then there is the marketing and networking of your business and getting your name out there.

You would need to start a relationship with a furniture rental company. If the home is empty, your client would need to rent furniture to get that staged look.

You would also need to investigate other ‘stagers’ w/in the area to find out what they charge in your area and the services they provide.

Make sure you also take to your insurance agent, you’ll need insurance because you are going into peoples homes.

Learn to deal with different personalities, not everyone is a perfect client.

Come up with forms to leave behind with clients, sort of like a check list of things that need to be done before staging – such as removing clutter, fixing holes in walls, painting, etc.

Hope this helps.

I just got the estimate to stage my house, and let’s just say.. i’m not in tune with the fees. Personally, for the amount of commission my agent is making, I think they should be picking up the tab on this. Who typically does this?
mistyped buyer. meant seller.

The seller would pay for this, it would never be an agents expense. I have no idea where you get the idea that the buyer might, but it will never happen.