Real Estate Market

  Stage Your home to SELL

(quicker and for more money)

I recently received two days of training in the art of staging homes from the Association of Staging Professionals.  I am now an Accredited Staging Professoinal / Realtor.  I pursued this training in order to offer my clients more value and more service.  The objective of staging your home is to sell your home quicker and for more money.  The time you invest in staging your home will more than payoff when we put your home on the market.  Believe me, the cost of staging your home will be much less than the cost of a price reduction when your house doesn't sell.

     Here's a simple way to think of it:  if decorating is about personalizing your home, staging is about de-personalizing it.  Think about the model homes you've seen - you see very few pictures and personal items.  The objective is to create warm, fuzzy feelings in the potential Buyer, a "feeling" of lightness.  Here are some staging fundamentals to keep in mind as you prepare to put your home on the market:

• Detail your house like you would detail your car.  Ever had your car "detailed"?  Treat your home the same way - clean every corner (with a toothbrush, if necessary).
• The way you live in your home and the way we market and sell your home are two different things.  Make the transition in your mind to thinking of your home as a house, a product.  It's not your home anymore - it's the potential Buyer's.  Think of how the Buyer would perceive your home.
• If they can smell it we can't sell it.  Smell is a critical part of the potential Buyer's experience.  If the Buyer walks in your door and smells animals, moldy carpet, or garbage, you've lost them.
• Buyers (and agents) only know what they see, not what it's going to be.  The potential Buyer doesn't care about an allowance to replace the dirty carpet, because when they looked at the carpet, they lost their good feeling about the house.
• Less is more.  This is huge.  Clutter is the killer - it eats equity and energy.

     I've barely scratched the surface here.  When you are ready to talk about putting your home on the market, call me and I will gladly share the knowledge I've gained.  Staging is all about getting a greater return on your asking price in the shortest time possible.  That is my objective.  If it is also yours, let's talk about it.  Call me at 704-661-3173 or email me at Robert@RobertDulin.com

                                                     Dogs need exercise (just like people do!)

     Meet Dreamer and Halo, the two constant companions of my wife, Ann, and me.  I can't help it - Ann and I are "eat-up" with our dogs.  We take them with us whenever we go out of town.  We recently spent a long weekend at the beach enjoying long, chilly, sparkly days on the wide beach at Huntington Beach State Park.  When we let the dogs off their leashes they take off like they've never run before.  It is a joyous thing to watch.

     Ann got me one of those tennis ball throwers - the long, curved plastic things that allow you to throw a tennis ball much farther than you can with just your arm.  All day they begged for us to throw the balls.  My arm got tired so I let Ann do the throwing.  Her arm got tired and she handed it back to me.  Dreamer and Halo never got tired.

     Halo is two now but she still acts like a puppy, with that endless puppy energy.  In order to wear her out, we started tossing a bumper into the surf for her to retrieve.  Like a champion she swam out to retrieve it and brought it back in like a trophy, lording it over her older brother.

     By sunset we packed up and went back to the house.  Dreamer and Halo both collapsed into a mass of fur and barely moved for the rest of the night.  Mission accomplished.