By Angela Colley | Nov 30, 2016 When you’re selling your home, you must be ready for people to pop in at a moment’s notice. And no, it’s not like when your neighbor drops by to ask you to water her plants while she’s on vacation, and leaves in five minutes without noticing how many dishes are stacked in your sink or the layer of dust on your coffee table. Nope, these people will scrutinize. And they will judge. But you’re still living in your home—how do you keep it clean enough to make a good impression, no matter the time or day? It turns out you don’t have to hire a live-in housekeeper, and your life doesn’t need to come to a screeching halt just because you’re showing your house. Try these hacks to get the job done quickly and easily, so you can free up your time—and save your sanity. 1. Work the room Half of my cleaning problems come from not knowing where to start. I walk into a room, picture myself trying to clean all the things at once, get overwhelmed, and suddenly feel the urge to sit down for a while. Apparently I’m doing it wrong (no big surprise there). But if you know how to work the room, cleaning will go much faster.“ At first, follow the top-to-bottom and left-to-right rule for each room in the house,” says Lauren Haynes, home organizing and cleaning expert at Star Domestic Cleaners. That means start by dusting the ceiling fan, the top of the bookshelves, and anything up high before moving on. Going from left to right (or right to left, if that feels more natural) will keep you on task and make the cleaning go faster.“Then focus on the top eye-catcher places and things like floors, ovens, and bathroom [fixtures],” she says. While your instinct might be to clean everything, you might also go crazy trying to pull it off before every showing. Instead, zero in on what the potential buyer is likely to notice, Haynes recommends—cleaning it every day or two, and then doing a deeper clean once a week. 2. Use mobile storage As soon as you know you’re going to show your house, pack up everything you don’t normally use. “Remove all the nonfunctional stuff or things which don’t contribute to the overall look of the property,” Haynes says. It’ll feel weird to live like that at first, but the more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to clean. Once you’re down to the stuff you actually need, find a way to quickly and easily hide it when it’s time to show the house. “When we had a viewing on short notice, we used plastic and cardboard boxes...

By Tori Toth One of the most cost-effective ways to prepare a home for sale is to organize it, but I know for many home sellers it’s no easy task. It’s important to contain and, in fact, erase clutter for three reasons: Gain more square footage. Showcase the positive features in the home. Buyers can visualize living in the space. Clutter comes in all different forms and it lingers in most homes. So if you see piles of paperwork, clothes on the floor, stuffed closets — it’s time to declutter! Here are some tips: 1. Start small. Organizing is an evolving process that changes as the needs of a home owner change. Start small: One room, one closet, one corner. Just start somewhere! To make it count, tackle the first cluttered area a home buyer would see as they walk into the home. 2. Schedule it. Many times a home owner never starts the decluttering process because of time constraints. Schedule blocks of time (2-4 hours) or even just 15 minutes a day depending on what needs to be organized to make your goal a reality. 3. Find a home. One reason why clutter can build up in a home is if an item is homeless. Creating a place for each item in your home is a crucial part to obtaining an organized home. Of course, keeping the space in order only happens when you return an item back to it’s home after use.  4. Adopt “good habits.” By always returning an item home, you’re building in a maintenance system in your organizing process. Another good habit to adopt is to take 5-10 minutes every night and put items away. This way when you wake up in the morning, the house is ready to show off. For more tips on how to organize a home, view: “Lose the Clutter: Habits That Could Make or Break Your Home Organizing Goals.”...

Submitted by HowMuch.net Maintaining and increasing your home’s value can pay off in major ways. Not only does helping your home hold value help it sell for its full amount, it can also help your home sell more quickly, help maintain your neighbor’s home values, and ensure that you’re not overpaying in property taxes. These 10 projects are listed from least to most expensive, and may help you increase your home’s value. Best part: None of these projects cost more than $2,000, so you don’t have to break the bank to take on these projects either. —-Low Cost: Budget under $500—- LAWN FERTILIZING Fertilizing your lawn may not seem as though it’s doing much for your home’s value, but a well-maintained lawn plays a major role in your home’s curb appeal. Curb appeal is how well your property looks from the road, and has a major impact on your home’s value and resale. Fertilizing a dry, brown, or otherwise patchy lawn can help boost your home’s curb appeal, and in turn its value. Cost: The average cost of lawn fertilizing is around $.03 a square foot assuming a 6,000 square foot lawn, for a total of $180. Total costs range from $.02 a square foot for a DIY job to $.04 a square foot during peak season. Money Saving Tips If you are able to tackle this job DIY, you can save a lot of money (which you can then use to plant shrubs or trees to further increase your home’s curb appeal). Tackle this job at the beginning of the season to avoid paying peak prices. INSTALL AN ATTIC FAN The attic is one of the most overlooked areas of the home when it comes to the impact on the rest of the home. Attics that are not properly insulated can become superheated, which can overheat the roof, cause ice dams, and raise your energy bills. Installing an attic fan can help protect your roof, lower your energy bills, and improve your home values. Cost: The average cost to install a gable mount electric attic fan is around $275 for spaces up to 2,500. Total costs range from $39 for a wind-powered vent to $321 for an electric fan to cool up to 3,000 feet. Money Saving Tips Look into getting a solar-powered fan, which will not only run when you need it, but will also lower your monthly energy costs to run it as well. PAINT A ROOM IN YOUR HOME Dingy, old, or out of fashion paint can really hurt the resale of your home. By giving a room in your home a fresh coat of paint, you can help remedy this problem. Choose neutral paints...

By Justin M. Riordan, Spade and Archer Design Agency Design trends are just that: trendy. They change from day to day, year to year, and decade to decade. The ones that are popular now won’t be soon. The ones that were popular years ago aren’t now and the ones that were popular decades ago are already back again. Interior design trends tend to follow fashion trends about three years later. As colors gain popularity in fashion, they follow shortly thereafter in interior design.  The trick is being able to see what are trends and what is classic.  The difference is that classic will never go out of style, whereas trends always eventually go out of style. Here are some major trends from our recent past that are turning people away from houses:  1.   Carpet in the master bathroom. The 1990’s brought us so many fine trends, carpet in bathrooms was one of them. The thought was that cold tile on your bare feet was unpleasant. You know what else is unpleasant? Mold in your carpet pad. 2.   Plantation shutters. They are expensive, I know. Every single one of my clients who has them tells me over and over how expensive they are. Plantation shutters were designed for plantations. Hot, muggy places. The shutters were designed to block light and still allow a breeze to come into the house. The issue today is that they still block light, over 50 percent of the light that would have come through a window is blocked by plantation shutters. The fact of the matter is that nobody wants to buy a dark house. If the shutters aren’t there, they won’t miss them. 3.   Curtains over closets. The odds of the next buyer having the same taste in curtains as you is slim. Curtains over closets scream “YOU HAVE WORK TO DO” to your potential buyers.  Do yourself and the buyer a favor, take the curtains down and put the doors back up. 4.   Family, Friendship, Love, Laugh, Dance… BARF! Word art inevitably tells a story of the seller’s life and is distracting to the buyer.  Nobody cares how deep your family roots run, or that this is Emma’s crib. Take it down. 5.  Accent walls. The term “accent walls” is a misnomer, they should instead be called focal walls as they tend to provide a focus point for the room. Unfortunately, as the focal point of a room, they tend to dictate how a room should be set up and what the color scheme should be for the room. If you have a purple accent wall and all of your buyer’s furniture is red, they are going to have to work to remove that...

By Melissa Dittmann Tracey, REALTOR(R) Magazine A favorite real estate tip: When prepping a home for a showing, whip up some chocolate chip cookies to fill the home with that rich, inviting, tasty smell. Who wouldn’t want to sit back and stay awhile? Well, you may want to put down the mixing bowl and turn off the oven. Research now says that chocolate chip cookies are one of the worst scents to have in a real estate open house. Researchers used a sample size of 402 people in a home decor store in Switzerland to find out which scents were the most pleasing to customers. The researchers say the findings could provide some insights into the most pleasing smells during open houses too. One of the author’s of the study, Eric Spangenberg, dean of the college of business at Washington State University, recently told The Wall Street Journal that baked goods are a complex scent that can distract potential home buyers, even if the scent is pleasant. Buyers will subconsciously devote time to trying to figure out the scent, instead of devoting the time to determining if this is a place they really want to live. (Or maybe it’s really that they devote time and energy to finding where in the world you stashed all those cookies!) Other distracting complex smells that researchers also suggest could distract customers: Potpourri, gourmet foods, and baked goods. So if you want an inviting smell to fill a home for your open house, what home scents should you reach for? Simple scents — like pine, lemon, cedar, and vanilla — all which can be easier for buyers to process and less distracting, Spangenberg says. For example, Chris McDonnell, a real estate professional with Coldwell Banker Distinctive Properties in Vail, Colo., told The Wall Street Journal he’ll prep a home for an open house by cutting fresh pine branches or picking fresh lavender and mint from his herb garden — scents that mimic the outdoor lifestyle he’s also trying to...

If you’re looking to be out-with-the-old and in-with-the-new before the school year starts back up, follow these tips. By MARIE DINSMORE As the weather heats up, so does our affinity for tasks such as laying by the pool or sipping iced tea in the shade. However, while the higher temperatures and long summer days are often conducive to relaxation and even a little—gasp!—laziness, if you have a house to sell, your down time may need to be cut a bit short. Plain and simple, your property isn’t going to sell itself—even with a fantastic real estate agent in your corner—so it’s wise to operate under the assumption that you’ll need to get your hands a bit dirty to move things along. Therefore, if you’re looking to get top dollar for your home before school resumes in the fall, consider the following steps: HIRE YOUR OWN HOME INSPECTOR. I know what you may be thinking. “Why would I drop a few hundred dollars to hire my own inspector if the buyer will be bringing one in anyway?” In truth, it gives you the fantastic opportunity to deal with your home’s imperfections before they have a chance to destroy a fledgling home deal. Depending upon the age and condition of your home, the inspector may leave you with a long list of findings that will require some work, but it’s important to remember that you don’t have to remedy every single item. Start by working with your real estate agent to tackle the most pressing issues and establish which ones can wait. BRING IN THE SUN! If you’re attempting to sell your home during the warm, sunny months, why not capitalize on the spirit of summer by showing buyers just how enjoyable your home can be at this time of the year? To set the stage, consider these ideas: ×  Bid Farewell to the Clutter – Too much clutter will cause your home to feel closed-off and stuffy. The goal is to make your home feel like a breath of fresh air, so give buyers room to breathe by getting rid of those extra piles of papers, trinkets, and toys. ×  Foliage is For Inside, Too! – There’s nothing wrong with bringing in the outside. In other words, places things like vases of garden blooms, lush plants, or bowls of fresh fruit in every room. ×  Cheer Things Up – Yes, the standard advice is to keep your surroundings a bit more on the neutral side; however, add a bit of cheer by incorporating bright accents or pops of color in the form of interesting throw pillows, beachy or nautical décor, or colorful candles. ×  Beautify Your Outdoor Spaces – What’s better than a summer barbeque? Nothing! Therefore, make a point to...