Do you have an indoor kitty dying to escape the confines of your home? Expand your cat's territory with a brand new catio - a patio for your cat! If you're anything like me (total cat person - guilty!), you want to protect your feline friends from the dangers of the outdoors (cars, owls and coyotes, oh my!), but you also feel sort of guilty about taking away their...
Preparing your home for a walkthrough can be tough, especially when you’re still living in the house. One of the hardest things is keeping your home clean while you’re taking the other necessary steps to sell your house -- like removing personal items, staging the house and increasing curb appeal. While you can spend money to hire a cleaning service, it adds up...
The White House has undergone tremendous change throughout the decades, embracing new interior design styles while pairing them with antique furniture that has been there since the very beginning. As one can see on the infographic below, courtesy of The Rug Seller, rugs serve far more of a purpose than functional floor coverings that give comfort underfoot. They're...
Yesterday on Housecall, we discussed ways to increase your home value with indoor décor. Today, we're focusing on what you can do outside the home to give it an added monetary boost. Curb appeal is everything when it comes to selling your home, and that means your home’s exterior needs to be in optimal condition. In fact, 71 percent of prospective home buyers...
Contributed by Kristin Belt If you’re like a lot of homeowners today, you might be tempted to chalk decorating choices up to personal preference and think they have little to do with home value — but this is a mistake. Whether or not you’re planning to sell your home soon, here’s what you need to know: the right decorating choices not only make your home...
Coined by Verl Workman, moderator of RISMedia’s recent webinar “Yes, You Can List 100 Homes a Year!” and founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems, the “unfair competitive advantage” describes the one asset that elevates an agent above all others in his or her marketplace. As attendees soon learned, webinar panelists Bob Sokoler and Martin Bouma have the...
Despite the continuous cycle that drives housing, there’s one commodity, arguably more valuable than any other, which remains impervious to the ebbs and flows of the market, relentlessly in demand while in an ever-present glut: information. The problem? To get it, we’re accessing a muddled Internet, where information, including real estate know-how, can come from...
Contributed by Shahar Giladi All you have to do is count the number of driveways with a hybrid vehicle, and you can see at a glance that Americans are embracing the eco-friendly lifestyle. However, a Prius in front of the house is just the beginning. More and more homeowners are opting for sustainable features in the home as well. Eco-friendly amenities often add...
Contributed by Jessica Kyriakos Sometimes when planning to sell a house, in the name of renovating interior living spaces, updating bathrooms, replacing appliances and adding decorative touches throughout the bedrooms, homeowners leave outdoor curb appeal as a last priority. While of course the inside of a home is important, sellers make a big mistake when they neglect...
