By

Amie H. Chaney

Home staging is economical and a well-proven benefit to Realtors and home owners alike. Here are some basic staging principles every home seller can use.

Become a Seller, Not a Dweller

Homeowners must make the mental shift necessary to become Sellers, not Dwellers. It is only then sellers are able to realize they own a commodity to be sold and no longer their home. The way we live in our homes is different than the way we sell our homes. With this mental shift in place, the next step in the process may begin.

Clean and De-clutter

De-cluttering is the first principle used in home staging. Clutter is defined as those items in a room that are not necessary for its function or beauty. Clutter can be too many books, knickknacks, or accessories. With staging, only key accessories and furniture remain. The property will immediately appear more spacious and well cared for.

Here are some tips to keep in mind as it applies to de-cluttering:

1. A buyer wants to purchase a move-in ready home. A house that is not clean implies deferred maintenance.
2. A buyer is purchasing square footage. Clear the clutter to create the impression of more space.
3. Let the light in; buyers are drawn to open, airy spaces.

Appeal to the Masses

With the de-cluttering process accomplished, the next phase is depersonalizing. The buyer will want to mentally personalize it and imagine living in the house when it becomes theirs. This includes using neutral tones throughout as well as general updates which will appeal to the largest segment of potential buyers.

Realtors no longer have the almost impossible task of telling homeowners their faux finished pink bathroom really needs a neutral tone of paint (put in before and after of pink bathroom) or their beloved collection of gargoyles will turn off potential buyers.

If You Can’t See It, You Can’t Sell It.

Curb appeal is everything. It’s the first impression a potential buyer gets of the home. Remember, if you can’t see it you can’t sell it. The easiest and best way to determine what needs to be done to the outside of the home and the lawn is to walk across the street. Look objectively at what the home looks like from that vantage point. Then, take the following curb appeal test:

1) Are the gutters clean and in good repair?

2. How does the driveway look?

3. Do the shrubs need pruning?

4. Do the trees need trimming?

5. How do the flower beds look?

6. Is the walkway leading to the house inviting?

7. Does the lawn look clean and neat?

8. Are the house numbers clearly visible?

9. Does the entryway and front door make a great first impression?

10. Are toys, tools, hoses and any other distracting items put away?

Amie Hebert Chaney, a Home Staging Expert (HSE), says Home Staging is the art of preparing a home for market to give the best possible first impression to potential buyers, resulting in a quicker sale and higher profit. The intent behind home staging is for potential buyers to be able to see the home as theirs. www.homestagingbyamie.com. For information contact FrogPond at 800.704.FROG (3764) or email Susie [at] FrogPond [dot] com; http://www.FrogPond.com.

It is only after answering and addressing the above curb appeal issues that the seller will have passed the “curb appeal test.”

Maximize Strong Points; Minimize Shortcomings

Finally, it’s important to show off the home’s best features, while hiding its flaws. Showcase focal points such as fireplaces, wood floors, and expansive views and divert attention away from less attractive features by creating alternate interest.

If a home seller is willing to follow these simple steps – clean and de-clutter, depersonalize, increase curb appeal and maximize the home’s strong points - they greatly improve the chances of selling their home quicker and for top dollar.

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  Should you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…

The Paso Robles Zinfandel Festival will be held all weekend starting on March 19th, but the main event will be held on March 20th from 5:30 - 9:30 pm in Commercial Building 2 at the Paso Robles Event Center.  Zinfully Important Person Tickets are $85, and the Zin Fan Del Tickets are $60.  You can purchase tickets at www.pasowine.com or call (800) 549-WINE.

At this event, there will be, of course, wine tasting, local cuisine and the Wine Country Auction.  The funds raised through the Wine Country Auction will be used to support the vineyard worker population, and a portion of the funds will be donated to health, education and community service programs for the local vineyard workers and their families.

In addition to the main event at the Paso Robles Event Center, 145 wineries will be hosting their own events throughout the weekend.  To plan your weekend, visit www.pasowine.com where all of the participating wineries are listed, along with their planned activities.  Also, feel free to visit my website for links to Paso bed & breakfasts, motels, hotels and restaurants.

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  Should you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…

El Pollo Loco, Sky Nails & Spa, Me-n-Ed’s Pizza and Circuit City are tenants that were slated to occupy the Golden Hills Plaza but have since cancelled; Circuit City because it claimed bankruptcy and closed nationwide.

The Golden Hills Plaza is located at the corner of Highway 46 East and Golden Hill.

I, for one, welcome Bed, Bath & Beyond into our city.  It will definitely fill the void for luxury bed, bath and kitchen accoutrements.  At this time, the nearest Bed, Bath & Beyond is in San Luis Obispo.

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  Should you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…

For most people, selling their home means cashing in their biggest asset.  In other words, it must be handled with great care if you hope to protect — and capitalize on — your investment in this market.  This free guide was written with one goal in mind:  to give you the tools you need to maximize your profits, maintain control and reduce the stress that comes with the home-selling process.

If you would like to receive a free copy of this report by mail, please call me at (805) 235-0234.  If you would prefer to receive it by email, please send your request to sherrycox [at] kw [dot] com…

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  Should you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…

There will be an Artists’ Reception at Studios on the Park in Paso Robles celebrating the art of Nancy Becker and Frank Armitage on February 20, 2010 from 5:00 - 7:00 pm.

Nancy Becker earned her BA in Art Education from the University of Colorado and also holds a BFA in Graphic Design from California College of Arts & Crafts.  Art, horses and the western environment are her passions.  She is also an accomplished silversmith, woodworker and lapidary artist.

A native Australian, Frank Armitage became involved in Mexican Mural Painting in the 1940’s.  In 1952, he moved to Los Angeles to work for Disney Studios on animation backgrounds and layouts for feature films such as Sleeping Beauty, Man In Space, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan and The Jungle Book.

After retiring from Disney in 1989, Frank retired to Paso Robles where he continues to produce art at Studios on the Park.  He is also available for commissioned work.

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  If you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…

by

Curtis Seltzer

Saturday morning before things start is a good time to begin most anything. Like a first draft of this column. I was in front of the screen by 6, emitting coffee exhausts. Nothing. I played FreeCell. Still nothing. More FreeCell. More nothing.

To goose the creative process, I checked my email several dozen times in hope that someone other than the crooked Nigerian with a $17-million-dollar proposal might have contacted me. All I had was a Dane with $10 million and two ideas for enlargements, neither of which involved my brain.

I had planned to drive to the gym to lift weights at 7:30 after getting some words down on pixels.

Adding muscle at 62 is as useful as patting sand onto a beach castle just before the surf comes in. Still, sand castles disappear faster without such maintenance. Right?

And then I remembered that Saturday was my day to repair farm fences in advance of the cattle — party of 60 — arriving in a week.

Spring fence work involves tacking things up that want nothing more than to lie down on the greening earth and rust in peace. With a few new steel staples, old wire is expected to present a united front for another couple of years, postponing the expense and drudgery of replacing it.

Everyone hates building new fence, because, among other reasons, we know that it too becomes old. This discouraging truth applies to other aspects of life as well.

Fence repair hurts your back and shreds your hands. Nothing is more disagreeable save, perhaps, getting a call at 11 on a stormy Sunday night: “Your cattle are in the road; I thought you’d want to know.”

This is the only reason why country landowners do maintenance: The alternative is always worse.

Faced with hours of near-fatal fence misery, I gave up lifting anything as heavy as a fresh idea out of my mental tar pit where all of my oversized thoughts disappeared long ago. Then I bagged exercise.

“TO THE FENCES,” I muttered with the same peasant enthusiasm that Stalin’s subjects used when they were marched to their dirt, singing, “TO OUR NEWLY COLLECTIVIZED FIELDS. HURRAH! HURRAH!”

Six hours later — scratched, bleeding and aching from more joints than I have — I had patched half the fence line, my moral fiber had been reinforced with a strand of new barbed wire and I had a column idea:

The Rules of Country Maintenance.

Accept reality: Everything falls apart. Once you understand that time crumbles our stoutest buildings and our best efforts, you’ve written yourself a ticket to maintenance sanity.

Look. The Appalachian Mountains started out as high as the Himalayas, so what chance does your barn repair have of lasting even up to the next Ice Age? None. Country dwellers need to keep their repair expectations in geologic perspective.

The standard by which to measure yourself is simple: Do it so that you don’t have to do it again any time soon. If you can remember the year when you last made a repair, you didn’t do it good enough.

As long as you understand that every repair eventually requires succeeding repairs (which are harder than those coming before), you will undertake all maintenance tasks with the depressing fatalism they deserve.

A rule of thumb is to build everything to a standard that when it needs to be done again, you will be gone.

Don’t procrastinate. A repair deferred is a risk expanded. Time makes every country problem worse. Of course, stalling should not be eliminated willy-nilly from your problem-solving options.

I keep procrastination on hold, but ready to go.

Shift blame. This is an art not a science. Farmers always have the weather. Other culprits that bear responsibility for fence holes and other breakdowns include neighbors, crossed stars, the Clinton Administration, big banks, little banks, all banks, Cheney, gremlins and spouses. Matching the breakdown to the responsible party is where art replaces science.

Maintenance is more agreeable if you can persuade yourself that you are blameless.

Vegetation rules. In the country, plants win sooner or later, particularly weeds. They give you practice at being a good loser.

In my woods, rival gangs — The Striped Maples and the Pokeweeds — fight over turf. They steal from upright citizens in broad daylight.

Thistles thrive in my pasture like the Sopranos in Jersey. Teasels seem to be immune from prosecution. Multiflora rose is a perp with many priors. They have organized themselves into Families and kill each other only when necessary.

I whack them, and they reappear. Many of these invasive criminals have roots that go back to foreign countries, about which Lou Dobbs has said not word one.

It’s best, I think, to declare victory and not make them too angry.

No one always escapes dirty jobs. The best approach to doing dirty jobs is to deny yourself time to think about them.

Fight water as little as possible. Everything having to do with running water — pipes, pumps, tanks, wells, ponds, stream banks — eventually breaks.

The more you try to make water do things against its will, the more leaks you spring. While you want water to shut up and run passively from the ground to your second-story bathroom sink, water prefers to run down, not up. Water always wins these tests of strength.

Keep all water systems as simple as possible. Gravity works by the way, and it’s usually more reliable in the long run than pumps.

Always investigate water weirdness. Some years ago, my wife said something about a funny smell in our tap water. I couldn’t smell a skunk in my kitchen if it sprayed my nose, but the water tasted more-or-less okay to me. Another princess-and-the-pea complaint, I thought. I checked our spring, but found nothing. Melissa continued to nag and whine.

To humor her, I called a plumber. He found a blockage in an elbow between the holding tank and the pump, caused by a large and very dead salamander.

I now pay close attention to what my then four-year-old daughter called, “Momma’s taste bugs.”

Two good things can be said about country maintenance chores.

· First, it’s better to do them than not.

· Second, you may find a half-decent idea while doing them that gives you an excuse not to do any more of them that day.

Curtis Seltzer is a land consultant. He writes summary memos for clients that lay out a target property’s benefits, risks, costs and unknowns. © 2008, Curtis Seltzer. All rights reserved. For information contact FrogPond at 800.704.FROG(3764) or email susie [at] FrogPond [dot] com; http://www.FrogPond.com.

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  If you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…

Are you thinking of retiring to Paso Robles Wine Country?  Here is a beautiful home in Quail Run Estates, which is an age-restricted gated community close to shopping and not far from Downtown Paso.

This 2001 3 bedroom/2 bath 1550 sq ft manufactured home on owned land exudes pride of ownership.  The home has a split floor plan, master bedroom separate from the other 2 bedrooms, a formal living room, and a spacious kitchen/dining area and family room combined.

Sellers are the original owners of this gem…  They invested in many upgrades during their ownership, including french drains under extensive concrete patios and walkways, professional landscaping, white vinyl fencing around the back yard, an awning over the back patio for those warm summer days, energy-efficient appliances and a reverse osmosis system.

Amenities include an in-ground swimming pool, clubhouse, tennis court, security gate and RV storage.  The Paso Robles Municipal Golf Course is close by, as is Hunter Golf Course, which I understand is a very challenging course.

Virtual tour at www.375Partridge.com.  $264,900…

Feel free to check out this listing on my website for more detail.

To visit this home in person, please have your REALTOR(R) call me direct to make an appointment.  If you are not currently working with a REALTOR(R), feel free to call me, and I will arrange an appointment for you to view the property.

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  If you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…

Tags: paso robles, Paso Robles real estate, Quail Run Estates, retirement home, Sherry Lee Cox

Are you thinking of retiring to Paso Robles Wine Country?  Here is a beautiful home in Quail Run, which is an age-restricted gated community close to shopping and not far from Downtown Paso.

This 2001 3 bedroom/2 bath 1550 sq ft manufactured home on owned land exudes pride of ownership.  The home has a split floor plan, master bedroom separate from the other 2 bedrooms, a formal living room, and a spacious kitchen/dining area and family room combined.

Sellers are the original owners of this gem…  They invested in many upgrades during their ownership, including french drains under extensive concrete patios and walkways, professional landscaping, white vinyl fencing around the back yard, an awning over the back patio for those warm summer days, energy-efficient appliances and a reverse osmosis system.

Amenities include an in-ground swimming pool, clubhouse, tennis court, security gate and RV storage.  The Paso Robles Municipal Golf Course is close by, as is Hunter Golf Course, which I understand is a very challenging course.

Feel free to check out this listing on my website for more detail.

To visit this home in person, please have your REALTOR(R) call me direct to make an appointment.  If you are not currently working with a REALTOR(R), feel free to call me, and I will arrange an appointment for you to view the property.

If you would like to search the MLS for listings in San Luis Obispo County,visit my website.  If you have any real estate questions or general questions about Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo County, please contact me via email or call me at (805) 235-0234 for more information.

Ca DRE # 01317192

It starts with a dream…