As home selling conditions across Canada shift to a buyers market, Re/Max Canada has taken steps to ensure that sellers have the information required to prepare their homes for sale through staging.
According to Michael Polzler, Executive Vice President and Regional Director for RE/MAX Ontario-Atlantic Canada, there are three major factors that come into play when selling a home - location, price, and condition of the home.
The idea behind their recently announced ’Fit-to-Sell’ program is simple – focus on the condition of the home, as this is the one factor that a seller can influence directly.
Through the assistance of staging expert Carla Woolnough, RE/MAX has created a comprehensive package of videos and checklists on the top 10 priorities for preparing a property for sale, which are available online to the public at www.fittosell.ca.
At Base 10, we also believe that home sellers across the country will have to go the extra mile when marketing a home for sale in an increasingly challenging environment.
Certification allows qualified sales agents to provide their buying and/or selling customers with 0.6% of the home’s selling price in Sears gift cards.
For example, a $250,000 sale price will get the home buyer or seller a $1,500 Sear gift card.
Sears Certified Agents are from leading brokerages, and are thoroughly reviewed for their sales abilities, licensing and professional achievements. They possess at least three years experience, and are knowledgeable and dedicated in the complete real estate process including: listing, home searches, negotiations and closing.
Currently servicing the GTA bordered by Oakville, Newmarket and Oshawa, they have expertise in their markets and know property values for the area, understanding unique benefits and issues of their communities.”
We’re not exactly sure how one becomes a certified agent. However, the services is operated by QV Realty Inc. in Toronto:
For those real estate agents considering a video marketing campaign, this is a must read.
Here’s an excerpt:
What percentage of your real estate customers come from out of your area? They need information about the area, attractions, natural beauty, parks, schools and more. But, they also want to SEE what all of this looks like. Photos are great, but video rocks!
A recent report by Genworth Financial profiles the first-time homebuyers market in Canada using results from a survey it conducted in December 2007 among 963 Canadians who recently purchased their first home, or were intending to do so.
Here are some highlights:
Canadian first-time home buyers remain confident in the stability of the housing market and are not overly concerned about the potential for declining home values.
The top concerns identified by respondents are high monthly payments (63%), rising interest rates (59%) and increasing property taxes (56%).
68% of first-time buyers would prefer a newer home, and 65% want a modern, open floor plan
Roughly half of respondents (52%) sought 5-year mortgage terms, with almost one-quarter (23%) preferring terms of seven years or more.
Roughly 48% of respondents were very likely to use the Internet to research the homebuying process or to search for the neighbourhood that meets their needs and lifestyle
While most agents will agree that placing their listings in these types of magazines likely won’t sell a home any faster, they will certainly agree that selling clients love to see their home showcased in high-gloss print.
Furthermore, prospective homebuyers (and the general population) love to browse through magazines like Homes and Land to see what’s on the market, which raises the profile of advertising agents within the community.
To help leverage their investment in print advertising, some of our clients have found that the unique domain names (i.e. www.123UniqueStreet.com) that come with our single property websites are a great way to ‘drive’ traffic to their presence on the web.
When readers see the easy-to-remember domain name, they are more likely to visit the property online, where they can access more photos, video, school information, and neighbourhood demographics.
Additional Homes and Lands franchises can now be found in Red Deer and central Alberta; Muskoka, Haliburton and Parry Sound, Ontario; London, St. Thomas and Woodstock, Ontario; Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, Ontario; York Region, Ontario; Niagara Region, Ontario and Montreal to Mont-Tremblant, Quebec.
As an added bonus, the results can be fully integrated within our UniqueHomeSites.com single property websites.
Here’s how it works - First, register your contact information (inc. logo and profile pic) with WhatIWantRealEstate.com. Second, upload your property photos and enter a text description of the listing.
The rest is taken care of by the folks at WhatIWantRealEstate.com. What they do is take the listing information that you supply and develop it into a video. Then, they distribute it to a wide variety of search engines – all for a one-time fee of $50 per property.
According to CEO and Founder Ryan Hoback, ”We place your video on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Itunes, and many other directories to maximize the visibility. Our optimization strategies target viewers by geographic and keyword specific searches, so each viewing is highly targeted to localized areas.”
Twice a year, InmanNews holds a Real Estate Connect conference, where leaders in real estate and mortgage come together with top technology executives to promote change and innovation within the industry.
Topics range from that of real estate market conditions, interactive marketing, social media, Web 2.0, MLS, mapping, lead generation, blogging, user generated content, search engine marketing and search engine optimization, online video, paperless technology and more.
Although many Realtors don’t have the budget to attend these types of events in person, the beauty of today’s technology allows us to check out the highlights via the Internet.
For a plethora of other video interviews, forum discussions, and general commentary from these events, it is worth checking out the InmanTV channel at WellcomeMat.com.
Real estate agents who use Point2 websites may be interested to learn that there was somewhat of a shake-up among senior executives at the company in December, with a number of them suddenly resigning.
Although Point2 continues to offer the same great service, those who left have started a new consulting company called VendAsta, and they’re based in Saskatoon!
Details are limited, but it sounds like they have some interesting ideas in the social networking realm. Stay tuned!
The other day, they have posted a glimse of what they’re up to on YouTube:
Taking a scientific approach to examining the home buying and selling process, along with extensive research of real estate academia, Redfin has come up with a list of data-driven recommendations for home buyers and sellers.
Here are some of Redfin’s recommendations:
Don’t overprice your property – Price reductions can further encourage aggressive bargaining.
Set your price to show up in web searches – A home selling for $350,000 will be seen significantly more than a home selling for $355,000 because the $355,000 home will be excluded by buyers who set $350,000 as their maximum price.
Debut on Friday – Redfin’s website traffic listings that debuted on Friday got on average 7.7% more visitors in their first seven days than those that debuted on the worst day, Thursday.
Market the property online - a craigslist posting about a listing generated an average of 6.8 visits to that listing on Redfin’s website.
When selling your home, stay put – vacant homes were 9.5% more likely to undergo a price reduction
“First-time buyers often enter the market with an unrealistic list of expectations, but soon find they need to decide on a smaller house or accept a longer commute time,” says Don Lawby, president of CENTURY 21 Canada.
According to Statistics Canada census data, home ownership among Canadians is continuing to increase year after year. The number of homes owned has increased from 6.8 million to 8.5 million, or 24%, between 1996 and 2006, while the population of the country has increased from 28.8 million to 31.6 million, or 10%.
According to the survey, the most expensive cities for first-time buyers based on price per square foot are Vancouver, where a 412-square-foot condo in the downtown is $281,000 or $682 per square foot; the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, where an 800-square-foot bungalow on a 3,500-square-foot lot in East York is $480,000, or $600 per square foot; and downtown Toronto, where a 340-square-foot condo in trendy Liberty Village is $200,000 or $588 per square foot.
The least expensive cities for first-time buyers based on price per square foot are St. John’s (2,150-square-foot two-storey bungalow, $170,000 or $79 per square foot), Halifax (1,408-square-foot semi-detached house, $129,900 or $92 per square foot), Windsor (850-square-foot 1½-storey house, $91,000 or $107 per square foot), London (1,000-square-foot townhouse, $120,000 or $120 per square foot), and Sudbury (969-square-foot 1½-storey house, $140,000 or $144 per square foot).
As home selling conditions across Canada shift to a buyers market, Re/Max Canada has taken steps to ensure that sellers have the information required to prepare their homes for sale through staging.
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