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When you’re serious about a home makeover then consider starting from the ground up because your flooring will dictate how the rest of your home is styled and coordinated.
The Property Artists know all too well that today’s economy has home owners looking for ways to improve the value and comfort of their homes, without breaking the bank. In this article, we will demonstrate what’s to love about laminate flooring and why it’s so hot in flooring trends.
When most people think of renovation projects that instantly give our homes a fresh new feel, they tend to think of painting first, followed by renewing the kitchen and bathroom(s), window dressings, and so on. However, the biggest improvement in both the home’s value AND appearance occurs when laminate flooring is used to replace old carpet, tiles, worn out wood floors and vinyl. And what’s really hot with laminate flooring at the moment is loose lay vinyl planks…bu whats so ‘hot’ about it? Well, laminate flooring has come a long way – but still today the term “laminate” is often treated negatively. It’s made up of several layers and at its core, high density sustainable fibre board is bound together with eco friendly melamine resin. A high resolution image of real wood is then laid on top and then on top of that, multiple layers of transparent melamine designed to resist wear and tear. But ultimately it’s the look!
What we love about laminate flooring is its durability, relatively quick to install/replace and is available in a wide range of widths and styles that mimic real timber. Your pets won’t scratch the surface from walking across it, unlike wooden flooring, it doesn’t warp, bend or fade over time and it won’t stain or damage from household chemicals. If it somehow does become damaged, it is so easy to remove and replace the area slat by slat.
COSTS: Laminate flooring is sold by the square meter and we can get prices on top quality products and styles for as low as $40/m2 ( of course you can also pay less for inferior quality products). So for an average 2 bdm apartment with around 60 square meters to cover the main living areas and bedrooms, thats a supply cost of just $2400. On top of that you will have whatever floor prep is required if any, and your flooring installation labour costs which for 60 square meters could range from $1,200 to $1,800…and more. So for around $4,000 you can totally transform and modernise your home.
Now you can see why we think your flooring should be the start of your next home makeover or renovation project.
Happy home improving!
TPA
Home Decor Trends may see the demise of Quote Artworks…
We all love our home decor touches. For the past few years, quote artworks have been very popular from DIY to store bought pieces – it’s like having that last little summary about the feeling and ambience we want to portray in our castle. A simple quote, or phrase, that we hold close to our hearts when we walk in the door. They way we want others to feel, the message that becomes a home mantra… But has it lost its charm?
According to Domain, quote artworks are OUT. They state that “after years of popularity, consumers will predictably move away from quote artworks.” within this publication about home decor trends for 2017, they continue with an interior design company claiming “[They’re] so cliche!”
Say it ain’t so!
Another negate about these popular personified pieces comes from Home You. They delve into the generational logic that “this trend began out of the millennial meme generation growing up and becoming home owners, ultimately becoming home decorators. Inspirational memes, beautiful quotes, set upon eye catching backgrounds and the like, are something we grew up seeing and creating – so it makes sense that they would become part of our adult homes, and often a key part of gallery wall installations. But as all things do, millennials are growing up and their tastes are becoming more sophisticated.
The Property Artists are on the fence about this one. Quote artworks, home names and catchy phrases for properties have been around for decades. Anything that feels right in your sanctuary, is stylish, well placed and matching the decor theme in your home belongs to be there. Home decor trends are often on the money but we think this one is debatable.
What do you think? Whats your favourite quote artwork or home mantra?
We all want that ‘premium price’ when we sell our home and we want it fast – fast so we don’t get inconvenienced for too long and over stressed, and fast because a house on the market for too long will sell for a lot less than it should. But how do we do that? is there a formula?
Well yes, there is a formula, as such …”the absolute, unequivocal, No. 1 strategy for getting buyers to fall in love with your home, and to do so at the most critical and impacting first moments on the market, is to have have your home looking AWESOME!” And by awesome I mean, display home, raffle home, professionally styled and presented home awesome! And its not so hard to do or expensive…
Incredibly, a whopping 90% of home buyers cannot see or envisage a homes true potential, appeal or liveability, if it’s not on display. But when it is, when your home looks and presents just amazing…then that’s what makes buyers go WOW, this looks incredible…I could live here, I want to live here. This is simply about turning on the emotion because emotion is king! Although we look for homes logically, we most often buy emotionally. When a buyer falls in love with your home then price will be justified..that’s called the ‘love price’, the ‘premium price’. So selling your home is all about a mood and appeal which in turn creates the vision and emotion in a prospective buyer to go ‘WOW’ and when that emotion is switched on, your home will definitely sell quicker and it will sell for more…this is how you get a premium price paid and its been proven in Real Estate markets around the world.
Dressing your house for success is absolutely vital. Property Styling is the number one way to really maximise the value of your home, and doing so quickly whereby eliminating the risk of having to reduce the sale price of your property in order to sell.
Here’s some ideas about preparing and presenting your home for sale…
Preparing a home for sale can be a very daunting task! From general maintenance to renovations, de-cluttering, cleaning and styling – there is generally a lot of work to do before a property is fit for an open home. So how can a Property Stylist help? Well, hiring a professional property stylist, just like us here at The Property Artists, who can come in, look at all your clutter and junk, then clear it all to make the house look more contemporary and saleable to more people. Another absolute No No is to sell your home empty! If you have commenced moving into a new home as your current property is being prepared to sell, your Property Stylist can hire furnishings and décor to really give your home that wow factor.
There are a few options to consider when you are planning on what needs to be done, in order to ensure that your home is ready to put on the market, which a Property Stylist can assist you with. This all comes down to how much time you can dedicate to bringing your property up to spec and how much money are you prepared to invest?
If you lack the time or creativity to see your property reach its full potential, employing a professional property stylist might just be the right investment for you. There are many ways to utilise a Property Stylist to suit your preparation requirements and budget.
1) The DIY approach.
While you may be confident in de-cluttering and cleaning, you may require a helping hand when it comes to the final preparation of your property. This could come in the form of hired styling accessories and or furniture. Ultimately, when you consider all that needs to be done, it’s worth asking yourself if you are confident that your property will fetch its maximum possible asking price if you do all the work yourself.
Employing the services of a Property Stylist to inspect your home and create a list of things you need to buy and style it yourself. This will reduce the hassle of knowing where to start and what needs to be done.
2) Guided help.
You could use a professional Property Stylist, such as ourselves, to complete an initial, objective property inspection after you have carried out the de-cluttering, cleaning and general maintenance items yourself. You can then apply a small budget to hire styling accessories and furniture for the main living areas of your home. This will freshen up key spaces in anticipation for sale.
3) The Full Monty.
This is exactly that. Ideal for the time poor, those lacking creativity and those that really want to maximise their return on investment with the sale of their property. Employing the services of a professional Property Stylist from the initial consultation stage, to de-cluttering, cleaning and maintenance right through to painting, styling and adding the final touches for your home to be put on the market. Investing that little bit extra to have your property really stand out and look amazing, will see that you will only be adding more value to your home, rather than the latter and running the risk of reducing the asking price in order to sell. This could mean a matter of a couple of thousand dollars invested versus tens of thousands of dollars lost.
Simply make sure that you have considered all your options then get the team you need around to help you sell your home for more!
Currently in Australia, private Real Estate sales have little impact on the wider Industry making up just a poultry 1% (5000 sales) of the 500,000 Real Estate sales made annually. It’s therefore no surprise the Real Estate industry doesn’t feel in anyway threatened by home owners ‘going it alone’, but is that naïve as we quickly learn how the internet along with its associated technologies, communication platforms and knowledge base produces new threats and disrupts long held traditional industries with different ways and means of doing business?
What we do know is that we have a much smarter and more informed consumer today. We also know a combination of factors have made selling your own home a more attractive and accessible proposition spurred along by a growing number of private sale facilitators cashing in on the ideal and spruiking the mantra. You can also add to that a whopping 34% of home sellers (as surveyed and reported by Core Logic) who had an average to poor experience with their real estate agent. That’s more than one third, and of this, 14% described their experience as either very bad, or disastrous – and there starts the private sellers motivation.
And if we wanted some proof as to how those combination of factors can conspire to change the norm, then we only have to look to our cousins in NZ (of which I am one) and parallel their Real Estate industry experience where back in 2011 two independent surveys of potential home sellers both evidenced 36% of respondents that said they would ‘possibly’ try to sell their home privately, with 14% in one survey and 5% in the other saying definitely. Fast forward 5 years and now a significant 10% of NZ property sales are transacted privately. That’s 10 times the rate here in Australia.
So why is there still a stubborn popularity of home sellers using Real Estate Agents in Australia? Does a property seller and a buyer really need an agent to connect and mediate the selling of a property? Is finding a buyer really as simple as putting up your own for-sale sign and listing your home on any one of the many internet portals and maybe an advert in your local paper and then waiting for all the buyer enquires, inspections, and the magic to happen. Superficially it’s a range of processes that don’t seem difficult or require great skill, nor is it costly, and that’s the appeal to the ‘do-it-your-selfers’. It’s only when you have the experience or the insight to dig a little under the surface that you can start to see how complex and specialised every aspect of bringing a home seller and buyer together is, in achieving what is our industry’s mandate -‘Selling a Vendors home at the highest possible price’.
I can happily say that selling a home isn’t particularly difficult, but evidencing and obtaining the highest possible price requires an enormously greater set of skills and abilities that a private seller just doesn’t have or can conceptualise. ‘This is why there are Real Estate Agents and how they add value to the transaction, to which 99% of home sellers would agree – reluctantly or otherwise.
As an example from within our profession, I do know that one prime difference between a good agent and a great agent is their negotiation skills where that difference will account for tens of thousands of dollars more in the successfully negotiated sales price. And that’s not because the ‘good’ agent does a bad job but the great agent truly knows how to get the buyer to pay more and not to quickly allow a vendor to readily accept an offer without making sure there is no more money left in the buyers ‘pocket’! If you were to hand the negotiations between the same buyer and seller to 3 different Real Estate Agents I can almost guarantee you will get a sale concluded at three different prices.
Of course, the value added service a Real Estate Agent provides goes much further than skills in negotiating a sale but is equally centred around principle of obtaining the highest possible price for their Vendors home. Advice and guidance on how to present your home can greatly improve your price and reduce your sales time, your marketing strategy and advertising options can affect how much interest you get in your home and of course the more interest the greater the price – especially if using the Auction marketing method, and there really is so much more.
But that all said, the reality is that one out of three vendors is getting a level of service, and an experience, they are not happy with and it is for these reasons more will consider the private sale alternative, especially as technology has opened up and given greater access to a market place once under near total control by the Real Estate industry. In nearly all facets of life, the internet has given us access to knowledge we never had, it’s given us more choice and better options, it has made us smarter and more discerning, it has given the balance of power back to the consumer and the Real Estate industry is yet to feel its enormous power…
Quite simply, if a consumer see’s no added value in your product or service then they will not want nor pay for it. Even as a 28 year veteran in Real Estate, I happily offer private sales advice to potential home sellers where we even a have a private sellers guide on our website at https://www.propertyartists.com.au/selling/selling-tips/ The spin off for us is just goodwill and the influence that can come from establishing those relationships, because in the end its is the strength of our relationships and the quality of our service that fuels the success of our business.
Written by Warren Kibblewhite
Principal – The Property Artists (QLD/NSW)
Director – WK Consulting (Real Estate Consulting & Training)
Sell Faster & For More
We all want that ‘Premium Price’ when selling our home, but maximising that price involves several key elements that don’t just include the ability and function of your Real Estate Agent, but also the condition and presentation of your home, In fact, nothing is fundamentally more important than making sure your home is styled and presented in it’s absolute best light and condition.
Home styling, or ‘staging’ as it’s called in America where we have taken this direction from, is now amplified here with the growth in popularity of television shows like The Block and Selling Houses Australia, where styling has become a lot more common as people realise the economic advantage of professionally presenting their property.”
It’s proven that a well styled home will sell faster and it will sell for more than an unstyled home. In fact a well styled home will sell for around 7-12% more than an unstyled home, so the financial benefits are definitely there, and they are there because a staggering 90% of buyers cannot see a homes real potential, so when that potential is realised through a professional stylist who will –
then your home will have wider more emotive appeal, that will create more interest, quicker, which leads to a higher price. Buyers look for a home logically, but they buy emotionally and so it’s the building of emotion that’s the key element in styling your home to be something buyers will just absolutely love.
At ‘The Property Artists’, one of our key tenets is to ensure, where appropriate, our vendors home is well styled and presented before we go to market and we do that through engaging a professional home stylist to consult with our vendor and at NO COST to them. We’re also very savvy ourselves in how to best style and present your home, so our vendors will never be short of the absolute best advice – and that advice starts with…NEVER sell your home empty, unstyled, or cluttered!
So, if you are thinking of selling, call Warren 0400505210, or Shelena 0417856607 for a friendly, no obligation chat about your best selling options.
Before and after photo’s courtesy of Domain – the real estate search website (www.domain.com.au)
The current and forecast Real Estate market on the Gold Coast is in good shape. A recent countrywide report produced by BIS Shrapnel (for QBE) shows recent gains have pushed house prices back to peak levels. We also see that the lower Australian dollar is expected to benefit tourism and build up for the 2018 Commonwealth Games is set to strengthen the local economy with tighter vacancy rates and infrastructure projects. The medium house price is forecast to grow by 14% by 2018.
The full report can be accessed here.. http://www.qbelmi.com/Uploads/Documents/7bb2836c-f872-4c1b-8722-f94dbc7861fb.pdf