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Top 5 Renos for ROI

Posted by StagingWorks on September 2nd, 2010

The article below provides some great tips on renovations that deliver the maximum return on investment.

Independent of market conditions, home staging is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of homes and condos.

StagingWorks is the premier Toronto home staging services company. We provide a complete range of professional services which include vacant home staging, occupied home staging and condo staging. We have staging packages to accommodate most budgets and serve Toronto, GTA and surrounding areas.

Please visit our home staging portfolio for more samples of our staging projects. Give us some some details on your home and when you’re planning to sell, and get a free home staging estimate. Or, call us for a free estimate at (647) 409-2091 or anne@StagingWorks.ca.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.

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The fixes that will keep your income property occupied

By SCOTT McGILLIVRAY, Special to QMI Agency

As anyone with an income property knows, market fluctuations can push your property values sky-high or diminish them to below what you originally paid.

How do you avoid being subjected to this volatility? The key is to avoid vacancy. If your property is always rented and you are receiving consistent cash flow, you are insulated from virtually all market fluctuations.

Attracting the best long-term tenants means having the best product. This often involves renovations and modernization – but not all projects are created equal when it comes to generating a return on your investment.

Here are the top five renos for ROI:

1) Painting

This is by far the most profitable reno a landlord can undertake. Picking neutral tones and doing a good job is key. This simple, inexpensive way to freshen up a home is an easy do-it-yourself project, and it can dramatically improve the look and feel of a space at a low cost. Expect to see 100% ROI.

TIP: No measuring, no cutting, no power tools. Even if you’ve never painted before, a couple of quick tips from the paint store’s employees and you are on your way to complete the No. 1 most cost-effective reno.

2) Kitchen

The kitchen is subject to intense examination by potential tenants, so it’s time and money well spent – earning it my No. 2 ranking in terms of best bang for your buck.

Kitchens should be bright and spacious with a smart layout. Replacing old appliances with inexpensive and more efficient new ones also adds a lot of appeal. Add a dishwasher whenever possible; I can’t even count how many times a tenant chose one of my apartments because it had one. An intelligent kitchen renovation should produce about a 75-100% per cent ROI.

TIP: A kitchen reno can cost between $5,000 and $100,000, but over-investing can actually create a negative return on your investment. If you’re on a tight budget, simply updating the hardware in the kitchen can dramatically transform the look of the cabinetry.

3) Bathroom

Before and after a bathroom renovation by Scott McGillivray. (photo courtesy of HGTV)

Bathrooms are equally important. It is often to costly and impractical to change the layout or number of bathrooms in your income suite, so focus on the finishes. Bathrooms with neutral tones and bold fixtures score highly. A beautiful faucet can take a bathroom to a higher standard. That gives it my No. 3 position, with about 75-100% ROI.

4) Flooring

Flooring can have a dramatic impact, and hard surfaces are the way to go. Laminate is inexpensive, easy to lay, durable and great-looking. With modern styles and improved design, it has become the flooring of choice for real estate investors.

Stepping things up a notch and using real hardwood can deliver an even greater impact. Refinishing existing hardwood with a modern look presents the best possible scenario, cost-wise, for updating floors. New flooring can generate an average of 70-90% ROI.

TIP: Real estate investors often look for hardwood hidden under wall-to-wall carpeting when scoping out properties. If you suspect hardwood under the carpet, sneak a peek by removing a floor vent and lifting the edge of the carpet and underpad. Refinishing existing hardwood can save you a fortune, and it looks incredible. Don’t be floored to see a 200% ROI in this scenario.

5) Light fixtures

These can reveal the true age of a property. Proper lighting and a few nifty fixtures in the right places – namely the kitchen and dining room – will brighten up the space and create atmosphere.

With the right touch, updating light fixtures can generate a 60-75% ROI.

Once you’ve made the decision to renovate your income suite, necessary repairs and maintenance should always supersede any cosmetic renovation. If ignored, these required renovations can often overshadow other improvements.

Please your customer while being mindful of the ROI, and you’re on your way to becoming a successful landlord.

Scott McGillivray is host of HGTV’s Income Property. New season airing Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT beginning September 6.

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10 Best Kept Secrets for Selling Your Toronto Home

Posted by StagingWorks on August 29th, 2010

See the following link for the 10 best secrets for selling your Toronto home:

http://www.stagingworks.ca/home-staging-toronto-blog/10-best-kept-secrets-for-selling-your-home/

Independent of market conditions, home staging is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of homes and condos.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.

Best of the City

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Posted in Home Staging Tips

The seller: In the hot seat

Posted by StagingWorks on August 29th, 2010

The article below by Tony Wong ran in the Star on August 27th.

When Liliana Montagliani and Pasquale Luciano listed their Mississauga home in the winter, they had high hopes for a quick sale.

“The market was very strong and we were in a great neighborhood, so we thought it would sell in a couple weeks,” said Montagliani. “We didn’t think we would be in the position we’re in today.”
In March, the four-bedroom Port Credit home listed for $900,000, but there were no takers. By May, the price had been slashed to $839,000. This month the couple cut the price to $799,999, or about $100,000 less than what they had hoped for.

“It seemed like a month ago, someone suddenly turned the lights off,” said their agent, Steven Belitsky. “Who would have thought the market would have stalled this quickly?”

Analysts have long been saying that the second half of the year would look vastly different than the first half, which saw record sales.

Sales have been falling every month for the last three months. In the first two weeks of August, sales fell by 29 per cent compared with a year earlier.

As a result, many vendors such as Montagliani and Luciano are caught in the downdraft, and have had to revise their expectations of what they can sell their homes for.

“It’s been frustrating and a little disappointing to say the least,” says Montagliani. “As a vendor you don’t want to give your home away.”

Other home owners have simply decided not to put their homes on the market. Listings were down 8 per cent during the first two weeks of the month compared with last year.

“This is what we call a real metamorphosis market,” said ReMax agent Mike Donia.

“In the old days you list it and your caterpillar takes wings and turns into a butterfly. But there a lot more caterpillars out there today, and if you don’t eventually adjust your prices you’re going to get squashed.”

Donia says some vendors are pricing their homes with the mindset that the market was still going up with double digit appreciation as it did earlier in the year.

In the second half of the year prices are expected to decelerate. And even the normally impervious upper end market has taken a beating. Agents are still talking about the Forest Hill home that sold for $3.5 million this month. In 2007, the same home had sold for $3.68 million.

“Sellers are finding that they have to have a lot more flexibility and they have to be much more realistic today,” says veteran agent Sharon Black. “Don’t expect every home to sell in five days.”

Black is currently listing a Yorkville loft with an asking price of $499,000.

Two years ago the vendor purchased the 900-square-foot property for $489,000. After commissions and land transfer taxes, the vendor will end up taking a loss, said Black.

“The market has turned. In this case the seller is getting 2008 prices for their property,” said Black.

Vendors who waited too long to list their property because it would show better in the summer – “Wait till you see my tulips bloom in July” – would have been disappointed said the agent. “In this market, he who hesitates is lost.”

Belitsky said the one piece of advice he would offer vendors is “not to chase the market down.”

The sale could die a slow death if vendors incrementally drop the listing price as the market cools. Best to make one dramatic cut and get it over, said Belitsky.

“If you follow the market to the new lower price you’ll never sell – you have to get ahead of the market,” said Belitsky.

As for buyers, Belitsky says the market mantra can be summed up pretty much in one sentence: “It never fails to happen. They’ll walk in, then say they really like the house, but then say…let’s see what happens next month.”

Montagliani, meanwhile, says she has learned a few hard lessons about the real estate market.

“For one thing, timing is everything,” she says. “Even a few weeks can make a difference in missing a window of opportunity. And that certainly may have happened to us.”

Independent of market conditions, home staging is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of homes and condos.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.

Best of the City

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Posted in Real Estate

Toronto market down 29% in August

Posted by StagingWorks on August 29th, 2010

GTA Realtors Report Mid-Month Resale Housing Figures

Greater Toronto Realtors reported 2,732 sales through the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) during the first two weeks of August 2010. This represented a 29 per cent decrease compared to the 3,832 sales recorded during the same period in 2009. New listings, at 4,770 were down eight per cent compared to the first two weeks of August 2009.

“Throughout the better part of the last year, the number of monthly sales was well above the expected long-term trend. Accordingly, it makes sense that the number of transactions has dipped over the past few months in comparison to last year’s record results,” said Toronto Real Estate Board President Bill Johnston.

The average price for August mid-month transactions was $412,934 . up eight per cent compared to the average of $383,796 recorded during the first 14 days of August 2009.

“We have seen a sufficient number of buyers relative to sellers over the summer months to support continued year-over-year price growth in the GTA,” said Jason Mercer, TREB’s Senior Manager of Market Analysis.

Independent of market conditions, home staging is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of homes and condos.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.

Best of the City

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Posted in Real Estate

Canadian home sales dropping

Posted by StagingWorks on August 29th, 2010

Independent of market conditions, home staging is a highly effective marketing tool used to maximize the selling price of homes and condos.

StagingWorks has been voted Toronto’s top home stager by Toronto Life.

Best of the City

Canada’s home sales fell in July, with Ontario and British Columbia leading the way lower as the newly introduced harmonized sales tax slowed activity in those provinces.

The Canadian Real Estate Association said Monday a total of 31,536 homes were sold in July, compared with 33,836 in June. Declines in the country’s most expensive markets — British Columbia (down 14.1 per cent) and Ontario (down 8.0 per cent) — accounted for most of the change in national activity.

But the agency said the overall decline was smaller than in the previous two months as July sales in the Prairies and Quebec came in on par with June levels.

“It looks like anyone who wanted to buy a house this year in Canada got their shopping done early,” said Doug Porter at BMO Capital Markets.

“The combination of tighter mortgage insurance rules, a modest backup in borrowing costs, and the HST have delivered a hammer blow to sales — with a soupçon of economic uncertainty making the temporary hit even harder than expected.”

The slowdown in demand in B.C. and Ontario was widely expected as many people scrambled to buy homes ahead of the July introduction of the harmonized tax in those provinces.

“The soft sales figures we’re seeing right now can be attributed in part to accelerated home purchases earlier in the year,” CREA president Georges Pahud said in a release.

“Activity may remain at lower levels for some time, but ultimately we expect a more stable market to emerge, with demand coming back into line with economic fundamentals.”

Average house price lower

The average price of homes sold in July was $330,351, edging up one per cent from the same month last year. But that was down considerably from the average of $342,662 in June.

Year-to-date transactions are still up 5.6 per cent, compared with the first seven months of last year. But the agency expects this gap to continue to narrow as activity rose sharply over the second half of last year, reaching levels that are unlikely to be matched in the final five months of 2010.

New supply continued to adjust to lower demand. The seasonally adjusted number of new residential listings declined by 7.2 per cent in July 2010, compared with June.

This is the third consecutive month-over-month decrease and the steepest in more than a decade. Since reaching a peak in April, new listings have fallen 17.5 per cent.

Last month, CREA said national sales activity is expected to drop 1.2 per cent to 459,600 units in 2010 as interest rate increases in the second half of the year keep homebuyers in a cautious mood.

Lower expectations

Although the introduction of the HST and the expectation of higher interest rates were contributing factors to the decline, Queen’s University professor John Andrew said there were “greater forces at play.”

“While the average home sale price was higher in July than one year ago, prices will inevitably fall in response to a large oversupply of homes on the market,” he said. “The unprecedented large rise in house prices between 2000 and 2009 is unlikely to be sustainable over the next few years.”

Andrew cautioned homeowners “to downgrade their expectations for how the wealth in their home will grow.”

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Posted in Real Estate

Home Staging Toronto Blog

Top 5 Renos for ROI

10 Best Kept Secrets for Selling Your Toronto Home

The seller: In the hot seat

Toronto market down 29% in August

GTA Realtors Report Mid-Month Resale Housing Figures

Canadian home sales dropping

Canada’s home sales fell in July, with Ontario and British Columbia leading the way lower as the newly introduced harmonized sales tax slowed activity in those provinces.

Average house price lower

Lower expectations

Home Staging Toronto

StagingWorks Blog