Like most homeowners, you probably don’t think of your property as just a building with rooms and a backyard. To you, it’s much more than that. It’s a home.

When you walk into your dining room, for example, you don’t merely see the table and chairs. You see memories. You recall laughter with family and friends. It’s emotional.

That’s what a home is all about.

However, buyers don’t want to buy your “home”. What they really want to buy is a property that has the potential to become THEIR home.

While you see memories of family dinners, they see room dimensions and what the dining room may look like with their furniture in it.

That’s why, when you’re selling your property, you need to keep emotions at bay as much as possible.

In fact, the best mindset is to think of your property as a product. The more attractively you present that product to prospective buyers, the more likely you are to get good offers.

That’s why cleaning, depersonalizing, and staging are so important.

It’s also why setting a price that aligns with your home’s current market value is important. You may have put your heart and soul — and many weekends — into landscaping the backyard to make it a summer oasis. It may, in fact, be a strong selling point of your property. But that improvement will only add to the selling price an amount that the market, not your emotions, dictates.

So keep emotions out of the selling process as much as possible. Save that energy for turning your next property into your dream home.

Want more tips on selling your property for the best price possible? Call today.

These days, just about everyone relies on the internet for work, school, entertainment, shopping, networking, you name it. So, speed and connectivity have become big issues.

Ideally, you want a fast, reliable connection — consistently.

If you have a router and connect with WIFI, here are some ways to boost the signal:

- Occasionally unplug your router, wait ten seconds, and then power up again. Routers get clogged with settings, protocols, code, you name it. Resetting the router is like cleaning the pipes.

- Connect your computer directly to the router with an ethernet cord. This hard-wiring will often double or even triple internet speed. The downside is, you’re restricted by the length of the cord.

- Check that you have the best router for your internet plan. Some newer high-speed plans require better routers, but you may not have been told that when you upgraded.

- Experiment with the placement of your router. The ideal spot is often on the main floor near the centre of your home. If possible, place it in an open space away from walls and other obstructions.

- Consider using Mesh WIFI. These are little “satellite” WIFI stations that you can place throughout your home. Your main router then connects to these, creating a much stronger WIFI signal in areas that were formerly weak.

Another way to improve your home WIFI is to contact your internet service provider. They’re the experts in their system and can advise you on how to create a better signal throughout your home.

Where do buyers form the most lasting impression of a home for sale that they visit? On the main floor!

When buyers view a property, they often spend a lot of time on the main floor, thinking and imagining. They visualize cooking in the kitchen, having family dinners in the dining room, and entertaining guests in the living room. They even mentally calculate how their furniture will fit!

So, making the main floor look great to buyers is crucial when selling your property. How do you do that?

An effective technique is to walk your main floor the way a buyer would. Start at your front entrance. Stand there for a moment and look around. Get a sense of the impression a buyer is likely to get from that perspective.

Next, walk to the kitchen area, because that’s where buyers often venture next. Again, linger a while and look around. Does the kitchen look clean and seem as spacious as possible (given its size)?

Finally, check out the other rooms on the main floor, including the washroom, if there is one. Gauge how you feel and the impression you form as you visit these spaces.

Once you’ve done that mock tour, write down ideas that jumped out at you for improvements. Those may include uncluttering some areas, rearranging the furniture, adding or taking away items, etc.

This is a simple but powerful technique for improving how your main floor looks to buyers.

Call today for more staging ideas that will make your home sell faster and for a good price.

March 1, 2021 

A total of 863 properties sold in the Victoria Real Estate Board region this February, 53.3 per cent more than the 563 properties sold in February 2020 and 33.6 per cent more than the previous month of January. Sales of condominiums were up 65.7 per cent from February 2020 with 290 units sold. Sales of single family homes were up 43.9 per cent from February 2020 with 390 sold.

"Our early spring market is in full swing carrying on from a fast start in January," said Victoria Real Estate Board President David Langlois.  "Our market remains one with tightly constrained inventory and high demand. The good news is that we have seen some stabilization in listings and condo pricing between January and February, but we continue to see huge pressure on single family homes – new listings are snapped up as soon as they are listed. As a result, the pressure on single family homes continues to ramp up. There is significant competition for desirable homes – and in our marketplace most homes are desirable – and people competing for properties pushes prices up."

There were 1,318 active listings for sale on the Victoria Real Estate Board Multiple Listing Service® at the end of February 2021, 38 per cent fewer properties than the total available at the end of February 2020 and three properties fewer than the 1,321 active listings for sale at the end of January 2020.

"The theme for 2021 is going to be inventory - where does it come from and how much new supply can be approved - so that this situation does not persist," adds Langlois. "We've seen the government attempt to influence the housing market in hopes of dampening the demand for home ownership. The foreign buyer tax has changed nothing – our market continues to zoom forward with almost no foreign buyers. The government adjusted mortgage qualification rules, those are absorbed by the market and buyers adjust. Demand-suppression measures have not worked and their failure to moderate housing prices in our community has only exacerbated the pressure on the supply that was constrained ten years ago but is now at historically low levels. If you are concerned about housing prices and availability of housing in general in our community, please support development in your municipality. Be vocal with your local council or neighbourhood association – these stakeholders hold the power in these negotiations - and help to make space in your community. Gentle density and the building of new homes are the only pathway to moderate housing prices in our area."

The Multiple Listing Service® Home Price Index benchmark value for a single family home in the Victoria Core in February 2020 was $870,300. The benchmark value for the same home in February 2021 increased by 9 per cent to $948,200, a 1.7 per cent increase from the previous month of January. The MLS® HPI benchmark value for a condominium in the Victoria Core in February 2020 was $525,600, while the benchmark for the same condominium in February 2021 remained close to last year's value at $525,400, a 0.38 per cent decrease.