Brighten Up Your Boston Home This Winter!

Brighten Up Your Boston Home

We lost an hour of daylight this past weekend in Boston, MA. That means that either your electricity bill will go up, or it’s time for you to incorporate some tips and tricks to brighten up your home naturally. As your Boston real estate agent, I’d like to help you out with the latter!

There are plenty of things you can do around your Boston home to brighten it up during the dark hours of winter. Here are few to get you started:

• Open your blinds/curtains. This seems like an obvious one, but a lot of people leave their blinds or curtains closed during the day. Unless it’s brutally cold and windy out, allow natural light to stream into your home for as long as it’s light out. Remove solar shades from windows to allow more light in.

• Install a skylight. If you’re ready to make an investment, this is one that could cut energy costs year-round, and increase home value. Plus, they look great, and they allow natural light to shine into places that otherwise wouldn’t get much! These are especially great for bathrooms with small or no windows.

• Add task lighting. Ceiling lights just don’t cut it in the winter. Notice where there are dark corners in each room and strategically place a new floor lamp or desk lamp in that area. These typically use less energy than overhead lights and give rooms a softer glow.

• Repaint. Dark colored walls can make a home feel dark and dreary, especially in winter. Lighter colored paint reflects light back into a room. If you have dark colors on your walls, consider lighter, softer neutral colors. You could always accent the room with a darker color for a winter appeal.

• Add mirrors. Mirrors create the illusion of extra space, but they also reflect light and create the illusion that there is more of it than there actually is. If you hang a mirror opposite a window, it’ll double the light in the room. Get creative with glass or mirrored furniture or decorations as well.

Aside from these tips, you could also clean your windows, mirrors and light bulbs really good, so that optimal amounts of light can shine through. These are great tips to incorporate, especially when staging your Boston home to sell! Boston homebuyers want a bright, cheerful home to come home to in the dead of winter. These tips will make your home more appealing to them.

Ready to buy a Boston home? Ready to sell your Boston home? Have questions? Contact me, your Boston real estate agent! I am here for you when you need me.

Patti Fine

Phone: 617-642-7585
Email: pf@pattifine.com

Patti Fine Real Estate

Greater Boston Area Homes

Search Greater Boston Area Homes 

Most Popular Home Features among Boston Home Buyers!

As a Boston home seller, you want to know who your potential homebuyers are in the Boston real estate market, and what they are currently looking for from a home. Trends come and go, so when staging your home to sell, it’s important to be up-to-date with the latest information.

After all, inventory is rising, so you have more competition. Plus, some upgrades yield a high return on investment and will allow you to increase the asking price of your home!

As your Boston real estate agent, I’m here to update you today! A recent survey was conducted to see which upgrades Boston homebuyers are willing to pay more for. Here were the results:

• Central air conditioning. This upgrade was most important to buyers, with a whopping 69 percent saying they would pay more for a home that had this: up to $2,520 more.

• New appliances. Of all the kitchen upgrades available, new appliances was the one that 69 percent of buyers said they would pay more for: up to $1,840 more. Added bonus: Energy Star appliances!

• Walk-in closets. Buyers desire lots of storage, and walk-in closets fit into that category. That’s why 60 percent of buyers say they would pay more: up to $1,350 more.

• Granite countertops. Granite is still a popular option in the kitchen, and that’s why 55 percent of buyers said they would pay more for this upgrade: up to $1,620 more.

• Hardwood floors. This trend comes and goes, but right now, buyers desire hardwood flooring over carpeting. Make this upgrade and 54 percent of buyers will pay more: up to $2,080 more.

• Master Suite. Buyers want a master bedroom with an upgraded master bath. From second sinks to mounted televisions, 49 percent of buyers will pay more: up to $2,030 more. However, it’s important to note your area’s demographic. Younger buyers don’t care as much as older buyers do.

• Kitchen island. Buyers like their kitchen updates, and the kitchen island is an upgrade that gives them more storage and counter space. That’s why 48 percent of buyers will pay more: up to $1,370 more.

• Stainless steel. This is still the material that most buyers, 41 percent of them, prefer for appliances, even though they wear faster. They are willing to spend up to $1,850 more for stainless steel.

• Eat-in kitchen. The kitchen strikes again! Buyers, especially younger ones with kids, are looking for functional eat-in kitchens. Forty percent of buyers will spend up to $1,770 more for this.

• Fireplaces. This attractive, functional feature is even more popular in the northern states, and no surprise after the winter Boston, MA had! Forty percent of buyers will pay up to $1,770 more for one.

As a rule of thumb, kitchen and bath updates are always popular among homebuyers. The National Kitchen and Bath Association recently shared that extra-large, luxury showers with multiple shower heads and built-in seating are all the rage right now.

Have questions about selling your Boston home? Ready to sell with professional assistance? Contact me, your Boston real estate agent!

Patti Fine

Phone: 617-642-7585
Email: pf@pattifine.com

Patti Fine Real Estate

Greater Boston Area Homes

Search Greater Boston Area Homes

4 Decluttering Tips for Your Boston, MA Home

As your Boston real estate agent, I’d like to take you back to the basics today. As homeowners, after we take down holiday décor, this is a great time to clean, organize and declutter our Boston homes! Market Watch has deemed 2014 the year to sell your Boston home, so if you’re gearing up to do so, it’s also a great time to prepare for staging your home to sell.

This is a daunting task for most Boston home sellers, because most have lived in their homes for quite some time and have collected a lot of stuff. Whether it was freebies in the mail, good sales at the store, or nostalgic photos or art designs from the kids, much of what we collect is meaningful to us. It is not, however, meaningful to our potential Boston homebuyers.

To help you get your home organized and clutter-free this winter, here are some greats tips from Realtor Magazine that I’ve summarized for you here:

1.  Give your home a walkthrough. Pretend you’re a homebuyer and you’re seeing your own home for the first time. Walk through each room and really take notice. After living in a home for so long, we stop noticing the obvious messes and clutter after a while! Walk with a notebook and keep track of what you notice in each room, and what you’ll need to go back and change.

2.  Create piles. As you clean and declutter each room, create piles: keep, give away, donate, sell, throw away. These piles can be different for each homeowner, but the basic gist is to get rid of everything that is not a necessity. If you’re moving in the near future, you’ll be so happy you did! You could also have a pile for keeping, but storing away until after you sell your Boston home.

3.  Clean out closets. Closets tend to be the black holes in most homes, where everything you’re not sure what to do with gets thrown. Once you tackle the closets, the rest should be a cinch! Create your piles. Remove anything you haven’t worn in two years, and aim to get rid of 50 percent of your wardrobe (the average person only wears 20 percent of their clothes 80 percent of the time).

4.  Clear counters and bookcases. Take all of your appliances and gadgets off the counters in the kitchen and bathrooms. Leave only a couple items. Donate any books that won’t be reread. Replace with a few decorative, neutral items. Professional home stagers recommend grouping decorative pieces in groups of three.

Realtor Magazine shared many more tips in their article that is worth reading. If you have more questions, or would like a neutral point of view, contact me! I’d be happy to help you out.

As your Boston real estate agent, I am your go-to source for help during the home-selling process in the Boston real estate market.  I look forward to helping you reach your goals!

Patti Fine
Phone: 617-642-7585
Email: pf@pattifine.com
Patti Fine Real Estate
Greater Boston Area Homes
Search Greater Boston Area Homes

New Tips for Staging Your Boston Home to Sell!

As your Boston real estate agent, it’s my duty to help you with the home-selling process in Boston, MA. One part of that is staging your home to sell.

Now, many staging tips you’ve probably already heard. Declutter your home. Get rid of anything personal, like family photos and kid’s drawings on the refrigerator. Repaint the walls. Power wash the exterior. Display potted flowers on your front porch. Rearrange the furniture. Clean!

These are typical staging tips that are very important if you want potential homebuyers to imagine living in your home. You want your home to come off as a model home that is move-in ready, not a home that is being lived in by another family. Everything should look as perfect as it can.

However, today I’m going to share a few out-of-the-box ideas to help you stand out from other Boston home sellers. The key to staging is also to help potential homebuyers remember your home above the rest! Here are some new ideas:

• Add color pops to your neutral décor. Neutral décor is important, but you don’t want it to be so neutral that it looks blah. Add some hints of color, such as couch pillow shams, a throw rug, curtains and flower vases. Try to stick to one color scheme. You could also create a focal point with paint, such as painting one wall a bright color. More tips are available in this Realtor Magazine blog. 

• Use the right type of lighting in each room. Certain lighting can show off the features of certain rooms better than other lighting. House Logic recommends that you use halogen lighting to show off art, for task lighting or for mood creation. Use LED lighting on stairs, under cabinets and for landscaping. Fluorescent lighting is best for garages, closets and laundry rooms. 

• Make homemade air fresheners. You want your home to smell good for showings and open houses, but you don’t want homebuyers gagging on artificial chemicals! Huffington Post shared some great homemade options. One option is to cut an orange in half, cut out the pulp and fill the skin with salt. Or, dab a few drops of vanilla extract on a cool light bulb, then turn it on. 

• Create focal points. Define the best feature of each room, then decorate the room so that your other furnishings fit around it. Is it a fireplace in the living room? A built-in entertainment center in the family room? A table in the dining room? Use the lighting and color bursts we already discussed to enhance each focal point to make it memorable. 

Hopefully these tips will help you create a setting in your home that Boston homebuyers will remember and want to make their own! Have questions? Need help? Contact me, your Boston real estate agent! 

Patti Fine
Phone: 617-642-7585
Email: pf@pattifine.com
Patti Fine Real Estate
Greater Boston Area Homes
Search Greater Boston Area Homes

Curb The Kid-Clutter In Your Boston, MA Home!

You’ve decided to sell your Boston, MA home. Congratulations! As your Boston real estate agent, I can tell you that you’re making a fabulous choice. Home prices are up the most they’ve been up since 2006, and home sales are the highest they’ve been since 2007! Boston homebuyers are trying to buy now before prices and mortgage rates go up, so chances are, your Boston home will sell in no time.

As a Boston home seller, it’s important that you stage your home to sell. That means that when it comes time for potential homebuyers to view your home, every room is clean, spotless, clutter-free and stripped of personal items. The home should look more like a model home than a home with a family living in it. You want your home to look move-in ready for the homebuyer!

However, when children are involved, staging your home gets a little more complicated. Children have a lot of stuff! As your Boston real estate agent, I’d like to lend you some tips on how to control your children’s clutter so that your home still comes off as move-in ready.

• If you have a lot of homemade artwork laying around or hanging on the refrigerator, now is the time to recycle it. I know, it has sentimental value. So before you do, take a photo of each piece that you love or want to remember. Then, you can add all of those photos to a scrapbook or a picture frame. That’ll be a great keepsake for your grown child someday!

• Invest in storage bins that have wheels underneath. Or, if you already own a lot of storage bins, try your luck at DIY by attaching wheels yourself! Wheels allow you to easily store bins underneath beds or cabinets. But they also make it easier for kids to pull them out when needed. Inside, you can store loose toys, games, clothes, diapers, dolls or anything else you want hidden!

• Make storage part of a room’s décor! In this idea from Better Homes and Gardens, they suggest you cut two squares of decorative fabric, preferably with patterns that match the décor of the room they’re going in. Then, you sew them and add a zipper to the side so children can easily get toys or accessories out of them. Hang them on the inside of a closet door so they’re not taking up space!

• Do your children have a lot of tiny toys that they’ve collected over the years? Those tend to get loose more often, and they’re hard to store away in a large bin. Instead, use an empty toolbox to store them! Toolboxes are made for tiny tools, nails and bolts, so why not use the little compartments for toys? When showing your home to homebuyers, they won’t even know toys are inside.

Hopefully these kid-friendly, clutter-removing tips will help you prepare your home for the Boston real estate market. For more ideas, check out this Apartment Therapy article.

When you’re ready to sell, contact me! As a Boston real estate agent, I can work with you to show your house, host open houses, attract local homebuyers, negotiate prices and close a deal!

Patti Fine 

Phone: 617-642-7585

Email: pf@pattifine.com

Patti Fine Real Estate

Greater Boston Area Homes

Search Greater Boston Area Home

It’s Time to Sell Your Home in Boston, Here’s How!

Good news for homebuyers in the Boston Real Estate market has been flowing for years now, but good news for sellers is starting to appear in rapid speed! According to a recent press release from the National Association of Realtors, home prices are stabilizing in most metro areas, home sales are still increasing and inventory is down. Those are ideal circumstances for Boston homeowners looking to sell!

Not only that, but MSN Money recently released a list of America’s comeback cities, and Boston was one of them. It said Boston’s low unemployment rate and storied institutions serve as magnets for people from across New England. This means that home sellers in Boston can expect a wave of homebuyers!

So, how can you prepare to sell your Boston home sooner than later? Here’s a summary of some of the great tips that a Realty Times article recommended:

• Hire a professional. As a Boston Real Estate agent, I couldn’t agree more with this one! Because it’s still more of a buyer’s market than a seller’s market, it’s smart to work with an agent that can help properly price your home, attract potential homebuyers, handle contracts and market to the masses. I am confident in saying that I can do all of these things, while still keeping you involved as much as you prefer!

• Fully Disclose. This is no time to try to get away with anything. Buyers know what they want and won’t give up the fight until they find it. They’re smart, too. If you know your home needs work, or there is a problem somewhere, you must disclose with me and potential buyers. If they find a problem later that you knew about, you’ll have a lot of trouble to deal with.

• Be realistic. You have to be realistic about your expectations and with the current Boston Real Estate market when pricing your home. Chances are, you’ll see your house as worth more than it is because you have an emotional attachment or because you expected the house to be worth more by now. Allow us to work together to come up with a price that compares to other homes, like yours, in the Boston area.

• Stage your home. Yes, you’ve lived in this space for years and have probably found ways to make it your own. Potential homebuyers don’t want to see that. They want to see an area that they can make their own. So, take every personal knickknack and photo out of the room and stage each room with neutral décor and open space, until the home almost looks like a model home.

• Be involved, but not too much. As your Boston Real Estateagent, I admire home sellers who want involvement in the selling process of their Boston home. It’s good for us to have regular conversations about the status of your sale and each step of the process. However, you don’t want to make potential buyers uncomfortable, especially during open houses. Make yourself scarce and I will fill you in on everything you miss!

These are all great tips for making your home-selling process go as smoothly as possible! Since inventory is down, potential homebuyers will be interested in your listing. As your Boston Real Estate agent, I would love to work with you to price your home, stage your home and show off your home. Let me help you! The time to sell in Boston is now. Don’t wait. Contact me!

Patti Fine
Phone: 617-642-7585
Email: pf@pattifine.com
Patti Fine Real Estate
Greater Boston Area Homes
Search Greater Boston Area Home

Staging Your Boston Home to Sell!

Summer is more than halfway over, which means that if you haven’t put your house in the Boston Real Estate market yet, now is the time to do it! Potential buyers take advantage of house hunting during warm, long summer days, so you should take advantage too by wasting no time. Clean up your house, make any improvements that are needed, contact me, your Boston Real Estate agent, set up some open houses and let’s together get your Boston home sold!

To help you in the process, it’s important that you stage your home to sell. Staging means getting rid of personal knickknacks that only having meaning to you, while keeping each room tidy, uncluttered and neutrally decorated. It also means playing up your assets and downplaying your faults. By doing so, according to this HGTV FrontDoor Real Estate article, staging has been proven to increase sellers’ sale prices by seven percent!

How do you do it? Follow this room-to-room advice from the article, combined with some of my own tips from experience:

In the Bathroom: Paint goes a long way to brighten up a waterlogged bathroom. Repaint your tiled flooring by first coating it with a high-adhesion primer and then a ceramic epoxy covering. Consider replacing an old vanity with a pedestal sink, which makes your bathroom appear larger and adds appeal that most buyers love. Scour your shower door, or replace your shower curtain, and spray your bathroom walls with a mixture of bleach and water. Repaint the walls if necessary. Always clean the toilet!

In the Kitchen: Increase the appeal of old kitchen cabinets by staining the wood or painting over them. Shine the handles with brass polisher. Fake stainless steel appliances by removing your appliance’s front panels, cleaning them and then applying a stainless steel stick-on covering. Yes, these exist! Your appliances will look modern and stylish without the big bucks of replacing them. If you want to replace the countertops, ask the vendors to use remnants from previous projects, or choose laminate with a granite-looking design. Store away unnecessary items in order to keep the counters cleared. If a table is present in the kitchen, clear it off and only display a centerpiece. You can set the table for open houses to make it look homier.

In the Living Room: Fix up a hardwood floor by replacing damaged boards with new ones rather than replacing the whole room. Afterward, sand it over and stain the boards. If you want to add anything, built-in bookshelves or a built-in entertainment center will go over well with buyers. If you do add these or already display them in your living room, keep them simply decorated with neutral décor. Clean the windows and keep the blinds or curtains open to allow ample light to shine into this room and all your rooms.

In the Bedroom: When selling, you want to display a calming, uncluttered place to relax and unwind. Remove exercise equipment, office supplies, extra storage bins and anything not necessary to a bedroom. Pinpoint the bed as the focal point, with balance on each side, such as two small nightstands. Consider adding a headboard for extra elegance. Remember to clean out your closets, because buyers will be looking in them. Keep the décor neutral, and try to match your curtains with your bedspread. As in every room, take away picture frames of loved ones. The more the bedroom looks like a neutral hotel room, the better.

For more helpful tips, you can read the rest of the HGTV staging article, and you can contact me, your Boston Real Estate agent! I’m always open to offering you more tips on how to successfully sell your home in Boston. The Boston Real Estate market is waiting for your home, so don’t delay! Call me today and let’s get cracking on getting your house ready to sell.

Patti Fine
Phone: 617-642-7585
Email: pf@pattifine.com
Patti Fine Real Estate
Greater Boston Area Homes
Search Greater Boston Area Homes