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Question #8:  It is ever ok to treat  a moldy basement without removing the water source even when it’s just a damp basement (not leaking).Answer:  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES!  Every single mold clean up protocol ever credibly written states that the water source must be removed.  When the water source is a wet basement many realtors are reluctant to demand basement de-watering for the home in conjunction with mold clean up because they imagine their commission dwindling or the deal being killed.  A concrete block basement can hold hundreds or even thousands of gallons of water inside the cores without ever leaking on the floor.  The truth of the matter is: if the water source is not remedied, the mold problem will re-surface again raising liability issues for both realtor and broker.

Huh? Why would a real estate agent have a problem with the source of the water being corrected during a sale?  Listing agent? Buyers agent?  Of course this series if from a spam email sent to real estate agents.

If there’s a hole in the roof letting water intrude, you gotta fix it… same’s true on the other end of the house.  Is his fix the only fix? You’d think so from his spam email but there are reputable basement contractors in Central Ohio. 

If you discover your basement has problems during the sale of the property,  a good home inspector can refer you to reputable contractors who will remove the source of dampness, any leaks and the mold…

This is from a series from a spam email from a basement contractor.

How is your basement this morning after all the rain?

Wet Basement Quiz Question 7

Wet Basement Quiz Questions 5 & 6

Wet Basement Quiz Question 4

Wet Basement Quiz Question 3

Wet Basement Quiz Question 2

Central Ohio Wet Basement Quiz…

I went to a company meeting recently but got there a little bit late. Good presentation, national speaker.  He’s all about home price but he kept mentioning “fake fruit.”

Huh?

The next morning I read a post from a California stager about fake fruit.  I loved the fact that Cindy Lin kept putting “Fake Food ” warnings in the post I read on ActiveRain that lead me to her real site. Staged 4 More- “Fake Fruit”   Cindy is writing about amatuerish vs. professional staging but all I am able to think about is fake fruit.

Builders stage homes in Central Ohio.  Some existing homes in Central Ohio are staged, but it is more DIY or Realtors® who have taken a staging course  or homeowners with talent.  Or all of the above without talent.

Warning I don’t think that apple pictured above is fake. If it takes too loooooong for your home to sell it will shrink, wither and rot.

I have to tell you a secret. Do you promise not to tell?  I grew up in a house with no fake fruit.  A fake fruit free home.  My neighbors on either side had a little girl my same age. Both homes had fake fruit as part of their day to day decor not in any effort to sell either  home… I was probably 5 or 6 when I was at the Wirkuty’s house next door and I bit into a wax pear.  I remember what it tasted like… Yuck!  Sorry neighbors.

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Sellers: What’s your home worth? Market Analysis Request … We can price it with or without fake fruit.

Buyers:

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MyRealLiving.com - set up your own page Choose me as your agent if you would like to work together to find a property!

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The Real Estate Market in Central Ohio - Columbus Housing Market is Stable

Previously about staging on ColumbusBestBlog.com

Home Buyer Beware

Don’t Try this at Home!

Wood you Tell a Homeowner to Paint the Cabinets?

Douglas Garbe, an associate with Real Living Real Estate Solutions (in Orlando Florida)  shared Green Kitchen 101  on ActiveRain, a real estate network.

Douglas is committed to the environment and conservation.  His “Green Kitchen 101″ post is about how being “Green” around the house can save you green. 

“let us start with the kitchen:

• Buy a water filtration system.  Say no to expensive bottled water.
• Cloth napkins instead of paper… can be used several times before washing.
• Use less single-serve or single-use products… these products are more than 50% packaging.
• buy in bulk.  Avoid useless packaging.
• Always cover your pots when cooking.  It speeds up the process and saves energy.
• Let foods cool before putting them in the refrigerator, so as not to raise internal temperature.
   

If followed through for a whole year, the above six tips save the average home around $750.00 a year”

I am not sure I can do that last one… I am afraid of germs.  I know people used to wait to put food in the refrigerator and then it was considered safer healthwise to put still hot food directly in the refrigerator.  

Douglas’s source:  It’s easy being green, by Crissy Trask.  Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2006

At the Columbus Zoo on a recent visit I was struck again by how much they “preach” being green.  The new Asia Quest Exhibit has a lot about conservation including what we can all do at home, a lot of the same ideas above.  Lots of common sense stuff.

Or maybe do try this at home, if you are trying to sell and the competition is stiff (and it is in lots of Central Ohio neighborhoods isn’t it? ) try home staging in  your home. 

Craig Schiller (just like the park in German Village) a home stager in Chicago has a gorgeous slide show about Buyer’s Seeing Red. 

Craig is talking to other stagers about the use of the color red in home staging.  It caught my eye.

Can you do home staging yourself? Or do you need professional help?  I majored in interior design until the second semester of my junior year in college.  My degree in home economics  then became a major which was called ”Related Art History of Design.”  So I have a background and lotsa study in design but I am not qualified to really stage a home.  I can help a seller with the rudimentary stuff but there’s a reason to get a professional involved in many Central Ohio homes today in my opinion.  It’s not like there aren’t buyers out there.  Buyers are  just able to ‘cherry pick’ the homes they buy today.  

I have thought about getting the staging designation for real estate agents too.  Maybe someday.  For now if you are in a neighborhood with 6 months or more supply of houses to sell, why not give your home a competitive edge by having it professionally staged?

Can you stage a home yourself?  Some people live in houses that look like they were staged.  Most of us don’t.  

Accent colors, accesories, home staging is not decorating.  Often home staging can be done with your own things. 

We have professional stagers in Columbus.

What’s the market like in your Central Ohio neighborhood?  What is your home worth?

Previously on ColumbusBestBlog:

Wood You Tell a Homeowner to Paint Cabinets?

Central Ohio - Warning! Do not try this at home!

Ohhhh she’s not in Central Ohio or I’d be asking this stager to guest blog on ColumbusBestBlog in a minute.  Painting oak cabinets… Rachel Backus is an authority and on Rachel’s Hudson Ohio blog MyStagedLife.com  gives an even higher authority… for painting oak.  Gee somehow “higher authority”   reminds me of a hot dog commercial…  back to staging.

“Oak is out!”  Rachel say it isn’t so?

What happens when maple goes out or cherry goes out?  Do we slap paint on those beautiful woods to get the house sold too? 

I had a house listed in Dayton Ohio, long, long ago built in the 20’s or 30’s where  my seller had bought the house from a member of the original family.  It had the original cabinets in the kitchen… My seller was widowed shortly after buying the home and was relocating to be closer to family.  An agent in my office sold the home in it’s original condition with original cabinets (which were painted)  and lots of great wood trim throughout the house to some fellas with great taste. 

I personally had relocated to Columbus a year or so later but I heard from an agent in Dayton who was listing the house and had some questions (the selling agent when I had the house listed had died…) sorry for the morbid details of people dying.  They do. 

Whenever I think about homes being updated for the latest rage in home decor or to get the house sold because the details of the original home have gone out of style I think of those cabinets and the toile wallpaper in the foyer of that home that had been there for longer than I have been alive and the preservationist in me screams “STOP the madness…”  

Then the real etate agent in me says “every home is not THAT home” there are lots of homes that are  not going to be original.  People update.  People make changes for their lifestyle or to sell.  Dark stained oak cabinets do date a home.      

I found Rachel’s entry on her blog via an entry on ActiveRain which she entitled “WOOD you tell a homeowner to paint the cabinets?”

Staging is getting a home to look it’s best for the sale of the home.  In a sellers market you can put your house on the market in some areas and the buyer is going to snap it up and paint the cabinets themselves if that is their taste.  Or not paint the cabinets themselves if they like them as is.  In a buyers market with lots of competition buyers just go look for a house where the seller has painted the cabinets or made upgrades that suit their taste. 

In a buyers market seller’s have to make moral decisions like things about painting oak.  Or painting brick?