Home staging is incredibly important when selling, but it has to be done right. When done incorrectly, it makes the home appear like a commodity and not a home. The purpose of staging is to elicit an emotional response from the buyer.

Sometimes a staging will leave you feeling a little flat. A lot of people say that you need to remove personal items from a home, but I disagree with that. Things should look and feel like a home, not a living space. We want the home to look nice, but also feel "lived in."

The outside of the home is just as important, and we pay attention to the exterior to make it feel personal and inviting. We want the buyer to relate to the home and have some sort of emotional response towards the property.

If you’re interested, we can come out to your property and have a look around to prepare you for a proper home staging. Please don’t hesitate to contact us about this!

If you’re selling your home and you have multiple offers on your property - congratulations! However, don’t get too excited just yet. You still have some work to do in choosing the most beneficial offer for you and your family.

Simple logic might tell you to choose an offer with the highest dollar amount, but you cannot forget to look at the terms involved. Someone might be willing to pay you more for your home, but offer less in negotiations. Remember that cash buyers always expect to pay a little less because they don’t have to run through the gamut of financing.

Consider the contingencies on the offer. Remember that a contingency always creates an opportunity for the buyer to walk away, so be careful moving forward with a buyer who has too many contingencies. The fewer contingencies, the better off you are as a seller.

Generally speaking, your first offer is your best offer. It’s important to shop around, but don’t wait too long because those buyers will eventually just look elsewhere. Respect the fact that buyers have committed to your home and made an offer on it.

When combing through offers on your home, it might be a good idea to work with a real estate professional to determine which offer will benefit you the most. Just don’t forget that terms can sometimes outweigh a larger offer on your home. Money isn’t always the determining factor in a sale, sometimes it’s simply convenience.

If you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We know it’s going to be a busy spring selling season, so contact us soon.

I’m very excited to announce that I am now part of the Fine Homes Group. I sent you an email letting you know that I was switching, but today I wanted to clarify why I made that decision.

This new opportunity will allow me to serve you at a higher level. I will have a whole team of marketing specialists, buyer representatives, and transaction coordinators, among many other helpful moving parts. This is a great way for me to help you do what you need to sell your home for top dollar.

One piece of advice if you’re thinking of selling this spring: don’t wait until it’s too late. Everyone lists in April and May, but I suggest getting started in February or March. You want to be the first home out there for everyone to see. If you wait too long, your home will be adrift in a sea of other listings.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

If you’re thinking about selling this spring, the first thing you need to do is take a step back and think about your home. Take a walkthrough of your home and try to identify little things like leaky faucets, flickering light bulbs, or any other minor thing that may trouble a buyer. Many of the things you’ve grown accustomed to may be very off-putting for buyers. The goal is to make it so that the inspector can’t find anything wrong with the home.

When putting a price on your home, you need to be aware of what’s happening in the market. There are two segments to look at: what has sold and what’s on the market. If your home is overpriced, you're going to help the competition sell their homes. You want to see what other homes have sold for, while keeping in mind how your competition has priced their homes.

It’s crucial to have the help of a professional when selling because another set of eyes will help you get an objective look at what is going on. More importantly, a professional will be able to give you tips on what you should do and the kind of things you shouldn’t spend money on. You need to focus on things like curb appeal and decluttering more so than fancy upgrades. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so impressing buyers right away should be your highest priority.

Whether you’re in the early stages of getting your home ready to sell or you’ve already begun the process, we would love to give you a hand. Give us a call or shoot us an email at any time -- we would love to hear from you!

We often notice mistakes home sellers make in New Hampshire. All these mistakes relate to timing issues. Today, we'll identify some mistakes to help you avoid them in the future.

It's best to list as soon as possible, especially now in February. Even when there's snow out, people are looking for vacation homes. Remember, it takes anywhere from 60 to 90 days for a home to close, especially with the new regulations in today's lending market. If you're thinking of waiting for May to list your vacation home, it will close at the end of June at the earliest. With our short summer seasons, that's not really enough time for a buyer to enjoy their vacation home.

In the middle of February, when there's two feet of snow on the ground, it can be difficult to inspect your property. It's hard to touch up paint and fix woodwork, so now is the time to do all that before the snow hits. Consider doing a pre-purchase inspection, where a home inspector takes a look at the property before snow and ice makes it too difficult to do so. Take exterior photos of the home now. Even though the leaves are off the trees, you can still get great photos before the snow hits.

3. You're not sure when to engage with a real estate agent.

Many people think, "Okay, it's May. I'm going to call a real estate agent." Call us sooner. Reach out and let us know that you're thinking of selling your home. We can help maximize your exposure and get you top dollar. Let's start that conversation now. We can list properties and not put them on the market right away; as we mentioned, sometimes it takes 30 to 60 days to get the home ready.

If you have any questions, give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to serve you!

I'm happy to tell you that Bedford had a great year in real estate. We sold 70 more homes last year compared to the previous year. In 2015, we sold 376 homes; in 2014, we sold 306. That's a little over a 20% increase in sales. This is great news for homeowners in the area. 

Nearly half of homes sold were in the $300,000 to $500,000 range. However, things have been going well in all price ranges. 

The condominium market is also performing well, and we have less than half the amount of inventory that we had last year. We actually only have 5 condos available, and I think this is because so many people are wanting to downsize. The main reason behind this trend is there are a lot of baby boomers that are moving out of their homes. Expect low inventory for condos throughout the year.

Another thing we can expect is an early spring selling market because the weather has been so warm. Spring will be here in early February, and this is partially caused by rising interest rates. If you've been looking to buy a home, then 2016 may be a great time to do so.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns!

We’ve grown a big real estate team here in New Hampshire. Now, we’re expanding into the Boston market!

You can now work with a team that covers New Hampshire and Massachusetts. This allows you to access exceptional customer service from our experienced agents in both states. We can help sell your primary home in addition to purchasing a secondary home.

In 2016, we want to create a jaw-dropping client experience. We want to set high expectations and exceed them in every transaction. Regardless of the market climate, our goal is to make your experience amazing.

If you’re thinking about buying or selling a home in either New Hampshire or Massachusetts, we’d love to connect with you. We’d love to learn more about you and your goals. Give us a call or email today!

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale We are here today with a market update for New Hampshire as we head into the 4th quarter of 2015. Before we get into our report, we wanted to make sure you have access to our 3rd Quarter Market Update document. You can take a look at that here, or download the full PDF here and it will give you all the details and statistics that are relevant to our market and important to your decision of buying or selling. The third quarter was great for our market. Transactions were up 22%, median sale prices were up 6.3%. That’s great news for the 6,700 sellers that sold their home in the 3rd quarter this year. On the Waterfront side of things, we are seeing similar trends. Waterfront home prices rose nearly 10%, while the average days on market dropped by 14.8%. The number of transactions also went up 9%.  For the general market, the average days on market has dropped from 96 to 74 days. This is a great sign for home sellers. Not everything can go up, sometimes things go down. We are starting to get ready for the potential of a shift in the market. We’ve been saying this for a while, but interest rates are going to rise. When they do rise, there will be some pressure felt by consumers as wages and jobs have not kept pace. We are advising clients that are at all thinking about selling in the next year or two, to start thinking about getting their home ready for sale. Do some research into what it will take to sell your home, including how sellable it is. With winter coming, there are some outdoor preparation items you’ll want to take care of before it gets too cold and snowy out. Even if you aren’t sure about selling yet, it’s never too early to give us a call to have those discussions about getting your home prepared. We would love to help anyone who is interested in buying or selling. We want to make sure you’re prepared, and to make sure you’re up-to-date on what’s going on in the market, don’t forget to download our full 3rd Quarter Market Update. Give us a call or send us an email if you have any questions, and we look forward to speaking with you soon!

Today, we will discuss the importance of the pre-qualification letter. The pre-qualification letter is essentially physical evidence that you can afford a home. 

The pre-qualification shows seriousness to all parties involved: your own agent, the listing agent, and the sellers. A pre-qualification also helps to inform the buyer. You'll know how much you can afford, and you can plan on how much you actually want to spend. 

The lifespan of a pre-qualification letter can vary from lender to lender. If nothing changes, it could be good for up to 90 days. It's important that you don't change anything. Please don't quit your job or buy a car. Don't do anything that would significantly impact the numbers your lender has pulled.

In terms of what the pre-qualification letter says, my preference is not to have a number on the letter. We merely include the letter in the offer packet. The seller doesn't need to know how much you could afford. That would definitely hurt your negotiations with the seller if they know you can afford $250,000 but you're only comfortable offering $200,000. Frankly, it's none of the seller's business how much you could afford.

When you get a pre-qualification letter, you're not required to stick with that lender. However, whether you change lenders or not, make sure you select a reputable lender. 

If you have any questions on today's video, give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to help you!

A lot of people have been asking us questions lately about how to move up in a seller's market, which often requires selling your current home and buying your next one in one process. It's a bit of a juggling act, especially in a market like ours, but it's not impossible.

The first step is getting your current home sale-ready. You don't have to necessarily put it on the market right away, but getting it sale-ready is important. 

Depending on your financial situation and ability to take risks, you may make an offer on your next home prior to putting your current one on the market, or put your current home on the market and wait for a buyer before making an offer on a home.

A lot of things can go wrong when trying to balance a sale and a purchase. For example, what if you sell your current home before you've found one to buy? What about if you make an offer on a home that's accepted, but you haven't sold your current home yet? It's important to have a "Plan B" in this case, and a trusted real estate professional should be able to help you come up with a good one.

If you're going to attempt this, my personal recommendation is that you hire one agent or a team for both transactions. It's much easier to communicate with one person instead of two, and there's a lot of juggling to be done that would be easier for one person to accomplish if they were handling both sides. They will help at minimizing potential risk, as well as maximizing your profits.

If you have any questions for us, feel free to give us a call or shoot over a quick email. We would love to speak with you!