7 Wonders of Oregon

For those of us that live in the Pacific Northwest, we take for granted the natural beauty that is all around us. Depending on what part of Oregon you live, you could wake up to the ocean surf pounding against the majestic shoreline or hike ancient volcanic lava beds. You could go from being in one of the world’s best food cities to windsurfing in a National Scenic Area in less than an hour. Oregon has such diverse ecological zones and we just love to play in them all. That’s why, when I came across this set of videos produced by Travel Oregon, I wanted to get the word out to those of you that have yet to experience the splendor that is Oregon. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the view!

Garett Chadney is an owner and licensed Principal Broker of The Broker Network located in Gresham, OR.  He serves real estate clients in the Portland metro area and can be reached at (503) 465-5077 or via email at garett@tbnrealty.com

Staging Your Home to Sell

In this competitive real estate market one of the best ways to attract a great offer is to have your home professionally staged. More than 90% of all buyers begin their search for their next home online and with more and more top REALTORS® hiring professional photographers it makes sense that homes are professionally staged prior to any photo shoot.

What Does a Home Stager Do?

Professional home stagers are highly skilled artists who have honed their craft so that their work appeals to all five senses. It’s not enough to just arrange vignette in a corner or a place bowl of apples on the kitchen counter. A really good home stager can make a masterpiece out of a blank canvas and, more importantly, can make buyers want to buy it.

Costs of Home Staging

If you insist on doing the staging yourself, the cost is very minimal. You may need to buy accessories that you don’t already have or you can utilize what you currently own and rearrange it so it will appeal to home buyers. The best advice though is to hire a professional. In the Portland metro area, there are lots of great professional homes stagers to choose from and costs can vary but depending on the square footage of your home and how many rooms you want staged, the cost can be anywhere from $500 – $5,000. Here’s the one thing you should take away from this…whatever your investment in staging is going to be, it will be less than your first price reduction if you put your home on the market for top dollar without staging.

• The Real Estate Staging Association completed a report in 2012 that showed that homes previously on the market without staging averaged 166 days on the market before a professional was hired. After staging, the homeowners received their first offer within and average of 32 days!
• That same report states that homes that were staged prior to going on the market received an offer (or multiple offers) in an average of only 26 days!

Let the Professionals Do Their Thing

As with most things in life, it’s better to let the professionals provide the services and expertise when you are ready to make that big change. Your home is probably your highest valued asset so when you are ready to sell, make sure to do it right. Hire a professional to help you stage it, photograph it and sell it.

Garett Chadney is a licensed Principal Broker in Oregon with The Broker Network and serves the entire Portland metro area.  His office is located in Gresham, OR and he can be reached at (503) 465-5077 or via email at garett@tbnrealty.com.

How Professional Photos Help Sell Your Home

Did you know that 98% of home buyers who searched for a home on the internet found photos to be among the most useful features of REALTOR® websites, according to the 2013 NAR Profile of Home Buyers & Sellers. It is the number one item of value that consumers want to see when beginning their search for a home on the internet. So, with that as a brief background, let’s see just how those beautiful photos the pros come up with actually help sell your home.

Our brains are trained to look for contrasting colors and shades as well as shapes and lines. It’s not a coincidence that truly gifted photographers can bring out different levels of emotions with their photos. Anne Geddes does it with pictures of infants, Peter Lik does it with landscapes and real estate photographers do it with architecture. They make your eyes follow a certain progression so that your senses are heightened and before you know it, you’re saying to yourself, “Wow! I want to see that home.”

They know what to shoot and what not to shoot. You would think it would be a no-brainer to forego taking a picture of a bathroom with the toilet seat up and everything from toothpaste to curling irons sitting on the countertop but unfortunately, that’s just what some agents do. They simply don’t have the ‘eye’ that the pros do. Same thing goes for how consumers are walked through the home with the pictures. Done properly, a potential buyer that has viewed the home online will know how a home flows even before stepping inside with their agent.

Photographers help market your home too when they post their work on their website, share on their Facebook business page or send it out to their Twitter followers. A good real estate photographer includes your agent in the marketing as well so that they can then share it with others in the social media world. Oh, and one more last little tidbit…homes with professional photos typically sell more quickly and for more money than those without. If you have hired a professional REALTOR® to list your home, make sure they hire a professional photographer to showcase your most important asset.