Thinking of Selling Your Home? 8 Tips to Create Great Curb Appeal Curb appeal is best defined as how attractive a property is to a potential buyer standing at the curb in front of the property. If the home and front look well-kept, buyers enter in a positive frame of mind. If buyers arrive to find litter in the front landscaping, paint peeling on the front door, a rusty mailbox stuffed with junk mail and walkways that haven’t been shovelled or swept, that negative first impression may be enough to turn them away. So how do you create great curb appeal and interest prospective buyers in seeing ..read more

Listing Your Home for Sale? 4 Steps to Help Your Interiors Stand Out 1. Pre-Pack Most of us have quite a lot of “stuff” in our homes. Living amongst family heirlooms, keepsakes, or the minutiae of everyday life is fine as long as you’re comfortable in your own space. When it comes time to sell, however, all that stuff distracts buyers from really seeing the space they may be buying, and assessing whether it will meet their future needs. Your first step is to go through each room in your home, including bathrooms, utility spaces and the basement or storage locker. Pack everything you won’t need ..read more

Generators for your home   Climate is a topic on many people’s minds these days, especially with the extensive reporting from the COP26 Conference in Scotland. In Ottawa, we have also experienced our share of severe weather in recent years. Memories of the Ice Storm in 1998, the August blackout in 2003, and the tornado which struck the city in 2018 are still fairly fresh. The power disruptions caused by severe weather, combined with improvements in whole home generators, mean more people are considering whether to add generators to their homes. We depend on a great many appliances and e ..read more

What are “Cumulative Days on Market” (CDOM)? Last month, when I first mentioned Cumulative Days on Market (CDOM), a client asked what it was all about. If you’re not familiar with the term, CDOM are the total number of days a property has been listed on the Ottawa Real Estate Board’s Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) system. Once a listing is made active and public on MLS® the clock starts and continues until the property is sold. Even if a listing is cancelled and re-listed at a different price or with a different brokerage, the CDOM count continues, unless the property is taken off the market ..read more

Monitoring the Market – August 2021 Real Estate Stats  Again, last month, sales of both residential and condo properties went down.  And again, prices went up.  Some members of the media speculate that this is a trend and the market is slowing. While we have definitely cooled off from the fast pace and eye-watering prices of the winter and spring months, August is often slower. It’s a month when many head to cottages and take vacations. I usually find the Cumulative Days On Market (CDOM) statistic very telling and last month, the average number of days a property (reside ..read more

The Value of Trees Have you ever driven through a neighbourhood admiring the trees? Does your neighbour’s magnolia make you smile when it blooms? Do you look forward to seeing trees leaf out in the spring, and change colour in the fall? Trees are a wonderful addition to any home and can add significant value to your property and neighbourhood. But many homeowners take their trees for granted, not realizing that urban trees need our help in the form of ongoing maintenance and professional care to help them survive and thrive. The Benefits of Trees Homes with mature trees are often in particular ..read more

Moving With Pets Despite the work involved, moving to a new home can be exciting and full of promise. You understand what is happening, envision the reward and look forward to settling into your new place. But what about your pets? Our pets are usually much-loved members of the family, and a big part of what makes home feel like home. Completely reliant on us for food, shelter, love and security, they don’t understand the mess, the boxes, the changes to the home they know or your increased busy-ness and stress. So, how can you help them stay calm before, during and after the move? Over my ye ..read more

Although July’s total sales figures declined 21% compared with July 2020, the total number of sales (1,724 freehold and condo properties) is not far off the five-year average of 1,775. The same cannot be said for sale prices though. Average sale prices for both residential (freehold) and condo properties increased 17% over July 2020, and year-to-date average sales are significantly higher as well. At the end of last year, the average condo sale price was $361,337 (an increase of 18.8% over 2019) and the average freehold sale price was $582,267 (an increase of 19.7% over 2019). The current ye ..read more

Are you planning to list your home for sale in the near future? If so the summer is a great time to assess how inviting your home would be to prospective buyers and to do updates while the weather is nice.  Start by going for a walk and looking at the homes around your neighbourhood. Which ones stand out to you? What makes them appealing?  Returning home, study the front of your own home and property. When a potential buyer arrives, the exterior is their introduction to your home. If your property makes a poor first impression or has limited ‘curb appeal’, it starts the showing on ..read more