Salem, OR

These homes suffered from a colorful past - and when corrected the results were astounding. You've seen these homes - ones that are in a dated hue, are too personal or bold. Over 85% of home buyers are looking first on the internet when shopping for real estate. When preparing a home for sale, it's time to hide those wild colors!

Color - it can transform a room from cool to warm, serene to vibrant, stark to cozy. We love color and the affordable and huge impact it can make. It can make a huge "wow" when everything comes together well and the colors are perfect, but when the colors aren't "quite right" or show as dated or too personalized buyers will be turning to more attractive hues!

This home lingered on the market for far too long. We provided a staging consultation and convinced (yes it was a hard sell) the sellers to paint the kitchen. Multiple offers were received and both the agent and seller were convinced the painting and staging were key to this success!

While we loved the paint job on this bonus room - it was far too personal to entice most home buyers that may not have toddlers who loved Elmo! By painting a neutral color and staging it as an office, it has a broader appeal

This living room's color was also a road block in attracting a buyer's attention!

This neutral tone is anything but dull!

I loved this dining room color - and so did the home sellers! However, it did make the room seem smaller and darker, and it may not appeal to many home buyers. After repainting, buyers will focus on the beautiful back yard view, bay window and spacious room - not the room color!

We love homes with colorful pasts - here's a sneek preview of a few we're working with . . .

Don't let your home's colorful past effect the marketability to a broad buyer base! Most potential buyers do not have the ability to envision your home with an updated palette, and will always assume repainting is more work than it really is. Statistics show that buyers want move in ready and are willing to pay more for homes that don't require repairs and updates.

Contact a professional home stager to get the right color the first time and make sure your new look is one that helps your home project a beautiful future.

There is a new website called Salemites.com that is a local gathering place for local folks to talk about what is happening in our area. We are fortunate to have many local bloggers giving all sorts of different persepctives on our city. This can be an invaluable tool for those of you looking to relocate to our area.

So I have made a master list here for you of our local non-real estate industry blogs. Head over and check some of them out. We have some great local writers and good information about local happenings!

Salem life and events

Desperately Seeking Salem

Salem Oregon Daily Photo

Look what's happening in Salem

Salem Event Calendar

Friends of Salem Saturday Market

Kid Friendly Salem

In and around Salem Oregon

Salem Music/Art/Culture

Red Crown Review

VideoMash

mohead

Salem News

Salem-News.com

Salem Food and Beverage Blogs

Eat Salem

Capital Taps: Fine Beer in Salem Oregon

Salem Locavores (actually a Google group)

Deaf Chef at Large

Pie O My

Gumbo Ya Ya

The Capital Bites

Environment/outdoor

Love Salem

Pacific Pedaling

Breakfast on Bikes

Historic Salem

Salem History

Business Blogs

Pam Hawk

Venti's Cafe

William Bragg

Obsidian Photography

Beer and Blog

Rachel Rossman

Local conversations

What's up with that

Dude! T-shirts

Kluver's Korner

Dogs and Dragonflies

Salem Pappy

Mulligan Stew

The adventures of Pam and Frank

50 is the new 40

Discovering AJ

Generic People Blog

Can't Catch Me

droll exhaust

The Other Realm

The can opener boy

Art history for cocktail parties

Moments of lucidity

Coaching Perspectives

Faith based blogs

The Orchard

"I need freeway access."

"I want to live down south."

"I want to be able to walk downtown."

Those are just a few of the statements that potential home buyers make when trying to decide where to look.  For those of you relocating to the Salem Oregon area, sometimes trying to figure out where our neighborhoods are in relation to where you work, or want to be can be a challenge. Sometimes it is hard to visualize where things are.

I created a neighborhood map that shows some different neighboods here in Salem Oregon, and you can click on each neighborhood to connect to a post I have written about that neighborhood as well as to connect to a link that will take you to homes for sale for that neighborhood.

Hopefully this will make your Salem Oregon home search just a bit easier.

At the end of last week legislation was introduced that would put an 18-month moratorium on HVCC. H.R. 3044 would bring some welcome relief from HVCC.

I hope this takes us back to a time when local appraisers got to appraise local properties. I was very disappointed that the cost of an appraisal for my clients in creased while at the same time the revenue for my local appraisers decreased under HVCC.

The information we have about how this legislation will proceed and how quickly is limited at this point. You can read one news story about it here. I truly do hope the moratorium happens so that appraisers who do quality work can be rewarded with more business rather than getting orders simply because they are part of the pool.

Prudential recently hosted a vendor fair prior to their awards banquet on Tuesday, June 9th. Over 55 vendors displayed goods and services that benefit Prudential Realtors and their clients.

Professional stagers are a Realtor's Most Valuable Parners in Service!! By connecting with a professional stager, Realtors will hit a home run with their clients every time!

Realtors visited the Mid Valley Professional Stagers (MVPS) booth and walked away with several souveniers that are sure to help them remember the M.V.P. theme. We used softball fabric as a table runner/topper, utilized gloves as business card holders, provided property score cards for Realtors to use when evaluating their client's listings, and MVPS trading cards that provided our contact information.

Realtors also had the opportunity to play a bean bag toss game to enter a drawing for a complimentary consultation.

A huge THANK YOU to Prudential for including Mid Valley Professional Stagers as one of their Most Valuable Partners in Service and for the opportunity to participate in a second year of their annual vendor fair.