About Bentonville's Talamore

There are a lot of homes on the market in Northwest Arkansas and around the country. Depending on the area and price of your home, you may be competing with ten, fifty, even hundreds of other properties. Here are easy staging tips to help you differentiate your property and make it stand out in a buyer's mind.

You never get a second chance...at a first impression

The view of your home from the road should be as stunning as possible. Make sure...

• Lawn is mowed, edged, and free from debris.
• If your door and shutters are different colors, repaint the door to match or paint to the one that is more neutral in color.
• Make sure gutters are clear and free of debris.
• Power wash windows and siding or brick. This makes your home sparkle .
• Clean up and put fresh mulch in flower beds. This makes the house seem brand new.
• Put potted plants outside in strategic areas to provide color and embellishment.
• Decking should be freshly sealed or painted with any unsightly or misshapen boards replaced.
• Buy a new welcome mat.

Kitchens and Living Rooms - Deal makers and deal breakers

Your kitchen and living room are the two most important rooms in the house to prospective buyers. Make sure they look their best by...

• Making them warm and inviting with good use of space, light, and decor.
• Clear the rooms of family portraits and anything that makes the home seem like the buyers don't live there.
• Sparse is better than cluttered...too much furniture is usually a turn-off to buyers
• Don't overload mantles, shelves, or counter tops with personal things.
• Replace dim 60 or 75 watt bulbs with 100 watt bulbs (or CFL's) to brighten up the room
• Open blinds...let the house be seen!
• Clean...clean...clean! It's cheap and it makes quite an impression. No one likes dust bunnies.

Bathrooms and Bedrooms...the icing on the proverbial cake

• Think about comfort in everything you do. Nothing sells a home like comfort.
• Use neutral color and paint schemes. Earth tones are safe...pastels are not. Never have I seen a buyer LOVE a purple bedroom.
• Limit the furniture in bedrooms and bathrooms to make the space appear larger and feel roomier.
• Clean out your closets! Buyers hate to see their own cluttered closets...they certainly don't want to see yours.
• If you have nice matching bedding great...if not...get it. It will more than pay for itself in the sell of your home.
• Remember to remove personal pictures. Leave art, landscape and building photography, sculptures, etc. in the home as part of the decor.

Your home will sell because of what you do or don't do just before it shows

• Strong fragrances are a complete no-no when showing any home. If you have to cover up a smell...bake some cookies or use some febreze one hour before the home shows. Here's a good example of polishing your home before a showing...the right way.
• If you have pets...do something with them. Whether the buyers love dogs or not, no home was ever bettered by Fido following buyers around the house or barking the whole time.
• Keep the house 'show ready'...shoes in the hallway, towels in the bathroom, paperwork on the kitchen counter...all these things are like personal pictures...it reminds the buyers that this is not their house and distracts them from the showing.

While home staging can be a lot of work, it benefits far out weigh the costs in most situations. If you need justification to spend the time and effort here you go:

• Staging helps you organize and de-clutter your home, in other words, it helps you get ready to move.
• Staging helps you justify the price you are asking. The better staged the house, the less concessions buyers will ask for.
• Staging helps reduce the homes days on market...effecting a quicker sell.
• Staging differentiates you from your home's competition...creating demand for your home, increasing showings, increasing offers, and creating a home that sells for a higher price.

If you would like additional staging tips by email or a list of reputable staging companies in Northwest Arkansas please contact me for more information. Are there some off-the-wall staging tips that you would like to share? Please leave a comment below.

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http://exitrealestate540.com/2009/02/23/24-easy-staging-tips-that-will-help-sell-your-home-in-a-tough-market/

Much happened in January, a presidential inauguration, a tough economy, a slow realization by the American public that we’re not quite out of the woods yet. As the coldest of winter slides behind us so to does the worst of housing crisis, or so we hope. Foreclosures made up a fair percentage of property sales in January as evidenced by the numbers. Below is the January 2009 Northwest Arkansas home prices and market report from EXITrealestate540.com, Bon Appetito.

Northwest Arkansas Home Prices

There are currently some 5500 homes listed for sale in northwest Arkansas with an average Days on Market of 176. It looks like 208 properties sold in the month of January and 277 went pending. The fact that the number of homes pending is higher by a third than the number of homes sold is a good sign that there is some additional buying activity going on. The average sale price for all of Washington and Benton Counties combined was $162,050 at an average sale price per foot of $84.40. That’s a far cry from the list price of $109.98 of the properties currently for sale. This may mean that many of the home sales have been lower end properties and foreclosed or distressed homes.

Here are the January numbers broken down by major city:

Please notice the Avg SP (Average Sale Price) of each town in Northwest Arkansas. For January, Fayetteville is the winner with an average sale price of $222,538 out of it’s 27 sold properties. Springdale is on the low end this month with it’s average sale price of $140,938 on it’s 43 sold properties.

Notice the average DOM for current properties is lowest in Springdale at 153 days and highest in Rogers at 181 days. It looks like a saleable listing will take, on average, some where on the order of six months to sell in today’s market.

Compare these numbers with those of other months in 2008 and 2009 in our market conditions category.

If you are curious what your Northwest Arkansas property is worth, contact me for a complete neighborhood analysis and accurate home evaluation.

Other Great Reads:

1. Northwest AR Home Prices and Market Report for November ‘08 (52.553)
2. Northwest Arkansas Housing Market Report for 2008 (45.765)
3. The Skyline Report - Northwest Arkansas Residential Real Estate Market Report for Third Quarter 2008 (36.924)
4. White Elephants Tough to Sell in Northwest Arkansas (23.317)

Click here for original at EXITREALESTATE540.com:

Northwest Arkansas Home Prices and Market Report - January 2009

The housing market in Northwest Arkansas is being affected across the board from small single family homes and apartments to sprawling luxury estates. Highly customized luxury homes - from Chuchhill Downs in Springdale to Pinnacle Subdivision in Rogers to Talamore in Bentonville - are sitting on the market, waiting for the right buyer and the right price. Find out why these high-end luxury homes are known throughout the real estate industry as ‘White Elephants.'

What's a White Elephant?

According to Wikipedia, a white elephantis a valuable possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost (and upkeep) exceeds its usefulness. The phase comes from Burma, Thailand, Laos and other southeast Asian countries' Monarchs who kept the sacred animals as a sign of peace and prosperity in their kingdoms. The animals were considered very sacred and local law protected them from being used for labor. This meant that receiving a white elephant as a gift was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it meant the receiver was in good standing with the monarch, and a curse because the animal could not be put to practical use (and had to be kept of course, it was a bad thing to sell a gift from a monarch) to offset the cost of maintaining the animal.

White Elephant Luxury Homes in Northwest Arkansas

We have some white elephants here in Northwest Arkansas. They are given this special title for a couple of reasons...

• Very High end custom property - these properties start around a million dollars here in Northwest Arkansas and go up from there.
• Custom is the keyword here - These homes are built specifically for their high-end owners. They may have specific amenities and features that very few other people want, making them inherently difficult to sell.

Now, I'm not saying that every home listed for a million or more dollars is a white elephant, I am saying that because of their custom nature - they are hard to find buyers for because buyers for high-end homes will just custom build their own white elephant with amenities to suit their taste and lifestyle.

We currently have 73 properties in Benton and Washington Counties that are listed for $1,000,000 or more. They average 5 bedrooms, 6 baths and over 7,000 square feet. The average list price for these 73 properties is $1,770,986 with an average price per square foot of just under $250.00 per foot. The average days on market for these properties is 202 days and growing.

60 of those are over 5,000 heated square feet.

19 of those are over 8,000 heated square feet.

4 of them are over 10,000 heated square feet.

What you need to take away from this is that there are amazing deals to be had in the luxury home market both in Benton and Washington Counties in Northwest Arkansas, and across the nation.

If you want to know more about great deals on Luxury homes in Northwest Arkansas, contact me or browse current listings to see what's available. Check out more information about Luxury homes and subdivisions in Benton and Washington Counties in the Luxury Homes category of this website.

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White Elephants Tough to Sell in Northwest Arkansas