Charlene Storozuk - Burlington Ontario Home Stager

The next meeting of the Halton & Hamilton-Wentworth RESA local chapter will be held on Wednesday, March 19th at 7:00 p.m. so save the date! This is an opportunity for you to meet and network with fellow stagers in the community.

The topic for this meeting is Prepaid Legal Services and How it Can Benefit the Home Stager. Our guest speakers will be Lyse and Tom McDonough of PrePaid Legal Services. It should be an informative evening. I hope you will be able to attend.

Please R.S.V.P. to me by March 10th. I'm looking forward to seeing all of you!

Charlene Storozuk - President, Halton & Hamilton-Wentworth Real Estate Staging Association

charlene@dezignerdigz.com

Dezigner Digz is proud to announce that Charlene Storozuk, Lead Design Consultant, was recently awarded Local Chapter President of the Year for North America for her work as founder and President of the Halton & Hamilton-Wentworth Real Estate Staging Association. If you have any questions about the local chapter or if you are interested in joining, contact Charlene.

Home staging is a service-oriented business, but it goes way beyond that. There is a mutual bond of trust and respect that must exist.

Comfort Zone

A home stager is being given the trust of a homeowner to enter their home and turn it into a more appealing, sell-able property. It goes beyond just giving them the lock box combination to gain entry. A homeowner must feel comfortable with their choice of stager. After all, a home is the largest investment that most people will ever make. To turn your home over to just anyone for a home staging job can result in disaster.

Sensitivity and Respect

A home stager must be sensitive to the fact that they are dealing with not only bricks and mortar. A home is a great big box of memories (for lack of a better description). Whether those memories be good or bad, a home stager must respect that and act accordingly. People move for various reasons. Sometimes they are moving because of a job transfer, promotion, wedding or to be closer to other relatives. Other moves are not for such happy occasions such as a family death, divorce or an aging parent that can't live alone anymore. These situations require sensitivity and respect.

Trust

A homeowner must also trust their home stager to do what is best to bring out the full potential of their home. Once you are selling your property, you have to let go of your attachment to it. If you don't like the colour your stager selects for your living room, it doesn't matter. You won't be living there anymore. He or she has chosen that colour to appeal to the broadest range of potential buyers. If you don't like the way your furniture has been re-arranged and you find it not functional for your particular lifestyle, try to bear with it - it's temporary. Your furniture was placed in that fashion to give the room flow and to show potential buyers the many options that they will have available to them as to the placement of their furniture.

If you are unsure as to whom to hire, ask your real estate agent if they have a stager that they work with. If not, check with family and friends. They may know someone who has worked with a home stager with successful results. Another option is to go to the Real Estate Staging Association's website and do a search for reputable stagers in your area. Their web address is: www.realestatestagingassociation.com. The Real Estate Staging Association has undertaken a new program called the Staging Excellence Alliance which some stagers now belong to. It is similar to a Better Business Bureau type of program. You can review a home stager's profile and find out a little bit more about how long they have been in business. You can also find out if any complaints have been made against that home stager from past clients.

As you can see, there are many facets to the home stager/homeowner relationship. It goes beyond just painting, re-arranging and de-cluttering. All of these aspects should be considered by both parties in order for it to be a win-win situation for everyone.

Dezigner Digz is a full-service home staging and interior decorating company located in Burlington, Ontario and servicing Ancaster, Hamilton, Aldershot, Burlington, Niagara Region, Bronte, Oakville, Milton and surrounding areas. To find out more about us, go to our website at www.dezignerdigz.com.

The REALTORS® Association of Hamilton-Burlington recently predicted a Seller's market for 2008. This is good news if you are planning on selling your home this year. If you are ready to take the plunge, here are a few tips to start preparing your home for sale:

• Clean your home from top to bottom. Once you have thoroughly cleaned it, clean it once again. Your home should be spotless and remain that way for every showing and open house.

• Remove any unnecessary clutter. Rooms that are cluttered look smaller and distract buyers.

• Tidy up cupboards and closets. Believe it or not, people will look inside those closets. Make sure that they are neatly organized.

• Hire a professional home stager to come in and do a walk through. A consultation report will bring to light those items that need your attention - ones that you may have overlooked.

• Follow through on your home stager's recommendations or hire him or her to carry them out for you.

A Seller's market can encourage multiple offers. This is even more likely to happen if your home is presented in the best way possible.

Charlene Storozuk is the owner and lead Design Consultant of Dezigner Digz, a full-service home staging and interior decorating company located in Burlington, Ontario. Dezigner Digz services Ancaster, Hamilton, Aldershot, Burlington, Bronte, Oakville, Milton and surrounding areas. Visit us today at www.dezignerdigz.com

'MAKE YOUR HOME THE ONE BUYERS WILL FALL FOR'

I was thinking the other night of ideas for my next post. I came up with my inspiration from my husband. He suggested that I write about preparing your garage when selling your property.

As a car enthusiast, to him the garage is the most important room in the house (next to the kitchen - he loves to cook). When we were looking for our home, he was most interested in checking out the garage. At open houses, he would take one look at the garage and then quickly go through the rest of the house and announce that he didn't like that one. There were some homes that I had to agree with him on; however, there were others that I thought were fantastic.

Finally, after a lot of teeth pulling, I got him to put into words what it was that he didn't like about them. In a lot of cases, it was the garage. Can you believe it? If the garage was being used as a storage room, he was put right off. He couldn't, as many buyers can't, visualize what he could do with the garage. He is one of those people that have to have a place for everything and everything in its place. I keep telling him that he should take the training and become either a Home Stager or a Professional Organizer. I think he would be great at both of them. Hopefully, one day he will join me and become a Stager. Anyway, back to the purpose of my blog - garages.

Here are a few tips for home sellers:

• Try not to use the garage as a storage facility. It at all possible, rent a storage unit on a short-term basis to keep all of your unneeded belongings. Your home stager will love you for that too. He or she will be able to use the unit for other items in your home that should be packed away.
• If you have a double car garage, a portion of it could be set up as a workshop - unless you are fortunate enough to have a separate workshop in your home. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Even a set of saw horses underneath a piece of 3/4 inch plywood will serve as a good work area.
• Good lighting is important in the garage, especially if you have a workshop in there. Buy a three pronged fluorescent light fixture, hang it from chains and plug it into the ceiling receptacle socket. You can remove it, if you like, when you move and replace it with a standard light bulb (as long as you don't include it in your agreement with the purchaser).
• A pegboard comes in handy on the wall to hang up all of your gardening and workshop tools. It will keep everything more organized and much tidier looking.
• The floor of the garage should be clean. If there are oil stains on the floor, remove them as best as possible with a TSP solution. If you are feeling really energetic, roll a concrete sealer onto the floor, followed by a primer and a top coat. I know that sounds like a lot of work. If other areas of your home are in more need of repair, then maybe you should forego this and just make sure that the garage floor is swept.

All of these things will help make your home more attractive to potential buyers. Believe it or not, there are people out there that put a lot of emphasis on the garage when they are house hunting. I don't think my husband is the only one.

By the way, as I'm writing this, hubby is busy outside vacuuming the garage - goof grief!

Dezigner Digz is a home staging and interior decorating company located in Burlington, Ontario and servicing Ancaster, Hamilton, Aldershot, Burlington, Waterdown, Stoney Creek, Bronte, Oakville, Milton and surrounding areas. The owner, Charlene Storozuk, is a member of the Real Estate Staging Association and is the founder and current President of the Halton & Hamilton-Wentworth Real Estate Staging Association. For more information about us, visit our website at www.dezignerdigz.com