5 Steps To Tackling Debt That Will Make You Feel GoodTuesday, July 23, 2019
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The following tips will increase your confidence in your ability to take back control of your life. 1. Determine The Size Of The "Opportunity" Problems are actually opportunities waiting to be discovered. Adopting this attitude will help you see that you can make choices that will positively impact your life.
Action: recognize that not all debt is equal. Classify your debt by the interest cost of the debt. The highest interest cost debt is the first opportunity to pursue.
2. Follow The Money You’ve likely heard the expression “follow the money”. Begin by reviewing your expenses. When expenses exceed income, savings reduction, debt accumulation or both is always the result. Next, what opportunities exist to increase your income?
Reducing your expenses is often easier than increasing your income.
Action: make a monthly list of expenses for each of the past 3-6 months and categorize each expense as either “must have” (example: food) or “like to have” (example: entertainment).
3. What Are The Viable Alternatives? It is easy to get “locked” into your behaviour as it is related to how you spend your money. Your past experiences have shaped your habits and consequently your beliefs about the future .
Be willing to confront your past behaviour by changing saving and spending habits.
Action: Identify less expensive alternatives for some “must have” and “like to have” purchases with the objective of reducing your total spending. Establish a savings goal.
4. Start Small Provide yourself opportunities to succeed. If you start with a small change in behaviour, you can experience success more quickly and provide yourself with needed encouragement.
Action: eliminate one or more small expenses from your “like to have” list. Use the savings to reduce high interest cost debt and/or increase savings.
5. Celebrate It is important to recognize the progress that you make on this journey. Keep the celebrations small but do celebrate. They will become a habit that you’ll want to repeat.
Action: set a modest goal that you can achieve quickly. Take the necessary action to achieve your goal; have a small celebration and then repeat the process.
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Send Me Your Wish ListThursday, June 27, 2019
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Your Dream Home Wish List
If you’re thinking about buying your next home or your first home, a wish list can be very helpful to me as your realtor. When I search for properties for buyers, I am able to drill down a little further and get more specific with a home than a consumer is able to view on realtor.ca, so by sending me your wish list, I can make sure that properties that have what you are looking for are sent to you immediately. No matter which stage in the home buying process you are, send me your wish list and share all your dreams with me, my job is to make those dreams a reality. I look forward to seeing your wish list and helping you in the future. |
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10 Things Your Home Stager Did NOT Learn From HGTVTuesday, May 28, 2019
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10 Things Your Home Stager Did NOT Learn From HGTV
We get it, you've watched all of the home renovation and home sale shows, read all of the online articles and tips regarding setting up your home to sell, and you have checked off everything on every home selling checklist you could find, so why would you need to hire a Professional Home Stager? We often hear homeowners say, “I don’t need a stager, I watch HGTV all the time, and I know that I need to remove the clutter and the personal items.”
These reality shows have really put the home staging industry in the spotlight over the last few years, and have helped homeowners to better understand the importance of preparing their home prior to listing it for sale. But, while these shows provide the basics of what this preparation involves, they don’t provide the full picture of what it really takes to properly style and STAGE your home in order to evoke the emotional connection that your prospective buyers are looking for.
1. Where to place YOUR furniture so that the room remains open and inviting, while maintaining function and flow
This does not mean simply moving all of your furniture to the edges of the room. This means understanding proper traffic flow, as well as the latest furniture styling trends. We will evaluate what should stay, what should be removed, and where to properly position your furniture to optimize flow, eliminate awkward spaces, and highlight the best features of the room.
2. Shelf Styling
By far one of the trickiest decorating techniques to master, this is the art of filling the shelves to catch your eye, without diverting your attention from the room. This means selecting the right size and style of pieces to compliment the space and the shelving unit, and understanding the balance between too little and too much.
3. Paint Colour selection
Just because a colour is popular or trendy, does not mean that it’s the best one to use for your home. Colours are selected based on lighting, home style, and the colour of the finishes of the home. Sure, we have our favourites, but each colour is selected to best suit the home.
4. What local trades will provide you with the best services, at the best value prices
We have spent a great amount of our time forging valued relationships with highly skilled trades to ensure that you receive quality work, every time. We only work with professionals, and often these professionals will provide special discounts to our clients.
5. Where to shop for the final touches and accessories that your home needs
We spend more time than anyone shopping for home décor items and finding the best deals, and we can provide you with some direction on this to help you to avoid driving all around town looking for the perfect piece. Of course, you would save even more time if you hired us to provide you with the accessories and accent pieces that your home needs.
6. Which updates/upgrades will most benefit YOUR house in YOUR market, neighbourhood, and price range
We not only evaluate what upgrades and repairs would add to the value of your home, but we look at what will help to increase it’s overall sell-ability – upgrades are not worth much if they’re not the right ones to entice your specific buyers. We consulted on a home once that spent a great deal of money replacing their kitchen, but for their target market, their funds would have been better spent doing other repairs to the home and minor updates to the kitchen.
7. How to make a bed
Forget what your mother taught you – making your bed before work, and styling your bed to sell your home are completely different! I can’t tell you how often we see this common mistake in listing photos.
8. How to utilize a piece of furniture for an alternate purpose
This does not mean putting an end table in an office and calling it a desk. It’s about thinking outside of the box when it comes to finding the right piece, often within your home already, to fulfill a purpose for a room and help to clearly define the space.
9. How to enhance your curb appeal
Yes, cut the grass, trim the trees, and mulch the gardens, we know that you have that covered. But there’s likely more that you should be doing. If your buyers are not engaged with the home before they get to the front door, you could potentially lose out on that sale. We are property stylists, and we want to be sure to create an inviting space, inside and out.
10. How to maintain function and daily life, while living in a staged home
The checklists and tips you find online are a great step towards preparing your home, but a Professional Home Stager can provide you with the specific recommendations that will help you to bring in the buyers and sell your home. |
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Multiple Offer - Buyer's PerspectiveFriday, May 24, 2019
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Multiple Offers - Buyer's Perspective
Multiple offers are the things dreams are made of for sellers, but a nightmare for the buyer. Today I wanted to provide some tips for buyers who end up in a multiple offer situation.
1. Don’t wait: If you’ve found the one, don’t wait to offer on it. Every day that you wait, other buyers are looking at the property and the more people that see it, the more likely you are to end up in multiple offers
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Is Furniture Holding you Back?Tuesday, May 14, 2019
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Is your Furniture Holding you Back?
Are you looking for the perfect home to fit your couch, a Persian rug or maybe a dining room table? Does this make sense to anyone, why are people buying homes for objects and not for those people who are living in the home? Too many times I’ve seen families turn down the perfect home in the perfect neighbourhood because it won’t fit their bedroom set or their mirrored dresser.
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Do it for YourselfMonday, April 29, 2019
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Do it for Yourself
Packing, Cleaning, Freshening and Staging. There is a lot of work involved in getting your home ready for sale. I often have clients tell me after they’ve gone through the list of work to be done for their home that they are so much happier in the home they are looking to sell. Instead of rushing around last minute to do all the work to give your home to someone else, do those items ahead of time and for yourself to enjoy!
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3 Tips for Making a New House Feel Like HomeTuesday, April 23, 2019
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I am the proud owner of an ugly little house with a lot of personality. Maybe you're in the same boat?
Just over a year ago, my partner and I decided to buy an older home with a great location; we found it in Uptown Waterloo. A far cry from our new-build first house, the Uptown house is a two-story, 1920s double-brick building with some interesting features. Rather than spacious rooms with plumb and level walls, our new house has tiny, divided spaces with lumpy plaster walls — level is just a state of mind anyway. The change has taken some getting used to, but bit-by-bit we’ve been rehabbing the house and making it into a warm space that feels like home.
Here on the blog, I’ll be sharing our various projects, decorating tips and DIY tutorials to hopefully help you make the most of your own space. Since we’re just kicking things off, I thought I would start with three tips for getting your new house to feel like a home as quickly as possible:
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Attending Open HousesFriday, March 22, 2019
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Are you going to Open Houses in Kitchener/Waterloo?
Attending open houses can be fun, you can see your neighbours homes, get decorating ideas, go into large homes and dream of the possibilities; but are you doing it right? When you attend an open house the agent working that open house is there to sell that home or to connect to potential clients. Are you leading that agent on? Are you pretending to be an interested buyer? Are you not interested in the home and walk around giving negative comments?
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Keep your Floors CleanWednesday, March 20, 2019
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Keep your Floors Clean for Bare Feet
With Spring finally here, more and more buyers are looking at homes and are wearing sandals. While you may wear summer shoes in your home, buyers feel it’s rude to leave their shoes on in your home, so they take them off and are left with bare feet.
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Stephanie Catcher 43 September 9, 2020 |
Steve Catcher 6 June 9, 2014 |