The Stage Coach was made aware of this product by a friend who runs a Home Cleaning Service: Lemi Shine. The primary use is to help remove hard water stains from glasses while in the dishwasher.  If you live in Central Texas, you are probably more than tired of the issues from hard water, high ph, and other side effects of the limestone on which our homes are built.

Besides cleaning glasses in the dishwasher, one of the household chores we recommend using it for while preparing your home for sale, is to clean your Garbage Disposal.  According to the directions provided by the manufacturer, Envirocon Technologies, Inc.:

Garbage Disposal Cleaner

“To Use: Add 1/4 cup of Lemi Shine and 1/4 cup of baking soda to your disposal, followed by 2 cups of water. This will foam up in the disposal, cleaning and deodorizing those hard to reach areas.

After the foam dissipates, run with water for 10 seconds to rinse. Repeat as necessary.”

This will make the kitchen have a fresh lemon scent for a few days – just the thing for that surprise showing!

Visit their website for more information, where to buy, etc.  I have purchased it in the Dishwasher Detergent aisle of H.E.B. Plus in Round Rock.

Contact The Stage Coach to learn more about Austin's Home Staging Handyman!

Home Staging Austin Home Stager

Crossland Real Estate’s Blog

For every month of the year, the analysis Steve provides is so thorough, it makes my head spin. Luckily, he ‘dumbs it down’ for readers like me so you can understand the numbers and what it means in real world Real Estate transactions.

This week, he posted September 2010′s Numbers.

In a nut shell, the information I glean from his blog that is important as a Home Stager:

1. Days on Market was UP in Sept.
2. Many homes were pulled off the market
3. The number of buyers is not enough for the number of homes for sale. [competition]

All of this translates to: Condition is more important than ever!  Now is not the time to test the waters.  You have to be serious, committed, and, as Steve mentions, flexible, in order to get your home sold in this end of the year market.  Homes are moving though – I’ve had two Staged homes go under contract in less than two weeks in October.  Then again, I’ve seen a few fall off the market after 120 days…  The difference, according to the listing agents, was these two sellers wanted to sell and were committed to doing whatever it takes:  They both did a lot of work on improving condition and they both priced their homes according to their REALTOR’s advice.

Price & Condition…  Simple formula. If you have to sell before the year end, take a serious look at the rooms in your house.  Would you buy it the way it looks today?  If not – better call The Stage Coach – Austin’s Home Staging Handy Man!

Contact The Stage Coach to learn more about Austin's Home Staging Handyman!

Home Staging Austin Home Stager

I keep a cooler for transporting candles and soaps in the Summertime. While performing a Setting the Stage service today, I found this little Gecko had stowed away.

Posted from WordPress for Android

The Stage Coach just configured WordPress for Android and is posting a sample blog from his phone… wonder if I can add photos this way… hmmm…

Posted from WordPress for Android

4 Bedroom Home in

Granada Oaks – Austin – 78737

The Stage Coach provided a Basic Stage Coaching with
Home Staging Evaluation Report Card Service…

…where we come out to the home and go room to room with the owners and/or REALTOR discussing each room and what attention is required. Pictures are usually taken, and it is advised the client take notes. This visit usually lasts about an hour or two. As part of the service, we will offer price quotations for basic Home Staging Services, and furnishing rentals when appropriate. Additionally, a Home Staging Evaluation Report Card will be provided via email outlining the visit and addressing: condition, “show quality” of the home and offering suggestions for every room discussed.

For more information on the property:

Sylvia & Steve Crossland
(512) 301-5811

For more information on Home Staging Services:
The Stage Coach
Austin’s Home Staging Handyman!
www.stagecoachtexas.com
Office: 512-670-8279
Cell: 512-934-1407

A rush of thoughts has come to mind reading both of these articles.  First and foremost, Isn’t “All Real Estate LOCAL?” It’s kind of cliche, but what’s working here in Austin is not necessarily going to apply in San Francisco or Las Vegas. That makes my recommendation to only take this article at its face value because it is based on National Averages. 

The Yahoo Real Estate article mentions that High-end Kitchen remodels are not paying off… well, it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that spending apx $112,000 (Yahoo’s Avg for 2009) was not a good selling strategy.  You’d have to be in a very specific market for a long period of time for a six figure renovation to pay for itself.  There are some areas of Austin where people have owned homes for a while that this could apply to… if you were the original owner who purchased the home in the 1970′s…

Instead of picking apart both of these articles on the minutia, let me just make one recommendation:  Discuss the need for renovations with your REALTOR.  When they are working up the comps for the pricing of your home, they should also be making notes of features of the homes that are selling.  And they should be informing you what the builders in the neighborhood are doing.

My favorite example:  granite counter tops.
It’s not uncommon to hear an agent recommend granite counter tops as an upgrade in preparation for selling your home. After all, they always add granite on HGTV. [Wretch!] Granite is NOT Always the answer!  But if your REALTOR is able to show you that 3 out of 4 of the homes in your area that sold in the last 60-90 days had granite counter tops, it’s time to consider it.  Then, if they show you that granite is a upgrade featured in new home construction in your immediate area and is already installed in their available spec homes, then you are going to have to seriously consider doing the work.  But if neither of these hold true, do not put the money into your counter tops if it could be used more appropriately elsewhere!

As your Home Stager, I can help you complete the renovations and repairs, but I lack the access REALTORs have to the local market sales and statistics. That’s why I like to consider each home a partnership opportunity.  The REALTOR can do what they do best: Price, Market and Sell the home.  While The Stage Coach will stick to what we do best: getting your home in Sell-Ready condition.

But, RSS Graffiti does not allow you the same flexibility that posting a Link to your Facebook wall does. In fact, if I post a link to a page on my website, I have to scroll through 17 or 18 different images to find the right one.  And this defeats the whole “Automation” aspect that I was looking for in the first place.

So, I thought about it: If I were a computer, how would I select an image?  (I had read on RSS Graffiti’s support site that they use an algorithm to exclude small pics and banner ads) Well – I would probably just grab the first one and use it.  But how do I make sure the one I want is first?

Well – I had a guess.  And I think it worked! it didn’t work!

All I did was, save the jpg file of the book cover as 01-How-to-clean-and-care-for-practically-anything and the picture to the left was what appeared on my Wall.

As a secondary test, I renamed the RSS Graffiti’s logo to begin with 01- and I am hoping that it will thus be along side the RSS feed posting as the selected image!

If so, if you have a logo you want assoicated with all of your blogs, all you have to do is rename the logo used on your blog page!  That would be too easy, right?  Well – let me know if you try it so we can find out if it works regularly, or is just a coincidence!

UPDATE: Here’s what showed up after this post:  It picked the ‘First try’ picture above, with my FB signature on it. Not at all what I had hoped – second try was a fluke, I guess.

I opened a support ticket with this question, and if the developer gets back to me, I’ll post what I learn.

For me, the selling point is, I can send RSS feed to my Personal Page and/or The Stage Coach’s Fan Page on Facebook, and it shows up on the Wall and in my Fans’/Friends’ Feeds!  Bingo!  Other applications created Tabs or Boxes, and did not provide the exposure I was looking for… And Manually feeding them out was a big time waster every time I put some thing up.  RSS graffiti is an easy set up, and comes with a multitude of options.

This week, I will be re-planning my current Blog-posting schematic to make sure that nothing is being repeated.  Plus, at this point, I am only feeding to The Stage Coach’s Fan page, and not my personal page, until I can figure out a way to keep them from being published at the same time.  [Feature Request! Optional feed posting Delay!]

If you give it a try, come back and let me know what you think!  Or if you’re using an application that works for you, please tell me about it!

The last time I located this type of information, it contained copyrighted material from my website.  They had it down within 24 hours of notifying them, so I did not report them to Google, etc.  But I am wondering whether this type of activity is legit, or if it can be reported?

Any insight is appreciated!

Thanks!

I delivered a proposal for about a dozen different things that needed to be done on the Exterior, including, cleaning the gutters on the first level.  There was so much back up of material in the gutters (right) that not only could you see the piles mounding over the edge, but there were little Oak trees sprouting in the material that had biodegraded.

Imagine my surprise when reviewing the quote with the homeowner when he asked, “Do I really need to clean the gutters?”

Taken by surprise, I really did not know what to say.  As a result, I went with my instincts, and splurted, “I suppose not… I could pull the small trees and plant some annuals up there  to add some seasonal color…”

It was one of those moments, where there is quiet on the phone, and you realize that maybe the Speaking part of your brain was working too fast for the Thinking part of your brain.  [Note: Sarcasm does often not play off well and be extermely careful who you try it with, as it easily could have lost me the job] After several awkward moments, he sighed and said, “There’s that much stuff, huh?  Well, I guess I see what you mean…”

I imagine it’s easy for me to say as the Home Stager, but home owners should understand that you are receiving beneficial information from your Stager that will help in the sale of your home.  Trusting us is, for lack of a better phrase, a necessary evil.  Not every one can be a Real Estate Pro – heck, not even every Real Estate Pro is a Pro… but if you have gone through the trouble of hiring a Home Stager, or two in this case I guess, why would you want to argue about some thing as simplistic as making sure the home looks its best from the street?

For the record, he was advised by the Listing REALTOR, the primary Home Stager, and myself that he should consider painting the exterior to a more neutral blending color. It’s the brightest house on the street.  And on that subject, he would not budge.  At least he let me clean his gutters…

This house in NW Austin should be on the market any day now!