MoveSmartly.com real estate blog welcomes yours truly
I am pleased to announce that I will be joining the team of writers at MoveSmartly.com blog in Toronto. MoveSmartly.com is a Toronto neighbourhoods and real estate blog which forms one component of Realosophy.com
According to their website,
Realosophy.com helps Toronto HomeBuyers make smarter decisions throughout the real estate transaction. The site’s founders strive to make neighbourhood profiles, school performance reports and a comprehensive HomeBuyers Guide accessible to all its users—no email address or other personal info required.
“Toronto home buyers are feeling anxious about fitting into a booming real estate market,” explains Realosophy’s founder, John Pasalis. “Buyers are increasingly diverse. They want their homes to fit their particular lifestyles. But media reports about sky-rocketing prices and fake multiple offers leave them wondering how to make this happen.”
I have been a regular visitor and commentator of this local blog and its writers for some time now. I’ve always been impressed with the quality of content and the varied perspectives offered by the multi-disciplined and talented team of writers. I’ve since had the opportunity to correspond and meet with several team members and I’m delighted to be associated with this group of like-minded individuals.
Please be sure to include the blog on your list of favourites and subscribe to the RSS feed.
10 Questions to ask a prospective Home Stager
Editorial note: I am pleased to welcome Dane Caldwell as a guest author to VaughanBlog.com. Dane is lead consultant and founder of 2 Hounds Design. With her background in design and decor, Dane brings both a comprehensive and professional approach to her design consultancy business. I am confident you will value her insight and advice.
Carl Minicucci, VaughanBlog.com
As a consumer considering hiring an interior decorator or home stager you need to do a little homework also know as due diligence. Many of these questions are generic to any service provider.
To help you I’ve provided a list of 10 Questions…and many follow-up questions:
- How long have you been working professionally as a decorator/stager?
- This question is important to determine if you are speaking to a professional or a hobbyist. A hobbyist will tell you they’ve been ’staging’ for years for themselves, friends and family. How nice for them, however, this does not tell you if the friends and family would feel the quality of their work was good enough that they would pay for this person’s services.
- If they are just starting out, and they tell you that up front, great, you are ready to move on to the next question.
2. Do you have a portfolio I can see?
- Of course you have to get a ‘yes’ but there is more to the question than just getting a look at the persons portfolio. Follow up questions:
- Are the photos in your portfolio your own or are they ‘examples’ or photos provided by your trainer?
- Did you select the accessories, furniture, paint, etc. or was it a collaboration with others? (HINT: you want to hear that they made the selections).
3. What formal training have you received and are you certified or accredited?
- There is no such thing as a certified or accredited stager. Currently to be certified or accredited the designations are awarded by an independent (from the trainers) institution. There is no such independent institution for home staging.
- There are many fabulous decorators and stagers who are naturals with little to no training as well as those who have taking training. The point of the question is to help you find the needle in the haystack. You are placing one of your largest investments in the hands of a stranger at the very least you what to know the person you are hiring doesn’t mislead consumers by claiming false certifications.
- The point of the question above is to see if you are going to be told the truth and not meant to bash those who have taken the training. Training is a good thing…false claims of certification and accreditations is NOT.
Assuming you’ve gotten the desired responses you can continue with the questions.
3. Is your business covered by insurance?
- If the answer is yes, then request to see a copy of the ‘certificate of insurance’. If insured, they will be happy to provide it. Obviously, if the answer is ‘no’ you need to end the conversation and move on to another decorator/stager.
4. Have you worked on condo’s, lofts, houses like mine?
5. Are you familiar with the market in my area?
- A stager who lives outside of your area may not be familiar with the various buyers who will be looking for properties in your area. In the downtown core of a city it is extremely important you hire someone who specializes in the downtown as there are very many diverse niche markets with even within a single condo building. You want a professional who can market your property to each niche, not just one type of buyer.
6. Are you familiar with the expectations of buyers in my price range?
- You want someone who knows the buyers and what is expected in various price ranges. An example would be a multi-million dollar property without top of the line appliances. Buyers who are shopping for a home in this price range will not be impressed with standard appliances. They are expecting to find Sub-Zero, WOLF etc in the kitchen as well as in any other room (butler’s pantry, bar, master suite etc) with appliances.
- Another example in today’s downtown Toronto real estate market buyers expect to see upgraded counter-tops in entry level condos but not necessarily in entry level homes. You need a professional who is experienced in these details.
7. Do you have insured resources to draw on for trades people if required as well as trade discounts you could pass on to me?
- While you are not entitled to the trade discounts, some decorator’s who stage may be willing to pass on a portion of their discount to you. This could save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
8. Are you insured to act as a contractor/project manager?
- If you are not able to or willing to take on the work to be completed to prepare your property for sale you need to know your decorator/stager is insured to do this. Yes, this insurance is above and beyond the insurance discussed above. Again, you would be requesting to view the certificate of insurance.
If you’ve made it this far you are doing well and are most likely talking to a professional who is running a business not a hobbyist. The last couple of questions are about working with the professional.
9. What is your availability if you were to be awarded my project?
10. What are your rates?
- Rates vary by area but if someone offers to work for you for peanuts…well you’ve been warned here: you get what you pay for.
- Or as world famous Home Stager Debra Gould says, ‘When hiring a stager don’t be penny wise and pound foolish!’
Dane Caldwell is Lead consultant and Founder of 2 Hounds Design. Email Dane
Moderate March Real Estate sales in Vaughan
Low inventory levels kept sales brisk but well off record levels, TREB President Maureen O’Neill announced today. “With 6,631 transactions recorded during March, the overall Greater Toronto Area resale market was down 22 per cent from the 8,518 sales of March 2007.
Sales were not evenly distributed across the Greater Toronto Area. In the City of Toronto (416 area code), they decreased 27 per cent to 2,527 from last March. However, the 905 suburbs saw only an 18 per cent decline, to 4,104 sales.
In Vaughan, the resale real estate market (District N08), was down 14 per cent to 196 transactions in March 2008, compared to 169 in March 2007.
Of note, average real estate prices in Vaughan rose marginally at just under 1% when comparing March 2008 to March 2007 for Detached home sales. For Semi-detached resale homes, the increase was much more pronounced at 8%.
Since overall inventory, at 20,533 listings, fell six per cent between these two time periods, a portion of this result can be attributed to a lack of suitable product. And this lack of product was at least partially caused by the severe winter weather that kept both buyers and sellers on the fence during the first half of the month.”
Overall, average prices rose four per cent in the GTA to $380,338 over March of 2007. Within the City of Toronto proper, however, the average, at $404,361, increased only two per cent over the $394,199 recorded during the same period last year. Furthermore, City of Toronto districts bordering the 905 averaged $347,882, up less than one per cent from the same period last year.
Source: Toronto Real Estate Board
New Census data results for City of Vaughan
Employment is growing faster in the municipalities surrounding Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal than in the cities themselves, Statistics Canada reported on Wednesday.
In its latest release of 2006 census data, Commuting Patterns and Places of Work of Canadians, Statistics Canada said the trend observed in Canada’s three biggest cities is one that has been emerging over the last 25 years and is consistent within most of Canada’s 33 census metropolitan areas (CMAs).
(A CMA consists of many municipalities and the central one lends its name to the CMA. The others are peripheral municipalities)
Sharp increase in the number of workers in the municipality of Vaughan
In 2006, the municipalities of Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan and Markham were among the 25 largest municipalities in Canada from the point of view of the number of people working there. Of these 25 municipalities, Vaughan ranked first in terms of the increase in the number of workers (+22.2%), Brampton ranked fifth (+14.1%), Markham ranked seventh (+10.9%), Mississauga ranked tenth (+10.1%) and Toronto ranked twenty-fourth (+0.7%).
The fastest growing peripheral municipalities around Toronto in terms of the number of people reporting them as their usual place of work were Mississauga (+35,100 or +10.1%), Vaughan (+25,000 or +22.2%), Brampton (+17,300 or +14.1%) and Markham (+12,700 or +10.9%).
Commuters to Vaughan made little use of sustainable transportation
In 2006, the number of people commuting to work in the municipalities of Toronto, Mississauga, Vaughan and Markham was higher than the number of workers living in these municipalities (+232,300 in Toronto, +68,700 in Mississauga, +25,800 in Vaughan and +6,900 in Markham). In contrast, the number of people working in the municipality of Brampton was lower than the number of workers living there (net loss of 58,900 workers).
In 2006, 43.0% of workers whose usual place of work was in the City of Toronto used a sustainable mode of transportation to get there, i.e., public transit, walking or cycling (compared to 41.1% in 2001). The corresponding proportions were 10.8% for those commuting to Vaughan (9.4% in 2001), 10.7% for those commuting to Markham (9.5% in 2001), 11.9% for those commuting to Mississauga (11.0% in 2001) and 10.4% for those commuting to Brampton (10.2% in 2001).
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