Five Simple Ways to Play Up Your Listing’s Luxury.

Every buyer, no matter the budget, wants as much luxury as their money can buy – and many times even more. Whether they’re dreaming of Barbie’s Dream house or Tony Stark’s Malibu Iron-Mansion, appealing to the luxury thirst of today’s house hunters is a smart move for both agents and sellers looking to sell for top dollar and fast.

Unfortunately, finding and showing luxury is a lot harder with some listings. Here are five ways to show off the luxury of your listings and put today’s serious house hunters in the high-end mindset:

1. Low cost, high impact staging

No ads, e-mails, or other marketing can help a home that doesn’t show well. To maximize your listing’s appeal to luxury-thirsty buyers, do a walk-through the property to spot the small fixable culprits that are stealing your listing’s shine factor like

• Beat-up fixtures and accessories
• Distracting themed decor
• Overstressed storage

In addition, consider investing in second or third-hand furnishings that will make your listing pop.

“In this era of Craigslist, eBay, Freecycle, estate sales and other peer-to-peer online stores and trading sites, there is an abundance of access to used furniture at great prices…” says real estate agent Samuel C. Anyanwu.

2. Start your shooting with a photo plan

After you’ve tackled your staging issues, the next logical steps are to start photographing and showing the home.

Before you start snapping, come up with a photo agenda/plan that includes these five most-loved listing features:

• Gourmet Kitchens
• Front of House
• Master Bedroom
• Master Bathroom
• Living Room

Chances are, not every listing will have these exact features to show off, but playing up luxury finishes found in the smaller details is a great way to increase your listing’s appeal. For example: Your seller’s kitchen may not be “gourmet,” but focusing on small details, like quality appliances or granite countertops, go a long way toward creating a luxury feel.

3. Light it like a pro (or use one)

There are steps offered as helpful advice for do-it-yourself listing photographers like “Writing down what stands out and what’s going to catch the eye. Then, start early to catch warm morning light and consider staying late to get shots at dusk.”

If you’re going to enlist the help of a professional photographer, be sure to look for one with a portfolio that includes great architectural shots. One great place to connect with local real estate savvy photographers is Houzz.com. Using Houzz, you can find not only professional photographers from your area, but also get ideas for luxury listing shots.

4. Include the luxury of the location

When your listing lacks the premium polish, be sure to sell and show off the luxury around it.

Marketing expert and author of the best-seller Likeonomics Rohit Bhargava wrote, “When you buy a luxury property, you are not just buying your own property but also entry into a particular neighborhood and even a way of life.”

You can sell the neighborhood in a number of ways, like

• Photos – Connect with the proprietors of the community’s most popular amenities. Ask them for permission to add a few of their photos to your listing pages.
• Listing Descriptions – Don’t waste your listing description repeating what buyers and sellers can find elsewhere on your listing pages. Use this space to include mention of points of interest, neighborhood names, and local details that highlight the neighborhood’s values.

5. Get inspired

Lastly, but definitely not least, remember that luxury is a state of mind. Before you can show luxury, you should get to know luxury and get to believe in luxury. You can only give, what you have and one great way to do this is by visiting Luxury Real Estate Blog like this one to see how today’s top agents and clients are marketing their homes.

These are my 5 starter ways to add luxury to your listings. What would you add to the list?

Downtown Toronto condos show signs of life

Toronto’s condo boom is slowing, but the downtown is showing signs of life.RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR

By Susan Pigg | Tue Jan 22 2013

Some Toronto realtors are seeing an unexpected surge in condo buyers scouring the market post Christmas and the return of a phenomenon not seen in months — bidding wars.

“I was shocked,” says ReMax realtor Peter Krpan who advised one couple, first-time buyers, that the softening condo market meant they could take their time and bid low on almost any downtown unit they wanted.

Instead, the couple found themselves outbid this month on their first choice, an 800-square foot condo listed for $324,000 on Queen’s Quay.

Their “backup” — an older, 660-square-foot condo on Victoria St. that had been on the market for 71 days — suddenly had three bidders and was gone before they could even put in an offer.

“I thought, ‘This can’t be happening. This isn’t in keeping with what we’ve been seeing the last few months at all,” says Krpan.

After a dramatic softening in sales and prices that started last spring and was exacerbated by tighter mortgage lending rules that left many first-time buyers on the sidelines, some Toronto realtors are seeing some signs of life in a market that, by December, was virtually dead.

Bidding wars have also broken out the last two weeks in some prime Toronto neighbourhoods where the inventory of houses for sale remains low, such as the west-end Junction Triangle and the east end Beach.

Even the well-supplied condo market is facing inventory issues, say veteran condo realtors. It’s not that there’s a shortage of units, per se, especially given the recent condo boom and the dramatic softening of demand just since spring.

It’s that too much of what’s for sale now are small, poorly laid-out units, aimed at investors, rather than the average buyer, realtors say.

“I think people who have been standing on the sidelines are realizing that we’re not having a crash. We’ve had a lot of clients come out of the woodwork the last couple of weeks,” says downtown realtor Joanna Kalbarczyk.

Kalbarczyk’s client, a young woman, paid over the $323,000 asking price for the older condo on Victoria St. that had three offers. She declined to say how much more because the deal is still being finalized.

Realtors, who have been anxiously awaiting the normally busy spring market, are hopeful this surge means the market is in pause mode — as it was in the nine months after the 2008 recession — rather than a continued decline.

But no one really knows.

Which is part of the reason ReMax has undertaken its first Canadian Homebuying Trends Survey, trying to gauge who’s buying and how that could impact the overall housing market.

The survey, released Tuesday, notes that “purchasing patterns have evolved, with a more conservative, fiscally-responsible purchaser moving to the forefront,” says Gurinder Sandhu, executive vice president and regional director of ReMax Ontario-Atlantic Canada.

First-time buyers are “experiencing a period of readjustment,” says Sandhu, in light of tougher lending rules from Ottawa that cut maximum amortizations from 30 to 25 years and put restrictions on the types of properties the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. will insure where buyers don’t have a 20 per cent down payment.

First-time buyers will account for about 30 per cent of purchasers over the next two years, notes the report.

While the report doesn’t break down local markets, it too confirms a significant shift to the downtown core over the suburbs in Ontario, as confirmed by a TD Economics report, also released Tuesday.

That report, by TD economist Francis Fong, notes that double-digit job growth in downtown Toronto from 2006 to 2011 has followed in the footsteps of all those folks who are now opting to live downtown, rather than in the suburbs, close to transit lines and amenities in what’s now become a vital, vibrant world-class city.

 

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