HomeGain.com recently conducted its third nationwide home improvement and home staging Home Sale Maximizer™ survey (previously conducted in 2003 and 2007) to reveal the top 12 low cost*, do-it-yourself (DIY) home improvements for people getting their home ready to sell.  Nearly 1,000 REALTORS® responded to the survey. (See complete survey results)

Thousands of REALTORS and Home Stagers use "Home Sale Maximizer" to advise their home seller clients.

Home Staging is reported to be the 2nd most valuable home improvement project to a seller when it comes to selling a home by return on investment (ROI), according to surveyed Realtors.

Home Staging is also the 3rd highest price increase to a home’s resale value ($300 cost / $1,780 price increase to a home’s selling price, which is a 586% ROI)

82% of Realtors nationwide recommend home sellers do DIY home staging.

Staging has rose on the list of priorities over the years. In 2007 survey results, Lightening and Brightening had the second highest ROI followed by Home Staging. Two years later, Home Staging overtakes Lightening and Brightening.

How many Realtors recommend professional home staging the majority of the time? Continue reading this post

Due to popular demand from the real estate community, HomeGain.com regularly conducts its nationwide home improvement and home staging Home Sale Maximizer™ survey. Past findings from the survey have been a guide for thousands of home sellers in preparing their home for sale.

HomeGain recently conducted a new survey of top 12 low cost*, do-it-yourself (DIY) home improvements for people getting their home ready to sell.  Nearly 1,000 REALTORS® responded to the survey.

The top five nationwide home improvements that Realtors recommend to home sellers, based on average cost and return on investment (ROI) to sellers, are:

1. Cleaning and de-cluttering ($200 cost / $1,700 price increase / 872% ROI / 98% recommended)
2. Home staging ($300 cost / $1,780 price increase / 586% ROI / 82% recommended)
3. Lightening and brightening ($230 cost / $1,300 price increase / 572% ROI / 95% recommended)
4. Landscaping ($320 cost / $1,500 price increase / 473% ROI / 94% recommended)
5. Repair Plumbing ($385 cost / $1,250 price increase / 327% ROI / 88% recommended)

Costs are averages and rounded up. For ranges of values, see chart 1 below. For actual price increase, see chart 2 below.

Cleaning and de-cluttering continues to  rank as the top suggested home improvement (since the survey was originally conducted in 2003). This low cost home improvement is recommended by 98% of Realtors and costs less than $200 but has a returning value of nearly $1,700 to the home’s sale price, or an 872% return (ROI).

“Inexpensive cosmetic home improvements and basic improvements greatly enhance the value of the home,” stated Carol Wilson of Carpenter Real Estate in Indianapolis, IN (AgentEvaluator member since 1999). Continue reading this post

HomeGain recently rolled out its March/April issue of the Agent Success Newsletter.

The newsletter included:

• Feature Story, which announced results from HomeGain’s recent home values survey.
• Question of the Month — “I recently met with a seller I found through your AgentEvaluator program who told me they received 12 proposals from agents in my area but decided to go with mine. I’ve just listed their home, but am a bit concerned about my effectiveness going forward. Should I be worried?”
• News about HomeGain’s Instant Home Values and Home Sale Maximizer™ widgets that are now available for FREE download.
• An Awards section, where we congratulated the newest AgentEvaluator Platinum Club, Gold Club and Silver Club members. 
• Agent Quote of the Month from Ron Petzel — “I have been in close contact with Nick Di Tomasso and Ryan Monsanto. Your company is one of the BEST. I have offered to talk to anyone you put in front of me or by phone to tell them what HomeGain has done for me and my Team.”
• Announcement of February’s Customer Advocate of the Month, Da’Mali Ross in the Product Team. “Da’Mali is the sole point of contact for all AIMS agents, and for each of them she takes care of all operations, setup, customer service, billing and tracking issues. She sets an example for what it means to put the customer first,” commented Salvatore Giammaressi, VP of Product at HomeGain.
  

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Read past real estate newsletters

HomeGain, the first website to offer free instant home valuations, just released instant home values and home sale maximizer widgets for free download.

There are three different versions of each of the Instant Home Valuation and Home Sale Maximizer widgets. (pictured below)

These widgets work best for HomeGain AgentView members. If you have a HomeGain AgentView membership and place one of these widgets on your site, when your visitors request a home valuation or to use the Home Sale Maximizer tool in the zip codes where you are featured, they will be sent to your AgentView module where they can review their home valuation or access the Home Sale Maximizer tool.

These widgets are a great way to attract visitors and to get them to come back. Used in conjunction with AgentView it allows AgentView members to keep their visitors engaged on their sites and on their AgentView sites.

The widgets are also a great addition to any website in need of quality home valuation or home improvement content.

If you are interested in getting these consumer-pleasing widgets for your website, click here.

Try HomeGain’s free instant Home Valuation Tool here

Although, in Shakespeare’s words, “All the world’s a stage,” in the world of theater, a play is rather hard to enact without a stage. It’s been tried over the years, but traditional theatergoers prefer a conventional stage.

And so do homebuyers.

GREAT. Yet another blog on staging, you say. One more appeal to get sellers to pay money they don’t have to sell their home in a market that’s upside down like the Poseidon. Why bother? Haven’t we heard it all?

In the immortal words of Bullwinkle the Moose, “BUT WAIT! There’s more!”

The three pillars of a successful sale are: Preparation, Promotion and Price. Of the three legs, price is without question the most important of the three. Using the Pareto Principle, price actually accounts for 80% of a successful sale. Currently, discount pricing reigns supreme as REOs are flooding into the market like water through the cracked levees of New Orleans. How can a normal seller HOPE to float a normal sale against the incoming surge of lower priced homes?

Believe it or not, there are buyers out there who don’t want an REO.

They aren’t “handi” types. They don’t have the will or desire to “make the house their own.” They can’t “see the potential” and quite frankly, aren’t interested. And not everyone has the Martha Stewart gene for using a twisted fork as a curtain tieback. Many of these buyers are actually willing to pay more to buy a nice house that’s ready to move into.

Scratch most REOs off your list.

This is where an understanding of buyer psychology is critical. Sellers need to realize that

Continue reading this post

We launched a new “what if” feature to our instant home valuation tool earlier this evening. The new feature allows users to receive an instant home value estimate. Once the user gets their estimate they can play “what if” and hypothetically add an extra bedroom, bathroom and/or some extra square footage. After entering the “what if” data the user gets a new home value estimate.

HomeGain’s home valuation tool is part of our AgentView offering that features real estate agent profiles, blogs and listings in an advertising free environment. Continue reading this post