All the World's a Stage, Part 2 - Selling a Home Tips

You really love green.  I mean you LOVE the color green.  Your bedroom is painted green, your kitchen is green, your living room furniture is green, your bathrooms are all shades of green:   chartreuse, sage, emerald, kelly, mint, pine, spring, teal, olive, Celadon, neon, sea, light, dark... When Johnny Cash wrote the song "Forty Shades of Green", he was actually thinking about your house.

the colors in a home play into staging a home for sale

Unfortunately, not everyone shares your affinity for green and if you're getting your home ready to sell, it may be something you need to address.

NEUTRALIZING NOT STERALIZING

Staging a home when you're still living in it, as I mentioned in my last post, means making your home a little less personal.  When it comes to personal taste, you sometimes need to neutralize the colors, lighten up a darker room, let the buyer be able to imagine bringing in their furniture, seeing their passion for the color red be able to play out in the home.

If you're living in the house, you don't want to make it so bland that the buyer wonders what kind of neat freaks live here and don't they have any personality?  You do want to tone it down, by packing up your 1,342 piece collection of Star Wars memorabilia, removing personal photos and keeping horizontal surfaces clean and clear of clutter (aka personal stuff).

PAINTING



  

Painting to stage a home

A good paint job is an investment, but a few thousand dollars spent to neutralize that aubergine room into a soft taupe could be what sells the house, and could be what keeps the price up.  A buyer who is worried about the cost of having to paint everything might be putting in a lower offer, if they offer at all.  Many times I've been with buyers who just can't get past the color on the wall or, more, the color of the carpet.  Some understand "it's only paint" and others don't and move on to other homes for sale.

Work with your agent and a staging consultant to see where you really need to paint and where adding in a few accent pieces will be enough to break up the color saturation.

WANT MORE INFORMATION?

 

If you'd like my full report on "Getting Your Home Ready to Sell" as well as monthly newsletters with Long Beach/West Orange County real estate updates, tips on homes and life, please send me an email to katielarson@kw.com and I'll get that report to you right away.  You can also "LIKE" me on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/KatieLongBeachRealtor?ref=hl

All the world's a stage, but your home is what matters

Staging a home creates a welcoming feeling

One of the first questions sellers ask me, after how high can we price this house, is "Do we need to stage the home?"  Many of you watch the HGTV shows that tell you staging is very important, and it is.  You want a potential buyer to walk in, feel good about what they see, be able to imagine their life unfolding in the same space yours has unfolded.  You want them to see themselves as the home's next chapter.

STAGING VERSUS REARRANGING

If you are living in your home, you can't very well move out all your well loved furniture and bring in the fancy new stuff, so I bring in a staging consultant on listings that will have the owners still living in the home, who still need to cook meals, host parties, entertain kids, watch TV comfortably in the old chair.  The staging consultant works with the furniture and furnishings in the house and might bring in some accent pieces.

The consultant will make suggestions to make rooms feel more open, to show off the features, to let in more natural light.  The staging feedback can also be a simple as "declutter and depersonalize", which means clean up the piles, straighten items in drawers and closets and remove personal photos and awards from walls and shelves.

CURB APPEAL

Curb appeal brings them in the door

You want to invite buyers into your home by welcoming them when they first drive up.  Fresh flowers planted, fitting the season, and a nicely trimmed lawn are a start.  The staging consultant can also make suggestions as to whether or not that garden gnome collection is welcoming or scary.

If you'd like my full report on "Getting Your Home Ready to Sell" and my monthly newsletters that include local Southern California information, Long Beach real estate updates, as well as tips on homes and life, please send me an email to katielarson@kw.com and I'll get that report to you right away.

I'm never too busy for your referrals, so if you know anyone looking to buy or sell a home, please let me know and send them my way. 

Lovely Long Beach

Long Beach offers, well, a beach, of course, but also views, bays, parks and lots of trees.  No wonder Long Beach real estate is constantly in demand.

 Queen Mary, July 4, 2014

A sunset, November 2013

 Belmont Pier, May 2014

El Dorado Park, September 21, 2014

 Duffy in Alamitos Bay, 2014

 Sunset over Alamitos Bay from Tantalum, 2013

THUMS Islands: A Different Kind of Long Beach Real Estate

One of the purposes of this blog, aside from bragging about this awesome city and telling you about Long Beach real estate, is to let you in on the stories behind various Long Beach landmarks and history. 

If you look off the coast, in San Pedro Bay, you will see 4 artificial islands that look like wonderful vacation destinations.  The have colorful towers, waterfalls, and palm trees.  They look FUN!  They're much closer than Catalina.  Makes me quote Tina Fey and say, "I want to go to there."

one of the THUMS Islands

We cannot go to there, though, as these are actually oil islands, working oil islands that are tapped into the Wilmington Oil Field, one of the 10 largest oil fields in the country.  They are in production 24/7.  We would be arrested if we tried to enter the islands.  Not very friendly of them.  On occasion, though, there are sponsored tours of the islands, but contact your City Council member for more information on that.  I took these photos while on a boat in the bay on July 4th.

As a group they are called THUMS Islands, with the name standing for the consortium of oil companies who built them in 1965:  Texaco, Humble Oil (now Exxon), Union Oil, Mobil Oil and Shell Oil.  And speaking of Catalina, the boulders that rim each of the islands are from Santa Catalina Island.  The THUMS Islands were designed by theme park architect Joseph Linesch, who also worked on the design of Disneyland.  Occidental Petroleum bought the islands in 2000.

Each island has been named after an astronaut who died in the line of duty:  Island Grissom, Island, White, Island Chaffee and Island Freeman.  Island Grissom is the closest and has waterfalls and the most sculptured screens.  Island Freeman is the largest at 12 acres, the others are about 10 acres each.

Not only are the oil operations camouflaged by the screens and colorful structures, but they are sound-proofed with wellheads and pipelines below the surface to enhance the appearance of the skyline and harbor.  Ah, come on, I do want to go to there!

While the islands may not be friendly to us, they have each been certified for commendable wildlife habitat management and environmental education programs.  Approximately 25,000 barrels of oil are produced daily from 735 active wells on the islands.  Part of the net profits generated from the sale of the oil is funneled to the City's Tidelands Fund.

Island Grissom


Houses on the peninsula and along Ocean have a view of THUMS.  If you're interested in living in view of these, let me know.  We can work something out and maybe I'll figure out how to get you a tour of one.  Maybe.

Queen City - Queen Mary on 4th of July 2014

Fireworks over the Queen Mary, July 4, 2014

Sunset over the Queen Mary July 4, 2014

28% Customer Satisfaction? Not here.

I wrote the following post for LinkedIn and, although it's not Long Beach centric as this blog typically is, it does apply to real estate and other interactions in life.  Let me know what you think.

As the fodder of comedian's jokes, airlines have struggled with their customer service perception - or lack of - since airline deregulation in the late 1970's. Once airline travel moved from the elite to the masses, the issues began and only heightened in the age of such online agencies as Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia, pushed into warp speed by websites such as Yelp, Kayak, CheapFlights, CheapTickets, GetMeThereFree, etc. Okay, the last one doesn't exist, but I think you follow me.

The current environment, where weather delays, misplaced bags, a surly gate agent or a sideways glance from a flight attendant sends passengers raging on Yelp, Facebook, Twitter or a letter to the Department of Transportation, makes consistent customer service a challenge. It's so difficult that a major carrier has set 28% as its goal for customer satisfaction. They are either discounting the other 72% as not particularly valid complaints or they only think they can only make 28% of their travelers happy. And that's the goal, not necessarily what is actually happening. Either way, it's not a good story.

Most businesses - dare I say any - struggle with customer service issues when the number of employees in contact with customers increases. Look at the recent press on the Comcast phone call. I know someone who supervises customer service agents at Comcast and that's not the type of service you would get on her watch - if she knows about it. However, she can't control what happens with every individual, on every call. Airlines have tens of thousands of employees. A great plan for phenomenal customer service in Dallas might not translate to that overworked gate agent in Scranton when one flight is delayed for weather, there is a creeping mechanical delay on another, a flight crew went illegal on their hours to cancel yet another and all she has is a mass of screaming, unhappy passengers in front of her.

All she can do is communicate facts, stay calm, keep them updated and be empathetic. Will that please 50% of them? 28% of them?

When we can get to the one on one interaction, where most of what is happening is under our control, we can get pretty close to 100% satisfaction with our customers if we do the basics: communicate facts, stay calm, stay in touch, be empathetic. In the real estate business there is much that is out of our control when it comes to the loan funding, the behaviors of the party on the other side of the transaction, the unexpected news at a home inspection. We can still keep our customers satisfied and feeling valued when we communicate facts, stay calm, stay in touch and are empathetic.

We don't have dozens of angry passengers screaming at us, when making 28% of them happy would seem impossible, but we do have one or two clients in front of us who might be making a lifetime investment and are scared to death when they hear their loan approval is delayed. My goal is 100% customer satisfaction by not only going beyond expectations, by delighting my clients, but by doing the basics: communicating facts, staying calm, staying in touch and being empathetic.

Come to think of it, that could work in our personal relationships as well as our professional ones. Think about applying that to your partner, spouse, sibling, parent, child, friend, insert-relationship-here.

Communicate facts, stay calm, stay in touch, be empathetic.

Guaranteed to keep more than 28% satisfied and engaged.

Nothing says summer like a pool

Probably of no surprise that California, Florida, Arizona and Texas have 60% of the more than 8.5 million pools in the United States.  A Google search on just how many pools are in California, Los Angeles County or Long Beach got me... nowhere reliable.  Closest I could get was an article on laist.com that said there were 43,123 pools in the LA Basin, with Beverly Hills having 2,481 and Long Beach with 2,859.  I counted close to 60 in our little neighborhood alone, using Google maps one day.

The exact number doesn't matter - there are a lot!  You likely either have one or live within a soccer ball's kick of one.  Interesting factoid in the article is that the typical LA area pool has an oval shape and measures around 16 feet by 33 feet.  Public pools tend to have square edges.

Having a pool means making a commitment.  Making a commitment to the maintenance and safety of it.  Some of that can be handled by employing a pool service for weekly checks, cleanings and regular maintenance.  That cost varies with the neighborhood and services.  You can expect to spend an average of $80 a month. 

You can also be your own pool boy, cabana service optional, by educating yourself on pool maintenance and doing your own chemicals and cleaning.  There are some excellent local pool suppliers, like East Long Beach Pool & Spa Supplies on Woodruff or ABC Pools & Supplies in Los Alamitos.  These guys know what they're doing, can analyze your water and can get you on track.

Safety issues span from having a required fence around the pool, to a lock on the gate, a drain that won't trap hair or loose suits, to making sure that children in the pool are watched at all times.  Also recommended is a pool safety kit:  a first aid kit, a flotation device, a pair of scissors to cut caught hair, clothing or a pool cover, a charged phone by the pool to call 911.  If you have a pool, everyone in the home should know how to swim.  The Internet is full of great tips and resources to help you and your family enjoy your pool.  One of the best sites I found was www.poolsafely.gov.

Aside from going IN the pool, there is also a lot to be said for being AROUND the pool.  Dining al fresco with a refreshing drink in your hand, looking at the cool water is a treat.  Turning on the pool light at night lights up the backyard with a tropical glow.

Owning a home with a pool is a commitment in itself.  You have to do the maintenance (or hire that pool boy), keep it safe, and maybe have your backyard become the neighborhood kids' favorite place to play.  It's not for everyone, but it's for at least 2,859 people in Long Beach. 

Would you like to own a home with a pool?  Let me help and maybe you'll be swimming in your own pool for that Labor Day barbecue.