Fort McMurrays Real Estate Blog

With the real estate shifting toward a buyers market, it is essential to present your home in such a way that showcases its best features and minimizes or rectifies problem areas. Many surveys have proven the importance of home staging as a powerful real estate marking tool that helps sell your home faster and for top dollars.

What's Staging? 
Staging involves dressing-up your home to be presented for sale in its best possible state. It is about merchandising your property. 

Professional home stagers work with the traffic flow of a home, eliminate or reduce clutter, rearrange the furniture, add decorative accessories, and create the illusion of space to enhance the best features of your home and minimize or rectify problem areas. 

Another often overlooked, but equally important part of the staging process is addressing the exterior of the property. Often times, a prospective buyer forms their opinion about a property based on curb appeal. A property's exterior is very important, and for this reason, stagers will also make recommendations based on the property's landscaping, driveway, and exterior look.

Good staging considers the style of the home and ensures that the staging is done with moderate taste to appeal to a wide range of people. When done properly, your house can make a memorable first impression on potential homebuyers. Staging can be accomplished with a minimal amount of time, money and effort. 

How Much Does Staging Cost?
Usually home stagers will work within the seller's budget, with an average cost of $1,000 to $4,000. This is dependent on the home's requirements and the amount the seller can afford to spend. 

The initial investment starts with a consultation, lasting one to two hours. During this time, your home will be closely examined with the critical eye of a potential buyer. The home stager will then provide you with a list of recommendations. You may do all of the work yourself, hire out some of it, or perhaps leave the entire process to the staging professional. 

Market Advantage 
As a seller, two considerations are of most importance: time (how long it takes to sell the home?) and money (how much money the home sells for?). 

Staging provides advantages on both fronts. Many surveys have proven, quite powerfully, that there are many benefits to staging. Indeed, one of the most important benefits of staging is that it can allow sellers to obtain top dollars for their property. Often times, the seller will obtain a 200% to 300% return on their investment in staging.

• A staged home shows better than competing homes on the market. 
• Staged homes sell for more money than unstaged homes. 
• A staged home sells faster than an unstaged home. 
• The listing of a staged home looks superior in print advertising and appeals to more people. 
• Realtors recognize staged homes as the best properties to show their clients. 

It's Never Too Late To Stage...
If your house is already on the market, you may feel that you are reading this too late in the game. Rest assured, this is not true. While it's ideal to have your home staged before it's listed, the benefits of staging can also be achieved after it's been sitting.

If your home is currently sitting with no reasonable offers, and it's not overpriced, you should consider having it staged. Once the staging work is completed, your real estate agent can simply change the marketing plan. Instead of advertising it as "reduced", it can now be advertised as "recently staged", which is actually much less costly than a price reduction as well as the obvious benefit of generating a new interest in your property.

There is no question that staging plays an important role in today's real estate market. Consult your realtor to assess the viability of staging your home.

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July 9, 2008 - The Government of Canada today announced adjustments to the rules for government guaranteed mortgages aimed at protecting and strengthening the Canadian housing market.

The new measures include:

1. Fixing the maximum amortization period for new government-backed mortgages to 35 years;
2. Requiring a minimum down payment of five per cent for new government-backed mortgages;
3. Establishing a consistent minimum credit score requirement; and Introducing new loan documentation standards.

Today's announcement marks a responsible and measured approach by the Government to ensure Canada's housing market remains strong and to reduce the risk of a U.S.-style housing bubble developing in Canada.

The new limits are planned to take effect October 15, 2008. This would allow existing mortgage pre-approvals with the common 90-day duration to be used or expire. Certain exceptions would also be permitted after October 15. The Government will work closely with all stakeholders to ensure timely and effective implementation of these measures.

The new regulations apply only to new mortgages, while existing originations will be unaffected. The lag period prior to the regulatory change will allow existing mortgage pre-approvals to be used or expire. All mortgage insurance companies will be affected by this regulatory change.

As Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is a Crown corporation, the government is ultimately responsible for CMHC's obligations, including mortgage insurance claims. Hence, CMHC will no longer offer 40-year amortization and 100 per
cent loan-to-value ratio mortgage insurance products, given the new regulations. In addition, the government also backs private insurers' obligations to lenders in the event of default, provided the business is eligible to the guarantee, but claims are
subject to a 10 per cent deductible of the original principal amount of the loan agreement.

Private insurers are still free to insure 40-year amortization and 100 per cent loan-to-value mortgage products, but the lack of government backing will lead to sizeable increase in risk. This may mean the elimination of these products after October 15, or a higher insurance cost for the borrower.

The measures announced today will build on the strength of Canada's housing market. According to the International Monetary Fund, the increase in house prices in Canada is based on sound economic factors such as low interest rates, rising incomes and a
growing population. A recent Statistics Canada report concluded that home ownership is at record levels, with over two-thirds of Canadians owning their own home.

For the news release from the federal Department of Finance, visit www.fin.gc.ca/news08/08-051e.html.

Recent sales data form Real Estate boards around the country indicates that real estate market is changing to favour the buyer. Sales continue to decrease and benchmark prices for residential homes in most areas are moderating, in some areas trending down slightly since March.

"Real estate is cyclical and the numbers show that we've entered a buyer's cycle," explains Kelvin Neufeld, president of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board. "Where appropriate, REALTORS® are recommending their sellers sharpen their prices, in particular for higher-end properties. On the other hand, there's still a steady appetite for mid-range properties priced competitively. Our average days-to-sell in June for single family homes was only six days more than last year indicating that when buyers see an opportunity, they act."

"We are now approaching a balanced market." said Ann Cosens, RAHB President. "Sellers can expect reasonable offers and homes are generally selling in reasonable time periods. For buyers, prices remain stable and there are a good number of homes to choose from."

"With the market stabilizing, there has never been a better time to be looking for a home," added Cosens. "Consumers have more properties to choose from and less pressure to make a quick decision and the market has a lot to offer all buyers."

In most provinces, sales numbers are slightly lower comparing to the same period of 2007, although it is still higher than those of 2006. It worth mentioning that  2007 was a record breaking year for real estate sales around the country.

On the other hand, some areas in Ontario recorded a remarkable increase in June!  Burlington saw a 65 per cent increase in activity, driven by detached home transactions and even more robust attached/row house sales. In Toronto (downtown east)  activity was up four per cent due to attached/row house and condominium apartment sales. And Ottawa - Ontario saw a  big saw jump in higher-end properties, in particular, for homes priced between $750,000 and $1 million, which is a 52.4 per cent increase in that price category over last June.

Canadian Real Estate is experiencing a soft landing coming off the strongest and longest real estate cycle in our history. For those who don't remember selling a home in a normal competitive market, it's essential to work with a real estate professional who knows how to establish the right price for your property. Everything matters now: your neighbourhood, your property type, your home's appearance and thorough marketing.

For details about the Fort McMurray Market visit www.McMurraysBestHomes.com

Here are some links to sites in the Fort McMurray area.

The Fort McMurray Public School http://www.fmpsd.ab.ca/

The Fort McMurray Catholic School District believes that every child has the right to a quality education. Our schools offer a wide range of programming geared towards meeting the academic, physical, cultural and spiritual needs of our community. Our students come from a wide variety of dominations, faiths and ethnic backgrounds. The Fort McMurray Catholic School District is the faith-based choice for publically funded education. http://www.fmcsd.ab.ca/  

 Fort McMurray Christian School Offering Kindergarten through Grade 9. http://www.fortmcmurraychristianschool.ca/

Our mandate is to advise and educate landlords and tenants with respect to their rights, remedies and responsibilities under the Residential Tenancies Act and the Mobile Home Sites Tenancies Act of Alberta. http://www.woodbuffalo.ab.ca/landlord/

 Website of the Fort McMurray Public Library. Check out the online catalogue, renew books and much more! http://www.fmpl.ca/

For all your Real Estate needs www.McMurraysBestHomes.com