What is virtual staging?

I'm always going to recommend first that you do real staging when trying to sell your property.

You want buyers to fall in love with your home the second they walk in.

Staging will allow the buyer’s emotions drive their purchasing decision.

If you refuse to have your home staged, virtual staging is the next best thing.

I have even had my graphic designer work with the current furniture that is in the home.

The designer can use their digital furniture in conjunction with your real furniture.

That way you don't have to move a single piece of furniture at your home and your marketing pictures will still end up looking great.

Virtual staging is better than showing an empty room

If you are getting ready to sell your property, you should consider staging your home.

That is when a home stager comes in and furnishes your house with modern, new, clean furniture. It makes your home look like a model home.

The problem with staging is that it costs money. The minimum cost will be around $3k.

If you refuse to do that, you should consider virtual staging.

This is where you take a picture of an empty room in your house, then a graphic designer edits the picture and ads computer-generated furniture.

In most cases, your marketing pictures will end up looking great.

You will definitely get a lot of attention to your online listing and will bring people in to see your home.

The problem arises when the buyer shows up to tour the home.

They came to see a beautiful model looking home and they end up taking a tour of a bunch of empty rooms.

This is not the ideal situation to put a buyer in.

But, virtually staged photos are better than showing a vacant room or a room filled with furniture from the 1980's.

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When to adjust your budget

Agents are strategically putting the asking price on their listings lower than fair market value.

By doing this the listing gets a lot of attention and gets multiple offers.

The property then sells for above-asking price, usually at fair market value.

Now that you know this info, be prepared to put in an offer on a home above your budget.

You could also look at properties below your budget and anticipate that the price will go up to your original budget.

Be the home buyer that is outbidding the others

Are you constantly being outbid when submitting an offer on a home?

Having a lower asking price is a widely used strategy by real estate agents to get multiple offers on their listing.

If you are seeing this a lot in your search area, adjust your budget!

Let's say your budget is $800k and you notice you have been outbid now a couple of times by buyers offering $25K above the asking price.

Adjust your budget down to $775K.

That way you can now be the one to submit an offer above the asking price.

You will now be the one who is outbidding all the other buyers by $25k.

Of course, have your agent do a market analysis on the property to make sure whatever amount you are offering is fair market value for the property.

Once we find a buyer for our home, is it safe for us to move out?

After reviewing the buyer's purchase agreement, you will most likely find that the buyer's purchase contingencies will all be removed by day 21 of the escrow period.

After all, contingencies are removed, it is fairly safe to start moving out.

I say fairly safe because a buyer could still back out of the deal after their contingencies are removed.

Most buyers don't do that because if the contingencies are removed, you as the seller can go after the buyer's deposit.

The buyer's deposit is usually 3% of the purchase price.

So if the home is $1,000,000 the deposit is $30,000.

Most buyers would continue with the purchase rather than lose $30K... but you never know.

In my opinion, it's reasonably safe to start moving out once all contingencies are removed.

Don't move out of your home until you are in escrow for 21 days

Now that the home seller has received an offer from someone to buy their home, they will soon ask when it is safe for them to start moving out of their property and into their new place.

The best answer I can give is to wait until you are in escrow for at least 21 days.

During days 1-21 of escrow, the buyer is doing their home inspections and working with the lender to get a loan.

Anything can happen during those 21 days.

Your home might fail inspections.

The buyer may not be able to get a loan.

The home appraised value may come in way below the agreed-upon purchase price.

Whatever the case might be, if the deal is going to be canceled, it will usually be canceled within the first 21 days of escrow.

So if we already know that going in, the best thing to do is to wait until the buyer completes their inspections and the loan is approved (usually the 21-day mark).

Typically escrows are 30 days long.

Plan your move for the last week that you are in escrow.

When are home sales the slowest?

Although right now is typically a slow period in real estate, I am predicting a hot real estate market for the 4th quarter of 2019.

The reason is that buyers have been experiencing heavy competition for the last several months, have had their offers rejected, but are still very motivated to buy a home.

All those buyers that have not had any luck lately will be hungry and ready to pounce on any new listings that come up.

That should make for an interesting end to the year.

Home sales are the slowest in the 4th quarter

The 4th quarter of the year (October, November, December) is usually when home sales are the slowest.

The reason is that everyone is busy with the holidays that come up during those months.

A buyer may put their home search on hold because they are having their family stay at their home for #Thanksgiving.

Or maybe it's more important to a home buyer to go to all the holiday parties instead of focusing on finding a home.

No matter what the reason is, the 4th quarter is typically the slowest time of the year in real estate.

Having said that, the real motivated buyers and sellers are still out there trying to make a deal happen.

Some of the best deals I have seen have gone down during the holiday season.

Episode 30 of The #AskDanielLosAngeles Show

On this episode, I answer the following four real estate questions:

1) At what point during the year are home sales usually the slowest?

2) Now that we found a buyer for my home and we are in escrow, is it safe for us to start moving out?

3) A lot of the homes I am touring are selling for more than the list price. How am I supposed to buy a property if everything I am interested in keeps selling over the asking price?

4) I do not want to spend a dime on staging my home. What other options are out there to make my home look more attractive to buyers?

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The cheapest home to sell this week in Sunland

The cheapest house sold in Sunland this week closed at $430,000.

Originally listed at $550,000, this home features a newly remodeled kitchen with original hardwood floors and will make a nice starter home.

The most expensive house to sell this week in Burbank

The most expensive home sold this week in Burbank was listed at $1,099,000 and sold for $1,104,000.

Located in the charming Magnolia Park neighborhood, the area is filled with eccentric boutiques, vintage antiques, hip eateries, Porto’s Bakery, and much more.

Glendale named 9th safest city in America

The website 24/7 Wall St. ranked the 50-safest cities based on FBI crime stats and demographics.

Irvine topped the list and was voted safest city in America, but there were ten other SoCal cities that made the top 50.

Glendale ranked 9th on the list.

What do you think?

Is Glendale really worthy of being called the 9th safest city in America?

The most unique home on the market this week in Los Angeles

Echo Park has really changed over the years.

Back in the day, Echo Park was not exactly the safest neighborhood to be in.

But now it's filled with beautiful homes that demand a high price tag.

This charming “Treehouse” vertical cottage built-in 1926 makes the most of its limited space.

Has 1 bed, 1 bath on main floor and a bonus space downstairs w/ separate entrance plus a finished attic.

This home is currently on the market and is asking $819,000.

The most famous home to sell this week in Los Angeles

The Ennis House just sold for $18,000,000 in the Los Feliz hills.

The home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Charles and Mabel Ennis and was built in 1924.

The design of the house was based on the ancient Maya Temples and its notable detail is the relief ornamentation on its 27,000 perforated and patterned decomposed granite blocks.

Filmmakers flocked to its location. The home shot to fame when the exterior façade was used for the House on Haunted Hill in 1958, but it is most known for being in the movie Blade Runner and the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (one of my favorite shows growing up!).

The house was included as one of the top ten houses of all time in Los Angeles Times, and is a designated California Historical Landmark, and a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.