ALL REALTORS® ARE NOT ALIKE! 

Let us visit your home and provide you with a Listing Presentation.  A listing presentation is an industry term for the formal presentation that a REALTOR® makes to prospective home sellers, trying to earn their trust and business. Don't list your home without a marketing plan IN WRITING!

We'll visit your home, and together we will walk through it.  We will discuss with you exacty how we would propose to sell your home, for as much as the market will bear, and within your time frame. We will tell you where we will advertise your home, both in print and on the web. With the dramatic growth in homebuyer usage of the web, you MUST have a top REALTOR® that can extensively market your home online! 

We'll compare your home to others like it that have recently sold, and also to others that are currently for sale. This is a very important way of determining the fair market value of your home. Our listing presentations are free and we prepare CMAs for prospective home sellers every day!

Buyers Want Your Home for As Little As Possible. Quickly Find Out What It's Really Worth, by Email, for Free. 

Are you thinking of selling your home? You should know exactly what it's worth before making such an important decision. 

Let us do a quick "Comparative Market Analysis" for you, for free, and with no obligation. Also known as a CMA, this analysis compares your home to others that are currently on the market and to those that have recently sold. 

As top REALTORS®, we determine the value of area homes daily. Using the information you provide below, we can perform a quick market analysis, and give you a free estimate of what your home is worth in today's market. 

Remember, market conditions can be different, even one neighborhood to the next. We know how to take all these factors into account when determining the true market value of your home. 

 

Article By: GEM Landscaping & Design

A large percentage of home buyers decide whether or not to look inside a house or take it seriously based on its curb appeal—the view they see when they drive by or arrive for a showing. You can help make sure they want to come inside your house by spending some time working on the its exterior appearance.

It's difficult to look at our own house in the same way that potential home buyers do, because when we become accustomed to the way something looks and functions, we can't see its faults. Decide right now to stop thinking of the property as a home. It's a house—a commodity you want to sell for the highest dollar possible.  Don't forget the backyard...When people who are considering buying your home come to check it out, one of the first places they will examine is your backyard. Your landscaping should be meticulous. And the more creative you get, the better chance you have of selling your home.

Curb Appeal Exercise

The next time you come home, stop across the street or far enough down the driveway to get a good view of the house and its surroundings.

1. What is your first impression of the house and yard area?

2. What are the best exterior features of the house or lot? How can you enhance them?

3. What are the worst exterior features of the house or lot? How can you minimize or improve them?

We are a professional Landscaping & Design team ready to answer any of your landscaping questions.  Please feel free to give us a call at 734-740-0533, we'd be happy to help!

Urban legend...you tell me?

Legend:   Burying a statuette of St. Joseph on the property will help speed the sale of a home.

Origins:   Those trying to sell a home often feel in need of a miracle when a quick sale fails to materialize. Folklore purports to have the remedy: Bury a plastic

The reputed origins of the practice vary. Some say an order of European nuns in the Middle Ages buried a medal of St. Joseph  — while asking the saint to intercede — in its quest for a convent. Others claim it may be connected to a practice by German carpenters who buried the statues in the foundations of houses they built and said a prayer to St. Joseph. Yet others trace the connection to a chapel building effort in Montreal in the late 1800s. Brother Andre Bessett wanted to buy some land on Mount Royal in Montreal to construct a small chapel called an oratory. When the landowners refused to sell, Bessett began planting medals of St. Joseph on the property. In 1896 the owners suddenly relented and sold, and Bessett was able to build his oratory.

But these theories may well be instances of retrofitting lore to a custom because mentions older than contemporary times have failed to materialize in standard folklore references. That the custom now has an interesting backstory does not mean its backstory is valid or even that old.

The practice of burying a plastic St. Joseph to help speed the sale of a home dates at least to 1984 in the U.S.A. In 1990 it seemingly became all the rage, with realtors buying plastic saints' statues by the gross. The standard practice calls for the statue to be dug up once the property has sold and placed on the grateful seller's mantle or in another place of honor. Some, however, who have trouble remembering where they interred their statues prefer to leave the buried saints where they've been placed to help protect the properties for the new owners. (Which may not work all that well — some believe leaving the statue underground will cause the land to continue changing hands.)

But why Joseph, you ask? Why not another saint — say, St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes?

Joseph, Jesus' earthly father, is the patron saint of home and family in the Roman Catholic religion. According to one of the hottest new customs, the statues are buried upside down and facing the road in front of a house for sale.¹

Actually, different realtors quote different placements of the statue:

• Upside down, near the 'For Sale' sign in the front yard. (An upside down St. Joseph is said to work extra hard to get out of the ground and onto someone's mantle.)

• Right side up.

• In the rear yard, possibly in a flower bed.

• Lying on its back and pointing towards the house "like an arrow."

• Three feet from the rear of the house.

• Facing the house.

• Facing away from the house. (One who tried this reported the house across the street sold, and it hadn't even been up for sale.)

• Exactly 12 inches deep.

The custom of burying St. Joseph has become so widespread that some religious goods stores even offer a Home Sale Kit, which includes a plastic statue, a prayer card, and an introduction to the St. Joseph home sale practice.

Prudent realtors also recommend the following advice in addition to burying Joe: "For this practice to be fully effective, the seller must, of course, first do such practical yet all important chores as completing all necessary fix-up, properly staging the home and finally, adjusting the price so as to exactly reflect market value."

Many who have experienced difficulty selling their homes have reported seemingly miraculous sales shortly after burying a statue of St. Joseph on their property. Stephen Binz's 2003 book, Saint Joseph, My Real Estate Agent, is replete with many such examples. However, one tale included in the book — which might well be apocryphal — points that everything doesn't always go as planned. One impatient man moved his statue from the frontyard to the backyard to the side of the house and finally threw it in the trash. A few days later the frustrated seller opened the newspaper and saw the headline "Local Dump Has Been Sold."