hello everybody we're starting a new program on real estate he and i program will have twelve episodes and in those twelve episodes we're going to try to  give information in and all kinds of different subjects for our real estate in and around the town of belmont and we hope it'll be rather educational it's  going to be called real estate for dummies that this is our first episode deceiving and we hope you'll enjoy it and you can always contact us at the belmont media center at nine lexington street  you have any questions at all about real estate or your own home we're happy to help and assist so we also want you to know that this program is is is so important as real estate today everybody there own something or is about to try to buy something so we thought that it would be a unique opportunity to try to transfer information to all the folks watching today  to put it in reasonable shape so that somebody coming by or somebody coming into the house is something that they're welcomed into and it is my theory that working on the outside of the house to get that into shape is one of the important things because an awful lot of people will do what we call drive bys to look at a house before they even get out of the car and come in me broker sign in so one of the things that you should bear in mind is to take care of the grounds have the lawn mowed have the flowers planted and none of these things are very expensive matters but they make it look completely better and the idea is to start with the outside and work itself into the inside so that you end up with something that looks pleasant to people who live  boulder people but does not dictate what they should have necessarily for furniture so that leads me into wiley why don't we why don't i go through the subjects and we'll go back and forth ensure we can discuss each one of these subjects that's fine so some of the pieces that we're going to discuss today wiley would be the interior look of the home as you mention the exteriors look at the home paints and wallpaper clutter in the home how to keep your house before you show the house before the house is being shown the attic how important the attic is to make sure that it's nice and clean you need to deliver a message will talk a little bit about the message that you want to deliver when people are about to come to your house to see your house right the realtors and what the realtors can do to help you sell your home and will get into the floors of the home the kitchens the baths you mention the yard in sprucing up the yard to talk a little bit more about that talk about fresh paint talk about the colors that people really enjoy seeing when they walk through a property when the thinking about buying a property right and we can talk a bit about the heating of the home how old the burner is you know and so forth and so on especially these days where oil and everything is so high you need good efficiency and it may cost some money to replace some of these things but it's money well spent so what why don't we start with that you  mentioned the exterior and my comments on the exterior is you mentioned the drive by are so important for potential buyers or you want to get them out of the car and into the house and that's a good start yeah that's right and doing those things that you mentioned keeping the lawn mowed in the shrubs trimmed in right maybe you mulch the the beds making sure the house looks really looks presentable from the outside because the first look is always leave the of the what looks in your mind you know well as i understand it there are two theories one is to have the house completely vacant so somebody coming in can visualize their furniture in the houses they go from room to room or difficult to move around because you want people to be able to get into the room move around and take a look at it but to me it looks much more homey or and friendly if you have some furniture in there rather than just having a be a room and i know a lot of people get concerned about the color as well muted colors and everyone is pretty much well except muted colors rather than the bright blues and greens and things of that nature but my idea is to make the house look comfortable make it look like it's something it's going to be pleasant to live in and the only way you can do that is by having some furniture and i think you have to be careful that you don't fill it up with old victorian furniture in this day and age but there there are a taste good and you can you can pay people to come in and stage it for you and that's usually money well spent i notice you know we just sold our home last fall and my realtor gave me some some some good tips about how the house should look when you're showing the house and of course the number one thing was it needs to be spotless you know it really needs to be spotless because people that are visualizing themselves coming into the house think about how they live and how they would like to live and having your house really cleaned up nicely and clowder alyssa's is so realtors point out when they are the at trying to advice people and selling their homes is the neutral colors the neutral colors on walls those neutral colors you know what i think is great looking wallpaper somebody may think that  is really something that's detrimental and you know doesn't fit in that particular room and what i did was i took my wallpaper down and i got into more neutral  though the one that looked like a golf course yes i did so the point i'm making is that these these folks that do get into the house after they've gotten out of the car they want to try to visualize how they would live that's right and those are true colors that are key so tell me a little bit about what you think about other parts of the house which talk a little bit about bathrooms and kitchens well you know it's very nice to have updated bathrooms and kitchen says specially kitchens these days with the granite covers and all seems to be the in thing back when i was younger it was all formica and you could get almost any color in for mica but now the granite seems to be very popular it's easy to clean and it certainly looks nice so that's a real plus now that's something that's a little on the expensive side but most of these things will come back to you in the final price where you get for the house bathrooms yes it's doesn't take an awful lot to upgrade a bath room this  clear glass in the bathroom shower seems to be a popular feature and let's talk about that a second right yeah i'm glad you are going to talk about bathrooms in kitchens they seem to bring back when you're ready to sell a house the money that you put in absolutely yes so the most important thing then in the home in the interior the home would probably be bathrooms and kitchens updated that's correct and if they arab dated  then the potential buyer sees that is much less work that they have to do would you agree with that yes i would yes that along with as we mentioned in passing the clutter in the basement you need to get that taken care of and i know it's all very sentimental things that are down there that we haven't been able to live without and it takes us back to junior high and high school but somebody coming in looking at a house they have none of that attachment for the material that is there and you just better off without it paint the floor of the cellar going on with that i unfortunately was a collector and we recently sold our house and we got rid of a lot of it but there's more in my son's house now this was and he did that out of exasperate should because he was helping us to get it cleaned out and he eventually just threw most of it in a van that he had and took it over the years of living in one house once house and know and then when it comes time to leave it's the you just can't get over how long it takes to empty that house that's right particularly now when you have a closing in you know you're up against the clock because you have to be out and there's so much to to remove from when the kids grew up it really is overwhelming yes and i'm probably the only person in the town of belmont that is still a member of the boston braves historical society and i had a lot of material very valuable material that warren spahn attorney said you're not old enough to remember these guys but  that i had to part with oh really well that you know it's great looking through some of the old things that you collect over the years it really is listen let's talk a little bit about the lighting fixtures and  lighting is another person's folly and i think you need new up to date lighting but you've got to be careful not to make it too too artistic because the could be spending money and doing that thinking you're upgrading and making it look better and somebody comes in and they don't like that at all and that's the reason that they don't stick around to look at the rest of the house but a lot a lot of this is by guess by golly right there's no one hundred percent sure patent one of the most some other important things that inside the home of the windows oh yes because of the expense of heat today yes  windows failing in terms of how much cold air blows through those it seems that every time i show ousts one of the first questions the comes up is how old are the windows right right and how many expensive and gas is a little bit better but that's going to and is rising up so that that's a very important feature in there with the windows are a big thing fact we had an inspection here recently and at the end of the inspection the would be by air and i say would be because they didn't buy as the the inspector what what needed to be done over a period of time and water wonder in the windows were the first thing that he mentioned the heating system which was maybe twenty years old which is not real old and the third thing was to replace the gutters and he said in that order and if you did it over a five year period you would have the house and really good shape and you were able to spread it out taking care of what he considered to be the most important thing first the the subject of attics we should talk a little bit about attics today it seems like over many many years we the best storage spot is either the basement of the attic you know so in preparation for a home to be sold you should look at your attic you should see how much clutter there really isn't that add it and stat dividing it and throwing things out absolutely  to call out clutter is being kind because if you have a house and you're storing stuff in the basement and in the attic the secondary stuff on the late least desirable stuff goes up in the attic because you don't want to go up there in the middle of the summer and haul stuff out so you're apt to put the more usable stuff in the basement which is something you've got to get rid of to sell the house but  it doesn't look quite as bad as the attic i've never been into an attic that was an attic that looked nice and there was one house that i sold in belmont and it was quite quite an old house had not been taken care of the nephew was cleaning the attic and i said to him you're going to be a little bit careful there might be a couple of squirrels dead squirrels up there he went up to clean the attic and in five minutes he came down he says the squirrels up there and they're not dead so that's kind of the you want to get the attic clean you want to do that first snow it's funny the this so many little things that you know you just you walk by when you're in your home and you don't because you walk in and out of that house every day and these all seem like simple little things but they are often overlooked you know up keeping things you know trying to throw things out and keeping the house in orderly fashion and it's just it it really becomes quite a job when it gets to the point where you are about to sell should plan what do you think in terms of planning to stop that getting rid of all the junk how many months in advance started one year really yes yes now i hope this doesn't go over the lines but my wife is very persistent on things and she does a lot of very good planning we started twelve months to start to clean the house up and we had to race like the dickens to make make the deadline and you cannot start too soon and it's a difficult thing to do to do because some of these things have been a part of your life part of your children growing up but you have to draw the line you don't need them anymore and you shouldn't want them anymore if they're worth any dale realty can provide we have people that do these things and they do them at reasonable cost because they want to keep our business right and they can be a great help and it really it takes away a lot of the emotion that you're going to the house different rooms of the house one of the things that i think that we find a lot of in the damani area is a specificity wrapped pipes and we should probably talk a little bit about a specified wrap pipes and what some of the alternatives  e in having a specialist wrap pipes because people that are new buyers are often frightened off by a special strap pipe is right and i found that if you can hire a professional to remove  it before you sell your home right do it yes absolutely and you have to hire a professional because that is all reported to the state and there are people that will come in and do it and they they do it the correct way and they handle all of the paperwork with the state they get through the approval and you know you could you could have your nephew come in and take it out and you could end up spending thousands of dollars because it hasn't been removed properly and hasn't been disposed of properly so you need to get somebody who was licensed to do this type of thing and the headaches  much much less and you don't run the risk of having to redo it later on a pay a fine of something i've been through that a couple of times in the last year even because all of this a lot of old homes in belmont that are that are brought up our children on here right and you know being a long time residents these are the things that we see every day that's right these are the these are the homes that we walk through every day you know it may be may be unfair to say that many of these homes a very very old you know and because they're so hold old they have so much character to them but there are so many different things that you need to do you know make sure the you keep it money to keep them up but the character of the house is what people are ages right for and i know you get some and you have open house after open house and you say this is never going to sell somebody will come through and say this is just what i'm looking for i'm glad it's a mess because now i can fix it the way i want it oh you know it's interesting as we do our show together for the next twelve months we're going to have pictures in the backdrop of different homes around belmont yes so anyone that wants to send in or have us go and take a picture of their home we're happy to do that for we're taking different architectural styles right and we want to get as many different styles as we can you know we're actually uses for the backdrops of some of these folks will see their homes right on t v for a month a month you're going to be great i think that  we didn't talk at all about the roof and gutters and downspouts right and the maintenance of of how important those three pieces are well they certainly are and  that's one of the this is that i think working on the exterior of the house first is important because if you have a bad roof that that can create permanent damage to what's underneath it and the same with the gutters so to me that's all part of making the house presentable so the people driving by will stop and come in and see see what is under the roof and under the gutters  and inside the siding so that's very very important there's more damage that can result from not taking care of those factors than almost anything else you know we might want to talk about just a little bit about pricing so the market is so sensitive today that what we need to do is make sure that our house is a price correctly oh yes you know if it's not priced correctly in your ready to move and you have it all of a priced you may be waiting for a long time for that right by the right the out so we want to make sure that we price our homes correctly and that's where professional real to comes in both you and i are agents licensed agents we're happy to help with any questions that the eight six nine seven four four eight and wally's cell number is six one seven three four seven two three six seven and we welcome any questions at all that you may have about your home getting your house ready to be sold right or anything at all that has to do with residential real estate around the town of belmont because we consider ourselves experts in selling properties and understanding what needs to be done to get a prop property ready i also like to say that you can contact wally at the belmont media center at nine lexington street in belmont and you can write us what we're going to do is at the end of the season and this season will and said at the end of september we're going to have a today tonight stay in the catskills with golf included it's been donated to us all you need to do to get involved in that for the drawing right wally at the belmont media center i here in belmont mass and again the address is nine lexington street belmont so please feel free to do so