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  • 4 Things You Can Add To Make Your Home More Comfortable

    4 Things You Can Add To Make Your Home More Comfortable

    Making your living place comfortable is an essential step in making it your home, and never something you should give up on. While it might take some money to reach a point where you feel at home – living somewhere that you don’t feel at home isn’t living at all! Your living space belongs to you, and you should do what you can to make it feel that way. Sometimes that can take time and money, and sometimes all you need to do is make some small personalizations to reflect your own wants. In any case, you need to figure out those changes.

    Smart home devices

    When it comes to smart home devices, you have quite a few options to choose from, but you should consider whether or not they’ll be useful to you. If you’re trying to make your living space more comfortable, then a smart home device is something that you can’t go wrong with, as it makes living at home much simpler. Control your lights and thermostat, and get important updates from other appliances right from your smartphone. It’s an investment to be sure and by no means an essential addition to your home, but a great step in the way of comfort.

    Get a humidifier

    If you feel like you’re struggling with dryness in your home, it can not only affect your plants but your body too. It’s important that you make sure your skin isn’t too dry, and that’s why you should look into whole home humidifiers, as they can help to make the air moister around the house. Without one, you might be experiencing frequent sore throats, dry skin, or a hard time with your sinuses. If you’re looking to feel more comfortable at home, this is a good purchase for you.

    Your air conditioning

    Summer is here now, and the heat can get a little too much to handle at times. You shouldn’t have to worry about that when you’re at home! Especially if you’re stuck at home due to lockdown or quarantining, so you should be making sure that your AC is working as it should! If not, then investing in a new AC unit is worth your money one hundred times over. Nothing is worse than when you can’t escape the heat at its peak, and you’re never going to be comfortable at home without one during the summer. 

    Invest in some good garden furniture

    During the summer is when your garden gets the most use, and there’s never been a better time to start looking at garden furniture. Unless you’re going to be spending your whole summer indoors, then your home would benefit from some nice garden furniture! Having somewhere to sit and eat can make your meals much more enjoyable and peaceful, and you’ll get to enjoy the sunlight that much more. Not only that, but it makes your garden a great place to host guests – perfect for summer barbecues!

  • Want Your Home to Sell Fast? Use These 4 Ideas to Brighten Your Home

    Want Your Home to Sell Fast? Use These 4 Ideas to Brighten Your Home

    Preparing to sell your home almost looks like designing a play stage. Everything should be in its rightful place with optimised lighting to give a good first impression. To invite the right buyer into your home, even just through magazine photos, you need to make it feel inviting, spacious, and warm by brightening it up. So if you’ve decided it’s about time you had a fresh start in a different place, here are some ideas to brighten your home for it to sell fast.

    Clean windows

    Windows say a lot about a home, both from inside and out. Cleaning them is the best way to maximise natural light entry to brighten up a room. This way, you allow enough sunlight into your home while making it look more appealing through the clean windows. To clean your windows, use cleaning products and rags or towels. You can make your products like a vinegar and water solution for cleaning, and be sure to wipe the windows in a circular motion to prevent unsightly streaks. To enhance the windows, use long, white sheer curtains to allow more natural light entry and make them stand out.

    Add lighting

    The more bulbs and lamps in your home, the brighter it will appear. For most of the rooms, it’s likely that they already have overhead lighting. Make them more appealing by using scones, chandeliers, pendants, or recessed lighting. All you need to do is determine how much lighting your home needs and add lamps or bulbs. If the existing ones aren’t quality, that is, they make your room appear dim by giving off a dark, yellow tint, replace them.

    Use white LED bulbs to replace the darker ones and brighten your home, but keep in mind that natural lighting is more appealing to prospective buyers. Remember your exterior and install porch lights, floodlights, lanterns, and string lights to brighten it up at night.

    Replace flooring

    Flooring plays a significant role in brightening your home as it makes it appear as one unit. If you have cracked or dull floors, consider cleaning, replacing chipped parts, or upgrading all of them with vinyl flooring. Remove the layered carpet and clean the floor to the last corner. Clean the rugs as well, and consider replacing them with newer and brighter ones to brighten your home.

    Paint walls

    Walls can instantly brighten or make a room dull. When you want your home to sell, it’s best to stick to neutral and light colours. Painting light colours work in rooms where there’s not much natural light coming in. Using darker colours might only make rooms appear darker. If your wall already has neutral paint like beige, a shade of grey, white, or “greige,” be sure to check if there are chipped or dirty patches and paint them or redo the entire house for enhanced curb appeal.

    If you’ve already decided to move, you can make your house brighter to land a buyer as soon as possible. Boost the value of your property by freshly painting it, adding lighting, cleaning windows, or replacing flooring to make it more appealing to every buyer who visits your home.

  • Housing Market for April 2021

    Housing Market for April 2021

    The London and St. Thomas Association of REALTORS® (LSTAR) announced 1,231 homes exchanged hands last month, the highest number of home sales recorded via the MLS® system for the month of April since the Association began tracking data in 1978.

    “We are encouraged by the strong sales numbers, as the spring market ramps up,” said LSTAR 2021 President Jack Lane. “Year-to-date sales are also performing ahead of 2020. At the end of April, there have been 3,918 sales, up more than 57% over the same period last year.”

    LSTAR’s regions, like many others across the province, are experiencing some of the lowest inventory levels seen in the past 10 years. Combined with a high demand, these dynamics have contributed to a very robust marketplace, with numerous situations of multiple offers and properties being sold for considerably more than their listing prices.

    “It’s important for the public to understand that every transaction is different, based on housing type, housing features, geographical location and many other factors,” Lane said. “Each transaction is unique and does not necessarily represent activity across the entire marketplace.

    City of London Real Estate Statistics for April 2021

    Number of properties houses sold or leased  837                  

    Median days on market   7                         

    Average sale price   $642,222          

    Median price    $593,000          

    Average sale price of a condominium   $467,098             

    Average sale price of single-family home   $722,885                         

    List price to sale price ratio   114.6%                           

    In our local marketplace, 100% of the listing inventory is selling every 30 days. Another way of looking at it is that every house that was listed in London over the last 30 days has sold. Once again this is an indication that the local market for the month of March strongly favoured sellers. Covid 19 pandemic has not adversely affected the local real estate market. If you are considering selling your home in the city of London or the surrounding area, there has never been a better time.

  • Housing Market for March 2021

    Housing Market for March 2021

    “The London and St. Thomas Association of REALTORS® (LSTAR) announced 1,296 homes exchanged hands in March, an increase of more than 56% compared to the same time a year ago. The total sales are the highest recorded for the month of March since the Association began tracking data in 1978.“

    In our local marketplace, 100% of the listing inventory is selling every 31 days. Another way of looking at it is that every house that was listed in London over the last 31 days has sold. Once again this is an indication that the local market for the month of March strongly favoured sellers. Covid 19 pandemic has not adversely affected the local real estate market. If you are considering selling your home in the city of London or the surrounding area, there has never been a better time.

    The city of London currently has 0.4 months of available inventory with 414 properties listed for sale or lease. For reference in March 2020 our market had 1.4 months of inventory which at the time was considered a strong seller’s market. Of the properties currently on the market in London, of those listed 272 are single-family residential dwellings. The remaining are condominium-style properties.

  • A Few Home Improvements To Do This Year

    A Few Home Improvements To Do This Year

    As people have been spending so much time at home the last year due to the pandemic, certain things about our properties have been more and more noticeable—especially the things we want to improve. There are certain things you can do to your property which will give it an instant facelift, things that can make your home feel more luxurious, all while helping improve the quality and value of your property. So when the time comes, and you want to look at selling, you will get a lot more for your money on the return. This is another bonus when looking to make home improvements.

    Enhance Your Patio

    People have been spending more time in their own gardens and in their patios which has made us want to make them the best they can be. You can do small things like adding plants, furniture, and different designs to help make them stand out, all while feeling more homely and somewhere you can relax with a good book. Another great addition to your patio would be a patio cover. Things like this will normally require a bit of extra help, so you will want to speak to some home improvement specialists like Northwest Exteriors.

    Go beyond that and turn the entire patio space into an extension of your home. Hire fence builders to make the space more private, add a personalized touch with outside decor such as fairy lights, a water feature, an outside rug or even an outdoor cinema. There are a plethora of ideas that can transform your garden and turn it into a luxurious space to spend more time in.

    Add Tiled Floors In The Entrance

    Carpets and wood flooring are great options for flooring, but for your hallway, as you walk into the house, a new and upcoming trend has tiled floors. You can go for a classic of plain colours or black and white, or you can mix it up a bit and go for something that stands out, like Morrocan style tiles. This can help the entrance to your home stand out and give it a great focal point. 

    The Dining Room Is The Heart Of The Family

    It is so easy to just grab a tray and eat your dinner in front of the TV these days. Some families rarely sit down and converse over food anymore. It is something that is missed and a great thing to have in your family routine. It gives time for the family to bond, discuss their day and create memories to last a lifetime. Coming around the table to catch up and enjoy each other’s company doesn’t have to just be for special occasions. Make your dining room more inviting, have a beautiful and spacious dining table set and an attractive centrepiece like candles or a beautiful bouquet of flowers. You can even get some top-quality artificial ones, so you don’t have to keep replacing them. 

    These few little changes can make such a difference in your home and how you feel while spending time at home and creating memories. That is what life is all about the memories we make. When you are looking to sell a house, you want to show off that so that potential buyers can imagine themselves in your home, creating their own memories and spending time with their family or the future family they want in your family home.