While I am not 104, even on a bad day, I do feel a bit like an explorer in an unfamiliar jungle.  I had written ‘unmapped’, but this new world of blogging and tweeting is not unmapped; it is just, for me, currently mainly unknown.

There are guides along the way – I am finding such an amazing abundance of venues to sit down and absorb the words (oh, the jargon!) and the ideas and experience of others and a similar abundance of people willing to share and spread their knowledge to the unknowledgeable, all for free.  It seems that, the more we all spread the word, the bigger the conversation gets, the better it is for everybody.  I’m like the frog: if you put it in boiling water, it jumps right out, but if you put it in cold water and heat it up slowly, well, you get frog for dinner.  I just hope this technology pot I’m sitting in doesn’t kill me!

All this to launch my new website, one I can play with and change and where I can post a weekly blog on a topic either to do or not to do with real estate (ripening tomatoes are on my mind a lot lately – the lack thereof).  I have asked others to contribute – my favorite lender, my favorite title person – and will post statistics and market trends and the like.

And the point of this blogging for me?  To inform, to entertain, and to prompt you, the reader, to comment and to question.  When we have a real estate question on our minds, you have to know that family and friends will willingly contribute their knowledge.  Why not ask someone who knows a thing or two after 20 years in the biz?  Given a desire to “do” something about our housing, it’s all about the next step – information.

Just thinking about that 20 years.  I’ve sold a few homes recently to young things setting out who want to raise their family there and to older folks who want to be carried out feet first.  It’s the first year I’ve actually been saying to people, you know, when you come to sell this house, I really will be retired!  That actually doesn’t sound too scary; must be getting older.  I just remember: everyone my age is older than I am.

But truth to tell, we live in the middle, don’t we?  We’re neither slobs nor showcases, so the question becomes what can we sellers do, thinking like buyers, to make our product, this widget that’s going on the shelf in the house store with a pretty pink ribbon on it, stand out from the rest?  What can we do (or not do) to have the buyers’ faces light up when they walk in and help them to feel at home?  We want them measuring the far wall for their sectional, don’t we?

As with a lot of things, it’s easier to say what not to do.  It’s easier to say what has people, if not literally then emotionally, turn on their heels and flee.  So let’s have a look at some; some doozies, some easily overlooked.

Work: Buyers don’t want any and they “horribilize” (a word I learnt in my first year of real estate; love it).  Well, if the Sellers didn’t take care of that leaking faucet, what else didn’t they take care of?  If this house has spider nests above the front door, what else is lurking elsewhere?  You get the picture: the Agent’s fiddling with the keybox and the Buyers are “horribilizing”.

Wall/fridge décor: We love our grandchildren, I dearly love my grandson (just 9 months’ old and sooooo cute!), but so do Buyers and, I hate to say this, their Agents.  So, they’re looking at little Dominick and not at the house.  And let’s not even think about the pink tulle hats, moose heads, guns, nudes, Toll paintings.  A Seller coined a lovely word for her ‘disease’ – Flatitis.  If a surface was flat, she wanted to put stuff on it; she willingly desisted for the duration of the sale.

Yards: There was this TV show for tiny tots in the England when I was growing up.  It had 3 characters, Weed and two Flowerpot Men.  Oh, and the Gardener, who was only seen from the knees down.  None of these characters could speak and, in retrospect, it was pretty pathetic, so the message is – no Weeds!  I was a teenager and we were merciless in our criticism.

Enough of this.  It’s that emotional separation from “home” to “house”, where the “house” is a widget we’re selling.  And such a warm, inviting, pretty widget it is too.  As one Seller signed off, “With our hopes up and our toilet seats down”!  Yes, toilet lids do need to be down – are you listening, guys?