Valentine's Kiss and Other Hues

When I grow up I want to be the person who names paint colors.

Did you ever wonder whose fertile imagination came up with shades like Volcanic Blast or Fiddle Leaf? And what was going through the mind of the men or women who coined American Anthem, Grandiose and Mythical? Was Soulful Music the outcome of an evening spent with old Billie Holliday LPs?

Real estate agents have been advising sellers to “neutralize” their homes for years. In many parts of the country, this still means painting your walls Builder Beige or Winter Snow, but in the DC market where beige equals boring, the infusion of color in a room can be a critical aspect of preparing a home for sale.

DC is a city of transients, where many people accept their government and corporate transfers and move on to their next location before their home is sold. My out-of-town buyers are always surprised to find that so many of the homes we tour are vacant.

While homeowners tend to paint their walls to complement their furnishings, once those items are removed the home can look disjointed. A prospective buyer may never know how fashionable the original room looked and will focus only on a color that no longer makes sense in an empty setting and may even appear garish on its own.

Fresh paint gives a buyer the impression that a home is clean and well cared for, but beige and white are frequently considered passé. Decorators and television hosts now insist that our homes be painted in “sophisticated neutrals” with names like Moleskin and Wheat Germ. Stealth Jet is the new Black.

Imagine you have been asked by your agent to repaint the living room in a nice, neutral color. What the heck is a neutral, you ask? Aren’t the Victorian and Hunt Club palettes more “sophisticated?” Must I now avoid the Bold Sangria that promotes a healthy appetite in the dining room or eschew the calming effects of Fresh Guacamole in the kitchen? What a conundrum!

You go to the local home improvement or paint store and are immediately engulfed by a dizzying array of colors, shades, tints and manufacturers. Overwhelmed and frustrated, you buy a couple of tester-sized bottles that line the counter and spend the rest of the afternoon painting nail polish-like stripes on the living room wall, babbling softly to yourself.

Need help? Well, let me suggest a few color combinations I have used that have received positive reviews from sellers, buyers and stagers.

An Earth tone like Glidden’s Whispering Wheat is very popular. Deeper and warmer than beige, it serves as a calming color for hallways and bedrooms. Pair it with Warm Caramel, a slightly darker shade, in the living room for a striking contrast. Are your kitchen cabinets white? Then take the walls a step darker with Gentle Fawn and watch your cabinets pop.

For a slightly cooler tone, try Duron’s Simplify Beige in darker rooms, graduating to Sand Dune in lighter rooms, then to Trusty Tan in the brightest or largest room.

Want something dramatic to set off that red sofa and those stainless steel light fixtures? Take a look at McCormick’s Ice Age (light), Platinum Plate (medium) and Cast in Stone (darker). These are also great colors to offset an exposed brick wall for an industrial look.

Keep things simple by painting ceilings and trim white. Use semi-gloss paint on trim, satin or eggshell on kitchen and bathroom walls and flat paint everywhere else for a professional look.

Remember that green tones will make you look jaundiced in the bathroom mirror and that decorative paint treatments such as Venetian plaster, marbleizing and rag rolling are best left for your new home.

Need more suggestions? Talk to your agent, decorator, or home stager.

In the meantime, I’ll be in my Heirloom Lace boudoir, lying on a Bed of Roses wearing my Relaxed Khaki slacks and Best Bronze sweater, drinking Iced Champagne and eating Chocolate Truffle candies while Ambitious Amber paints my house.

It’s Showtime: Setting the Stage for Successful Selling

If you missed my article in the June 25th edition of The Washington Blade, read on.

Did that fabulous job in Manhattan finally come through? Is there a penthouse condo is SoBe calling your name? Perhaps you’ve fallen in love and you’re tired of the morning walk-of-shame from his place to yours. Whatever the reason, you’ve decided to sell your home.

It used to be that real estate was all about “location, location, location.” While a great location can still cause buyers to compromise on a less than stellar house, the mantra du jour is actually “location, condition and price.”

Since we cannot change the home’s location, real estate agents must rely even more on its condition and its price to achieve a successful sale. This article will address some ways to improve your home’s condition so that buyers are more likely to identify it as “The One.”

In nearly 13 years of selling real estate, I have had the pleasure of listing a dozen or so houses and condos where I didn’t need to change a thing. Most homes have needed at least some minor tweaking. Some have been candidates for Niecy Nash’s Messiest Home in the Country. And yes, a few others have been straight out of A&E TV’s Hoarders.

Often the most difficult thing for homeowners to do is to begin to think of the house they have poured blood, sweat, tears and money into as a product that will be sold to others. Like many of my colleagues, I help my sellers de-clutter, de-personalize and survive this transition so that a buyer who expects the look of a model home will not be disappointed. While you won’t find me vacuuming in my lingerie à la Annette Benning, I generally end up flexing my creative side by staging or even sometimes renovating each home I sell.

The National Association of REALTORS® has long suggested that staged homes sell more quickly and for higher prices than similar, unstaged homes. My experience has certainly shown that to be true. I have also found that staging an occupied home needn’t cost a fortune.

Here are 10 low-cost staging tips to keep in mind when living in your home while it’s on the market.
• Listen to your agent’s advice – candor is not meant to be mean-spirited.
• Pack and store non-essentials off-site; sell or donate what you no longer want.
• Experiment with new furniture arrangements to make spaces seem open and inviting.
• Use smaller area rugs to show off more of your hardwood floors.
• Refresh your paint; choose colors that tone down or rev up a room.
• Keep items on horizontal surfaces to a minimum; staging vignettes generally use no more than three items of varying heights.
• Invest in light bulbs and replace burned out bulbs immediately.
• Leave your blinds up and your toilet seats down.
• Repair or remove anything that stinks, clinks, squeaks, or leaks.
• Clean! Clean! Clean! Do it yourself or hire a service. Or call Annette Benning.

But what about a vacant house? Although some buyers see vacant space as an opportunity to turn what is into what could be, most people have a difficult time imagining how they will live in a home that is totally unfurnished. Professional staging helps your home outshine the competition by accentuating its best features. Think of it as dressing your home for a date or a job interview.

• Start with clean skin: a spotless home.
• Apply foundation: otherwise known in the trades as paint.
• Put on your favorite outfit: a great sofa, an elegant dining set, an antique desk.
• Add accessories: rugs, throw pillows, linens, art.
• Finish with a bit of bling: dishes on the table, crystal at the bar and light streaming through the windows.

With your efforts, the assistance of your agent and the talents of a professional stager, a successful sale will surely be imminent. To paraphrase Norma Desmond, “it’s just us, the virtual tour, and these wonderful people here at the open house.”

Is your house ready for its close-up? Mr. DeMille awaits.

The Renovation Dissertation, Part 6

Our group continues to expand and become even more international. Tony, Luke’s brother and our master carpenter, returned from Miami this week to be on hand to supervise the framing, cabinet and millwork installation, and to give me a hug since I hadn’t seen him for about five years. Freshly back from the Sunshine State, he noticed it had started to rain and then, in mid-conversation, ran out to his new car to find he had left his sunroof open – soggy seats and a wet ride home for poor Tony, I expect.

Mack’s crew of electricians came as a surprise – they’re from the Ukraine! One of them reminds me of the bad-guy-from-another-planet, Talec, played by German-born actor Matthias Hues in the 1990 Dolph Lundgren movie, I Come in Peace, albeit with more hair and less muscle. (Hey, I never claimed to be a highbrow film enthusiast!)

Tomorrow we order the kitchen cabinets, a beautiful tight-grained Alder in a flat panel, frameless design with a warm brown, Chestnut finish. Yum! The open den on the second floor will contain a built-in office credenza and bookshelves in a similar style with a finish called Rouge, slightly redder than the Chestnut as you might imagine, but very elegant. To top it off, the cabinets in the master suite “refreshment center” (see photo) will echo those in the den, and that area will be outfitted with a bar sink, a small refrigerator and a mini-microwave for popcorn, sodas and a movie in bed or that first cup of coffee in the morning. (Sounds like a real estate ad, doesn’t it?)

Karen and I had great fun at the condo board meeting last Thursday. Everyone welcomed us warmly and we got to meet several neighbors. We learned that the condo is incredibly well-sustained and has reserves of $94,000 – not bad for a group of only 53 homes! We also got a parking pass and chatted with John D., the appointed “enforcer” of parking and monitor of work done by the condo’s subcontractors. Good man to know. With any luck, we’ll not encounter him in his official position.

So far, we are on target for plumbing and electrical inspections by the middle of the coming week. I am headed over today with four new bathroom fans to be roughed in before inspection and on Tuesday, I will be meeting with a representative from a company that fabricates cable railings to price out our contemporary staircase rails and posts. What a treat! Then I can post a posting about posts. Whaddyathink?

The Renovation Dissertation, Part 4

Yeah, OK. I know that by now those of you who have been following along are thinking, “So what happened? Why haven’t we heard anything more since they bought the property?”

Well, I gotta tell you that even agents and lenders are not immune to our own bureaucracy.

Unlike the folks on Flip That House, our contractors are chomping at the bit to begin, our permit applications are in process, our suppliers are tapping their feet waiting to ship our cabinets and fixtures, and our own creative juices are flowing like a burst pipe in an unwinterized, bank-owned property.

The problem? An obscure change in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac procedures that require that the direct lender (the bank to whom our loan will be sold) review condominium documents!

Now, I ask those of you who own condominiums (condominia?) – How much time did you really spend reading those documents? Sure, I know I told you to go over them, to make sure the reserves were sufficient, that you really could keep your 200 pound Chihuahua and that you were allowed to play your Barry Manilow CDs on full volume after midnight, but did you really go through all 300 pages? Never fear! Now your mortgage bank will do it for you.

But here’s the catch…

They have to keep from losing the documents when you send them.

First, let me applaud all the listing agents, loan processors and property managers out there who do everything possible to keep the process moving along by assembling, obtaining and transmitting these valuable documents. Most of the time, this procedure is routine. The documents are simply another set of checks and balances to raise the buyer’s comfort level with the purchase (or make him run screaming from fee increases and special assessments).

Even the bank reviewers need our sympathy. They are now buried in a ton of paper, trying to sift through ground leases and insurance forms and the impact of commercial storefronts on the ground floor of high-rise buildings. Reading War and Peace would be easier (and probably faster). They ask for only 3-5 days to accomplish this task.

In our case, we are simply asking 3-5 days from when? We got our documents a bit late due to an emergency situation that is totally understandable, but well within the timelines for closing. In this case, they were not contained in a three-ring binder, on a CD-ROM, or simply stapled together, but were bound in hard cover. Try to stick that in a copier! Page by page later, by the next business day after we received them, we had a viable copy which we gave to our processor to transmit to the bank.

Our processor scanned and e-mailed them. The bank lost them. She faxed them. They lost them. She e-mailed and faxed them again. Feeling comfortable, she took a couple of days off. Guess what? They lost them! I think our 3-5 days started about four days after she first sent them, but boy was it fun to read her e-mails to the bank once she returned to work. She was not happy and was pretty direct about letting them know it.

In the days of Bonnie & Clyde, people were taken hostage in banks. Now the banks take people hostage outside their homes. Instead of settling on Friday, Karen and I had a great lunch in Bethesda at Mon Ami Gabi, where the pommes frites are simply amazing and our waiter, Omar (a fellow Boomer), kept us in stitches with childhood references to 1960’s television commercials.

My cup is always half full. Now we will get to do it again on Monday (or maybe Tuesday if the condo reviewer isn’t old enough to have taken an Evelyn Wood speed reading course). Omar awaits.

The Renovation Dissertation, Part 3

When was the last time you Googled “contemporary toilets?” If the answer is never, then take a moment and do it now; you will find about 439,000 hits. During the past three weeks, I swear I have looked at them all.

I began my quest for the perfect toilet to go with the perfect contemporary vanity cabinet (another 168,000 hits) naively thinking, “So what will a toilet cost – maybe $500?” Well, think again. Sure, you can go to the orange box store or the blue box store and get one for about $100, but will it have a real chrome handle? Will it look “high end?” Will a potential buyer look at it and say, “Wow! Where did they find that?” Will anyone even care?

Now, I had in mind something that was ecologically sound such as a dual flush model. (For the uninitiated, that does not mean two people can flush at the same time, but that you have independent settings for when you need an easy flush or a tough flush – you’ll forgive me if I hesitate to explain further.)

I also wanted something that was streamlined, stylish, ergonomically designed and easy to clean. And not stainless steel, please. I spent too many years in law enforcement to be able to think of a stainless steel toilet as chic.

I cast aside the models with little painted flowers and Victorian pulley systems. I sped right through the photos of standard, two-piece toilets and went straight for the one-piece models. I looked at round ones, elongated ones, pillbox ones and even square ones (!). I studied toilets both foreign and domestic: Japanese, Italian, English, Czechoslovakian and the good old American brands we all know and love. But when the prices shot up over $4000, I sat down on my own Kohler Rialto and put my head between my knees. A toilet for the price of a granite countertop? Oh puleeease!

So for the moment, I have put the toilet search aside and have moved on to faucets. In the end, however, (pardon the pun) the toilet selection will probably be based on comfort and cost. The coveted Creative Commode Award may have to wait for another project.

The Renovation Dissertation, Part 1

My friend Karen and I still have so much faith in the real estate marketplace that we have recently embarked on a project to bring a 1970’s townhouse-style condo kicking and screaming into the new millennium. I have the real estate knowledge and a handle on what sells in this market, as well as experience in renovating properties all over the country. Karen, a senior mortgage lender with a local firm (klucey@masondixon.com), is both financial and design consultant on the project. We’re gonna have some fun!

Our “flip,” as they say on TLC, is a 4-level building that currently has 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, an outdated kitchen, plain Jane baths, carpet everywhere, an unfinished basement, more than 1500 square feet of finished space, a great location, central air conditioning, huge closets, a fenced yard and gated parking. I hope you will understand that until we close on the deal, I must keep the address to myself.

I am an avid watcher of HGTV and TLC, but Flip That House really makes me cringe. I commend those who are lucky enough to stay on deadline, not overextend their budget and sell the property in a reasonable amount of time. For the others, well, I feel their pain. Yet my main concern is that while people get drawn into renovating properties by the promise of large financial gains, TLC merely adds what the people paid for the house to what they spent in renovations and subtracts the total from the final sales price to arrive at the “profit.” This, I believe, does a real disservice to John and Jane out there in Viewerland, who are sitting on the sofa munching Cheetos and thinking this would be fun.

Where are the costs associated with buying the house? Where are the costs of carrying the mortgage, utilities and, in some cases, condo fees? Where are the costs of selling the house? What about the time involved in researching properties, locating and monitoring suppliers and subcontractors, and even doing your own demolition? Isn’t your time worth something? All these costs play a prominent role in figuring profit. And that figure is only a pre-tax profit, so you haven’t really even reached the bottom line until you pay Federal and State tax on the gross profit you received.

So, by using this Blog as a reality series, complete with photos, descriptions and recommendations for the uninitiated renovator, I have several objectives.

1) To let people who are thinking about renovating live vicariously through Karen’s & my experiences,
2) To point out pitfalls and celebrate successes,
3) To provide a more accurate analysis of the time and money involved in this type of work, and of course
4) To let would-be buyers follow our progress and provide input.

Stay tuned as we march from contract ratification through inspection to settlement and beyond. If all goes as planned, the Open House will be in June.