CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[ronholm]

[drice1234]

I would just put a carpet allowance into the price. That way the new owners can pick out the carpet that they want

[CRT_Ben]

Hey Phil,

I checked out your website, it looks nice! I have two observations:

1. You need to get acreage up there - 103 X 67 requires effort on the part of a perspective buyer to turn that into acreage, even then, they have to guess on the unit - reasonable people would assume feet, but still.

2. I find the background distracting - I don't really have a useful suggestion for what to change it to, just throwing my opinion out there. Also I don't think you need the business tie-in when advertising the house, people might get confused.

Looks like a classy house, one that I wouldn't mind owning if you transplanted it to Northern Virginia Good luck with the sale.

Ben

[ronholm]

[JustGreg]

Sounds like you don't have any hardwood hiding under your carpet either Phil. ALLLLLL the frigging houses on my block have hardwood under the carpeting...ME??? f*ck no. I lifted one corner of carpeting in every room after buying the house (the owners didn't know if it had hardwood or not as the house was a stepping stone purchase for them and they weren't around when they had the old ripped out and new installed) and nope...no hardwood. Figures.

Hey Phil...you ever think of buying a converted Quanset hut with a walkup apartment inside? I'm not even close to trying to be a smartass BTW. I'm serious. It sounds like it would fit your lifestyle. A regular house really doesn't sound like it's working out well for how active you are with an at home business. Just a thought.
Personally I wouldn't mind doing it myself. Especially up here where it snows so much. No ice dams backing up under the shingles and into the house. No snow to shovel off the roof (I could fix that by getting a gabled house instead of a ranch like I have now) Easy to heat. Hell, you can drive your car right in. I wonder if GovLiq has anything like that. Hmmmm.

I'd love to have the ability to throw it all on the line and depend on a home biz like you. You've got bigger cahones than I do my friend.

If you have alot of equity, find a large carpet installer that has no payment no interest for 2 years. Just before you sell, have new carpet put in and then after the signing pay the installer off with your equity check. I wouldn't put top of the line in tho.
Go with what the pro's say...inexpensive beige carpet with a high end pad so it's spungey (sp?) under their feet. Tactile is another tool in selling a house. It isn't all visual or baking cookies before a showing thing.

Me???...dutch oven pork roast. Bring on the carnivore house buyers!! An HT in the basement and a pork roast in the oven???...MAN PURCHASE!!! The wife won't stand a chance!

Good luck.

Greg

[Phil Smith]

[Phil Smith]

[Phil Smith]

[Phil Smith]

[garyfritz]

Might be tricky to fit a theater into one, though.

[Phil Smith]

Thanks Gary, but I have an irregular shaped lot (wider in the back than the front, as well as deeper on one side than the other), so I'm not sure .15 acres is it's true size. Even if it was, I don't think I'd mention it's acreage. 103 X 67 sounds already small (which it is). .15 acres sounds TINY!

[Phil Smith]

I finally got a good pic of my house. What do you think I should price it?

[drice1234]

Hard to say. A multi-level with lakefront. I would start at 1.2 million

[HaydnG90]

The estate has its own wind powered turbine for generating electricity. Added value here and very green.

[rmcarthur]

[kal]

[kal]

[Ridebreck]

[kal]

I have to mention another pet peeve of mine. My wife and I bought our house and 2000 and spent a lot of time on the MLS.CA (multiple listing services) web site looking at pictures of homes. I've probably looked at pictures litterally 400-500 homes online in the last 7 years.

Not one of the realtors knows how the first thing about photography. Other than a few expensive multi-million dollar homes where they use a pro photographer, none of the pictures do anything right. My parents had a few realtors come in at first and take photos of their house for them. I was disgusted at the results. Right from the stupid $100 point and shoot camera (without wide angle) with flash blowing everything out, to the composition they used.

I redid all the shots for my parents when they sold and interest picked up immediately.

For the fees that real estate people charge, they should spend $1000 on a nice SLR and get a few hours of lessons to understand the difference between ISO, f-stop, and shutter speed. Throw in some lessons on composition and lighting and before you know it, you're not that far off from shooting pictures that look like something out of architectural digest or canada house and home like this:



(The nice furniture helps too but just spending 30 seconds to understand how lighting works does wonders)

Seriously. It's not hard to do. You can do this with a $400 Canon Digital Rebel SLR as long as you KNOW what you're doing and stop using the @#$@&$@ built in flash!

And yes, you can take a shot with a window in it and bright sunlight outdoors. Expose for the inside of the house - don't let the silly point and shoot camera do auto-exposure and expose for the brightest object ( the window ) making the rest of the picture dark. The end result will be a nice shoot with the window nice and white just like you see in the fancy magazines.

I'm sick of seeing bad shots like these: (all taken from MLS by realtors)



My grandma used to take off-center shots like this of her ceiling as well:


This one has so much potential. But the realtor selling this $700K house can't even hold the camera steady let alone notice that the picture's fuzzy and redo it (doesn't really matter though, the composition's boring):


These were just the first random pictures I came across in MLS.CA - I didn't even have to search.

Kal

[kal]

I have to mention another pet peeve of mine. My wife and I bought our house and 2000 and spent a lot of time on the MLS.CA (multiple listing services) web site looking at pictures of homes. I've probably looked at pictures litterally 400-500 homes online in the last 7 years.

Not one of the realtors knows how the first thing about photography. Other than a few expensive multi-million dollar homes where they use a pro photographer, none of the pictures do anything right. My parents had a few realtors come in at first and take photos of their house for them. I was disgusted at the results. Right from the stupid $100 point and shoot camera (without wide angle) with flash blowing everything out, to the composition they used.

I redid all the shots for my parents when they sold and interest picked up immediately.

For the fees that real estate people charge, they should spend $1000 on a nice SLR and get a few hours of lessons to understand the difference between ISO, f-stop, and shutter speed. Throw in some lessons on composition and lighting and before you know it, you're not that far off from shooting pictures that look like something out of architectural digest or canada house and home like this:



(The nice furniture helps too but just spending 30 seconds to understand how lighting works does wonders)

Seriously. It's not hard to do. You can do this with a $400 Canon Digital Rebel SLR as long as you KNOW what you're doing and stop using the @#$@&$@ built in flash!

And yes, you can take a shot with a window in it and bright sunlight outdoors. Expose for the inside of the house - don't let the silly point and shoot camera do auto-exposure and expose for the brightest object ( the window ) making the rest of the picture dark. The end result will be a nice shoot with the window nice and white just like you see in the fancy magazines.

I'm sick of seeing bad shots like these: (all taken from MLS by realtors)



My grandma used to take off-center shots like this of her ceiling as well:


This one has so much potential. But the realtor selling this $700K house can't even hold the camera steady let alone notice that the picture's fuzzy and redo it (doesn't really matter though, the composition's boring):


These were just the first random pictures I came across in MLS.CA - I didn't even have to search.

Kal

[Phil Smith]

I think one of the problems is your typical digital camera zoom doesn't go very wide. I started to take interior pics of my house and my Nikon 995. It was immediately obvious that it wouldn't zoom wide enough. I borrowed a friend's D70 with an 18-70mm zoom, and it's a big improvement.

[kal]

[kal]