Archive for April, 2011

How to Hold an Online Garage Sale

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

With Spring’s arrival, you may be thinking about emptying closets and ridding yourself of unwanted items. And if you’re thinking about moving, one important step is to get rid of clutter that may have accumulated around your home.

Organizing a traditional garage sale can be a hassle when you have to gather all your unwanted items, tag inventory, post neighborhood signs and online ads, and then spend your weekend haggling prices. If you don’t have that much time, consider holding your garage sale online.

Swap boards, donation directories and even online auction sites make it easy to do. Craigslist, Kijiji, and eBay are the best known of these sites, but there are many to choose from. What’s more, eBay once estimated that the average household has $2,000 worth of unused goods waiting to be sold. You may already be thinking of a few items that should find a new home casino online before you do.

Here’s how to hold a successful online garage sale:

Plan—or Not – The beauty of an online garage sale is that you don’t need to gather all your unwanted belongings at once. Instead you can post them online as soon as you decide to get rid of them.

Price It Right – Search online to learn prices of comparable items. Remember: if you don’t want to lug that item to your next home, it may be worth selling at any price. But if you’re still attached to it, you can set the price a little higher.

Show and Tell – Multiple photos are important—they draw attention to your item over similar ones. Also use them to answer anticipated questions. If you’re selling a piece of furniture, for example, include close-ups of unique details, dings and the upholstery pattern. Also provide detailed written descriptions.

Deliver the Goods – If you’re selling locally and have a vehicle big enough to hold your item, offer to deliver for a small fee. If you’re auctioning the item, you can add a flat shipping fee to the price, or allow buyers to compute and pay for shipping costs.

By getting rid of unwanted items through an online garage sale, you’ll have fewer items to pack when you decide to make a move.

Please contact us any time if you have any questions.

March 2011, Calgary Real Estate Statistics

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

Another Strong month in the Calgary Real Estate Market.  To help you keep up to date with the Market we have posted some highlights from the Calgary Real Estate Boards March monthly Statistics package for Realors.  It is our belief that Real estate is driven by supply and demand so the areas we focus on include the inventory of listings, our sales and of course median sales prices.  

Calgary Listing Inventory:  As shown below our inventory in Calgary Metro increased by 683 listings this month.   This is very typical to see listings rise as spring arrives.  

Inventory  Feb 2011 March 2011 Change
Single Family Home 3504 4024 +520
Condo’s 1750 1913 +163
Total 5254 5937 +683

Calgary Sales: 

Calgary sales continue to trend upwards with single family home sales increasing by 15.9% over February and Condo sales increasing by 24.1%  over February.  Sales always tend to increase with the arrival of spring.  It is unknown at this point how much the changing mortgage rules have impacted sales but the feeling that I have is not very much which means sales could continue to be very strong in the upcoming months.   

Sales Feb 2011 March 2011 Change
Single Family Home 1169 1355 +186
Condo’s 468 581 +113
Total 1637 1936 +299

 Calgary Real Estate Sales Prices :    Prices for  Single Family homes remained constant this month while condo prices dropped by $11,000 which is almost exactly what we gained in February.    

Sales Prices Feb   Median Price March Med Price Change
Single Family Homes $400,000 $400,000 0
Condo’s $267,000 $256,000 -$11,000

 If you have any questions about this summary or about  Real Estate in general please feel free to contact us anytime.  

Gord Piper and Brent Wilcox

Century 21, The Professionals