Author: Team Logue

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Morning Sarah here. I’m taking my Starbucks with the dear Natalie Robinson of Set The Stage and we’re going to talk about home staging. Nat thanks for joining me here in my kitchen. I appreciate you coming to talk to us about staging, I know there’s some differences between staging and design and you’re truly a stager. I had the pleasure of working with you for almost years and you’ve probably done thousands and thousands of our clients homes.

So lots of people know your face and know your stuff, give us the impression though so many people are nervous when I say we’re gonna stage your house what is the difference of staging versus design? What’s the goal?

Great question, Sarah. I guess the biggest difference is when it’s your home you’re trying to personalize it, it’s your family, you’re proud of your your children and maybe you don’t have some fabulous art that you’ve collected on the trip, but for staging we want to make the space look welcoming for everyone. Everyone’s taste sort of deep personalizing neutralizing the space you don’t want to lose the charm or the feeling of a home because I think a lot of people think, “Oh staging they’re going to make it look cold and you know sparse and and unrealistic” but I feel like there’s a line between making a home look presentable and marketable with not losing that ‘wow’ factor that we try to create.

It’s so true because our clients are always impressed once you leave, they feel like their house is going to be almost naked when you’re done with it because we’ve told them to remove so much. But you do such an incredible job and we hear the feedback from our buyers and sellers that we keep the home feel well presenting attributes of the house and staging is truly about retailing the home it’s no longer your personal home right. So the end goal of staging I always try to present to people is we’re selling your house not your things.

Absolutely. I have sometimes pushback there because they’re like but you know this artist is this much or these chairs I picked and I’m, and I know you know, it’s about making the house look presentable for every one of the highlights of the home, the the features, the upgrades that they’ve spent money on you know? I want them to notice the staircase and the backsplash and the hardwood not you know the knickknacks or the tchotchkes as you like to call them that stuff’s not stained it’s leaving. So we still want to make them fall in love with the idea of the house but not focus things that really don’t add any value to the home.

Perfect so what would you recommend to someone preparing we get a lot of people getting geared up for January/February you know to get ready for the market before you come in? What could I do as a homeowner to prep my house?

Things like neutralizing your space you know fresh linens, fresh towels, if you can provide those things that would be wonderful white shower curtain anything that can fit in your hand that’s a good rule of thumb we say if it’s if it’s fits in your hand we probably aren’t going to keep it. Our biggest thing is we focus on photography and and how that is going to look in you know five second MLS video. The camera sometimes will highlight the small things or the bold colors rather than showing off you know your beautiful cabinetry or your hardwood all those things that we want to highlight. Having something small or bold red in the corner it’s going to take that away from from the overall shot. It’s so true we have buyers that will be searching realtor.com seamlessly there, “I want to see the purple house”.

Right, I think oh wow if they just painted that purple wall you know to a great new tone of gray just we’ve been growing it it wouldn’t be memorable as the purple. Absolutely. Deep personalizing is huge. I mean if you can take a few minutes and you know pack up and the thing is you’re moving so the more you do ahead of time I feel like the homeowner, yes it’s a lot of work up front, but they are very pleased at the end because like wow I’m actually like pretty much packed up ready to go and better than you the homeowner packs their things I know I don’t want to take a risk of breaking somebody’s precious things. Right now I’m great grandmothers were exactly, the other thing is when when you have family photos in the home yes they’re beautiful for the family because it’s your space, but the homeowner you know they’re gonna be stopping people join do I know that person? Do my kids go to preschool? So you know just trying to make the place more neutral and welcoming for everyone.

Yeah so I guess the bottom line is you’ve got to remember when you’re selling your home you’re not selling exactly to your imprint you’re selling to a huge group of nationalities, age groups, different people to see your house in a different light. So staging truly works we know 78% of homes that are staged sell faster according to National Association Realtors and I think it’s worth it to present your house in the best light. Absolutely.

So before you step out the door and put a for sale sign on your house, contact Natalie or contact us, we can put you into contact with Natalie and get your house off on the right page. Right neat, clean, neutral clean. That’s a great point clean is if you didn’t do anything that I’m asking you know if they can’t do the fresh linens you can’t do the towels, please just, yeah clean is number one probably and keeping it smelling fresh but not perfumed or personal is a great tip as well people definitely appreciate a clean home.

So to get started, if you need tips on prepping your home for sale you’ve done a great handout for our clients we’re happy to share it with anyone who needs it and thanks so much. Great to see you Sarah. Thank you.

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Is it time to invest? You want to jump into the real estate market, have you been sitting on some equity that you need to maybe move around? We have a great option for you as becoming a real estate investor. I have a special guest speaker with me today that’s gonna take us through some of the pitfalls and highs of investing in real estate. For all the details check us out at teamlogue.ca.

Hi name’s Miles Kulik mortgage broker with The Mortgage Group servicing over 2,500 clients over the last number of years and we’re looking forward to helping those investment clients that are available today. Morning Sarah here. I’m having my morning Starbucks with Myles a fabulous financial advisor a mortgage broker and we’re here to talk a little bit about investing. We have a lot of questions from our clients about how they can buy a rental property or an investment property there’s a lot of changes in our mortgage rules these days and a lot of variables that we’re facing with in the financial world of Ontario and buying and investing in real estate. So I’ve asked Miles to give us sort of some of the fear factors and some of the jump off points that people should consider before jumping in and just making that purchase.

As Sarah said there is that basically get your ducks in order it’s kind of there we’ve talked about that for a long time now but as rules have changed and the markets change it’s never been as important and we always say meet with someone financial advisor, mortgage broker to sit down and go over where do I stand today and build a plan you know we always call, I call it the roadmap to success you know when you’re building going on a trip you want to have your roadmap upfront and that’s the the key ingredient to success in the investment marketplace today. Sit down early and go over the math in front of you and making sure that you’re building that budget or business you know for success in the future.

So we have clients always say to us, “Sarah we own this property we have this much equity in this property can we easily take the equity out and buy say townhomes say condo like fabulous condo?” like this where we’re getting people to buy a new build can they easily take that equity out to buy the next property? You’re giving the equity other property is available to them there’s multiple ways to do it and it is easy there are ways to do it the nice opportunities are really people look at what they call lines of credits and basically what happens is that they have equity in the home they’re allowed to leverage up to 80% of that property towards a line of credit sometimes they take a mortgage sometimes it’s purely interest only it’s really how they want to organize that get out of that property.

Ok so what are some of the immediate changes that have affected people to getting that liquidity maybe as fast as we used to be able to get the equity. So as everything as the pendulum swings in different directions and definitely swung in one direction to make it a bit more difficult from the qualification perspective what’s happening now is we’re now seeing lenders change the criteria of how they calculate the debt and previously it was balance only. Right now they’re looking at limits and so that does come into play when we’re calculating what they call the total debt service which is basically all your debts combined.

“How much do I qualify for?” What we want to look at is you know what is the limit right how is that affecting us but the key ingredient to that though also is looking at the entire market who’s offering what to me? Where do I qualify for a certain percentage with different institution and making sure you’re looking at market read versus what institutions written and I think just to clarify that for people you should be shopping lenders and that’s why we always refer people to you. Yes all those lenders are really determined who’s offering the best package for what you’re trying to accomplish.

Yeah most definitely and again at one point I’m vanilla ice cream was you know is everywhere it was all over the place now we’re looking at we call it Neapolitan you know what I mean and I like to relate everything to food I love food so you know looking at it is that everyone’s offering a bit different and I really want what is the best for you and that’s the opportunity that you should.

Well we really appreciate the help that you provide our clients and guiding them and I think if anyone’s investing in real estate they should obviously hire professional mortgage broker to shop the best positioning for them.

With regards to do you have put more cash down, less cash down, what did your rental ratio and then obviously hire a professional agent right? Most definitely. Most definitely. We were talking with that just a little bit ago you know? Go to someone who actually is in the game, you know someone who invests in real estate, someone who’s invested in real estate in the past you know? They have the experience, not just the open the book and what is it gonna tell me is someone who’s actually felt maybe a little bit of pain to you know?

Yeah most definitely.

I think that real life experience has so much more value than just looking at what would it tell me in the book here. Absolutely we’re constantly trying to position our clients again great equity climb where they’re buying fabulous renters but to understand that it is it’s a long-term gain. Yes most definitely and you know and the point that you made a great point without even maybe the Americans but someone who that says, hey I can find the property I’ll put you in the right path with a very financial people I can help you look to lease to the right people give you the pitfalls of a renter you know what to look for what not to look for in a renter. That’s a full package and that’s that’s more so than just finding a home and then walking away from the product right. It’s a great time to be invested it’s more balanced is easier to buy a product right so we encourage our clients to get out there and start looking.

Never a better time than when the market is maybe a balanced situation versus I’m rushing into something, maybe the price is a little bit more than what the cash flow can get. A balanced market to me would say now I can find the right rental income to offset that debt. I have on a balanced market. Alright so it makes a lot of sense at this point we definitely have more properties available and more renters available so it’s time to be an investor. Most definitely.

Thank you so much your help today, I appreciate it. You’re welcome. Thank you.

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Sarah here. We’re going to take a morning Starbucks with Darren Sanger-Smith at Structured Creations a fabulous designer taking an uplift to many old homes. He puts on beautiful faces to homes within the city providing character within character subdivisions. If you’re looking for your next project or how to renovate  your home Darren has great ideas.

I am Darren Singer Smith owner of Structured Creations for a residential design firm, boutique residential design firm and in business for just over 15 years. Thanks for having us in, very cool office right downtown, very your style I love all the accent pieces  we’re very fortunate that so many of our clients have had the pleasure of using  your design services and the incredible things that you make some of these scary houses turn into. Our clients are always impressed at what you come up with,  we really appreciate it.

So give me an idea of some of the problems or some of the neat projects that come into your hands and what you do for our clients  and for you know, other people looking for great design ideas.

One of the things we find is that renovations  up make them bigger they become very costly  because you almost turn the whole house apart right so sometimes it’s  better just to take it right down to the deck. So the big confusion of trying to  get clients to understand cost benefits, right piecing a puzzle back together or just taking apart, building brand-new. So that’s one big puzzle and then the next big step is teaching and educating clients on the level of design and detail that we can get into. Some of the details outstanding.

I  mean I personally love the detail you added to our house and I wouldn’t let  you tear it down. I love the style. So I’m one of those clients but the detail you added really facelifted it basically into this era and it looks incredible, but it didn’t stretch so far to take it out of the design in the  neighborhood. So I love that you look at the surrounding and don’t obviously put  in something doesn’t fit within the community and that’s that’s really important too.

So you know part of that decision on taking ours down and upgrading it is what the environment is, I mean is it sensitive to all those houses around you right? You know it’s not necessary to build the monster home and a house in a neighborhood that’s filled with  beautiful little bungalows so there’s a balance but it is comes down to budgeting. Housing that doesn’t design and budget together – and that’s  why we always recommend that people meet with our professional services to make sure that the budget works that they don’t make a number of mistakes that are gonna be costly and at the end, results are satisfying and that’s the biggest thing with the services that we try and provide.

The level of drawings is the key right? Right. If you’ve got a really really thorough detailed instruction  manual you’re gonna get a very very thorough detailed construction. Perfect. So that’s that’s the key to it so if someone’s looking to find a certain  neighborhood that they must be in and they want a certain house style that they must have this is a good starting point. Correct. Absolutely. Okay great. I appreciate the information. Look forward to our next project!

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Morning, Sarah here. I’m at Colour Land, Benjamin Moore where Peter the owner is offering 20% off to our clients using the keywords, ‘Team Logue’. The best thing to come to this store for is, Peter, his great expert advice on how colours work for flooring, cabinetry and more. Hello, I’m Peter from Colour Land Paint a family owned business for 18 years. Good morning, Sarah here with our morning Starbucks, I’m joined by Peter at ColourLand. Thank you for having us in. You’re welcome, Sarah.

I really appreciate it, we’ve got a ton of questions every time Benjamin Moore launches the colour of the year. All our client’s call and say, “Sarah should we go with the colour of the year?” I’m really true especially that we have you guys so entrenched in our community that people come in and get the expertise advice that you offer, I know our clients love coming in and learning, what the best colour is that’s going to match for their space in their home. And you do a great job coaching people on that front. We know what colour of the year is, Metropolitan. Very cool colour, it’s challenges as you said to me is that it’s a gray.

It is a gray and in these days there are grays that have a predominant tones and there are, I think what people are looking for these days are grays that look neutral with their fixed elements. The worst thing that you can do is just put the colour of the year on the wall without even checking it with your fixed elements because you’ll be surprised at the end of the day especially with if you have a lot of natural sunlight it’ll look blue’y or green’y. When you say fixed elements you mean hard-ways, cabintery, back splashes, items that when you sell the house, they’re not going to leave the house.

So if a client’s trying to get a neutral colour or trying to switch to that gray, what would you recommend they do? First step would be to come in to a local store like mine with pictures but better yet would be with the actual flooring or cabinet or something that shows us the true blender tones and whatever the fixed elements are. Pictures don’t really do justice because colours don’t really get transpired in true life with pictures. You sound like a colour expert. So you have a sample here of the colour and you have a number of grays that you recommend to clients. I can see what you’re trying to do here can you just give us a rundown when you talk about those colurs against the hardwood with the colour of the year versus maybe a warmer gray? Grays are a challenge. They are.

Here at ColourLand I developed a colour system of 800 colours or custom colours called graymoned colour collection. Just because with Benjamin Moore’s 3000+ colours, they didn’t have the grays people were looking for. I used my formulation techniques to create some neutral grays that work very well with today’s fixed elements in flooring. And grouped them into colour categories. In the past everyone was doing beige and everyone had traditional woods for all their trim and railings. But now the trends are everythings going more gray. You got your neutral grays, your warm grays, your ‘grayiege’, which are a combination of gray and beige and beige which is really not so popular anymore.

When it comes to picking which colour category to get into its very dependent on your fixed elements. If your flooring is very dark and subdued then you can get away with the warm grays and neutral grays, but if you do have a warm tone floor that’s when the graiege’s are very popular because you don’t want an overwhelming amount of gray in your paint because it’s going to end up looking blue.

If you’re thinking of colour of the year before you paint this colour you’re recommendation, bring in some floors, bring in some cabinetry and lets match some of your gray collection and see what works best. We know the overall return on investment can be as a high as 100% on paint. So get some good coaching before you paint your new gray. Thank you so much, Peter.

Join Sarah Logue for a Starbucks with Amy Thompson from City Mortgage Group as they discuss the impact of the recent rate increase and how it will effect your variable mortgage rate. Learn how to best prepare and maximize your buying power by getting your pre-approval in place. Amy was awarded first place in the 2018 Reader’s Choice Awards Best Mortgage Agent. Congrats Amy Thompson! Thank you for helping Team Logue clients with all their mortgage needs.

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I’m joined with Amy Thompson from City Mortgage Group. We’re so excited to look at how this new rates going to impact our buyers and sellers.

I’m Amy Thompson from Citi mortgage group and if you’re in the market for buying a home it’s good to know all your options and where your financial comfort lie. Amy thanks for joining me at Starbucks. Thank you for having me.

So yesterday I’m reading an email from you and I’m like “Shoot! What is going to happen with this new rate increase?” I know we’ve been, you know preparing for it all year and our buyers we’ve been coaching them to talk to you, make sure their pre-approval is in place. But I think it sends out more of a panic when I start talking to clients yesterday about it and we actually have in front of us. So let me understand what is 1.75 percent BOC Bank of Canada mean what does this increase mean for us? So some people don’t realize that the Bank of Canada rate is actually their prime rate. Right. So this being said prime has now increased from 3.7 to 3.95. Okay doesn’t sound so painful that way. No it doesn’t sound so painful but this affects buying power. So people who are looking to purchase with a variable mortgage, some products now qualify at this higher rate where we’ve been safe with a benchmark but now this new rate change effects that qualifying part where on some variable mortgages.

Okay now the big question I may not ask regularly and as agents I get asked this, “Do I stick with the fixed? Or do I go with the variable?” Because now there’s almost a full point spread there right? Well I like to say there’s two kinds of people out there. There’s someone who can sleep at night knowing that tomorrow their mortgage rate may change and there’s people and there’s people who need to sleep at night knowing their mortgage payment will not change. There is a premium on a fixed mortgage but with this rate increasing you need to know your affordability on how many increases you can afford before it makes sense to secure in a fixed rate. That’s sort of in alignment with the stress test though right? So if you’re gonna do a variable rate you’re already of qualifying under a stress test rate you have to know where you can max out. So that’s not too different. So give it to me in plain numbers I have four hundred thousand dollar mortgage, what does that mean? With this new increase it’s just shy of thirteen dollars for every hundred thousand dollars in your mortgage. Meaning that if you have a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage this rate increases probably up to your monthly payment by about fifty dollars. Okay so weekly I have to cut out two lattes a week. Exactly. That could be challenging but thirteen dollars truly isn’t that painful to protect our industry overall.

Alright so best advice though and we’re constantly preaching your name and congrats on your readers choice that is so amazing! You’ve been wonderful in helping our clients get your pre-approval. Your pre-approval lasts for 120 days. So those pre-approved before this rate change have locked into their rate for a hundred and twenty days from that pre-approval date. But with rates on the rise and they’re continuing to rise get your pre-approval in now so that we can lock in a rate for you for one hundred and twenty days so that you when you’re out there looking for the perfect home you have it in your back pocket. And I think you always make a good point our banks are amazing to work with but you’re a great option for someone just looking for that mortgage piece and looking for another piece of advice they can shop a mortgage rate for them. Well there’s so many different products out there banks typically fit one perfect product where there’s a lot of business owners, new business owners people that don’t typically fit that perfect box that we have a home for.

Alright we will make sure our buyers contact you before they get the financing done on their next purchase. Thank you! Appreciate it thank you for joining us today. If you have any further questions on how the new rate increase is going to affect you please feel free to reach out to us and check us out at teamlogue.ca

Find Sarah Logue from RE/MAX Escarpment Team Logue Realty at any Starbucks and join her for a chat over coffee. If you have a question on the market, interest rates, need reno advice, what the hottest colour is to paint your house or any inquiries on a neighbourhood or community event, Sarah is happy to answer all your questions. Always happy to share a coffee with you!