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Potential homebuyers frequently make a list of homes from various internet sites, advertisement listings or through a realtor that they wish to see and then drive by these homes to get a ‘feel’ for the property and the house. Bottom line, if your home looks unappealing from the outside there is a good possibility your home will be crossed off the list of potential purchases.
Decide to spend a weekend fixing up the outside of your home and stick to a plan.
1) Call two or three local landscapers and ask them to come out for a landscape appraisal but most importantly ‘pick their brain’ for ideas of how best to show your home. Explain that you are selling the home and wish only to make the most of the exterior at minimal cost to you. In some cases, you might be surprised, particularly during slow landscaping seasons that you can afford to have a professional lightly landscape your property or at least modify a portion.
For less than $500, an associate of mine had a local gardener come in and plant 12 tropical plants, 8 large flowered bushes, trim the existing trees to shape, pull the weeds, cut out sod to merge two planting beds, plant 20 small flowering bushes and throw down several bags of mulch in 2 afternoons. She also saved a little more money by having him transplant bushes from another part of the property to the front where she planned to create a more dramatic impact. Further, his price included clean-up and removal of gardening debris, which saved her a lot of time after the work was complete. Her soil was very hard to dig into and it would have taken her twice as long to dig one hole as it did for the gardener to dig several; he was familiar with such difficult work and he had all the right tools to do it quickly. My associate only paid him to service the front beds while she saved money by cleaning up the smaller side beds on the side property by doing it herself. (The gardener even let her borrow his expert tools as long as she promised to return them the following day, which she did.)
You might be surprised at the minimal but well-worth price of hiring a professional gardener, particularly if you find a local, one-woman/man operation with low overhead. Someone starting a new business might also be less expensive in trying to build a clientele while my associate in turn offered to advertise the gardener’s services by keeping business cards on hand during real estate visits.
Consider having him/her do a portion of the work and then do the less difficult areas of your home yourself. Even if you do not have a landscaping budget, call a few local gardeners to come out for a quote just to get some great landscaping ideas you can use yourself. Most are willing to spend a few minutes of their time even if you do not use their services. Take their business card anyway and offer to send them a referral. It is all part of doing business. So consider hiring a professional gardener to add curb appeal to a tired property.
2) Stand at the curb of your property and look the land from the perspective of the drive-by potential buyer. Get in the car and drive down your street and look at the way your property compares to your neighbors. If your neighborhood is well-cared for but your property is not; where the trees are overgrown and the weeds are hiding your front door is a clear indication your home will stick out like a ‘sore thumb’ and you may lose the sale. If you live in a neighborhood where your neighbors’ landscaping is ‘so-so’, this is your opportunity to shine. My associate explained that she once lived in a brand new home in an older neighborhood where few people took the time to landscape nicely so anything she did…add a border, plant a few bushes, and place a park bench near the front driveway with container plants, certainly looked amazingly better than the homes around her property. When the time came to sell this home, she took a ride around the block and took the position of the potential buyer. As a drive-by buyer canvassing her own street, my associate noted that the viewer would see blasé curb-appealed homes and then come upon her own, where the flowers were blooming, the green grass was trimmed, the containers were filled with flowers and the inexpensive park bench at the end of the long driveway looked inviting. So plan your landscape to stand out from the rest and if your budget does not allow for the extras, then the next rule of thumb is to just make the property look ‘neat’….
3) Neatness in landscaping is important. If a property looks tidy, the impression you will give to the drive-by buyer is that the inside is neat and well-cared for as well. Even if you are not a neat person, make an effort to neaten up the exterior. Find someone who has a ‘neat’ eye and ask for their opinion.
Trim the grass and if you have spotted, brown grass, invest in a bag of grass seed and water frequently to encourage growth. Baby-sit the seeds and if necessary, place a barrier around the area to keep children and pets from stomping on them. Cover new grass-seeded areas with hay or grass clippings to prevent blowing away, from birds eating the seeds and to keep moisture in. Water newly seeded areas daily.
If you have time before you place your home up for sale, fertilize your lawn…it can make a huge difference in how healthy and green the lawn shows from the street. If you do not have grass, then create areas with grass. Consider removing areas covered in stone or weeds and planting with either seeds or sod. It is a big project if you have little or no front lawn so elicit help from friends and neighbors if needed. Having some kind of greenery in the form of grass makes a huge difference to a buyer. Grass is a great canvas to making other areas of your property stand out and grass appeals to many who grew up with front lawns or always wished they had one. If you live in areas where it is impossible to grow grass, adding stone is another possibility however, be sure that stone works in that area of the country in which you are selling. Stone lawns usually fit in better in coastal properties where sand is the foundation and the cost of carting in topsoil is enormous. I often feel that all-stone frontage looks out of place in neighborhoods where lawns are more prevalent and gives the impression the homeowner really cannot be bothered to maintain a lawn. I feel that stone is not a warm product if used in large areas and should be contained in smaller garden beds if possible.
4) Once you have the grass, fix up the existing beds. (If you do not have any beds in your property, this would be an entirely different article. This article deals with homes, which have garden beds already in place that need sprucing up.)
Garden beds help soften the hard lines of sidewalks, walkways, and the rigid angle of homes. Once you have weeded these beds, ask yourself, “Does the design of the current beds allow them to be connected in some way across the front of the home? Do my beds flow?” The reason that I bring this question forward in a Curb Appeal article is that my associate explained to me that she used to have to separate garden beds in front of her home; one ran right across the front left-side of the home and the other ran down the side of the driveway. Both beds were disconnected from each other separated by a walkway. This separated design made the frontage look severed and harsh. So she cut out the sod from the bed in front of the house, around the walkway and made a connection to the bed nearest the driveway. It looked like one continuous snake-like bed and once planted with similar foliage the entire property looked really ‘pulled together’. In doing this she accomplished two things: 1) Softening the hard angles of the walkway, which did not have a garden bed in front of it and, 2) the property had the look of what my colleague refers to as ‘fluid design’. The eye now followed a soft flow from one end of the house where the bed began to the end of the driveway where the bed ended. And…there was a small surprise at the end of that bed too, which made the design interesting and appealing.
At the end of the driveway, which is ordinarily dull space, the garden bed ended in a circular shape and she planted just a few extra eye-catching flowers there; just a nice little touch and the colors were appealing. The path up the driveway, followed around the walkway toward the entrance of the home was entirely landscaped and pulled together with like-flowers and shrubs. Not a whole lot, but it was consistent and it was neat.
5) Another lawn tip from my associate…she did not have time for grass to grow in some ugly, brown and bare spots on her front lawn and in some cases, the grass just never grew back at all. She cut around the bad areas and made a teardrop-shaped cut out on that spot and filled it in with a few container plants she had growing in the yard. My colleague arranged the containers on 3 different levels…small, medium and large and then filled around the containers with mulch to even things out. The arrangement looked very nice. One of her empty containers (she often picks them up in the dollar store or finds disposed of in construction sites), she cut in half and placed it cut-side down on the bare spot on the lawn in front of the 3 flower-filled containers. She filled the cut container with soil and threw in a handful herb seeds, namely dill and in about 2 weeks; the container flowed with pretty green herbs and ‘spilled out’ the container onto the ground covering the area cut out from the lawn. It made a nice presentation and was not too ‘much’ and at the same time hid the very worse part of our property. My friend noticed that even after I sold the home, the new owners still kept the container area as it was when she had the home for sale.
6) Another consideration when taking control of curb appeal when selling your home is to remove or trim down those trees and bushes which hide the beauty of your home. So often buyers look at photos of homes, which show a huge tree in front of the house that hides any view from the inside to the street. If you cannot see the home in a photo or in a drive-by viewing, this again reduces the chances that a potential buyer may be interested in your home. No one wants to ‘guess’ what a home really looks like and if there are overgrown bushes and trees hiding the house, potential buyers do not want to envision having to clear the property themselves. So be bold and trim the bushes down and if necessary, remove whatever seriously blocks viewing the home’s charm and character from the street.
7) Along the lines of seeing a home from the street is the inability to do so if you have cars parked in front that do not always need to be there. Granted, we need to park our cars but if you have the opportunity to take your car to the street or to the furthest end of your property for a few hours on the weekends or, if you have a large driveway and can move the car away from the front of the home, then take the time to do this. Buyers need to visualize the home as it would be if they lived there and anything which detracts from this thought is a non-plus for you as the seller. Weekends are usually the busiest times for drive-by house viewing so if you can move your car to a neighbor’s driveway or off your own driveway for a few hours, do so. It may make a difference in the curb appeal of your home.
Also, as a reminder, if you have any cars, boats or trailers parked in front of your home, which really do not need to be there…a car you were going to work on or an inoperable vehicle without any registration and kept putting off paying to be towed away, make a decision as whether it really needs to be there or not. Call a charity to have it towed away and donate it. Put an ad in the paper or on craigslist for a free boat or project car, but by all means, remove any unnecessary vehicles, which really take away curb appeal and make the property look more like a car dealership or a parking lot than a home.
So the main items to consider when creating curb appeal are to:
Woodland Hills - Relocation Information and Area MapPosted at 12:46 PM, Jul. 11, 2006
Woodland Hills Woodland Hills is a community within the City of Los Angeles. It is located in the southwestern area of the San Fernando Valley, northeast of Calabasas and west of Tarzana. To the north Woodland Hills is bordered by West Hills, Canoga Park, and Winnetka. Running east-west through the community is U.S. Route 101 (Ventura Freeway) and Ventura Boulevard, which starts in Woodland Hills.
History Victor Girard Kleinberger (later known as simply Victor Girard) bought 2,886 acres (12 km²) in the area and founded Girard in 1922. He sought to attract residents and businesses by developing the land, advertising in newspapers, and planting 120,000 trees. Although much of his development provided a dubious facade of economic activity in Girard (local lore has it that in order to attract development he erected false store fronts on Ventura Blvd., for which he spent time in jail), the Girard Golf Course completed in 1925 continues to operate today as the Woodland Hills Country Club, and his scheme was successful in attracting interest in the community. The town suffered through the Great Depression yet survived. In 1941, the community was renamed Woodland Hills, an appropriate name owing to all the trees that Girard had planted years earlier. Harry Warner came along in the 1940s and bought 1,100 acres (4.5 km²) in the area for a horse ranch. The modern Warner Center commercial zone is named for Harry and features several high-rise buildings, hotels, and shopping centers in Woodland Hills. A major transit hub — the western end of the Orange Line — opened here in October 2005. The population living in Woodland Hills nears 70,000.
Education Schools serving Woodland Hills are operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The schools include Lockhurst Elementary School, Woodlake Elementary School, Woodland Hills Elementary School, Calabash St. Elementary School, Hale Middle School, Parkman Middle School, and Louisville High School (on the Calabasas border). El Camino Real High School and William Howard Taft High School are multiple United States Academic Decathlon winners. Los Angeles Pierce College is also located in Woodland Hills.
Demographics As of the census of 2000, there were 61,092 people. 74.8% White, 3.4% African American, 7.2% Hispanic/Latino, 5.9% Asian, and 6.8% Two or more races. Median age: 40.8 Average household size: 2.66 Median household income (1999): $70,411
Famous Residents Born and raised in Woodland Hills:
Ted Cassidy, actor who played Lurch on The Addams Family lived here until he died in 1979 (his ashes were supposedly buried in his yard) Lisa Kudrow, actress on Friends graduated from William Howard Taft High School Paige Hurd, actress who played Vanessa in Beauty Shop Sara Paxton, actress Will Smith, actor, R&B singer Xzibit, hip-hop artist Noel Webb, violinist and composer. Val Lauren, Actor. Businesses
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View more entries tagged with: Woodland Hills, La, Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley Tarzana - Relocation Information and Area MapPosted at 8:35 AM, Jul. 11, 2006
Tarzana Location It is surrounded by Reseda to the north, Woodland Hills to the west, Encino to the east, and the Santa Monica Mountains to the south. Major thoroughfares include Reseda Boulevard, Tampa Avenue, Wilbur Avenue, Burbank Boulevard and the commercial backbone of the south San Fernando Valley, Ventura Boulevard.
Most of Tarzana's inhabitants live in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains south of Ventura Blvd. North of Ventura, there is a uniquely designed area meant to emulate a more rural setting called Melody Acres. Tarzana contains two country clubs (with golf courses) nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains: El Caballero Country Club and Braemar Country Club. At the remote southern end of Reseda Blvd., there are a number of luxurious gated communities, including Mulholland Park, Silverhawk Ridge, Monte Verde and Braemar Estates.
North of the Boulevard, where a smaller portion of the population lives, there are fewer houses and more apartment buildings. Tarzana extends to Victory Boulevard, though only a small percentage of the population lives in the area.
Residents There are approximately 28,484 residents. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the racial composition was predominantly White (78.9%), followed by Asian (5.6%), and Black or African American (3.8%). American Indian or Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander each constituted less than one percent (0.3% and 0.1% respectively) of the population. 13.1% identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino. About 35.2% of the population in 2000 was foreign-born, including 21.9% that were born in Iran and 10.6% in Mexico.
Tarzana features a burgeoning Iranian-American population, and the community is well known for its Persian restaurants, booksellers, and language training institutes. A thriving and long-established Jewish community attends four synagogues and provides the customer base for the first and only branch of the Hebrew language bookseller Steimatzky constructed outside of Israel. A number of popular and well-regarded delicatessens can be found in Tarzana, such as the Tarzana Armenian Grocery and Mort's Deli.
Notable residents include comedian Jeremy Hotz, actor Jamie Foxx, actor Chuck Norris, filmmaker John-Erik Jordan, KROQ's Kevin, Bon Jovi gutairist Richie Sambora his wife, actress Heather Locklear and frequent Star Trek guest star Hana Hatae.
Early History The area now known as Tarzana was originally part of the San Fernando Mission, which was established in 1797 by Spanish settlers and missionaries, who eventually displaced the indigenous population. Later on the area was seized by Mexico and then sometime afterwards, the United States, at which point the area came to be part of a sequential order of large cattle ranches owned by the wealthy and powerful local elites. Beginning in the 1870s, the area was purchased by investors who transformed it into a large-scale wheat farm operation.
In 1909 the surrounding area was purchased by the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company. General Harrison Gray Otis, founder and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, had invested in the company, while also purchasing 550 acres in the center of modern-day Tarzana. Another investor established a small town called Runnymede in the general vicinity and allocated the surrounding land for small poultry ranches and berry farms.
In 1915 Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known as the author of the Tarzan stories, purchased Otis’ land upon which he built a large home, and renamed the property, Tarzana Ranch. Burroughs subdivided and sold the land for residential development, while the neighboring small farms were also converted to residential areas. In 1927, local residents renamed the town Tarzana in honor of Burroughs and his famous literary character.
Trivia
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View more entries tagged with: Tarzana, Iranian, Jewish, Otis Gray, La, San Fernando Valley Encino - Relocation Information and Area MapPosted at 7:47 AM, Jul. 11, 2006
Encino Encino is a district of Los Angeles, California, located in the central portion of the southern San Fernando Valley. It derives its name from the Rancho Los Encinos (Ranch of the Oaks), a parcel of land given to three Mission Indians by the Spanish government following its abandonment of the California missions in the early 1800s. Geography Encino is bordered by Tarzana on the west, the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area on the north, Sherman Oaks on the east, and the Encino Reservoir of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on the south. The district's boundaries are roughly Mulholland Drive on the south, Lindley Avenue on the west, Victory Boulevard on the north, and the San Diego Freeway on the east. Major thoroughfares include Ventura, Magnolia, and Burbank Boulevards, as well as Balboa Boulevard, Hayvenhurst Avenue, and Haskell Avenue. Census data As of the 2000 Census, the population of Encino was 40,946, with a population density 3,864.9 per square mile. 18.25% of the population was under 18, and 20.08% was over 64. The district contained 18,159 housing units in a land area of 10.59 square miles (27.44 square kilometers). Water covers 0.13 square miles (0.33 square kilometers) of the district. Encino in popular culture It is the setting of the 1992 comedy, Encino Man, Encino is mentioned in Frank Zappa's 1982 hit song, "Valley Girl." "The Point" from Fast Times at Ridgemont High was located in Encino (Encino Little League Field). Encino was where Ali's family lived (Elisabeth Shue) in the movie "The Karate Kid". Their country club was Encino Oaks and lived on Alonzo Avenue. Encino is where specials on the popular cartoon SpongeBob Square Pants takes place. Encino is the setting of the first half of Chilean author Alberto Fuguet's novel Las películas de mi vida (The Movies Of My Life). Encino is where, according to a recurring on-air gag, Match Game panelist Brett Somers would take host Gene Rayburn to a nice hotel after the show if she were "feeling frisky." The Jackson Family have owned a mansion here since the 1970's, with all their children including Michael and Janet growing up there. Parents Joe and Katherine still live in the gated mansion on Hayvenhurst Ave in Encino. Notable attractions The Encino Velodrome has provided an outdoor oval bicycle racing track since 1963.
The information herein was complied using sources deemed reliable (as noted throughout this book under “source”), including the
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View more entries tagged with: Encino, San Fernando Valley, Rancho Los Encinos Sherman Oaks Relocation Information and Area MapPosted at 12:16 PM, Jul. 10, 2006 |
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