As many have said, renovations can be a lot like giving birth!

They’re painful, they make you want to scream, and cause you to ask yourself why you’re bearing the brunt of all the work. And yet, you love the result and often end up repeating the whole thing.

Houzz.com’s Remodeling & Relationships Survey of Canadian users, conducted online this past December and January, found a number of issues that caused pain, including the fact that:

• 18% made a significant design decision without telling their partner
• 8% snuck away to catch a break
• 9% neglected to mention the price of something.

Those are the little white lies of the fixer-upper set, but in a number of cases, things got even worse:

• 5% admitted to secretly throwing

Everyone wants to live in a beautiful home.

We all a house that attracts compliments from friends and family. It is a proud feeling, indeed, when you stay in a home that is the envy of entire neighborhood. Owning such a home, however, is no piece of cake. Even if not too much, it still does require a certain amount of effort, time and knowledge to keep it well-maintained and updated.

People who live in houses with front yards or lawns need to be more patient and careful about taking good care of the grass and foliage and keep it free of uninvited pests, insects and rodents.

Enhancing the curb appeal of your home is all about increasing the visual appeal of your front yard or lawn, which in turn, elevates the overall splendor of your home

Listing your home for sale: Should you update, or should you sell as-is?

When listing your home for sale, should you spend the money to make some home improvements, or should you sell it as-is?  Of course, as in most questions of this sort, it depends on the particular improvements that your home needs, and it depends on the local market trends. It depends on your goals as a seller. It also depends on the condition of the homes that are your closest competition.

 The Mind of A Seller VS. the Mind of A Buyer

In my experience, there is a different calculation that goes on in the mind of the seller, compared to that which is in the mind of a buyer.  For instance, if the carpet in your bedrooms is original carpet in your 18-year-old home, there

The two most important elements of selling a home have always been 1.) Price and 2.) Condition but maybe today there is a third factor.

MARKETING can be equally -and sometimes more- important when selling a home as price and condition. Professional marketing is the secret sauce that sells homes! There are more options to market a home than ever before. The way a home is marketed online determines how much attention it gets as in cases where homes that were priced too high end up in multiple offer situations due to impressive marketing presentations online. On the opposite side there are homes that sell for less than they are worth due to poor marketing efforts.  When people start to sell their home most of the time they haven't thought much about the

Getting your home purchase or the sale of your Kamloops Property right there are a few simple steps to making it as stress free as possible.

BUYING A HOME IN KAMLOOPS

A step at a time: Before seriously house hunting, have your mortgage financing in place, says Kent Browne, broker of record with Royal LePage Team Realty in Ottawa. Make sure you also have roughly two per cent of the anticipated purchase price set aside in cash for legal fees, land transfer tax and other expenses.

Preparation: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.'s free, downloadable 72-page guide Buying a Home walks you through the entire house-hunting and -buying process. There's also a condominium guide: http://cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/co/buho/index.cfm.

Browne suggests scouting

Whether lighting a single family home or the common areas of an investment property, the difference in electricity cost between LED, fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs is astounding.

It costs possibly six times as much to operate an incandescent bulb as it does the equivalent illumination (lumens) of an LED bulb. In this writer’s geographic area, a 60W incandescent lamp costs 15 cents to operate 24 hours while the equivalent LED bulb costs 2.5 cents.

You can download a detailed analysis of 30 lights left on 24 hours a day for 20 years. While that is likely not the case for a home, the cost ratio between the two lighting technologies should remain similar.

The spreadsheet with all calculations can be downloaded here. Plug in your

This controversial real estate move is leaving some homeowners feeling scammed

Imagine your realtor sold your home for $500,000 more than the price you agreed to — but you didn't see a penny of that extra cash. That's the situation for some Vancouverites, as exposed in a Globe and Mail feature Saturday February 6th 2016.

A controversial sales technique called "shadow flipping" allows unscrupulous Realtors to score two or even three times their standard commission on a single house by reassigning the sale to different owners at ever higher prices. But it's a practice that has left the original sellers feeling scammed and justifiably so.

How does it work?

An increasing number of real estate transactions in the Vancouver region feature what's

If you’re selling a home in Kamloops, you’ll want the best possible representation.

Buying a home is a big step, but then again, so is selling a property. The most important thing when listing a home is finding the right real estate agent to get you the most money possible and ensure a smooth, stress-free process.

Before You Start to sell your Kamloops Home

First off all sellers should take a look at the Working with a REALTOR® brochure, available on the BC Real Estate Association website (bcrea.bc.ca). This is a great introduction to what a certified REALTOR® does, what their legal and fiduciary duties are, and how you can best work with one.

Interviewing Kamloops Real Estate Agents

To ensure your agent is the right fit for you, sellers

We all know that the kitchen is considered to be the heart of the home and, as one of the most important rooms in the house, it needs careful planning if you’re to ensure that it both looks good and functions as it needs to. So, if you’re planning a kitchen makeover, here are five stylish and practical kitchen makeover tips to make sure that you get the best out of your space:

• Select your style

There are so many styles of kitchen cupboards, tiles, floor surfaces, backsplashes and appliances on the market at the moment so, before you embark on a kitchen makeover, think about what you want the end result to look like. It’s time to get creative, and consider the different colors and textures that you can incorporate into your kitchen, which

After years of making a house a home it becomes full of memories and emotions — not to mention stuff — which are not the features buyers are interested in when a homeowner decides to put the property on the market.

As home buyers have become more savvy with regard to what they can get for their money, staging has increased in popularity, helping homeowners to not only sell their home quickly but also to get top dollar.

"Because homeowners are attached to their homes there is so much emotion attached to it," said Tracey Jones, owner of Victoria's ReMarkable ReDesign Styling and Staging.

"We come in as fresh eyes. We're not attached to a homeowners' belongings. Homeowners become blind to their own surroundings."

Jones began her business in 2007