If you are planning to sell your home in the spring of 2020, you are likely starting to feel increased stress over the long to-do list to get your home ready. As I have advised my clients, those who hit the market in the earliest part of the spring tend to sell their homes quicker and for more money. With that said, sellers have roughly 90 days from Thanksgiving to make their home as attractive as possible to the buyer community. What are the main actions you can take to accomplish this goal?

Thoughts, feelings, and emotions are stirred at the suggestion of selling the family home. It may be that just the parents are living there now, but the house may still be very much in the hearts and memories of the children that spent any length of time there. Someone can be gone from the house for 30 years or more, yet the thought of the house no longer being in the family is disturbing. Often the house is the anchor for a family that is spread out across the country or the world. Even so, there may still exist the hope of family gathering once more at the dining room table, of bringing one's own children to play in the tree house, or playing with Grampa's trains in the basement.

When you consider downsizing -- or rightsizing, as I call it -- you have to think about what really is the right size for you, not just based upon where you are, but where you’re going. The average person uses about 1100 square feet of any home they live in, unless they have a special hobby. So if you have five children, and you have a house that’s about 6000 square feet, you have more than enough room for everybody.

“Timing is everything.” Like most of us, you’ve likely had the reason to utter this all too common phrase. Perhaps you delivered the joke’s punchline to a colleague at just the right moment. Maybe you brought up a touchy subject to your spouse at the end of a long day’s work. What about the time you showed up to the store and found the item you were looking for had just gotten marked down by 50%?

Summer is here in the DC area and it looks like it's here to stay! It's time to start thinking about how to get your home (and your kids) ready for summer break. To continue our Top 6 Home Tips series, let's take a look at a few ways you can keep your home up to date with the changing temperature.

Once the decision to make a move has been made or is being strongly considered, one must decide what type of living arrangement is suitable and hopefully if not exciting, pleasing. This is a new chapter in your life!

Contributed by Debbie Zech, Realtor® with the Eric Stewart Group of Long & Foster Real Estate Trying to decide whether you want to purchase a home that has been lived in and loved or whether you want your family to be the first over the threshold? There is no right or wrong answer; let’s take a few minutes to discuss some advantages and disadvantages of each.

BLOG Contribution by Erik Tammaru, Realtor with the Eric Stewart Group of Long & Foster One question I often get as a Realtor is, “Will updating my kitchen help me sell my home and make more money?”

Spring has sprung! With the recent increase in seasonal temperatures, our trees and gardens have come back to life, and so too has the local real estate market. Each year, the spring real estate market is strongest in the February-to-June timeframe. The inventory of homes is coming off of winter lows and buyers hit the marketplace in earnest in hopes of securing the perfect home before the competition lays eyes on it. This combination of cyclical events makes it the perfect time for sellers to put their homes on the market to fetch top dollar.

To many homeowners selling property in “as is” condition sounds very attractive, but what does an "as-is" sale actually look like?