Staging & Selling Montreal West Island Homes

I just read the following listing description in the local MLS about a property in Montreal's West Island: "This house has a remarkable kitchen that is what makes this home flow so well. It is well equipped with five windows, two sliding doors, and hanging wood cabinets which allows sunlight shin...

The Official Canadian Temperature Conversion Chart 50* F (10* C)Californians shiver uncontrollably.Texans die of exposure.Canadians plant gardens.35* F (1.6* C)Italian cars won't start.Canadians drive with the windows down.32* F (0* C)American water freezes.Canadian water gets thicker.0* F (-17.9...

I have clients with very specific requirements for their next home. Not many homes that match their criteria are coming onto the market here in Montreal's West Island.  One just did, but it has a problem. The driveway of this property is level with the street, and then it slopes down toward the g...

Short and sweet today. Two words we often (mis)use in our real estate blogs: advice and effect, a.k.a., advise and affect.  Yes, the different spellings have different meanings, but I often see them used incorrectly. Advice (noun): words of wisdom that you give someone. "C" in the word is pronoun...

My poor husband.  The little lamb goes to Vegas for 5 days on a business trip, and his evil wife (that's me!) does this to his bedroom while he's gone.  Yup, 5 days for a stone wall, fresh paint, new bed and bedding, and updated lighting and accessories.  The poor man didn't know what hit him...n...

We run into a lot of properties in Montreal West Island real estate that have more furniture than they can handle. This was one of them.  Among other rooms we tackled in our staging of this property, the dining room was over-stuffed and didn't show off all of the available space. A quick trick we...

There's a home in my neighbourhood that's been for sale for quite a while, and I think I know why.  It's the same problem that kept another home in the neighbourhood on the market for more than a year.  It's the unfortunate decision that some homeowners make to not update their home as time goes ...

1. Put a Glade plug-in in every electrical socket in the house.  This serves two purposes: 1) It puts buyers into a fragrance-induced coma which makes negotiating MUCH easier, and 2) If they're not in a coma, they will take all that 'fragrance' as a subtle hint to begin the internationally acclai...

First, I promise this won't be painful.  Second, no disrespect is meant to anyone.   It's been a long time since many of us were in grade school, and some were not lucky enough to have Mrs. Snodgrass in grade 6, an extremely tough teacher who taught me more in one year than I learned in the next ...

Why wait 'til Halloween to dress up?  Inspired by ThatBritishAgent (Sheldon Neal), here's a pic of my boys...in July.  Peace, brother.  Peace, sister.