When is the best time to sell your home?

If you've been thinking about selling your home, you might be waiting until the "market is right". After all, if the local market suddenly booms, your property will likely sell for a higher price. 

That may be true. However, there are other factors to consider in your decision to list.

For example, will you be buying a new home as well? If so, then the higher selling price will probably be offset by the higher cost of the new property.

In addition, there may be characteristics of your home that will help sell it quickly and for a good price – today – regardless of the market conditions.

A good REALTOR® will help you make the right decision. Give us a call today we would be happy to help!

Your home at a glance

Have you ever driven up to a restaurant and your first impression was disappointing? Perhaps the windows looked dark and gloomy, the façade was worn and unattractive or for some other reason it just didn't look like a tempting place to eat. 

It could still be a fantastic restaurant – a real gem. But, your first impression has soured your anticipation. If you still walk through the front door, it will likely be with the expectation of being disappointed. 

This scenario often plays out in the real estate market as well. 

A buyer drives up to a home for sale and quickly forms an impression based on what he sees "from the curb". That's why you'll hear real estate experts talk about the importance of "curb appeal". It's one of the most important selling points of a property. 

If you plan to put your home on the market, you obviously want your home to look as attractive as possible from the street. Fortunately, there are many simple things you can do to improve curb appeal. 

For example, you can trim shrubs and hedges, plant flowers, clean the walkway and driveway, paint the front door and garage door, and clean the exteriors of the windows. All these projects are relatively easy and inexpensive. Yet, each can make a dramatic improvement to how your home looks at first glance. 

Don't be like the great restaurant that’s hidden behind an unkept façade. Make sure your curb appeal reflects the overall value of your property. 

Looking for more advice on selling your home quickly and for the best price? Call today. 

There are unwelcome guests that most homeowners dread. They come into your house, eat, sleep, make a mess, and never leave willingly. Each one has at least six legs and sometimes flies.

They are, of course, insects. They’ve been freeloading in homes since homes were invented. Here are some practical ways to keep these unwelcome guests out:

Find out how they got in. Look for gaps around windows and doors, and cracks in the basement. If you find a spider web, there's likely an insect entryway nearby.

Watch out for standing water near the foundation of your home. Make sure rain gutters drain water well away.

Eliminate clutter. Insects love warm, cluttered, moist areas.

Check the seal around dryer vents and other vents, pipes and cable

wires going through the wall. Reseal if necessary.

Rinse recyclables before putting them into a bag or bin. Few things are more tempting to a bug than the dark, moist, sweet insides of an un-rinsed pop can.

If you do end up with a serious insect problem, call a professional exterminator. 

This year's Dine Out Vancouver experience for my husband and I was at La Terrazza on Cambie at Pacific Boulevard in Yaletown. I've said it before ...My husband and I are big foodies. We love trying out new restaurants and can very often spend on just food what some people spend with alcohol on their bill. My husband doesn't drink at all and I only have a drink once in a while. We sometimes find we don't always get the best of service when all we order is water and coke. 

Not sure if our server had a chip on his shoulder, but he wasn't overly friendly or attentive. Although he did take my coat when we sat, which was nice...that is where the attention stopped. We did notice we weren't the only ones that didn't get much of his attention either. Perhaps that is just the kind of server that he is. The rest of the staff were very friendly, which is why we won't write off the restaurant as a whole based on one server. 

This past weekend La Terrazza was serving both the regular menu and their Dine Out Vancouver menu and the majority of the people in the restaurant seemed tp be eating off that menu. So I could be wrong but perhaps there was some pre-judgement on our server about this too. We didn't come originally because of Dine Out Vancouver in all honesty we were looking last minute and hadn't tried this place so thought we would. It did turn out to offer the Dine Out Vancouver special menu and I did order from it, although my husband did not.

Our bill came to a little over a $100 and usually we would tip at least 20%, but I could not bring myself to do so this time with the lack of service, he still got over 15% because I always round to the nearest dollar but he could have gotten more....had the service been better. Part of the reason I did tip even that amount is the hope that he has to share some of his tips with the other staff. Everyone else that attended to our table did a great job, we would hate for their small cut to have been hurt. Having worked in the industry both myself and my husband we know how hard servers work for their tips. But you do have to work for it, give excellent service and you usually will be tipped well for it...in our experience.

Dine Out Vancouver is actually a great idea and way for restaurants that usually experience a slow down after the holidays to get some business they typically wouldn't get. The food was very good, although we felt it was a little overpriced for what you get. Again we don't mind paying for a good meal, but when your prices are up there the quality of the food needs to be too! I am sure we will try them again someday, but at this point it's not on our favourite list. That isn't to say that I wouldn't recommend La Terrazza, the ambiance was nice and the food was good...you just have to be prepared to pay a little more for your meal. We have our favourite Italian restaurants that offer a lot more for less in quality and experience. For now we will likely stick to them when looking for Italian cuisine, visit some of our previous posts to see which ones. 

My family has teased me for years, if it isn't a wallet full of coupons then it's a wallet full of loyalty cards and it seems that more and more companies are going that way offering points or something. Of course, I sign up for them all....well not all of them but according to my family they think I do. 

Either way, the stack of cards I carried around was getting to be ridiculous. Months ago I downloaded stocard but for some reason never used it until about a couple months ago. Now I absolutely love it, I can leave the house with just my phone and I have everything on it. It's also great for sharing loyalty cards with members of your family so that everyone in the family benefits from the savings or points. Now you only have to have one card and everyone can scan the same card into their phone.

You can find the stocard app in the Apple Store, Windows Phone and Google Play. Unfortunately, Blackberry and Nokia users cannot access this app....and there doesn't seem to be any plans to support those phones anytime soon. (Why you should switch to an iPhone...just my little plug for Apple because I love my iPhone 6.)

Apple's Passbook app which comes loaded onto your iPhone works the same way but actually offers so much more. It can hold your movie tickets, loyalty cards, sports tickets even and my husband loves it for his boarding passes. Other compatible apps will actually download tickets and passes on their own and put them right into Passbook.

At some point this year Passbook may become the most important app to use when Apple Pay finally comes to Canada. Then with fingerprint technology using your credit cards will never be more secure....no fear of losing or having them stolen.

Check out both of these apps today and lighten your purse and/or wallet.

              stocard                                       Passbook

For the 3rd year in a row I am proud to say because of our amazing clients our team has achieved the top 10% of Realtors here in the Fraser Valley. We thank each and everyone for their continued support of our team. But I also want to say THANK YOU to an incredible team KARA BERMAN and LISA SPEERS without either of them we wouldn't have finished the year off so strong! The age old saying there is no "I" in team and I would have to say that saying has never been more true!

We are all looking forward to 2015 being just as good, but always striving to be even better.

A couple days ago I blogged about Dine out Vancouver starting their festival Friday and completely forgot about White Rock's very own food festival "Taste White Rock" formerly known as "Bite of the Rock".

It's another great opportunity for people living south of the Fraser River in the Valley, instead of heading to Vancouver they can try some of the fabulous restaurants in White Rock. The festival starts tomorrow January 20th and runs through February 13th, there will be select White Rock restuarants offering 3 course meals for $25 or $35. Many of which are also offering entertainment.

This is the 9th annual Taste White Rock and promises to be an excellent opportunity to try a new restaurant or an old favourite for very reasonable prices. 

A couple of our families favourite White Rock restaurants that are participating are "Cielo's" if you're looking for Tapas. Great for sharing and enjoying a few different items on the menu. Then there's "Five Doors Down" which is literally five doors down from Cielo's and used to be, not sure if it still is owned by the same owners. But they offer delicious meals as well. 

For details on participating restaurants and their menus visit Taste White Rock

Dine Out Vancouver 2015 starts today January 16th and runs until February 1st. 

Dine Out Vancouver boasts 17 days of culinary excitement with delicious meals at fabulous restaurants for great prices!!!
The catch is that you must make your reservations sooner rather than later. 

My husband and I are really big foodies, every year we say we are going to finally try out a new restaurant that takes part in Dine Out Vancouver and before we know the festival is over and we missed out or we waited too long to make reservations and they were all booked up. The last couple years we actually made out to a few restaurants and were very impressed with our choices. One was the Italian Cultural Centre and another Kerkis Greek Taverna in Kistilano on 4th avenue. It doesn't look like Kerkis is participating again but quite a few of our other favourites are- Poor Italian Restaurant, Black + Blue, Francesco's Ristorante Italia, Five Sails. For more casual affair we love Dunn's Famous Restaurant's Montreal Smoked Meat sandwiches an dany of the Hapa Izakaya locations.

Not only are there great deals at many of your favourite restaurants but many hotels are offering special pricing during this time too.

For more details on the participating restaurants and hotels visit the following link:

Dine Out Vancouver 2015