Full Transcript
Hey Garage Door Fans. I’m Chris Wilke with C&W; Canada Garage Doors and welcome back to The Garage. I’m here today with Nick Jankovic of Remax Elite and the Muv Team. Nick, how are you doing? Good, buddy, how are you? Alright, so I know you’ve had a busy summer helping people sell homes, and one of the big things that makes people want to buy a home is curb appeal. Absolutely, yeah. So that’s what I want to talk to you a little bit about today, but before we get into all that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the Muv team. Okay, so we’re a full license team, we’ve been around for a few years now. Technically right now we have six agents, a couple assistants, a marketing manager, and full-time photographer. Yeah, a giant army, right? Yeah, well you know, we’ve been around for a while now and you know, we’re younger age team. We’re very aggressive in out marketing and we like to get deals done, that’s for sure. Awesome. Great to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me. Alright, so let me get down to business. So, let’s dive into curb appeal. Yeah. So, Nik, from a realtor’s standpoint, how important is curb appeal? Curb appeal is huge man, I mean right now it’s no secret. It’s a buyer’s market. What that means is there’s a lot more inventory than there is actual buyers, right? So what I’m finding when I work with buyers is the littlest things will turn a buyer off. You only have one first impression, you want to make sure that you know, when a client or when a potential buyer shows up to your home and is interested, you know, possibly purchasing it, that you’re showing it at its best, right?So, you can only make one first impression, so you want that curb appeal to be up to everyone standards. I’ve seen, literally this happened last week. It sounds like I’m making this up because I’m on this show, but I had a client that was debating between two properties and it was actually the garage door, believe it or not. That one of them was in shambles and they actually leaned towards the other one. Just because of that, they’re like we don’t want to deal with this headache and yeah, even though I don’t think it’s that big a deal, but you know, it is. It actually is a huge deal, so people are finding that curb appeal is a really important aspect. That’s so funny that’s happened, because it’s happened to me a lot. That’s actually one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on this show, is because a lot of people don’t understand that a lot of times the garage door is the biggest impression you have on your home, especially with a front attached garage. It could be 30 to to 80% of your curb appeal. So, when you have one then is that needs a little work, or may be the original with the home, and it looks a little ratty or a little bit in shambles it ends up turning people off. Even when they walk into that house and they have that already first impression, as I’ve said. It basically sets the tone, right? Yeah, because your first impression is just not not strong, right? Yeah, so that’s good. So what do you recommend your clients do to personally boost their curb appeal? Well, let’s start off with doing the simple things, right? Hosing down your siding, make sure it’s nice and clean, make sure the lighting is working When you’re walking into a home, if only a few bulbs are working and the rest aren’t, it just sets a tone. Make sure the lawn is cut and hedges are trimmed, all the flowers are laid out properly. Then if you’re looking to spend a bit of money, which in my opinion is, there’s a lot of value. The return of value is huge. Things like replacing maybe the roof, obviously looking at the garage door, you know if your windows need replacing; things like that, right? So people initially don’t like to spend that little bit of extra money, but in a market like today it goes a long way. A lot of people are always afraid that "well, I’m selling this house, I don’t want to put any more money in." Like there’s a thing called ROI or return on investment which is what you were kind of talking about. And the garage door actually can be one of the most ROI you can get out of investing into your home, something like 98% sometimes. So, people think of it as "oh, I"m putting money into something I’m just going to sell anyway." In reality, you’re boosting your curb appeal and making sure you sell quickly and for the full value. Because you don’t want to have to go into the negotiations like "oh, well maybe I’ll take a little bit of a hit here," when you could just simply fix it yourself and get the full value. Yeah. Okay, so that’s really good. Keeping a home looking modern is also really a challenge especially, so do you know any like tips and tricks that for like someone who has like an older home or maybe something like that it looks a little dated, that they can kind of help boost their curb appeal? I mean, you know those things like changing the paint around right? You know you walk up to a house and if it’s you know, a pinkish color, which might have been big in like 1998, 2000’s, you might want to look into changing that color. I mean you got the old brown wooden garage doors, that’s a big turn-off to a lot of a lot of potential buyers. Lighting is huge, like I mentioned earlier. You know, you’ve got the old yellow lights, maybe you know investing in some LEDs can really boost your curb appeal and modernize. Yeah, we had Kevin from Halo Power on the show. Yeah, Kevin would probably love that pitch! I have to say, things like updating the garage door so I once had a client who had their home in the market for a couple months, could not sell it to save their life. They just updated their bathroom, inside the house was gorgeous but they neglected the door. They neglected the door, yes, exactly. Something so minor like that. They spent a very little amount of money, like under $2,000 to just facelift their garage door a little bit. We had to color match the the stonework on the outside and I believe that house sold within a couple of weeks. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s just a way of changing that mindset from when you’re first approached. So if you think about them replacing that right off the bat, they probably would have sold it around that time, and they see the garage door would pay for itself, right? You’re holding on to - if you’re holing onto a home and you’re paying both mortgage payments every year and then sitting there you know baking for two, three months, you know you’re paying two grand a month in mortgage payments.. Why not spend that money right off the bat? Get your home situated the right way and then sell it as soon as you can. It’s actually really good point. So, as long as you have it sitting there, you were paying for that. Absolutely, so something like that would pay for itself anyways. So that’s really great. So, Nik, I have one more question for you. What else can people do to help sell their home in this fall market? Hiring the right team is huge, huge thing to not overlook obviously, when selling your home, right? So, you want to have the right real estate agent, the right team working for you, marketing your property correctly, putting as many people through the doors right? That’s a that’s a big factor in selling a home these days, but for the client themselves, what they can do.. One thing that I always tell them is make it look like a showroom. If you declutter, make sure you declutter, pull things off the walls that might distract buyers, make sure the curb appeal is up to standard, but most important make sure they get the garage doors fixed, because I’ve seen in happen.. I swear I’m not paying him. Again, those little things like that make a big deal and it’s not a big investment, and the return, your value’s huge. Yeah, again, I have to go... you said hiring the right team is a huge thing, and I have to say I have to say hiring a professional makes all the difference. You wouldn’t have someone operate on you after they’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to take out a gall bladder, right? You have someone who, like you and your team, who sell hundreds of homes every year. And genuinely care, care for your clients and are really focusing on selling their home.I’ve seen your marketing and it’s very aggressive. Please follow these guys on Facebook, because you those videos are not only well done, there’s also a plethora of educational knowledge within them. Well Nik, thank you very much for being on the show. Before we go, where can people find you? Obviously you guys can check us out on muvteam.com. We’re all over Instagram with Muv team, Facebook (we’re also called the Muv team obviously), and then you can reach me at my phone number which is right here 707 9484 and get in contact with us. We’d love to hear from you guys for sure. Thank you very much Nik. Well Garage Door Fans, you know where to find me: www.cwgarage.ca and phone number here 780 266-1248 Instagram and Facebook @CW garage doors. Thank you very much.