HIA Predicts 2014 Will Be Good For Housing Industry
Australia’s housing industry is looking good this year based on the recently released Summer 2014 edition of the National Outlook report by the Housing Industry Association (HIA).
Preparing Your Home For Sale? Tips Direct From a Sales Agent
Selling your home can be one of the most stressful things you can do especially when you think of what is involved even before your home hits the market such as:
- Choosing which agent or agency to sell your home
- Organising your contract of sale with your solicitor or conveyancer
- Deciding on renovating or styling your home
- Basic preparations inside and outside the home
- Communicating the possible sale of your home with your finance institution
Aussies Like Modern Interiors For Their Homes More
Data gathered by Australian property site RealEstate.com.au has revealed that more Australians prefer their homes to have modern interiors characterised by simplicity, clean lines and fully functional furniture.
Live Longer Through Home Improvement
We can’t stop aging, but we can do something about living a longer life. And no, it doesn’t really involve joining a gym or starting Pilates or whatever fitness craze everyone’s into these days. Well, regular visits to the gym, Pilates and all kinds of exercise programs do help you extend your life, but we’re talking about something a little closer to home here. According to an article by Sabina Read for RealEstate.com.au, we can also live longer through home improvement projects as well as everyday household chores.
Thinking of Selling Your Home? Essential Steps to Creating Street Appeal
With buyers having a great deal of choice, creating street appeal is essential; it will enable potential buyers to connect with a house so they will want to look inside. An appealing frontage will make selling your house a whole lot easier.
We are all told not to judge a book by its cover but let’s face it, it happens, especially when it comes to real estate. At any time of the day or night potential buyers could drive by your house and instantly make the decision about whether they would like to arrange a viewing or not.
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Beat the Summer Heat At Home
Things are certainly heating up on this side of the globe. With the summer season in full swing, Australians are finding themselves right in the middle of scorching hot temperatures that could cause certain health issues if you’re not prepared for them.
You’re fortunate if you work in an air conditioned office during the day because you’ll be spared from 40 degree days without much expense on your part, but what about those who work from home? What about your children, or any other member of your household who has to stay home?
If you’re not willing to keep your home air conditioning system running the entire day, the members of your household will have to find ways to fend off the summer heat. Fortunately, there are a lot of cheaper and easier ways to keep cool at home. Here are some of them.
How to Choose a Good Painter in Sydney and Australia
Are you planning on painting your home?
Finding a good painter in Sydney and Australia is not always an easy thing to do. Especially in the painting industry, where many (lets say) “shonky” operators exist that take shortcuts, comprise job quality and value, and basically leave you with an unpleasant experience.
So when looking to find local painters to perform a painting job for you, you need to ask the right questions. Below are some of the questions we use at Tradebusters when interviewing recommended painters for our exclusive network across Sydney and Australia. We hope they may help you find a quality and professional painter for your next home renovation or improvement project.
Quick Home Improvement Ideas for the New Year
The new year brings a fresh start that more often than not inspires new home improvement ideas. Nothing spells “fresh start” better than to get home improvement projects up and rolling . These projects don’t even have to be big ones. They can be quick, simple and should not cost you that much.
Here are some quick home improvement ideas for the new year to get you started:
1. Do some painting
Whether it’s done in a high-traffic area or a barely used room in your house, painting adds a pop of colour and a fresh clean feel to your walls. If you’re painting newbie, don’t hesitate to ask for tips from people working at the paint store, from colours to do to painting techniques that will make the job easier and faster for you.
2. Put up wallpapers
If painting is too much work, then perhaps putting up wallpapers might do the trick for you. Many of the wallpapers available in stores today are very chic, and they certainly would make amazing accent walls. Plus, the choices are simply amazing. You can get wallpapers with texture, wallpapers with retro patterns, metallic wallpapers and many more.
3. Change your drapes
Changing your drapes is one great way to greet the new year. Sure, everyone wants brand new drapes every single time we change them, but there are less expensive ways of changing them. One such way is to recycle your curtains and drapes to another room. The drapes you had in your living room, for instance, could be switched with the ones in your bedroom, and vice versa.
4. Give your cabinets a facelift
When you give your cabinets a facelift, it does not necessarily mean you have to change a lot of things about them, although that could be an option. Giving it what we call a “spa treatment” will do. Dust the cabinets inside out, then wipe them down with a soft, damp cloth. If your cabinets have nicks and scratches, get a soft cloth and dab those areas with just a tiny bit of wood stain. When the wood stain is dry, wipe lemon oil onto the whole cabinet using a soft, clean cloth. All these will enhance the natural colour of your cabinets and give them a newer feel.
5. Change door handles
Your door handles are perhaps the most worn-out among all the fixtures in your home, and the coming of the new year is the perfect time to replace them. To spice things up, you can actually replace them with handles that are actually different from the last ones. Just make sure that they look perfect for the door and that they don’t end up looking out of place.
6. Organise your home
With the holidays just a few weeks in the past, it’s safe to assume that your home has to deal with a lot of clutter, especially when you have children at home or when you’ve had people come and go for the entire holiday season. The new year would be the best time to organise your home. You can start with just putting things back where they actually belong. If you’re up to it, do some segregation, like keeping the things you still use and deciding which ones you can actually throw or give away. Organising your home may not be as simple or as quick as other home improvement projects, but it’s one of those home improvement ideas that has to be done, whether it’s the new year or not.
Kitchens of the Future
The way the kitchens of modern homes function and look like today, most of us are probably thinking that we have reached the pinnacle of kitchen design. Then again, if the innovators of the past thought about things that way, it’s highly likely we’re not going to be enjoying stuff like smartphones or even the Internet.
No matter how seemingly modern and multifunctional our present-day kitchens may be, they can still be made significantly better with innovations that may seem crazy or just too much today, but could be really necessary and useful in, say, half a century into the future.
Let’s talk about some of these kitchens of the future, which are actually really cool to have.
Prepare Your Home For Summer
Prepare your home for summer in Australia. If news reports are to be believed, the Land Down Under is heading for a really hot summer. There are even reports saying this summer could be the country’s hottest ever, with at least one or two heatwaves cutting across the southern states.
One of the greatest dangers Australians face with every sweltering summer is that the hot and dry weather provides a perfect condition for bushfires, which almost always rage throughout the country in the summer and damage acres of bushland as well as properties near it.
This summer, which is expected by experts to become record-breaking on so many levels, you need to prepare your home against bushfires, as well as to keep all members of your household from suffering heat strokes and other heat-related health problems. Here are some tips we hope could help you prepare your home for summer.
