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Every home has an entrance, a front door. You want it clean and beautiful.  You want it to be inviting and welcoming.  If you want top dollar from the sale of your home, the entrance must invite and welcome the buyer.

What appears immediately inside the door is equally important. Every time, I took a buyer into a house and it didn’t look just right, they would soon comment on the appearance.  I noticed they started to create their opinion right there. This transition area between the front door and the next few steps into the house is important. With a good transition area, you have improved the atmosphere of your home. This atmosphere and setting translates into dollars, when you sell your home.

The simplest way to set this welcoming atmosphere is with the flooring.  While expensive homes have great entrances, inexpensive homes achieve the same thing with a few feet of tile, a small so people can wipe their feet, and a small vanity for checking their appearance as they enter or leave.

Do not under estimate the importance of the entrance to your home. It helps define the quality of your property when people enter. If the entrance exudes richness, buyers will think of the home as a valuable property, and will be prepared to offer accordingly.

On the other hand, if the entrance is shabby, then no matter how well you have the rest of the home, “shabby” is what will be imprinted on the buyer’s mind (remember first impression really count). You will receive an shabby offer you and it will make a difference in how your home sells. Remember, your home is competing with hundreds of other homes.

Look down.  The easiest way to define an entrance is with the flooring. If the rest of the house is carpeted wall to wall or has wood flooring, a different type of floor at the will help set it off.

The simplest way to add a rich touch to your entrance is it to have tile flooring. It is a rare house that has tile throughout.  Hence, entrance title will define this as a different area. A word about tile: It has been used in homes since the ancient Romans build their villas on the Mediterranean. It has a rich history over thousands of years. Throughout time tile has always indicated richness. It is the same today.

Choices of available tile are immense, with larger tiles being the most popular.  These are available in ceramic, marble, granite and a number of synthetics. In one sense, it almost doesn’t really matter what type of tile you choose, since tile simply signals a fine entrance. As a practical matter, however, you want a tile that will compliment the rest of you house.

What if you already have a decorative entrance?

Most homes already have an entrance. Some may already have tile.  Does it need to be improved?  Did the original builder put in a rich entrance, or does it need to be updated?

Think of it this way: Is your entrance inviting and welcoming, or does it need help.  What do potential buyers see when they first walk through the doors of your home? Remember, most buyers first look down, if for no other reason then to see where they are stepping.

Not sure? Call a real estate agent for a second opinion. Good real estate agents see houses day in and day out and can immediately tell you whether the entrance of your home needs work, or is in good shape. (They can do the same for a lot of the features in your home.)

Should I install it myself?

Most building and hardware stores offer great instruction on how to install tile. Some even offer occasional classes on it.  The larger suppliers even have equipment that you can rent and do it yourself   Most entrances are fairly small, usually not more than 5 or 6 feet wide by 10 or feet long. That’s only 50 to 60 square feet. If you’re interested in learning how to lay tile this is a good place to start.

How much will it Cost?

How much an improvement project costs will depend mostly on the tile you buy. You can buy tiles as cheaply as a dollar a tile. Or you can spend $20.00 a tile. Usually professional installation is the same price regardless of the price of the tiles, unless you get specialty tiles that break easily, require a special application such as granite.
For a typical entrance, it probably will cost between $200.00 and $500.00.

What about other Materials?

You can use other materials,, but remember that tile preserves that elegant look, and is especially impressive You can just as easily use wood, an offsetting carpet, or a synthetic material.   Remember that the idea is to have a welcoming and inviting entrance. It can be well worth the cost to boosting the value of your home. How do you feel about the entrance, when you go into people’s homes? Do you agree or do you think other things are more important?

A Texas based company ‘Freehold Licensing’ has been blamed for coming up with a scam to distort money for 99 years on your real estate. An attorney has come up with an idea of charging a 1% fee every time a house sells in the CC&R’s. When a seller goes to see their home, they will pay a 1% fee of the gross amount to the developer or builder. It is called a transfer fee. Apparently, some homeowner are not aware of it. Watch the video below for more information:

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

From the standpoint of having the opportunity of selling other people’s properties, it would hurt your ability to sell your property. If the majority is against a transfer fee, you will narrow your buyers. They will buy a home in a neighborhood without a transfer fee. Let’s find out if a transfer fee would hurt or help you sell your home. Take the poll now. Then leave a comment on how you feel.

This is my favorite article. I found it in an magazine Called Heath – July 1982 by Leslie Kane. They weren’t in business for too long. It was too bad because I liked the magazine. Here is the article.

In any given society, particular colors affect almost everyone in the same way. “Colors have a uniform effect within a Western European tradition, which includes Japan,” says Margaret Walch, director of the Color Association of the United States, which standardizes the 192 colors in current use by industry and government.

In general, dark colors strike us as evil and foreboding, while light colors seem not only cheerful but physically light as well. Bonnie Bender, color marketing manager at Pittsburgh Paints and an authority on color and psychology, reports that in an experiment testing the psychological effects of paint on worker productivity, researchers painted heavy boxes white and light boxes black. Workmen had considerable more trouble lifting the light black boxes than the heavy white ones.

Marcella Graham, a medical technologist, color consultant and interior designer, described an equally dramatic example of the use of color to lift depression and stimulate activity. Called in for a consultation on staff and patient apathy in a hospital, she found the whole place painted light and medium chocolate brown and two shades of grey green. Graham advised painting the hospital floor by floor, using pumpkin orange, strawberry pink, emerald green and lavender. (Simply putting in pink curtains or orange bedspreads produced its effect.) Patient response to the brilliant colors was immediate and positive. Elderly men shaved and dressed to get out of bed each day. Female patients began circulating and visiting in the halls and requested powder, combs, lipstick and stockings. Even staff morale picked up.

If colors exert such a powerful force on mental and physical health, it behooves us to know more about them.”

Next time, we will break down each color. I’ll start with this article and add research from other sources.

A couple of days ago, I was talking with a group of people. When we got on the subject of color, everyone seemed very interested in my knowledge of it and how it affects us. I explained that I had found this research by going to the library in the early 1980s. Now, people have send me articles on present research on color. If you find one, please send me a copy.

Someone requested I put my findings on my blog. So I went through my papers and found the information that I dug out of the library. My information all comes from print books and magazines. If there’s someone out there who can add to it, please do by leaving a comment at the end. I want research and not something from a book that isn’t backed up by research that you can go read yourself.

Looking over my papers, I still like this article, The Power of Color. I found some of the sources on my own and I found the information to be accurate. Today, I found myself enjoying the article as much as I did in 1980. It was written by Leslie Kane in July 1982 for a magazine called Health. In my research, I found a book I think was well written. It was printed by Architecture Digest in the early 1980s. I only have pages copied out of it because it was a limited edition, so please let me know what you want. I’ll start with the article. Here are the first three paragraphs of The Power of Color – and you can decide for yourself.

“Why should hanging pretty red wallpaper in your bedroom inspire you and your spouse to make war and not love? Why does a teacher who holds sway in a yellow-and-brown classroom complain that your child’s fidgety and inattentive while a teacher who instructs in a blue room calls him a model student? And why should your job suddenly become more depressing instead of less when the boss finally shells out for a paint job and your dirty white walls get a coat of nice fresh green?
It’s a matter of science—the science of experiencing color.”

This next part I found to be true in a couple of other books that are out of print.

“Colors are electromagnetic wavebands of energy,” says Alexander Schauss, director of the American Institute of Biosocial Research in Tacoma, Washington. “Each color has its own wavelength. The wavebands stimulate chemicals in your eye, sending impulses or messages to the pituitary and pineal glands near the brain. These are master endocrine glands that regulate hormones and other physiological systems in the body.” Stimulated by response to colors, glandular activities can alter moods, speed up heart rates and increase brain activity.”

If you find this information interesting, I will continue entering Leslie’s article and other information from books that are out of print. Please let me know how you feel about this by leaving a comment below. The picture above is one of my favorite pictures from the Hubble telescope. The color is beautiful and this is a part of our universe. Color is important to your well-being.

This came out of my favorite book on the subject. I have articles that were written around 1980. I will be sharing them with you. Some readers have found other articles on present research on color. They have sent it to me. I’ll be adding this to the series on color in real estate.