All this talk of staging makes me curious.

How much does it cost, say for a house posidrive's size?

Posidrive:

I concur with what other have said about getting it staged and/or a re-paint to contemporary Canadian taste.

Do you not have a family room in addition to your formal living room? I would have expected a family room in a house at this price. Could you convert the office?

It is a very large lot, are there any restrictions as to what you can do with it, could you have horse?

What price is the builder now quoting for new homes of the same size as yours? Buyers may be able to buy a new home to their specification cheaper than you paid at the height of the market.

Hmm, when I read that the house was yellow, I thought of lemon yellow. That's not yellow - that's more of a cream colour - at least that's how it looks to me and I thought it was lovely!

However, that being said, I do agree that staging the house would make it look a lot more welcoming and lived in. There is a TV show called The Stagers

http://www.hgtv.com/decorating/befor...res/index.html

They have some before and after pics that show what a difference it can make.

It's enough of a lot to barbecue a horse on a spit but it'd be a struggle to keep one alive on that space. It's more suburban lawn than field.

So what use is a lot that size. other to spend time on mowing

You've got me. It's a subdivision so I suppose any kind of animal is out of the question, I doubt you'd even be allowed to put up a couple of nets for a football pitch. I suppose you could run a lot of washing lines and dry laundry for everyone living in the project but otherwise it just looks a bother, lots of lawn in the kind of place where neighbours inspect your lawn.

That's about the perfect size. Big enough to justify a John Deere lawn tractor, small enough that it takes about 45 min to mow.

I do my best thinking on the JD.

<is anyone going to tell me what house staging costs?>

As with most of the other houses of this size/price point in this development we do not have a family room. The style of our house is aimed more at the smaller family or those soon to be empty nesters who appreciate the larger rooms. I can't see any reason why the den could not be converted to a family room. For the larger family with a bit more cash to develop the basement to their own needs there is of the order of 1000+ sq. ft available. A similar size home but with a larger undeveloped basement but on a much smaller lot sold for 760k recently.

I don't think that the regulations specifically exclude a horse although I'm not sure. We do have limits on 3 dogs or cats though. We are allowed as many fish as we want

Not much left in our phase, unless you have 425k to buy the one remaining lot . New builds of non custom homes by less prestigious builders in the next phase of the development, if built to the same specification would probably work out at a very similar price as we would hope to get after a bit of bartering on price. These are however on much smaller lots with a lot more through traffic and although described as estate lots, our realtor thinks that this is a bit of an optimistic description since the space between the houses is not great. Most of them are also back to back instead of backing onto essentially open space. Buying in this next phase is going to have the purchasers living in a real mess for many years whereas the homes in our phase are ready to live in without all the hastle associated with constant construction traffic, so for a family with young children we are a much safer option. We have also had a number of builders go bust recently, so if you go new build then you are taking a chance.

What we need is a British family who is (a) not Canadianised and (b) ownes a couple of large dogs to fully appreciate our house

SPACE between you and the neighbours. Plus the kids have a large safe area in which to play.

Exactly, although we have a Husquavana

Oh dear, far too European. This is your problem.

The condo regulations specifically mention residences using tennis courts so a couple of footy nets, especially if not permanent structures should not be a problem. We have a condo board who will approve anything that is not anti- social.

Also coonsidering the price point of many of the houses, the neighbours are very non snooty and would not inspect the quality of your lawn.

Difficult to say exactly - like many things it depends on the level of expertise and charging structure of the firm you engage. You could budget for somewhere up to $1,000 for a meeting, advice and written plan. After that the sky is the limit depending how much you do yourself and how much you want to let them do for you.

$700,000 at 3% is $400 a week so if you can knock 3 weeks off the time on the market you are ahead of the game.

Not in my case. I'm mortgage free. But the place could do with some cosmetic updating if we wanted to sell it at top dollar (which we will sometime not too many years from now).

Do these companies just rent/own their own furniture for example. Or simply provide advice?

Kiwilass mentioned a Vancouver firm called Dekora earlier.