Happy Easter! Check out these tips for selling your home this spring

Cherry-Blossom-JakeMcGuireHappy Easter from your friends at HGTV’s FrontDoor.com!

Easter — and spring in general — are a time of renewal, and hopefully, this spring season, we’ll see new life and activity in the real estate market.

In celebration of glorious spring (and the end of a harsh winter), we’re sharing our seasonal tips to help home sellers make the most of this traditionally strong time for the market.

Staging Tips for Spring

Adapt Your Home to Its Selling Season: Spring Tips

And tune in to HGTV to catch your favorite shows and hear more about FrontDoor.com!

New Year’s Real Estate Resolutions to Live By in 2010

house-searchWith 2010 well underway, how are you doing on your New Year’s resolutions? (My efforts for daily gym workouts have been less than successful, but I digress.)

If you’re looking for real estate-themed resolutions, may we suggest adding a few more things to your list of to-do’s?

1. Take advantage of a buyer’s market. Home values are still falling in many markets and many areas are still ripe with great deals. Browse homes for sale.

2. Let Uncle Sam help you buy a new home. See if you qualify for the homebuyer tax credit.

3. Aspire to live better, but within your means. One can always dream. Check out our Luxury Living Guide and try our “Can I Afford It?” calculator.

4. Get your finances in shape. If you can’t afford to buy a home now, commit to a homeownership strategy. Take steps to boost your credit score and save for a down payment.

5. Find adventure in the Southwest. Find out what life is like in Santa Fe and Albuquerque and enter to win HGTV’s Dream Home.

Happy New Year!

Southwestern living shines in HGTV’s new Dream Home

hgtv-dream-home-new-mexicoLonging for a luxurious lifestyle in the Southwest?

Then check out HGTV’s Dream Home!

This year,  it’s a 3,900-square-foot, Pueblo-style home in Sandia Park, New Mexico, a scenic master-planned community between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Starting Jan. 1, you can enter to win the $2 million grand-prize package, which includes the home, a 2010 GMC Terrain and $5,000 in cash.

If you live in the Southwest, let us know what it’s like. Post your comments here. Good luck!

HGTV’s Real Estate Intervention host Sabrina Soto to speak at NAR

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HGTV fans attending the NAR convention have to check out the “Test Out Your On-Camera Presence” session on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. or Sunday at 1:30 p.m. in Room 28A on the upper level of the San Diego Convention Center.

The host of HGTV’s Real Estate Intervention, Sabrina Soto, and Channing Dawson, one of the members of the founding executive team of HGTV, will show you:

* how to use video to enhance your brand and business
* the top 10 tips for boosting your on-camera appeal

Attendees will be part of a “studio audience” and a few lucky REALTORS® will be selected to work with Sabrina in an interactive home walk-through.

Are you the next real estate star? Stop by HGTV’s FrontDoor booth #1916 at NAR

HGTV’s FrontDoor.com is at the NAR conference in San Diego through Monday interviewing dozens of Realtors in search of a few good real estate experts. On Friday night, more than 50 people did a screen test for a chance to be on an HGTV show.

If you think you have what it takes to be a real estate expert on TV, get your two minutes of fame at HGTV’s FrontDoor booth #1916. It’s fun!

See what it’s like in this video:

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Test Your TV presence with HGTV’s FrontDoor.com at the REALTORS® Conference in San Diego!

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a real estate expert in the media, or even HGTV?

Then join HGTV’s FrontDoor.com at the REALTORS® Conference in San Diego this weekend! Here’s how:

Sabrina-Soto1.  Attend the “Test Out Your On-Camera Presence” session

Saturday, 11/14, 1:30 p.m. – 3 p.m., San Diego Convention Center, Room 28A
or
Sunday, 11/15, 1:30 p.m. – 3 p.m., San Diego Convention Center, Room 28A

The host of HGTV’s Real Estate Intervention, Sabrina Soto, and Channing Dawson, one of the members of the founding executive team of HGTV, will show you:

* how to use video to enhance your brand and business
* the top 10 tips for boosting your on-camera appeal

Attendees will be part of a “studio audience” and a few lucky REALTORS® will be selected to work with Sabrina in an interactive home walk-through.

2. Shoot a 90-second screen test in HGTV’s FrontDoor booth #1916

Annalisa Burgos, FrontDoor’s editorial content guru, will be conducting screen tests in our booth #1916 on the convention floor. We’ll shoot a 90-second video of you reacting to a typical scenario from our HGTV shows. It’s not a lot of time, so you’re on the spot. See how fast you can think on your feet and offer valuable advice for our viewers!

We’ll select a few videos to highlight on HGTV’s FrontDoor.com.

So if you’ll be in San Diego, definitely stop by and say hello to your friends at HGTV’s FrontDoor.com. We look forward to seeing you there!

Take charge of your home search with HGTV FrontDoor’s OpenHouse.com!

hgtv frontdoor open houseHGTV’s FrontDoor.com is proud to welcome real estate open house listing site OpenHouse.com to the HGTV family!

On OpenHouse.com, you can find open house schedules and addresses and view hundreds of thousands of virtual home tours to enhance your house hunting experience.

Combine that with FrontDoor’s 4 million real estate listings and expert articles and videos and you’ve got all you need to take charge of your home search.

OpenHouse.com also offers homebuyers and sellers great insider tips and advice, including:

Read the news release here. And be sure to watch HGTV’s Open House Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET for more news!

Neighborhood Snapshot: Upper West Side in New York City

In New York City, where space is scarce, homeowners have to be creative when customizing their living space. Native New Yorker Arlyn Gajilan set out to turn her Manhattan studio into a peaceful, eco-friendly oasis in an urban jungle.

See how a well-planned, “green” renovation can increase home value and learn more about the Upper West Side, a suburban-like, family-friendly neighborhood with the benefits of a big city lifestyle.

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Inman conference highlight: FrontDoor’s Segway to social media

Inman News’ Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco has been great so far, and tomorrow, August 7, we’d love to invite all our fans and followers to listen to the president of our parent company Scripps Networks Digital, Deanna Brown, talk about “How TV, the Web, Your Phone and the Social Universe are Colliding.” It’s at 9 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom.

In case you didn’t know, HGTV’s FrontDoor.com and the entire Scripps Networks family are actively engaging consumers through blogs and social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. On FrontDoor, we’ve also integrated Facebook Connect to allow readers to comment on articles on the site.

To spread the word about all the cool stuff we’re doing, we brought in our Segway-savvy social director. Check her out in this video!

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Extra, Extra: FrontDoor is coming to a town near you!

Our FrontDoor family is growing! Now readers of some of the biggest newspapers in the country — the Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Denver Post and more — will get FrontDoor’s valuable expert tips, advice and videos and browse our 4 million listings.

FrontDoor.com is partnering with 250 newspapers across the country to enhance their Web sites, allowing homebuyers and sellers to browse local listings and real estate content.

In fact, the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.com just launched this enhanced content, while the FrontDoor team attends Inman News‘ Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco this week. We hope all you Bay Area folks enjoy it!

frontdoor-partnership-with-sfgate

Partners include Cox Newspapers, Freedom Newspapers, Journal Register Co. and Southern Newspaper Group.

If you recall, we announced a similar partnership with local television stations to enhance their Web content.

So look out for FrontDoor in a local newspaper near you!

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