Where do you go to get information for renovation projects?  The television set in your home in Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Parkland County and the Edmonton area is probably not your first choice, but flipping through the channels these days reveals something surprising:  Among the many sports, movie and mainstream networks, there are a large number of worthwhile programs and even whole networks offering valuable information to homeowners.  Check out some of these offered in the Spruce Grove/Stony Plain/Edmonton area by Shaw Cable and TELUS Optik TV.  A little disclosure:  After you’ve checked them out, let me know what you think because I admit I haven’t seen most of them myself!

A & E

(Shaw 25, HD 233; Telus 170, HD 670)

$100 Makeover, Disaster Guy, Drill Team, Fix This Kitchen, Fix This Yard, Flipping Vegas, Flip This House, Hoarders, Sell This House

CBC  (Click on Find a Program)

(Shaw 4, HD 209; Telus 4, HD 618)

All for One With Debbie Travis, Steven and Chris

Discovery Channel  

(Shaw 32; Telus 200)

Canada’s Worst Handyman

DIY Network  (Click on Shows A-Z)

(Shaw 136; Telus 144)

A whole network of house-related programming, such as:  Decked Out, The Dirt on Gardening, Disaster DIY, DIY Hot List Kitchens & Baths, Dream House, Garage Mahal, Holmes on Homes, House Crashers, I Hate My Kitchen, Man Caves, Rehab Addict, Turf War, Wasted Spaces, Weekend Handyman, Yard Crashers, and many, many more.

HGTV 

(Shaw 19, HD 231; Telus 142, HD 680)

Too many shows to list them all here!  A few of the more popular:  Colin & Justin’s Home Heist, Debbie Travis’ Painted House, Gardening by the Yard, Holmes on Homes, Holmes Inspection, House Hunters, Property Virgins, Real Renos, Sarah’s House.  Many more.

OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network)

(Shaw 92; Telus 202, HD 651)

Divine Design, Home Takeover with Simon & Tomas

PBS

(PBS Spokane on Shaw 22, HD 204; Telus 23, HD 607 Seattle

PBS Detroit on Shaw 81

PBS Boston on Telus 54, HD 629)

HandyMa’am with Beverly DeJulio, The Perennial Gardener with Karen Strohbeen, The Router Workshop, This Old House, The Woodwright’s Shop

Slice  (Click on Shows)

(Shaw 33; Telus 141)

Family Renovation, House Poor, Shotgun Reno, Till Debt Do Us Part

TLC The Learning Channel

(Shaw 35, HD 236; Telus 140, HD 671)

Hoarding: Buried Alive, Home Made Simple, Kitchen Boss, Spouse vs. House

W Network

(Shaw 34; Telus 146)

The Agents, All for Nothing, Anna & Kristina’s Grocery Bag, Building Bryks, Candice Tells All, Colour Confidential, Divine Design, Grin and Build It, Help My House is Falling Down, Home Wreckers, Inside the Box, Love It Or List It, Making House, Million Dollar Decorators, My House Your Money, Property Brothers, Take This House and Sell It

Not strictly related to houses and real estate but still very much related to home, so we have to give an Honorable Mention to:

The Food Network 

(Shaw 29; Telus 143)

Ace of Cakes, Barefoot Contessa, Chef at Home, Eat Shrink and Be Merry, Family Restaurant, French Food at Home, Iron Chef America, Jamie’s Meals in Minutes, Restaurant Makeover, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Tough Cookies, and much more!

This list isn’t intended to be comprehensive, but if I’ve missed anything that really should be on it, please let me know!

I’d love to help you find a house to turn into a home.  Call me at 780-910-9669, email me at barry@barryt.ca, or contact me here. 

Today’s blog post is a little different! 

I enjoy playing poker, a game that requires a fair amount of skill, psychology and yes, luck.  But poker is also all about mathematical probabilities.   There are many books and now websites dealing with the odds of making up all the various poker hands.  Here are just a few from the website Probability in Poker.com.

• Odds of getting a Royal Flush are 1 in 649,740.  This improves to 1 in 64,974 if you drop the royal part and just aim for a Straight Flush.  Already have 4 of the 5 cards you need for a straight flush?  Your chances of getting the 5th card are 2 in 47.
• The odds of being dealt 4 of a kind are 1 in 4165.  But suppose you already have 3 of a kind.  Should you aim for 4 of a kind or even a full house?  Absolutely, say the math folks, because the chance of getting your 4th card is pretty good, relatively speaking, at 1 in 10, or even moving up to a full house with a 1 in 16 chance.
• How about some of the more common hands, like 3 of a kind?   Odds are 1 in 47 you’ll be dealt 3 of a kind, but if you already hold a pair, you have a 1 in 8 chance of getting that 3rd card.   Chances of being dealt two pair:  1 in 21.  Single pair:  1 in 2.3, meaning that in every 3 hands dealt to you, you should receive a pair.  But here’s where poker can feel a little cruel:  the odds of getting a particular hand never change based on what happened in a previous hand so just because the last three hands you’ve been dealt haven’t contained a pair, this doesn’t mean a pair in the next hand is a sure thing!

Maybe you’re not a poker player and the last paragraph has you nodding off – sorry about that!  Maybe some of these other statistics will interest you.  (This information comes mainly from TheLongestListoftheLongestStuffattheLongestDomainNameatLongLast.com).

• Are you dreaming of becoming a billionaire?  If you live in the US, your chances of that happening are about 1 in 1,000,000, and world-wide, about 1 in 7,000,000.
• Maybe finding a four-leaf clover will improve your odds of becoming wealthier.  Odds of finding that four-leaf clover on your first try are about 1 in 10,000.
• OK, maybe rolling dice will give you better luck.  If you roll two 6-sided dice, what is the combination most likely to come up?  There’s a reason they call it “Lucky 7” since seven is more likely to come up than any other number.  You are least likely to roll a 2 or a 12.  In fact, you are six times more likely to roll a 7 than a 2 or 12.  (Dice Probabilities)
• Maybe golf will give you more success.  Shooting for a hole-in-one?  Odds of making it are about 10,000 to 1, if you’re an average golfer.
• It seems we hear fairly often about people out on a golf course getting struck by lightning.  How common is that?  Well, odds of that happening to you in a given year are about 1 in 500,000.  Odds get longer, making the event less likely, if we eliminate the stupid factor.  You and I would never put up our umbrellas or hunker under the tallest tree on the golf course in a lightning storm….  If you do get hit by lightning, chances are good you’ll survive with odds of dying 1 in 2,500,000, or, put another way, life goes on after 4 out of 5 lightning hits.
• Speaking of living…  What are your chances these days of living to age 100?  People today have a 2% chance of that happening, or odds of 1 in 50.  The person most likely to live to age 100 is a white woman in a developed country who was the first-born child of a mother age 25 or younger.  Be glad you’re alive in the 21st century because no matter how long you live, it’s probably going to be longer than at any point in the past.  If you were around in the Stone Age, you’d be a senior at just age 20!
• Odds of having twins are about 3 in 100, triplets 1 in 8,000 and quadruplets 1 in 700,000.
• This past week news reporters were warning people that a bus-sized chunk of a decommissioned, 20-year-old NASA satellite was about to fall to earth.  You stand a 1 in 3,200 chance of being hit by that piece of space junk.
• Odds of dying by natural disaster, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, are less than you might think at 1 in 3,357.
• Odds of dying, period, are one in one since no one gets out of here alive, but pick your method:  1 in 5 chance of dying of heart disease, 1 in 7 for cancer, 1 in 100 for vehicle accident, 1 in 20,000 for air travel.   Yikes, this is just morbid; see The Odds of Dying.
• And how about winning the lottery? You often hear that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than win at 6-49.  Sad but true.  Odds of winning at 6-49 are 1 in 13,983,816, making it about 28 times more likely that you’ll be hit by lightning than by Lady Luck.

One last little bit of trivia.  You may have run into someone in your life with the same birthday as you.  Ever wonder how many people need to be in a room together before you find two people with the same birthday?  The answer might surprise you:  you have a 50/50 chance in a room of just 23 people of finding two people with the same birthday.  In a group of 75 people, there’s a 99.9% chance of that happening.

Check out these websites for more odds:

FUNNY2 – The Odds #1

Probabilities in the game of Monopoly

Bridge Odds

Craps Odds and Probabilities

Roulette Odds – Casino Odds and Roulette Probabilities

Poker Probabilities:

The Wizard of Odds

Texas Holdem Odds – Probabilities for Poker Hands

Wikipedia Poker Probability

Blackjack:

Blackjack Probabilities

Lotteries:

Lotteries:  What are the Odds?  CBC News

Lottery Probability, Lotto Odds

What are the odds I can help you find the perfect home or sell your treasured property?  Let’s talk!  Call me at 780-910-9669, email me at barry@barryt.ca, or contact me here.  

How do we go about changing the “For Sale” sign on your home in Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Parkland County or the Edmonton area into “Sold”?

Once your house is officially “on the market”, lots of things take place in my office to make sure that as many realtors and potential buyers as possible are aware of it.

First of all, I post your listing, consisting of a detailed description of your property, the pictures and measurements I took during my visit, and various other particulars such as the asking price, annual property taxes, neighborhood features and so on, to the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS®.  This powerful online service almost instantly makes your property’s information available to the thousands of realtors working in the Edmonton region.  They, in turn, can make this information available to their clients who might be looking for a property like yours.  Clients who create a customized search profile listing their desired property features can opt to receive automated “highlight sheets” showing properties available for sale that match what they are looking for.  These days, most realtors, or their offices, have websites with a direct link to MLS, making it possible for their clients to see all the pictures and other information posted on MLS.  Potential buyers can also search MLS listings directly by going to MLS.ca or Realtor.ca. 

Back at the Realty Executives Leading office, a full-color printed “window ad” showing a picture of your home and a verbal description is posted in the front window of our building so that passers-by and visitors to the office can see the properties listed for sale by the realtors from our office.  I may also create a glossy color highlight sheet featuring photos of your home’s best features for potential buyers to pick up when they are viewing your home with a realtor.

I advertise some or all of my listings every week in the local newspapers, the Grove Examiner in Spruce Grove and the Stony Plain Reporter in Stony Plain.  I also place ads in the Real Estate Weekly (circulation 60,000) published by the Realtors Association of Edmonton.  Printed copies of the Real Estate Weekly are inserted in home-delivered newspapers and sent out to newsstands selling the Edmonton Sun, as well as high traffic food stores, banks and real estate offices all around the Edmonton area.   Websites for all three of these publications have meant an even greater possible audience for this advertising.

I make as much use of technology in marketing your property as I can, featuring my listings on my website and on my Facebook Business Page, as well as posting ads on Kijiji and creating special in-house virtual tours, using software called VisualTour, that are attached to my MLS listings. 

While we still put a For Sale sign on your front lawn and maybe stage an open house, you can see that today’s real estate marketing goes well beyond traditional sales methods!

Looking to sell your home?  I can help!  Call me today at 780-910-9669, email me at barry@barryt.ca, or contact me here.