Alice Stolz

”We tell ourselves not to judge a book by its cover, and yet when it comes to buying and selling houses, you’ve got around 20 seconds for someone to look at the front of your home and decide yes, no or maybe.”

It seems hard to fathom, but the study – the room that many of us deemed done, dead and obsolete – has not only had a glow up, but, thanks to the pandemic, has also had a complete rebrand.

If kitchens are the engine room, living and dining spaces are the true heart of the home.

For many of today’s would-be buyers, the main bedroom is not about size, opulence or whizz-bang features. But there are some basic essentials you need to get right.

As simple as bedrooms can be, they can also be painstakingly tricky to get right when you think about the ever-changing needs of the people using them.

No holiday house is complete without a bunk room. So, what should this memory-making space include?

Bathrooms are fast becoming one of the most amped-up rooms in our homes.

Think you could hack it on The Block? Alice Stolz shares the top things you should master to make it through a renovation.

Now the final spaces have been revealed and the homes completed, picking a favourite is harder than you’d think

While some teams understood the assignment on garden week, others missed the mark with their outdoor spaces.

Remember when ”Mum and Dad’s room” used to consist of a double bed and a couple of bedside tables? How have things changed.

Forget location, forget pools and forget views. Buyers, especially family buyers, love open-plan living just about more than anything else, says Alice Stolz.

As to what should and should not be incorporated into a studio, that is very much open to interpretation. Do you need a kitchenette? A fridge or a fireplace? What about a TV or a microwave? A Pilates bed or a Murphy bed?

Call me harsh, but buyers who love the addition of a self-contained studio will be most likely drawn to the very fact it exists and it is habitable, not necessarily that it is fitted out with the most expensive marble you can buy or that it has a solid-gold loo.

This Melbourne suburb has been overlooked in the past, but it’s just hit the national stage.

Many families are embracing apartment living, with affordability, shared facilities and a sense of community appealing to buyers.

With over 115,000 Aussies homeless, could Japanese inspiration give more people a place to rest their head, Alice Stolz writes.

Would you, could you, roll up to a house you once lived in, knock on the door and ask if you can come in for a peek inside, Alice Stolz asks.

’The kicker is, they’re for sale and they’re cheap.’

The topic that every child should learn at school.