Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
What I’ve learned from selling our (first) house
NOTE:
Please feel free to add your advice / tips on selling a house, on moving in general, in the comment section. I’m sure you all have some fabulous ideas that I haven’t thought of or heard of.
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First and foremost, work with someone whom you feel completely comfortable with and who actually believe in your home’s potential and value. If they don’t believe in your house, how are they going to make any buyers / buyers agent believe it?!
Interview agents. Interview the finalists for a 2nd time if you have a hard time deciding on one. Ask the same questions to each agent. Negotiate on commission if you can, the worst they can say is no. Trust your gut feeling because most of the time it is accurate. Once you have found the agent to your liking, then you need to trust his/her advice.
I personally don’t recommend selling a house by owner, because you have to do all the showings yourself and most people feel uncomfortable viewing the house if the owner is present. But if the market is in the upswing and in your favor, then by all means, give it a try if you are not on a time constraint. We didn’t want to pay a huge hefty percent to a realtor but we didn’t really have time on our side.
So, to the point, here are the bullet points:
* Price it right. The agent should provide you with a full comparative analysis and suggest a listing price. Go to open houses that are in the same price range as yours, who are in the same proximity, seek out the competition and see what they / their house have to offer.
* DE-CLUTTER, DE-CLUTTER, DE-CLUTTER! No one wants to picture living in a house filled with STUFF everywhere, especially not YOUR stuff. You want people to be able to “see themselves” in the house; how you live is NOT how you should show the house.
* Pack away all pictures that have adults in them (and children’s pictures too if they are older). For some reason, most people are OK with kids’ / babies pictures but not grown up pictures. I think pictures of grown ups hinders potential buyers from seeing themselves living there; it’s someone else’s house and not mine kind of thinking.
* CLEAN. Clean the whole house like you never have before.
* STAGE, STAGE, STAGE. Again, this is the “how you live is NOT how you should show the house” idea. Stage up your house, spruce it up with decorative items, make it as much “magazine-like” as you can. Rugs, pillows, candles, wall hangings / paintings, nice towels in the bathrooms, matching pillow cases and shams and bedspreads, etc do make a huge difference in presentation.
* Kitchen counter spaces should hold only a few essential / decorative items.
* Bathrooms should be close to spotless.
* Beds needs to be made and again, magazine-like. THEY don’t get to keep your bed or bedspreads, but it will make it so much more cozier and pleasing to the eye if you make the bed like a magazine’s would.
* Pack away off season clothes and hide them under the beds or put in the basement or attic. Make your closet half full to give the illusion that it’s bigger than actual.
* If you have kid(s), pack away bulky or loose pieces of toys. On the same note, pack away stuff that you don’t use often. When showing requests comes, you want to be able to whirl through the house and tidy in a speedy manner.
* Paint the interior. Most likely daily wear and tear has left some smudges on the walls, painting it a neutral color will make them go away and give the space a new and fresh look. This is one of the cheapest investment/improvement that will give the highest return when selling a house. Be sure the colors flow easily from room to room.
* Go through and fix the “little” stuff. The cosmetic things that will matter a lot. Such as blown out light bulbs, broken hinges, nail holes in the wall, leaky faucets, etc.
* Make sure the entrance, inside and outside, is clean and welcoming with rugs, and a place to put their shoes.
* Make your garden / yard as attractive but easy to care as possible. Repair any siding issues if necessary.
* If you’re going to do any remodeling, go with the kitchen first. Then bathrooms. For major remodeling, those 2 will get you the most return for your investment.
* Don’t refuse any requests for showings. Try to accommodate all requests because you don’t want to second guess if you might have lost a potential buyer. The people who bought our house requested their first showing time to be 8-9p.m. That’s right, P.M. Our kids’ bedtime is 8p.m. We ate dinner, cleaned the house, packed up the kids and drove around the city until they fell asleep. And those people bought the house after 3 more unreasonable showing time requests. As much as I think we could have done better in the transaction, the fact remains that we sold it after only 6 weeks in a not-so-hot market. For that, I’m very glad we didn’t refuse any of their unreasonable request times.
Selling a house is a huge daunting experience, especially when you have little children and or pets. I really hated the whole experience. The next time we move, if possible, I want to move out first because I just really did not like tidying up every single day and never knew what would happen that day. There are so many factors on why a house goes and why another won’t. But if you decorate it magazine-like then potential buyers are more likely to be drawn to the house.
on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 10:30 am:
LOL……me have something to add???? Well I actually agree with your list (although we do have to turn down showings). Imagine living like this for a year and a half while the market continues to crash around you. We have done EVERYTHING (and actually more) in the above list. Truth be told in a really really really bad market there is only so much you can do. When we first listed we were surprised that we could actually make a profit….but then prices started to drop 5 - 20 grand a month for the rest of the summer. Then it went steady for a while then just recently there was another $10,000 drop (we bought the house in 2001 at 125,000…..you do the math on how serious 10 grand is to us). Its hard to say “one” thing will do it. After 18 months you can go crazy blaming yourself as if there was “something” YOU are doing WRONG. My biggest piece of advice is if you are doing your best then ignore all unsolicited advice (oh and BOY will you get lots, worse than pregnancy). (oh and I don’t consider Sweetisu’s above advice unsolicited;-) People can be well meaning, but just end up being mean. Realistically in some areas this IS the WORST housing market in 16 years, and not only is there no end in sight it looks to get worse. If you are in a market with a high foreclosure rate its hard to price a house lower than a bank who is selling a house for 20-50% less, no matter what you do. Mostly you just have to hang in there, keep your house PERFECT at ALL times. If you can afford to kennel pets every day while you are at work, because most of your showings WILL be last minute. It takes an hour for my husband or I to get home (I have to get my son out of daycare in my building) and 15 minutes is not enough of a notice. Of course if you have a dog you will have to explain to friends, coworkers and family that no you can’t leave your dog in the house while there is a showing…they still won’t believe you. We can’t afford to Kennel everyday so we have had to turn down a lot of showings because of it.
My final advice is to be prepared for jerk realtors. Yep the realtor selling your house can be a real gem (yes interviews are a good idea). However those who are bringing buyers over generally don’t have respect for the sellers. We had realtors barge in without knocking 15 minutes before the showing (realtors generally know and say “hello” before entering even during the “scheduled” time). We have had them show up an hour after the scheduled time (was supposed to be there between 12 and 1, showed up at 2) with no apology. I usually sit across the street and watch the house during a showing (so I can get back to work asap since I work form home some days). One realtor never showed. then she insisted she was there just forgot to leave a card. Those are just a sampling of the many many many jerks who have been in our house while we weren’t there. So just expect that they will not be nice. Get out 15 minutes before the showing time and just avoid them at all costs its a buyers market so it sellers are fair game.
Ok So sorry for the long post, but you can’t imagine how many times in the past 18 months I have seen what the “thing to do” is for selling a house. In a normal market there is probably more that you can “do” to sell a house. But in this market you really just need to hang in there (oh and live in a immaculate house all the time)