Selling My House (advice?)

[House Cat]

After several break-ins in the neighborhood, I am ready to sell my house. I want to do this while all of the original owners are still present and maintaining the beauty of the neighborhood. The problem is, this task seems kind of overwhelming. When I read about it on the internet, there is just so much conflicting information.

I'm not really looking for any of you to give me step by step instructions on how to get this done because that would be too much, but for those of you who have sold your homes, what were the things you felt were most important? Were there things you did that you regretted? Did you put money into things that seemed to really pay off? Anything that you put money into that was a dud? Anything pertinent that you would share for a first time home seller?

When I look around, I feel like EVERYTHING needs to be done. I have a perfectionist's eye. Do you think a buyer would too?

When we bought our house, the market was flooded with foreclosures and short sales. Houses were empty and sold as-is. This is a totally different market. I have no idea how this market works.

 

[NOYFB]

I have heard on numerous occasions that kitchens and bathrooms sell houses, so it might be wise to invest in updating those rooms. but I have to admit that I've never sold a home, so I don't really have any solid insight. I do wish you luck in this very precarious housing market!

 

[Dee*Jay]

House Cat, I have been a realtor for over eleven years in downtown Chicago. The best advice I can give you is to have the listing agent that you will use (or are considering) come through the property with a critical eye and tell you what he/she thinks would pay off and what wouldn't. This realtor should also provide some comps to support the guidance they are giving you. For instance, if a "perfect" house right in your neighborhood sold within the past 90 days for $X and one that needed some work sold for $Y, this realtor should be able to tell you where you fall in the X-to-Y specturm so you can talk over what it makes sense to do (or not) to get the most bang for your buck.

I'm sorry this isn't more concrete advice (like, replace the drawer pulls in the kitchen and VOILA! YOU HAVE A BUYER!) because every area is different and without specific information I'm not sure anyone can give you guidance that will pay off for your situation in the end.

I will offer up a couple of generalities though: Anything that is considered a health and safety issue and that would likely be flagged in an inspection it will probably pay you to take care of up front (assuming you are not selling "as-is," and it doesn't sound like that's the case based on your post). But cosmetic stuff (replace the worn out carpeting in the master bedroom vs. either giving a credit or just pricing the place appropriately and letting the new buyer replace it themselves) is very situation dependent. At the most basic level, of course more prefect sells better over less perfect, but there is a line of practicality that has to be considered, and that is where a local realtor should be valuable to you.

Do you have any specific questions though? I'm happy to help with those in any way that I can based on the information you feel comfortable providing.

 

[NOYFB]

House Cat, I have been a realtor for over eleven years in downtown Chicago. The best advice I can give you is to have the listing agent that you will use (or are considering) come through the property with a critical eye and tell you what he/she thinks would pay off and what wouldn't. This realtor should also provide some comps to support the guidance they are giving you. For instance, if a "perfect" house right in your neighborhood sold within the past 90 days for $X and one that needed some work sold for $Y, this realtor should be able to tell you where you fall in the X-to-Y specturm so you can talk over what it makes sense to do (or not) to get the most bang for your buck.

I'm sorry this isn't more concrete advice (like, replace the drawer pulls in the kitchen and VOILA! YOU HAVE A BUYER!) because every area is different and without specific information I'm not sure anyone can give you guidance that will pay off for your situation in the end.

I will offer up a couple of generalities though: Anything that is considered a health and safety issue and that would likely be flagged in an inspection it will probably pay you to take care of up front (assuming you are not selling "as-is," and it doesn't sound like that's the case based on your post). But cosmetic stuff (replace the worn out carpeting in the master bedroom vs. either giving a credit or just pricing the place appropriately and letting the new buyer replace it themselves) is very situation dependent. At the most basic level, of course more prefect sells better over less perfect, but there is a line of practicality that has to be considered, and that is where a local realtor should be valuable to you.

Do you have any specific questions though? I'm happy to help with those in any way that I can based on the information you feel comfortable providing.

Great advice, Dee Jay! And I'm totally calling you if and when our condo ever gets to the point where we could actually get out from under this mortgage! Although, I may never want to leave after my new bathroom is finished! LOL

 

[zoebartlett]

Great advice, Dee*Jay. We sold our condo a year ago and we regret not having it appraised ourselves. The buyers, my husband, and I signed the offer we had negotiated, and then the condo was appraised.When the appraisal came back, it was for far less than the offer had been, so of course the buyers refused to pay a penny more. By that point, we had gone through a lot and we just wanted out. We lost a lot in that sale, although we were happy to finally move on. Looking back, I wish we had gotten the condo appraised before putting it on the market.

ETA: Like Dee*Jay suggested, we did have our realtor walk through the property and give his recommendations about things to do vs. what to skip tackling before selling. We did save some money...

 

[Mayk]

We also recently sold and had an appraisal completed before the listing. The market had been heading up and we wanted to be sure if we listed and received on offer we had an idea about where it would come in. This was a good decision for us.

My advice is to de-clutter and simplify. Our house showed better. We pulled area rugs up so the wood floors showed better. Those were just a few things. Best money I think we spent. We repainted the front door and shutters. It had been a dark green. We went to black with a creamy white house. The Green was dated the black made the whole place look more up to date.

 

[movie zombie]

staging.....that is the magic word for me.
unclutter the house.
take down family/personal pictures.
fresh paint.
make the space inviting but also open to being someone else's space.
same with the outside: curb appeal.

there is a lot about both on the internet.

I've done it and I can tell you it really makes a difference.

 

[Dee*Jay]

I'm trying to get a handle on what people mean when they say appraisal. Do you literally mean having a appraiser come in and give you a value for your home? Or do you mean having a realtor provide what he/she thinks the value of your home is? What I'm getting from the comments is the first of the two scenarios and I really don't know how much value there is in that. I mean, I suppose there is SOME value in that to make sure you're not thinking your $100,000 property is worth a million dollars so it's good to have someone set you straight, but if the realtor is doing a decent job you should walk away from that meeting with as reasonable a number as you would get from an appraiser. Plus, and "official appraisal" doesn't do you any good. Let's say you get your house appraised for $500,000, you go through the process of listing your house (with or without a realtor), ultimately get a buyer, and the buyer's lender has an appraiser come out and he says the value is $400,000. The piece of paper you have from the appraiser you hired that says $500,000 isn't going to do much good because the lender is going to rely on their appraiser's assessment. Also, in my experience, and in *normal* market, if you come to an agreement with a buyer and the contract is written for $X (and assuming it is a reasonable figure and not something wacky), then the appraisal miraculously comes back for -- drum roll please -- $X!!! Or, $X plus a couple grand to make the buyer feel good about the deal (but not plus SO many grand that he seller feels BAD about the deal).

Is this making any sense? What I'm getting at here is I'm not sure I would go down the road of having a property appraised in the formal sense of the word because I don't think it does a seller any good. Any good realtor who runs a well thought out comp should provide you with a valid number to work off of. And I'm definitely not putting realtors on any sort of pedestal (god knows I've deal with my share of utter morons in the past 11 years... ) but a good one SHOULD provide you with basic service like a ballpark figure for the value of your property.

(Zoe - did you use a realtor in your sale? For some reason I'm thinking you didn't...?)

 

[Tacori E-ring]

I met with three realtors when I sold my last house. I ended up moving states and the realtor I chose was AWESOME. Personally it makes all the difference. He told me what to focus on and what to leave. He also was there to arrange inspections and repairs. He worked really hard for his commission. I replaced the carpet, had the hardwoods professionally cleaned, and the windows professionally cleaned. My house was sold empty. Staging is nice but I didn't want to spend the money.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

Our last house sold empty, too, because we needed to move out to be able to do the cosmetic stuff. We made it as spotless as possible. Hardwoods were in great shape because I had used large rugs. We painted the entire inside one neutral color. New carpet in three bedrooms (hardwood in master). Replaced hardware in bathrooms to update. It was a buyers market so I can't say that we got what we wanted, but I do think the interior condition is what sold the house. We did not undertake redoing bathrooms and the kitchen was still pretty nice.

 

[zoebartlett]

Dee*Jay, we did both, and yes, we worked with a realtor. Our realtor walked through our condo and gave us what he thought was a fair listing price. We went with that, knowing we'd have to negotiate somewhat, and we thought it was a fair listing price. The offer we received a couple months later wasn't too far off our mark, so we agreed and everyone signed the paperwork and waited for a closing date. Then an appraiser came in and appraised the property's value. That's when the buyers lowered the price they would pay, so we ended up "having" to agree to that if we wanted to sell to them. Our realtor had recommended that we get the condo appraised ourselves before listing the condo so we'd know ahead of time what we could be looking at (in terms of possible offers), but we chose to save the money. I was just saying that I wish we had spent the money on an appraisal so we wouldn't be blindsided. I will say that we bought and sold at exactly the wrong times. I don't think it was a normal market either time. We bought high and sold low.

Housecat, I agree with everyone else regarding staging your house (decluttering and making it less personalized). I don't think it's necessary to stage in terms of leaving furniture, etc. for showings. I've heard it can help but it would have been an extra expense we would have had to pay for. Our condo was empty when it sold.

 

[missy]

Ditto to much of the good advice here.

When we sold our old beach house in 2011 we decluttered and removed all personal effects i.e. photos etc. We had hardwood floors downstairs but carpet over hardwood upstairs so we removed all the carpeting upstairs and refinished the hardwood underneath them so the whole house had lovely hardwood floors. We also repainted upstairs with a fresh coat of paint (all neutral colors).

Make sure the house smells fresh. Nothing turns people off more than musty stale odors. If you have a basement make sure it smells good and not damp and musty. Your realtor can go over everything with fresh eyes and sense of smell because sometimes when you live in a home you might become desensitized to odors that are less than appealing. Personally I hate air fresheners so I don't recommend using that to freshen up smells. Rather clean everything very thoroughly, air rooms out and get flowers and start baking. Baking smells are awesome and then of course you get to enjoy the proceeds.

Landscaping is important to many buyers and I suggest if yours is not do what you can to freshen it up and make it pretty. We had great landscaping at our previous house and it really made the house pop to potential buyers.

Buyers respond favorably to nice landscaping and superficial aesthetics (though good bones are the most important thing lots of buyers get in the way of themselves that way) and many don't have as much imagination as you and I do. I remember when we bought our co-op in Brooklyn the place was a wreck. The family that owned it had not lived there for 20+ years and the place was a time capsule complete with the 20+ years of thick dust and dirt LOL. The furniture and carpet was OMG crazy with black linoleum floors in the library room. Haha. We fell in love with it immediately because the space was awesome. Many people might have balked at the wreck since it was also a complete gut job. But my dh and I had the vision and knew it was a spectacular space. So just saying all buyers are not that savvy and need some dressing up to realize it will work well for them.

Good luck with your sale!

 

[Mayk]

Dee jay. We paid for an appraisal. The realtor actually gave us a refund at the close off commission for the cost. It was their suggestion and we decided we wanted to study the comps to be sure our pricing was right.

 

[Tekate]

I have recently moved to New England and without a doubt finding a house was miserable because people don't understand CLEANLINESS, I mean is it too hard to remove grease stains from a stove? clean the inside of a dishwasher? dust the baseboards? I have never in my life seen much crap on the market in the 600-700K market (in New England that is not that much). I was appalled. So I bought an 8 year old house for top dollar cause the owner keep it clean and nice.

In selling my house in Texas my house was pained, the grout repainted, I did everything I thought necessary to be competitive in a hot market, I paid to have the house staged and I had 2 offers before the house went on the market (40K over asking price but it is a hot market). Remember you are selling a LIFESTYLE not just a house, even if your house is in a less than stellar neighborhood the buyer will want it clean, neat, and as up to date as possible. Throw pillows, white sheets, flowers in the bathroom and get a bucket of clorox and warm water and scrub (if you need to that is). best of luck!

 

[momhappy]

Focus on cleanliness and simplicity.
Without knowing/seeing the space, it's difficult to give advice, but generally speaking, you want to keep things minimalistic. De-clutter everything and remove furniture pieces as needed to open up space (put them in storage if you have to). Clean and maybe invest in a fresh coat of paint for the interior (grays are very trendy right now). Depending on your specific housing market, staging may or may not be useful. If you don't want/need to invest in professional staging, you can still maximize your spaces by removing excess pieces and adding a few new accessories here and there. A good realtor should do a walk-through and give you advice on what sells and what doesn't, so be open to those changes if need be.

 

[iLander]

Watch out for those realtors (except for DeeJay )!

We had three give us their sales prices and one was about $50K more than anyone else. She gushed about the property and seemed super nice. We signed with her, a top producer in our area. A month later, she started picking on stupid things; trim the tree away from the roof (later found out she got a kick back from tree guy), lower the price, etc. She kept saying to lower the price and didn't do anything to promote the house. It wasn't in her ads, those were for the multi-million dollar properties apparently. She got our price down to where the other realtors were at the start, and her enthusiasm didn't last past the first meeting.

There are usually a pool of buyers looking for a certain property that fits their checklist. By the time our house hit their price point, it was a stale listing and those buyers look for newly listed and tend to ignore older listings. So we lost 6 months. I wanted to cancel her contract but she pointed out her contract was ONE YEAR! I didn't think to check that, and we were stuck with her. Her top producer status was due to her holding onto the sellers for twice as long as all the other realtors.

So go with the consensus price, not a wish-for price. Go with a realtor that has a minimum contract. Write in specifically what you want (# of open houses per month, ad placement frequency, professional photos, internet listing, etc). Make sure it's in top notch condition on day one. Buyers are lazy so and so's, make sure even the inside of your closets are tidy. Pretend your most critical friends are coming for a party, what would they grouse about? If your realtor suggests fixing something, get competing quotes, don't just use her guy.

Check realtor.com to see other houses similar to yours and see what they're going for. Ignore whatever Zillow tells you, their metrics are numbers only and condition is not taken into account.

Good luck, I hate selling houses, and I've done it 4 times.

 

[Dee*Jay]

iLander, your' advice is so good are you sure you're not one of us Evil Realtors?!?

Specifically the point about not just going with the realtor that suggests the highest price, especially if it is way off of the others. The best scenario (if possible) is to go with a realtor who has successfully sold In Your Specific Neighborhood. In Chicago, that can literally mean having sold a bunch of units in that particular building, but I understand your scenario is much different than that. If possible though, it would be great to use a realtor that has already done successful transactions right there because they *should* be very in touch with what's reasonable.

I'm kind of horrified by the idea of a realtor getting kick-backs by a vendor. Ewww. I go out of my way to make sure I never have a conflict of interest in a transaction--I won't even do a deal where I act as dual agent, I insist the other side get their own agent--and this is just so unacceptable to me.

Regarding Realtor.com and Zillow and all those other sites... geez, I hate them with the passion of a thousand Realtor suns... They give consumers the (false) sense of being informed, when in reality they as not a good source of information. Because they are not brokerages they are not bound by the rules and regulations that surround our industry. We are forced to be accurate and up to date; they are not. Those sites also don't "think." If you put in some general parameters the sites will spit you out a result based on the info in their database. That result doesn't take into account all of the nuances that make one property different than another. For instance, I live in an open loft with no walls except in the bathrooms. Based on those sites it is a studio, and when you search studios in my area you get a price that is FAR FAR FAR less than what my 2,760 square foot fully removed previous photography studio is worth. The appraiser, when I refinanced in January, even said he had no idea how to comp this place because he's never been in one like this. Of course this is an extreme example, but the point is the sites only work off of raw data. A realtor *should* be able to assess the property based on it's own merits.

I fully agree with the advice given related to making sure your house is clean, de-cluttered, has good curb appeal and smells at least neutral. (I hesitate to say "good" because good smelling to one person is horrible to another. I can't tell you how many places I've been in with the potpourri or Glad plug-ins being a total turn off.)

BTW, I feel kind of bad because I seem to have taken over this thread. Sorry! I hope t least some of this is useful!

(And Zoe, I'm sorry you had such a bad experience!).

 

[momhappy]

iLander, your' advice is so good are you sure you're not one of us Evil Realtors?!?

Specifically the point about not just going with the realtor that suggests the highest price, especially if it is way off of the others. The best scenario (if possible) is to go with a realtor who has successfully sold In Your Specific Neighborhood. In Chicago, that can literally mean having sold a bunch of units in that particular building, but I understand your scenario is much different than that. If possible though, it would be great to use a realtor that has already done successful transactions right there because they *should* be very in touch with what's reasonable.

I'm kind of horrified by the idea of a realtor getting kick-backs by a vendor. Ewww. I go out of my way to make sure I never have a conflict of interest in a transaction--I won't even do a deal where I act as dual agent, I insist the other side get their own agent--and this is just so unacceptable to me.

Regarding Realtor.com and Zillow and all those other sites... geez, I hate them with the passion of a thousand Realtor suns... They give consumers the (false) sense of being informed, when in reality they as not a good source of information. Because they are not brokerages they are not bound by the rules and regulations that surround our industry. We are forced to be accurate and up to date; they are not. Those sites also don't "think." If you put in some general parameters the sites will spit you out a result based on the info in their database. That result doesn't take into account all of the nuances that make one property different than another. For instance, I live in an open loft with no walls except in the bathrooms. Based on those sites it is a studio, and when you search studios in my area you get a price that is FAR FAR FAR less than what my 2,760 square foot fully removed previous photography studio is worth. The appraiser, when I refinanced in January, even said he had no idea how to comp this place because he's never been in one like this. Of course this is an extreme example, but the point is the sites only work off of raw data. A realtor *should* be able to assess the property based on it's own merits.

I fully agree with the advice given related to making sure your house is clean, de-cluttered, has good curb appeal and smells at least neutral. (I hesitate to say "good" because good smelling to one person is horrible to another. I can't tell you how many places I've been in with the potpourri or Glad plug-ins being a total turn off.)

BTW, I feel kind of bad because I seem to have taken over this thread. Sorry! I hope t least some of this is useful!

(And Zoe, I'm sorry you had such a bad experience!).

I agree with the neutral smell. Some people have sensitivities and/or allergies to fragrance and sometimes an artificial fragrance can give the wrong impression (like they're trying to hide/cover something up). I find some artificial fragrances to be almost as bad as pet odors

 

[House Cat]

This is incredible information! Waayyy better than what I was getting on the internet! And Dee Jay, thank you!! I don't feel you're taking over at all! Your information is very valuable!

I know I need to do some repairs. My siding needs to be replaced on some walls and I am going to paint the exterior, update the color of the shutters to black (they are burgundy) so that the color scheme of the house is grey, white, and black. I also need to re-do the flower beds out front because I have eclectic tastes in plants. Right now there are peonies that have to be nursed because they don't REALLY live in this climate, a HUGE oakleaf hydrangea, and a japanese maple in the front bed. The only thing that will stay is the maple, and I will plant something simple.

The big question is the interior paint. My living room is a color called Sea Salt. http://southernhospitalityblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_3345.jpg Like this. I also have a white couch, warm, wide plank floors and a fire place something like that, the bricks are more red. The rest of my house, except for my son's room is painted that mocha color that everyone's house seems to be painted nowadays. Should I paint my living room?

Then there is my son's room... I wish I had photos and it isn't clean enough to show, but his room is the lightest gray, with a white ceiling, but his trim is black with black beadboard in the closet. Space theme, star wars, with a large black ikea expedit shelf. It looks incredible, but it is very specific. In other words, if the buyer has a young boy, this room will be ten shades of awesome. If they don't, they might hate it.

I think my living room floors might need to be refinished. How important is this? What about carpet? It is 5 years old. I know most of these questions should be asked of my realtor, but opinions of the forum are important because you all have bought homes before and have a good eye.

The info about the realtors is great! My mortgage agent recommended a realtor. Should I be cautious about this recommendation for any reason?

 

[momhappy]

^The trend in interior paint is gray (as opposed to browns), so you might want to consider painting, which also gives it a fresh, clean feel. Have you thought about updating the brick on the fireplace? Maybe a more modern, grayish tile? You could add she other gray accents (throw pillows, etc.) - gray and light aqua look amazing together.
As far as the Star Wars bedroom, I'd ask a realtor for advice. My initial response is to keep it neutral, but a local realtor would know best.

 

[House Cat]

What I hear is that paying for an appraisal isn't appropriate if you have a skilled realtor?

Do appraisers vary that much?

What I mean is, would my appraiser's value be that much different from the lender's appraiser's value?

How do I really know my realtor is a good one? The one who helped us buy our house wasn't. Let's put it this way, we looked at 82 houses. We put in 7 offers. The only advice she ever gave us was to put in our "highest and best" offer. This was during the time when the market was flooded with houses! My friend finally had to write our offer in order for me to get my house.

 

[Dee*Jay]

What I hear is that paying for an appraisal isn't appropriate if you have a skilled realtor?

Do appraisers vary that much?

What I mean is, would my appraiser's value be that much different from the lender's appraiser's value?

How do I really know my realtor is a good one? The one who helped us buy our house wasn't. Let's put it this way, we looked at 82 houses. We put in 7 offers. The only advice she ever gave us was to put in our "highest and best" offer. This was during the time when the market was flooded with houses! My friend finally had to write our offer in order for me to get my house.

They could actually be very different. An appraiser that you hire is working in somewhat of a vacuum (I'll explain that more in a second). Also, appraisers also only use information going back a short period of time when looking at comps (typically 60-90 days). So say you have your property appraised today, in April, and then take some time to fix a couple of things... and then you go on the market at the end of May/beginning of June... and then it takes a little while for a buyer to bite so now were in August...and it takes the bank a little while to send an appraiser out there once the mortgage paperwork is rolling along So the comps your appraiser used are from Jan/Feb/Mar and the comps the buyer's lender will use are from June/July/August. A lot can happen between January and August.

Back to my point about operating in a vacuum. Your appraiser is just coming up with a pure number with no point of reference, but the buyer's lender will have the benefit (or detriment, depending on how you look at it) of an agreed upon contract. If the "pure" number your appraiser comes up with is $500K, but the agreed upon price is $475K or $525K, well there are enough fudge factors in the market that any appraiser worth his salt can make the number in the contract work (if it is at all reasonable). If however the agreed upon price is not reasonable (and you used the original appraiser's figure off of which to base your negotiation) then the buyer's appraiser is not going to produce an appraisal that doesn't make sense just because that's what the parties agreed to.