Archive for the 'Home Selling Advice' Category
Get Top Dollar For Your House
August 19th, 2008 categories: Home Selling Advice, Real Estate Market
If the time has come to sell your house, you will surely want to get the highest price possible for it. Below are some suggestions, based on years of experience, that will help you get the most for your home, whatever the current market is like. Yes, you will have to spend some money up front. But better to spend it now than rush around in the weeks before closing trying to get a good plumber, electrician, etc. You will also be prepared for the buyer’s inspection.
So here goes (not in any particular order):
1. Get a home inspection. Yes, pay $500 bucks or so to get a full home inspection. This will tell you all you need to know about your house. Generally I recommend you fix everything. Some will be super simple and you can do it yourself if you are handy. Some, like plumbing and electrical, will require a professional. Get a pro and keep the receipts. This might costs hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, but you will reap the rewards at closing. Advertise as pre-inspected and make the inspection available to buyers. Trying to hide problems never works.
2. Mold inspection. Get one if the home inspection recommends it or if you know there is visible mold in the crawl space. This is the new “red button” for buyers. The mere mention of mold, which is in EVERY house in the world, strikes terror in the buyer’s mind. A mold inspection by an independent inspector will cost about $300, depending on the size of the house. Fix as suggested. Yes, more money spent.
3. Clean!!!!!!Clean like never before! It is easy to become comfortable with a certain level of “mess” in our houses. Buyers want their own mess, not yours. Either break out the rubber gloves and cleaner or call in the pros and tell them you want the deepest cleaning they have. This will really help sell your house. The hard part is keeping it clean as time drags on. Don’t falter. It’s not fun but it IS necessary to keep it clean and smelling fresh. (Change your air filters a lot.) This includes the garage, decks, and any sheds!
4. Remove collections. Your frog collection is wonderful, but it is time to pack it away. You will be moving everything anyway, so get a headstart and pack up all your collections. Plus, do you want your expensive items out where children of buyers can get at them?
5. Reduce furniture. It is amazing how much can get packed into a house over the years. Now is the time to sell, store or donate some of it. You want to open up the house and let buyers see how big the rooms are. Stage furniture for maximum impact.
6. The dump is your friend. Get rid of all the garbage, broken items, etc. Be brutal. Take it to the dump and be rid of it. If it is in good shape, donate it and get the tax deduction. Or sell it and get the cash.
7. Paint. Do it yourself or hire someone, but do it. It is easy, quick and cheap. Inside and out. And it has a tremendous impact on the curb appeal of your house. This one task probably has the greatest return on time spent. Keep colors neutral.
8. Clean your yard. Mow, mulch, get rid of “yard art”. Your yard will be the first thing a buyer sees. You want it to shine. Drive around your neighborhood and see what houses stand out to you. Copy them. Power-wash your sidewalks, decks and driveway.
9. Hire me as your listing agent.
Does everyone do these things? No. Most don’t. They are reluctant to spend the money up front. They think they will just take a few bucks off the asking price if the buyers wants stuff fixed. Big mistake. The buyer will invariably demand WAY over the actual cost on any item. And you will be scrambling to fix items between the inspection and closing. Not a good thing.
The question is: Do you really want to sell your house? If so, then you should do everything possible to get it in prime condition. The above suggestion will go a long way in helping you do that. Give me a call if you want more in-depth advice.
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Why No Newspaper Advertising?
June 24th, 2008 categories: Home Buying Advice, Home Selling Advice, Real Estate News
I don’t advertise my listings in newspapers or magazines anymore. I did early on in my real estate career because that was what everyone else did. And, frankly, the sellers demanded it. They wanted to see their house in the paper! I followed everyone else for several years and never got a single lead on a listing off of ANY ad. Even the larger companies will sometimes admit that newspaper or magazine ads don’t sell a particular house. What they do is drive possible buyers to that company. Which is wonderful for that company, but a waste in advertising a single house, and it really doesn’t help the seller.
Think about when you look at the house ads. Kind of makes your eyes blur with all that clutter, doesn’t it? The VAST majority of buyers go to the internet to find a home. THAT is where your house needs to be.
So, when I went off on my own I decided to stop doing stuff that doesn’t help my buyer or seller. Now I do only internet and targeted direct mailings. This is not necessarily cheaper for me, but it works. Newspaper ads are “old news”. On-line is the place to be.
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Do Gas Prices Impact Home Prices?
April 29th, 2008 categories: Home Buying Advice, Home Selling Advice, Real Estate Market, Real Estate News
OK. The price of gas is soaring with no end in sight. It is impacting food prices, delivery prices, you name it. It seems to negatively touch every part of your life. But does it impact the sale of your house? In a word, yes.
Think about it. You have two houses similar in size, yard, schools, etc. The only difference is one of them is 15 miles from everything. The other is 1 mile. Which do you think will sell? At $1 or even $2 a gallon, maybe no big deal. But with gas in sight of $5 a gallon you better believe buyers will take it into account.
So, what do you do? If you are the house close to everything, rejoice and play up that aspect! If you are out in the wilderness, don’t necessarily despair. There are buyers who will WANT to be far from everything. Play up the privacy, solitude, close-to-nature aspects of your home. It may take longer to find that particular buyer, but they are out there.
Commute time has always been important to buyers. Now add the COST OF COMMUTE to the list!
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Why I Don’t Practice Dual Agency
April 21st, 2008 categories: Home Buying Advice, Home Selling Advice, Real Estate News
As a buyer or seller you may run into the concept of dual agency. That is basically where an agent “represents” both sides of a real estate transaction. Say my company has a listing. I also have a buyer under a Buyer Agency Agreement. My buyer likes the house I have listed. Uh oh. No problem. Under Dual Agency I can say to my buyer and seller, “Don’t worry, I’ll represent both of you”. Riiiiight.
In a nutshell, I do NOT practice dual agency because I believe in keeping my promises. When I get a listing I promise to represent that seller throughout the entire process, from listing to closing. It would be wrong of me to go back to my seller and tell him I can no longer represent just him because now I have a buyer and can get both sides of the deal. Same with a buyer.
Now, dual agency can get pretty confusing with “designated agency, who is representing whom, who can and cannot be a designated agent. It just isn’t worth the liability. So, I keep it simple. If you are my buyer or seller I represent ONLY you throughout the ENTIRE transaction. Ask your “big company” agent is they can make the same claim.
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Pre-Listing Inspection
March 18th, 2008 categories: Home Selling Advice
Something to think about when it comes time to sell your house is paying to have a professional home inspection done. For around $450, depending on the size of the house, you can have a home inspector come out and give you advance notice of anything wrong with your house. This will give you time to decide what you want to fix AND give you the time to get quotes without having the pressure of a deadline hanging over your head. This is much preferable to having only a few days to find a contractor and get them out to do the work after the buyer asks for an item to be fixed.
You can also then market your house as a pre-inspected home. This will give potential buyers more confidence in the condition of your home.
Face it. If there is something wrong with your house the buyer’s inspector will most likely find it. Of course, even if you fixed everything, the new inspector will find “something”. But wouldn’t you want it to be something really minor?
The only possible downside to a pre-inspection is that the results of the inspection become a “material fact” that must be disclosed to potential buyers. But even this downside is preferable to any nasty surprises just a short time before closing. So think about it. It could be money well spent.
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Who Will Sell Your Home
March 13th, 2008 categories: Home Selling Advice, Real Estate News
When the time comes to sell your home there is a lot you need to consider. The biggest decision is: who are you going to use to sell your house? Sell it yourself? You can try, but it is not nearly as easy as you might think. You cannot just post a sign in your yard, put an ad in the paper and hope people will flock to your castle. Doesn’t work that way. You simply must get your home in the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS). This is where virtually everyone gets their information. If you are not in the MLS, you are missing out on the vast majority of buyers. Not smart!
To get in the MLS you can use a high-priced firm, a “discount” firm, or an entry-only firm. All have their plusses and minuses.
You can go with a high-priced national firm. They will tell you they have hundreds of agents that will make your house a priority. Right. Or they have fancy relocation affiliations that will pull in so many buyers you will have to beat them off. Right. Don’t get me wrong. They ARE good firms with good agents. They just over-charge for what they do.
A full service discount firm (that would be me!) does everything a high-priced firm does, just for less.
An entry only firm will simply put your listing in the MLS with maybe a sign in the yard. Other than that you are on your own. For some people that is a great option.
What to do! Obviously, I think you should use ME! I looked at all the options and decided to do it MY way. I provide full service at a reduced fee. (See my Fee Structure button for how and why I charge what I do.) I don’t have a fancy relocation department, but so what. A buyer coming into town is going to see your house in the MLS with or without a relocation department. Why pay extra for a useless perk?
Give me a call at 919-417-9753 and see what I can do for you.
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Where To For Home Prices?
February 26th, 2008 categories: Home Selling Advice, Real Estate Market, Real Estate News
A big question right now is where do home prices go from here? The national news has story after story about falling home prices. An article on Yahoo Finance, “Existing Home Sales Decline“, isn’t very optimistic for the near future. Basically, sales of existing homes fell 12.7% in 2007. That’s a national average. Some fell more, some fell less. And there are pockets that went up, too!
Prices, nationally, are expected to continue dropping until the end of 2008 or into 2009. There is a pretty good inventory of houses that need to be sold to end the downward pressure on prices.
Locally, in Chapel Hill, we do have a lot of unsold homes at this time. For the East Chapel Hill School District there is a 12 month supply of existing single family homes. However, we are lucky to have a pretty good buyer base. The universities, medical centers and RTP all provide a pretty steady supply of buyers. Plus, more people are moving INTO North Carolina, so that helps as well.
All is not doom and gloom. But it does mean if you have to sell, your house has to be a “cream puff”, the prettiest house on the block. Give me a call. I’ll help you make sure your house is the best one out there.
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Furnished Or Empty - Selling An Unoccupied House
February 13th, 2008 categories: Home Selling Advice, Real Estate News
If you have to sell a home that is unoccupied, due to death of owners, divorce, a move, whatever, one of the big questions is should you sell it with the furniture still in the house or move the furniture out? Long ago, before I got into real estate, I had agents tell me to get everything out so potential buyers could see themselves and their furniture in the house. Bad idea. After I got in the business I realized what a big mistake that was! You want the house to be furnished. If it is empty, people see an empty house. If it is well furnished, they see a home. Big difference. It is also amazing how ALL the little scratches, chips and dirt are MUCH more evident in an empty house.
A big advantage of selling an empty house is that you have the opportunity to really stage the house. A staged home can look beautiful, but it can be a pain to live in. So grab the chance and get rid of all clutter, clean like a demon, and arrange the furniture to maximize space and views. Get rid of big clunky, furniture. Set the table as if for a feast. There are lots of things to do since no-one is living in the house. Make that potential buyer see the possibilities in your home!
And don’t think you can set it and forget it. Every few days you need to go in and make sure the house still smells OK. A vacant home can get that “vacant smell”. Hard to describe, but you know it when you smell it. So open windows, change the air filters, walk around a bit and take the time to see if anything needs to be adjusted. You will be glad you did.
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Real Estate Takes A Beating?
January 29th, 2008 categories: Home Selling Advice, Real Estate Market, Real Estate News
You likely have seen it all over the news over the past few weeks. How new home sales have fallen by a record amount, or existing homes are not appreciating in value, etc. It is enough to depress anyone. However, things are never as bad as they first seem. Sure the housing market is taking a hit right now, but that doesn’t mean you give up. Houses ARE still selling! People move for tons of reasons, so there is always a supply of buyers, particularly in the Chapel Hill area.
We are lucky in that part of the local population is very “fluid”. That is, they are only here for a few years and then move on. Examples are grad students, interns, professors, that come and go. Many of them want to buy a house for the years they are here, so we get a supply of ready and willing buyers. Plus, there is a net influx of people to our area. They realize what a great place Chapel Hill/Orange County is and move here. This also helps keep our area from suffering the huge peaks and valleys of other areas of the country.
If you’re looking to buy, now is the time! Give me a call.
If your looking to sell, get your house in order and let me show you how to maximize your return in this market.
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Winter Delights & Home Care
January 21st, 2008 categories: Home Buying Advice, Home Selling Advice
One of the joys of living in North Carolina is the occasional light snowfall. Just enough to get your camera out and prove to your relatives in northern cimes that, yes, it does snow here! It is a great time to get some wood and put that fireplace to work. And even though those gas fireplaces look wonderful, there is nothing like a real wood fire to make those lazy Sunday afternoons drift by.
However, those dancing flames in the fireplace should remind you about fireplace maintenance. When was the last time you had the chimney sweep out to clean out your chimney. Personally, I have no idea on my own house. We only moved in to it last year, so I don’t know the last time it was cleaned. Maybe never! Shame on me. I plan on having it done soon. This is also something I have no intention of “Doing-it-myself”. Let the pro do it!
If you are planning on marketing your house soon, that is all the more reason to have a thorough cleaning of the chimney flue done. The inspector WILL check it out. It is quick, doesn’t cost a lot and will help your house look, and smell, cleaner.
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