House Selling Recommendations

[dukeforester]

We are making preparations for selling our house in the next year to eighteen months and moving to San Antonio to be closer to our kids and grandson. We are meeting with a real estate agent tonight to get his take on the house's market value as is and what he would recommend we do to get top dollar. I realize that y'all cannot see the house (contemporary built 20 years ago), but do you have any general recommendations? Should we paint the inside? Upgrade the bathrooms/kitchen? Thanks for any insight.

[Indoor66]

We are making preparations for selling our house in the next year to eighteen months and moving to San Antonio to be closer to our kids and grandson. We are meeting with a real estate agent tonight to get his take on the house's market value as is and what he would recommend we do to get top dollar. I realize that y'all cannot see the house (contemporary built 20 years ago), but do you have any general recommendations? Should we paint the inside? Upgrade the bathrooms/kitchen? Thanks for any insight.

Paint, upgrades to kitchen and bath are usually items that enhance value beyond cost. That said, those are questions for the Realtor. You are competing in your market with comparable housing. Get a 2nd Realtor opinion as well.

[Lid]

Agree with PP, get a good agent and ask those questions for your market. Interview a few agents and find one that will give you the amount of guidance you need.

We are in the process of selling our house (should close next week, fingers crossed), and for our 7-year-old house, we:
- painted the trim outside
- landscaped a bit
- did all the minor repairs we'd been putting off
- replaced all the brass light fixtures with more updated fixtures
- painted the inside (not all, but lost most of the bright colors and refreshed the rooms that get a lot of "love" from our kids)
- filled a storage space with furniture, books, toys, etc. that we could live without
- updated a few window treatments
- every day, put EVERY SINGLE THING away and cleaned obsessively so if there was a showing, it would look perfect. No family pictures, etc.

We got an offer after about 2 1/2 months for a fair price. Our region isn't hurting terribly, but things are not selling quickly, either. We put a lot of time and effort into preparing before we went onto the market, and our house sold faster than a few others in our neighborhood. YMMV.

[aimo]

Watch a few episodes of Sell This House on A&E this Saturday morning. You can learn a lot about staging and painting and how to do it with the least investment. Upgrades to bathrooms and kitchens, of course, cost more but can be the difference to a buyer picking yours over your neighbor's down the street.

[Lavabe]

We're putting our house on the market next week. Several thoughts:
1) Discuss with your realtors what price you'd like to get on the house. Some of those upgrades may push you past the price that will get people to buy (buyer's market). Depending on the price range you might want to upgrade bath and kitchen ... or you might not want to! We have two houses in our subdivision who are horribly overpriced (compared to our working price), and they are not moving.
2) Curb appeal!!! Get started on major landscape or exterior projects.
3) We put in about $4K in repairs (driveway, kitchen floor, painting, deck sealing, washing, minor repairs), but decided not to repaint completely, recounter the kitchen, and recarpet, as everything will have to be the buyer's choice anyway.

It's a guessing game for us, but we are trusting our realtor on this one.

A&E and HGTV are nice to look at, but many of the shows are dated before the buyer's market, and the housing markets vary wildly even within the same region. Also, many of the programs are geared towards certain areas of the country. That's why we're paying for a real estate agent!

Good luck!
Lavabe

[DukeDude]

What sort of commission are you paying to your realtors? Does it change if you are also using them to buy a home? Is it negotiable?

[Lavabe]

What sort of commission are you paying to your realtors? Does it change if you are also using them to buy a home? Is it negotiable?

Some are negotiable. It depends on the market. I believe that standard here in Atlanta is 3% to the selling agent, 3% to the buying agent. I'll double-check with my wife on this. If our agent also handles the buyer of our property, the commission is reduced.

Cheers,
Lavabe

[Lid]

We're in Atlanta, too, and are paying a slightly higher commission than what Lavabe said. It's negotiable, but we didn't really press on that. Different markets seem to have drastically different commissions in general -- I know it's lower in the Triangle. That said, our agent spent a LOT of time with us helping to stage, pick paint, etc. before we even got to the marketing side of things, so I'm okay with it. We needed our hands held; not everyone does.

Do be careful about dual agency (having one agent represent both buyer and seller in a transaction). It's good to understand exactly where the agent's loyalties and obligations are.

As far as whether an agent will lower the commission if you're using them as the seller in one transaction and the buyer in the next, I don't know. It certainly seems reasonable.

[CathyCA]

Hire a home stager.

I hired one to stage my home for sale this year. She told me which stuff to move out of the house and into the storage building, how to re-do my landscaping, how to rearrange my existing furniture, and which paint colors would work for my home. She put together some flower arrangements, helped arrange artwork on the walls and even showed me how to fold and arrange the towels in the bathroom to make it look more like a spa.

She helped me prepare my house for potential buyers. It was a total pain in the butt to live in the house as it was staged, but worth it in the end.

My house sold in 5 days for the asking price, and I had a second offer come in as well. The home stager was worth every penny I paid her (around $1300.)

PM me if you would like to see pictures of her work.

[DukieInKansas]

Hire a home stager.

I hired one to stage my home for sale this year. She told me which stuff to move out of the house and into the storage building, how to re-do my landscaping, how to rearrange my existing furniture, and which paint colors would work for my home. She put together some flower arrangements, helped arrange artwork on the walls and even showed me how to fold and arrange the towels in the bathroom to make it look more like a spa.

She helped me prepare my house for potential buyers. It was a total pain in the butt to live in the house as it was staged, but worth it in the end.

My house sold in 5 days for the asking price, and I had a second offer come in as well. The home stager was worth every penny I paid her (around $1300.)

PM me if you would like to see pictures of her work.

Check with your realtor on a stager. The one we worked with in selling my father's house 2 years ago included that in her services. Stager came out on morning and gave ideas/recommendations. I don't know if the price of the house determined if the realtor provided the stager or not.

Definitely remove items that make it your house - it seems that buyer's have no imagination - can't see a room without the purple paint on the wall or grandma's portrait over the fireplace.

[CLT Devil]

Declutter, declutter, declutter.

Take down all pics of your family or with people in it.

Landscape - hard to do in this weather cycle, curb appeal is huge

I've used stagers before and must say they are very expensive, don't do it.

Fresh paint and carpet always helps

Any good agent will want 3% per side, if they are willing to cut their commission then how hard do you think they will negotiate on your behalf when it comes down to it...it's worth paying a full commission for the service you get.

Don't do print advertising, a waste of money.

Have the agent do an agent luncheon to get other agents in the house. The internet and agents are what sells houses. Open houses are a good way to get business for the agent but dont sell houses, plus youve got a lot of unqualified people looking at your house who might not even be able to afford it.

Use minimal pictures on the internet - all it takes is one picture of something they dont like to keep them from coming.

I could go all day. Im a broker in Charlotte with my own company. The bottom line is to get a good agent...if they are willing to cut their commission then you dont want them. You want the agent who wants your business, but does not need it (if that makes sense).

[CathyCA]

I've used stagers before and must say they are very expensive, don't do it.

Let's agree to disagree. I am currently the happiest woman on the planet, and it's because I used a stager to sell my house--in 5 days in California for the asking price in this economy.

My stager is so wonderful that I'm thinking of flying her here to NC to decorate my next house.

[AtlBluRew]

All the comments above are great. I thought about a stager, but both me and my realtor have watched enough HGTV that I think we both have at least a clue.

Specific thoughts about the above:

Landscape ASAP -- that way, when you put the house on the market, it will be established and not look just done.

Definitely replace brass fixtures with brushed nickel. In my case, it was replacing ceiling fans that had a brass finish. It had greater impact than I imagined it would.

I had different wall colors throughout the house, and my agent convinced me to paint the whole house in just one, and a neutral one at that. I picked a Benjamin Moore color called Camouflage that I already had in the living room. I had my doubts about doing the whole house the same color, but I love it! The place seems bigger, I guess because I've stopped noticing the walls.