We put our house (in a suburb) up for sale in June. The agent lives in our subdivision, i.e. knows the market very well. I've known him for 20 yrs. We started fixing up the house for sale in February, making a list of all of the things we thought needed attention. Took us until June to get them all done. He walked through and mentioned a few more, which we addressed. I told him that we'd be willing to spend "hundreds" of dollars to make it more saleable, but not "thousands". At the time, he said homes were selling in days. We were expecting a quick sale at a premium. We listed it for about $10k more than we thought it would sell for.
We had very few showings the first few weeks. Since first impressions by a buyer come from the online listing (with pix) or drive-by, I figured that any of the interior shortcomings (older furnace, older carpet) weren't keeping interest down. Our realtor stressed that neutral colors sold best. At the time, I felt that someone who's looking at a house would probably want to repaint anyway to suit their tastes, so why bother with redecorating. The realtor said that 80-90% of buyers want "move-in" condition. They're not interested in redecorating or modernizing kitchens, baths, etc. (IMO, they're lazy :lol: ). We've since done some interior redecorating to get rid of 30 yr old wallpaper, drapes and paint colors. Our guy said neutral colors are best, grey is the new "in-color". A big concern was "clutter". Being a handy guy (like most on this forum), I've got lots of tools, wood, steel, etc. That is a big turn-off, according to our realtor. I pitched a bunch of wood and made my workshop as neat as I could. We also had the carpets cleaned in the entire house. Had a showing this past Saturday that I thought had promise as they spent quite a bit of time looking. The feedback was very negative: Price too high, location (main street in sub), weeds in cracks of pavers :roll: , carpeting was old, clutter in garage. :shock:
This whole experience is very stressful on my wife and myself. I was looking to our realtor to advise us on what needed to be done to sell our house and at what price. He's done a "fair" job of that. I wouldn't say great because I think he could have been a little more forceful about some things. For instance, I suggested the original price based on comps he provided. It was on the high side. He said "sure, let's try that". When we lowered it, he said "yeah, that's a good idea". We did get an offer that was $20k below our original asking price and I suggested a counter splitting the difference. He said, "yeah, that's probably about right". The potential buyer walked away. Looking at newer comps, the offer was probably about right and I should have taken it. I'd take it if offered again.
Anyway, I think our realtor has a good feel for what buyers want which is hard for me to understand sometimes. (Some grass growing in sidewalk cracks? C'mon) When we've looked at property of any kind, we looked past the surface and saw the potential. But our realtor says we are in the minority. I understand now that most people don't even care if there's a workbench. My wife retired in July, I was going to retire at the same time. The only thing stopping me is the sale of our house. Hope to have it done by Nov. 1st so we can move to the house we bought in the country and build our retirement home out there on vacant land. BTW, the 2nd house we bought was a disaster, we pulled carpet, repainted the whole place, new hardwood floors, etc. Which is why we got it very cheap and with some work, it's now worth triple what we paid for it.
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Today's Featured Article - Grain Threshing in the Early 40's - by Jerry D. Coleman. How many of you can sit there and say that you have plowed with a mule? Well I would say not many, but maybe a few. This story is about the day my Grandfather Brown (true name) decided along with my parents to purchase a new Ford tractor. It wasn't really new except to us. The year was about 1967 and my father found a good used Ford 601 tractor to use on the farm instead of "Bob", our old mule. Now my grandfather had had this mule since the mid 40's and he was getting some age on him. S
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