I was wasting time checking home listings in a nearby suburb, and happened upon this one.
Asking $919k, it is 2.5-3x the average of homes i that town, and the description calls it the “crrown jewel” of the town.
Check out the photos - they didn’t even make the beds! What do you think is going on when a house is presented like this? I recall seeing similar things back around 2010 - after the turndown, when several homes were being foreclosed upon or were short sales.
It surprises me that the realtor would have allowed photos to be taken in such a state.
We saw a house hunting show on HGTV once with open drawers in the bedroom. We remarked about how easy it would have been to just close them.
The photos of this house were shocking. It looks like it could be a nice house if staged correctly. My wife is a neat freak. Our house never looks that bad, and for photos it has to be immaculate.
Aside from the messy house, the photos themselves make the home look dark, dingy and dated. This Realtor isn’t doing his job very well. For a house that big and expensive, it should be staged and a professional photographer brought in. When we sold our house a couple years ago, it wasn’t nearly as high-end as this, but that’s what our Realtor did. Had us move most of our stuff out and got a pro in there to take pics.
I agree with that assessment. It’s likely that the owner didn’t want to pay for the photographer or for someone to stage the place (which can be very expensive). Our realtor recommended a stager, who quoted us $2500 for our very small home. Instead, we went to a furniture rental place and did it ourselves: total cost about $200, and our place sold for $40K over asking.
I’m currently selling my house and looking for a new one. Since what house I buy is directly related to how much I can sell my house for, I went to great lengths to pick a realtor who would pay to have pictures professionally taken after it was thoroughly cleaned and "staged’.
My ex-wife and I still live in the house and it is fully furnished, so no paid staging was required, but we have to keep things in good working order since a showing can happen at almost any time.
As I look at pictures of houses I might be interested in, most are clean and tidy, but a few have junk strewn all over, and I won’t even bother to go see them. I don’t know why a realtor would take on such a property, but it’s not like they can make the sellers clean up their house and keep it that way until it sells.
I showed the pictures to my daughter, partially based on the network rack I pointed out in the basement, she suggested the house might be inhabited by a group of streamers or pro-gamers. I never thought of that, but sounds reasonable.
One point on staging an otherwise vacant, clean house: I live in a townhouse condo, and when the mirror image condo next door was being sold, I invited the realtor showing it, who had no prospective buyers on hand at the time, to see my unit because I had a laundry room setup in my basement/garage level the other units didn’t and a well-finished third floor.
Upon a quick tour, she commented something like my unit looked much bigger. Having looked at the unit for sale, I agreed, and I think it’s because my unit isn’t cluttered but offers a sense of a well-ordered lived-in space, while one random item of furnishing per bare-walled room was just too stark to offer that vibe.
That’s interesting- my first thought was that it’s a rental inhabited by a bunch of (possibly unconnected) roommates . Something about the differences in the bedrooms and bathrooms make me think that isn’t anyone able to control how the whole house looks.
I thought it looked interesting from the outside (I like old houses), but inside it looked like 80s builder-grade crap. Nothing original left. If I bought it, I’d feel I’d have to completely re-do the interiors, so I would not be offering top dollar. And that’s without considering the bad/no staging.
ETA: Not a new house. Build in 2005. Piece of crap.
Good catch. And in the garage picture, it sort of looks like some monitors stored on TOP of an open garage door. And there is a chandelier hanging in the garage.
Kinda cool looking from the outside in an ‘Addams family’ sort of way.
Staging a house, and listing it with pictures that look like a hot mess are two different things in my book. I would hope that the realtor would get that taken care of…or at least be more selective of which pics to use to minimize the hoarders look.
It’s definitely something to do with the realtor. Looks like he specializes in flips, or other sort of “need to sell asap” situations. Take a looks at this one he just put on the market:
Guarantee there is likely nothing neat or old about this house. It was built in 05. If you check the street view - or even the satellite, you can see that with the exception of the house immediately to the south, it is WAY overbuilt compared to the rest of the block. I’d imagine that someone who had a business doing well, and had some ties to that suburb decided on building their dream home, without caring whether it fit in with the neighborhood.
Now it is POSSIBLE that the folk who built it had it built to very high standards. Heck - maybe they made their money from a contractor’s firm. But IMO it is much more likely that the home was built to LOOK expensive, with less focus on the quality of construction.
Moving a couple of towns to the east, or the couple of towns to the west, a $900k home would have fit in much more. That town kinda has the reputation of where teachers move. The most affordable middle class town along that stretch of commuter train line.
My guess was that it had been foreclosed after 08. Looking at the property history, it was listed in 09, but not sold.
Yeah, staging is expensive. But if I were the realtor hoping for a commission on $900k, I’d pony up just to have a quick cleaning. Have the beds made, and just clear the surfaces. Hell, stick the crap in boxes and move them from room to room staying ahead of the cameras.
One of my nieces was looking for a home recently. She keeps a very nice home. But at one point I overheard her saying to her mother, “I just want to see ONE HOME that is as clean as MINE!”
And that’s weird, because that neighborhood is no where near - and VASTLY different from the home I listed. 4700 Harrison is pretty much one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago.
If you click on the guy’s name, it’ll show his Realtor.com profile and listings. Looks like a lot of low-rent properties, so he may not know any better.
Gotta love the incredible clutter on the bathroom counter tops – something that would take barely more than a minute or two to clean up. And the last two interior pictures are duplicates. This is a realtor who truly Does Not Care.
-The sole exterior shot seems to be from fall. they did not care to rake, but they DID buy several mums - which they placed in planters pretty much blocking the front walk.
-The TV screen says “Alien Nation.” Not sure if that is a show, game, what… That pic has xmas stockings hung.
-The basement room, with the pool table, is nearly immaculate, with very little clutter.
-Is that a chandelier hanging in the garage?
2021 tax bill $21.6k!
There are a total of 8 homes in that town listed for >$800k. Besides this one, all of the others are proposed new construction ranging from $1.1-1.5 mill.
