I’m currently in the process of selling my condo. It’s been on the market for about 7 months now, and there’s a couple things I would do differently could I go back in time. So I thought I’d start this thread to offer my advice and let anyone else do the same.
Buying
Consider resellability. When looking at a new home, look at anything that might make it hard to sell it. There might be a negative about it that doesn’t bother you, but it might be a deal-breaker for most others. Even if you plan on living in your home for the rest of your life, situations change, and you might find yourself putting it up for sale eventually. Would any of the negatives be easy for you to correct (wallpaper, shag carpeting)? Or are they more permanent (located right next to a gas station, no basement) When buying my current condo, I didn’t mind that there wasn’t a view. But now that I’m trying to sell, I realize that most people do not want to look at a brick wall when they look out the window (my midrise condo looks out directly at the midrise next to me.) This problem is not easy to correct.
Selling
Do not scrimp on a Realtor. My fiancee and I chose a Realtor that offered a considerably lower commission rate than most other Realtors in the area. Big mistake. We now are beginning to realize that buyers’ agents often won’t push their clients into making an offer on our place-- or even bring them to look at our condo-- because the commission they’ll earn just isn’t worth their effort.
Open houses are often wastes of time. Most people that go through open houses aren’t necessarily in the market to buy-- there’s no guaratee they’re even approved for a mortgage-- and so it just becomes a four-hour parade of looky-loos. Others’ mileage may vary on this one. But this has been my experience.
To add another example to this, a few years back, my dad bought an old funeral home, which had living quarters upstairs. He turned the main floor into an antique shop, but there was very little parking available. He was also located on a very awkward busy corner. When the time came to sell, no one wanted to touch it. He couldn’t even rent the upstairs out because it wasn’t up to city code, and it would’ve cost too much to make it “rentable.” To sell it, he had to lower the price so far, he ended up losing over $60,000 on it. He and my step-mom may have loved it when they bought it, but he admits they didn’t consider resellability. And it bit 'em in the ass.
Part of the problem is that the housing bubble not only burst, but dug a hole Charles Bronson would be proud of. The seller’s market is very gone, so whatever your property would have sold for 7 months ago is high, now. Good luck.
Don’t trust selling realtors. They’ll say anything to get you to buy; no lie is too outrageous. Never, ever, ever, ever trust anyone who has a financial interest in which house you buy.
Get a home inspection. No matter how smart the inspector seems, follow him around and make sure he looks at everything. Home inspectors sometimes concentrate only on the big ticket items and forget to notice things like bedroom doors that don’t close.
And get anyone you know who’s bought and sold a few houses to have a look. Your parents have probably bought and sold a few houses so have them look. Friends, family, whatever. They may see something you missed.
If buying a condo, research the condo corporation. It might be a nice place but if the condo corporation is in the red, the property is a monstrous risk and could be hard to resell.
Resellability can be summed up as such: **Save money on things you can fix, pay for things you can’t. ** The old saw that you want to buy the ugliest house in the best neighborhood is mostly true. A house that looks ugly because of wallpaper, bad carpets and stuff like that can be fixed up for a surprisingly reasonable price. A bad foundation can only be fixed with enormous money and effort, and some things like location can never be fixed. Consider that when you buy.
I have to disagree about open houses - they are a method of marketing your house and getting lots of eyes in the place. Those “looky loos” might know someone looking to buy, or, if they see exactly what they want - think about getting the house seriously.
I just put a house on the market. I got it cheaply because it was very dated. Spent lots of time taking down wall paper, changing light fixtures. I hope to make a decent profit. I had 2 false starts in the realtor dept. before I found one I can work with. My suggestion is to keep shopping around until you find one that you click with and can sort of trust.
My neighbors had this problem. When they bought their rowhouse, they had parking in the back but no garage. They spent some serious money and had a garage built. It is a massive structure for the neighborhood. it is a two car garage, with storage above where the cars are parked.
The problem is that this is an older neighborhood in DC. Nobody else on our block and the other street with which we share an alley has such a thing. A few neighbors have intact carriage houses with a garage door, but nobody has a purpose built structure and it isn’t much of a selling point in the neighborhood. They had an open house and I took a look. They hadn’t done much since the house was renovated prior to their buying it. They hadn’t painted or installed crown molding or anything of the sort. The agent also had one open house and that was it. The house never sold. They gave up and rented it out.
Every other house in the neighborhood has sold except the partially renovated home whose real estate investor owner ran out of money mid way through and wanted too much money.
Buying. if you want it done, PUT IT IN THE CONTRACT. Remember, these people (the sellers) arn’t your friends, just cuz they metnion that they’ll clean the soot out from under the water heater and clean/repaint the mildewey soffits that the inspector pointed out, doesn’t mean they will. And put in some sort of clause that either tells them when to have their stuff out. When we bought our house they said that they would be back to pick up a few things over the next week or so. No big deal right…it took them TWO MONTHS to get rid of some of their stuff. To make matters worse, after two months they decided they couldn’t get the swing set out easily and asked if we wanted to buy it from them (it’s been in OUR backyard for two months, we could have just told them to go away at that point and leave the set it alone, we own it now) on principle, we said no. Somehow they found away to get it out. Oh and they left 19 empty cans of paint in the basement. Wish I had mentioned that too. And wait what me bitter…no
Okay how bout this
Buying…Pick up “Home Buying For Dummies” so you know what to look for.
Selling…Pick up “Home Buying for Dummies” so you know what they’re looking for (and how to hide or excentuate it).
Put in the contract someplace that if something like say, an electrical fire occurs in the garage between closing and taking possession, the sellers have to tell you.
I’d add clean/dust in areas which you don’t normally see. I had a potential buyer turn away because he was over 6 feet tall and saw some dust/grime in a place I can’t see.
If you can, have a pro come in to stage your home. We repainted, replaced carpet and some hard flooring, put in new light switches and cover plates, and our home stager brought in furniture and decorations to turn our house into a model home (it helped that we had already moved and the place was empty). Got an offer much faster than average - last spring, when the market was softening significantly but still better than now.