You sound a lot like us; we’ve decided that there’s no way we’re sending our kids to the local schools, and we’re not thrilled with the notion of paying private school tuition for three kids, so we figured out where we’d like to live and decided to try to sell. With our third due around November 1, however, we also knew that we didn’t want to deal with closing, moving, etc. right around the time she was born. By the time we made up our minds to do it, it was already a little late in the season (May), so we did as much touch-up and decluttering as we could stand knowing we’d still have to live here, and did a three-month listing agreement with an agent we know here in the neighborhood. We decided up front that we would price at the high end of what was reasonable, keep it on the market for June, July, and August, and if we didn’t get an offer we liked we’d take it off the market until next spring. We already had our oldest child enrolled in a private school for this year, so we didn’t have any compelling reason to have to move this year, but we wanted to try to take advantage of the low interest rates before they started edging back up, etc.
As I said, we got rid of as much clutter as we could manage but with a six year old and a four year old around, there’s only so much you can do. Our dining room has been turned into a library with bookshelves on three of the four walls, all pretty much full; we knew we’d be better off storing the books and shelves for the duration, but I’m traveling a lot for work these days and my wife was already four months pregnant, so we decided to leave them for this round. We made sure that every closet appeared to be no more than about half full. We did strip old wallpaper in one bathroom and repaint it white, repaint the entryway etc. We’d just finished remodeling the kitchen (all new cabinets, countertops, tile backsplash, and tile floor), and we knew when we did it that we might want to sell in the next few years, so we deliberately choose more neutral colors and patterns. There are a few areas where the carpet is slightly worn or stained, but fewer than you’d expect for eight-year-old carpet in a house with two small kids. Overall, the house is in excellent condition otherwise; most of the major systems have been replaced in recent years (roof, appliances, etc.) and it was painted externally just a couple of years ago. The only exception to that was the furnance, which was original and thus was about 25 years old.
Every time the house was shown, my wife would bundle the kids up and get out of the house. We kept packages of the slice-and-bake chocolate chip cookies in the fridge, and if we had enough advance notice would bake a half-dozen and leave them on a plate on the kitchen table with a note encouraging the lookers to take some. We tried to keep fresh flowers on the table. We opened drapes or in some cases took them down completely to open up with windows and let in more light. I had to practically hold a gun to my wife’s head, but I finally convinced here to turn on every light in the house before leaving with the kids for a showing.
In short, we did everything as well as we could manage, but didn’t get a single offer in the whole three months. We had reasonable traffic – probably between fifteen and twenty parties looked at the house during those three months, but not so much as a single insulting lowball offer. I have to attribute most of that to the market; of the five houses besides ours on the market in our neighborhood during that time, only one sold, and three others still have signs out front.
Now that the baby’s here and things are beginning to settle a bit, I’m planning to tackle some of the more ambitious projects we just didn’t have time for the first time around – getting the books and shelves into storage, clearing even more stuff out of the closets, putting more stuff into storage, etc. I’m hoping to get started in earnest on those just after the new year, with the plan being to get everything ready for the house to go back on the market in March. I know my wife was discouraged by our experience this summer, but she’s never been part of selling a house before (at least, not since she was seven years old), whereas my family bought and sold several in my junior high, high school, and college days, so I’ve been through the wars and know that sometimes, it takes a while. No doubt we could have hauled in a few offers if we’d underpriced the house, but we had no motivation to do so last time, nor do we really have any this time.
