All posts by Becky

Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.

MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE to Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 Hours!

Selling a Home, , , , , ,

This one is hard for most people (we discovered we are indeed hoarders) and may cost a little money in storage units or can make you some money depending on what you want to do.  But minimizing your house will help give people the space to imagine what their belongings will look like in it.

What does minimizing really mean?  Minimizing is defined by Google’s dictionary as: reduce (something, especially something unwanted or unpleasant) to the smallest possible amount or degree.  Well I’m not sure if the things we “reduced” were unwanted or unpleasant, but our house certainly does look empty without them.  Basically, you want your home to look as close to a model home as possible—and model homes do NOT have a lot of personal effects.

So how much has to go?  Well that really depends on your space.  In our living room we had a bookcase, couch, loveseat, chair, coffee table, two end tables, a large TV cabinet and a baby swing and bouncer.  To us, it looked neat and tidy…to the realtors it was too much stuff.  Basically, start to look at your items and ask yourself, “Do I HAVE TO have this right now?”  If the answer is no, then it’s time to start looking into some sort of move or storage.  For us, we split our things between two locations.  Our move will take us from Missouri back to Ohio so we opted to go ahead and move half of our things back to Ohio and put them into a storage facility until we arrived.  Storage facilities are very affordable these days and for a 10 x 20 foot unit we’re paying about $65 a month.  In our minds, this is well worth it in that it enhances our house’s visual appeal and gets our stuff closer to where it needs to be.  So we drove a 17 foot Uhaul from Missouri to Ohio filled with excess furniture, boxes of clothes and holiday decorations and anything else we could fit that we wouldn’t need for the next few months.  The funny thing is, I don’t miss any of it!

Next we arranged our garage to be able to be a secondary storage location for items we needed more regularly but that cluttered the house for showings.  We used the garage for storage of dog crates, large baby items, our hutch and continue to add to the growing mass as we continue to pack.

Basically, by getting rid of all of the excess furniture in the visible part of the house (not closets, cabinets, drawers), it makes the house look bigger and lets people’s imagination run wild!

One other option while you’re minimizing, start to assess whether you really need the item or not.  Garage sales and Craigslist can be an excellent way to rehome some of your items.  That means less stuff to move and more money in your pocket!  We’ve sold MANY items on Craigslist.  The safest way, is to meet the individual at a police station when selling the item.  Other options if this isn’t convenient are other highly trafficked places with security like the Post Office, Government buildings or grocery stores.

Join us tomorrow as we cover “HOW TO GET RID OF CLUTTER!”
Miss HOW TO PICK AN AWESOME REALTOR?  

Check out the first post in this series of 10 MUST DO’S TO Get an Offer on your Home in 48 Hours! 

Though the dog is the focal point of the picture look at all of the furniture in the picture.
Though the dog is the focal point of the picture look at all of the furniture in the picture.
And again here, there's a lot of furniture in the background (of course there's also a talking squirrel!)
And again, there’s a lot of furniture in the background (of course there’s also a talking squirrel!)
Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.
Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.  We also added a new light fixture and removed the one that was hanging.  It made the room so much brighter and more open feeling.

How to Find an Awesome Realtor to Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 hours!

Selling a Home, Uncategorized, , ,

Realtors these days are a dime a dozen.  Heck, you probably have a friend, neighbor or relative that will list your house for you “cheap”.  And why not, they are family right?  Well think again.  If you’re going to pay money for anyone, you’ll want to pay the very best you can find.  And while that might be Aunt Susie the selling machine, chances are it’s not.  We looked for the best we could find.

How did we find an awesome realtor?  We started the process by looking for some of the top realtors in our area.  We didn’t want the person pursuing this career on the side selling one house every few months, we wanted the person that sold one a week.  We also wanted to make sure they fit our personality and could help us meet our selling goal of getting it under contract before we left Missouri.  The best way to do this is by interviewing your potential candidates.  Get a feel for them.  You’re going to be talking to them almost every day for the next month or two so make sure you like them.  And I say like them, not LOVE them.  You have to like and TRUST them enough to handle probably your biggest asset.  Ask them a lot of questions and take the feedback and use it.  We asked ours: How quickly can we get on the market, what kind of sales plan did they have, where would they list us, what kind of marketing tools would they use, could they walk the house and give us some pointers, how much is their sales percentage.  When they leave or better, before they get there look at their website.  Does it make you want to buy a house?  Do they have other homes in your price range or do they only sell million dollar homes?

Basically though, the main things that won us over with our realtors:
1. They brought us a Market Analysis of other homes in the area that we were selling and showed us aa few of the homes in there they sold.  They were detailed with prices, features and pictures.  This was very different from the 1 or 2 pagers other agents bought us.

2. They had their own marketing person.  They focused on their core competency (selling homes, talking to buyers/sellers) and let a marketing person work on her core competency—marketing.  That meant there was a person working on marketing specifically for our house versus the agent trying to make time to do it.

3. They had some great marketing tools.  Some of the agents just described getting an online presence.  These agents went a step farther.  They made up packets all about our house for people to take (with full color pictures of the entire listing), they asked us to fill out information about what we loved about the house and what we loved about the community and used this as a free standing display for house shoppers and they sent letters to agents that were showing homes in the area like ours.  We felt these and some of their other strategies were the kinds of marketing we were looking for.

4. They weren’t afraid to offer us honest opinions about things we needed to change in the house (yes, that wallpaper really is ugly and needs to go!) and helped give pointers about rearranging things to be more visually appealing.

5. Finally, their rate sounded like a steal for the marketing they did.  Basically, when you sell a home part of the profit of your home goes to paying the Selling agent and part goes to the Buyer’s agent.  Rates run anywhere from 4% to 7%.  So basically if you sell your home for $150,000 you’ve agreed to a 6% rate with your agent they’ll get $9000 and you’ll get $141,000.  From that $9000 your agent gets they give a percentage (somewhere around half) to the buyer’s agent.  So when you choose an agent ask the rate, but also see if that makes sense for the work they’ll do.  When I sold my last house, I felt I didn’t have the best agent out there, but they got 6% and only listed the house on MLS.  And now, my fast paced, high selling agent also got 6% and I have no problem paying it.

Join us tomorrow as we explore how to MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE!

 

Ten MUST DO’S TO Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 hours!

Baby, Pets, Selling a Home, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The house was listed on Friday night in the MLS, we didn’t allow the first people to go through until the open house on Sunday and by Monday afternoon we had an offer!!  Now, after the offer/counteroffer process we’re entering into the next stage of home selling…THE INSPECTION PHASE.

But how did we do it?  How did a home owner with FOUR dogs, TWO cats and a baby get their home ready for sale so quickly and get that 48 hour offer?  Well we’ll share what worked for us.

Follow us as I explore each point in more detail.

  1. FIND AN AWESOME REALTOR-Realtors these days are a dime a dozen.  Heck, you probably have a friend, neighbor or relative that will list your house for you “cheap”.  And why not, they are family right?  Well think again.  If you’re going to pay money for anyone, you’ll want to pay the very best you can find.  And while that might be Aunt Susie the selling machine, chances are it’s not.  We looked for the best we could find.
  2. MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE!-This one is hard for most people (we discovered we are indeed hoarders) and may cost a little money in storage units or can make you some money depending on what you want to do.  But minimizing your house will help give people the space to imagine what their belongings will look like in it.
  3. GET RID OF CLUTTER– That means taking down the knickknacks, picking up the toys and hiding away all of your other home accessories that aren’t a necessity.  This also means that some of your family photos may need to make the move to the moving box for a bit.
  4. De-PET the HOUSE AKA GET RID OF FLUFFY-Okay, so you don’t actually have to get rid of Fluffy, but some people love the discovery of pet hair in a house (OH LOOK HONEY, BY THE COLOR OF THE HAIR THEY MUST HAVE A GOLDEN RETRIEVER!), but most people DON’T.
  5. NEUTRAL COLORS-If you love bright bold colors, good for you, so do I.  But that doesn’t mean everyone does and some people have a hard time getting over it.
  6. INCREASE CURB APPEAL–The first thing people see when they browse through 100’s of houses online is the front of your house.  And what’s the first thing they see when the cruise up with the realtor or are patiently waiting for the realtor to unlock the door?  Curb appeal!
  7. FIX ALL THOSE THINGS YOU’VE BEEN MEANING TO DO-You know what I’m talking about.  Those things you said you were going to do when you move in.  Or maybe that knick you put in the front door when you moved in.
  8. WALLPAPER and OTHER SPECIAL TOUCHES-When was the last time you heard someone say, “Oh my gosh honey THIS HOUSE HAS WALLPAPER…I LOVE IT!”  Ummm…NEVER.
  9. KNOW YOUR HOUSE-You need to be able to look at your house like a buyer and if you can’t, find an honest friend that will serve it to you straight.
  10. CLEAN HOUSE-A clean house is a happy house.  And if you’re like most of America you don’t have time to do the cleaning the way it should be done.

 

BONUS-Join us after we explore the 10 MUST DO’S TO GETTING AN OFFER IN 48 HOURS to explore GETTING YOUR HOUSE READY FOR A SHOWING IN UNDER 2 HOURS

Notice the very minimal items in the shelving. They were packed with books and trinkets.
Notice the very minimal items in the shelving. They were packed with books and trinkets.

The Offer and Riots in Old Saint Louis

Selling a Home, ,

Picture

So last night we received an offer on our house.  In total that was less than 48 hours from the first showing!  I can’t say we’re too disappointed!  So we’ve now entered into the negotiation phase or the “don’t scare away” the potential buyer phase of the process.  I always feel like this is a dance between buyer, seller and realtors.  The guessing game of how much were they approved for, how much they want to spend and how much do we get.  So we’re back to waiting for the phone to ring to see if the buyer has accepted our counter offer.  In the meantime, I’ve done my due diligence and Googled our esteemed “first time home buyer.”  Though it looks like he was a good student at college that was pretty much the only information I could gleam about him.   He’s one of those smart ones that actually looks into his Facebook privacy settings!  So back to some honest waiting!In other news, we generally don’t watch the news in this household (or TV for that matter).  The news is depressing.  I think that the more you fill your life with paranoid, depressing thoughts the more likely you are to feel that way and become that way.  I’d rather think the best of people and the world, then to run around everywhere afraid and paranoid.  So I have to say yesterday I was surprised when one of my friends from Ohio sent me a message to ask if I was okay.  Apparently not too far from my house (10 minutes) was a fatal shooting of a teenager by a police officer.  I work in the not so friendly section of town at a manufacturing facility so they got worried when they heard whole communities were rioting after the ordeal.  Thankfully the plant continues on its boring march (other than those pesky Union folks) and no riots have come this way.

But I went ahead and read some news about it against my better judgment.  Groups of people are breaking into stores, burning down donut shops and in one place they were looting and stealing WIGS!?!  What is this world coming to that people feel they should loot to get WIGS of all things!?  My mother also called me tonight to tell me to lock myself in the basement…umm mother, this is not a tornado, just some crazy folk doing crazy stuff!  So for now, we’ll try to stay out of the crazy part of town other than having to go to that whole work thing.

Houses for Sale and the Tale of the Sneaky Neighbor

Selling a Home, ,
Notice how the mulch really accentuates the plants and the house
Notice how the mulch really accentuates the plants and the house

Picture

It’s 8:30 pm and I can’t wait for the phone to ring.You see, my husband I just put our house up for sale here in Saint Louis.  It was listed in the MLS on Friday and we allowed no showings until the Sunday open house.  Now, for those of you that know me you know that pulling off an open house is no small feat.  We’ve literally spent the last week cleaning like wild people and the house looks amazing…the garage on the other hand looks like HOARDERS!  The Realtors said to “minimize” aka get rid of almost EVERYTHING in the house.  Well, what can I say…we have a lot of STUFF and that stuff now all lives in the garage.  I’m not quite sure how we’ll get it out of the garage when we move, but we’ll save that for another day.But a few days before the open house a lady came to the door to inquire.  She said she had a friend that was “very interested” in homes in the area.  I knew something was off during the conversation, but still I asked for her name and phone number and said I’d have the realtor contact her.  So on a scrap of paper she wrote “Valerie Smithe” and included her number for our realtor to reach out to her.  A couple of days before the open house our realtor put up signs all throughout the housing division with pathways to our house for the open house.  Low and behold though a day later someone else had signs up for their own open house with a path leading to one street over from ours.  We took a drive by the house to see the competition.  Who did we see in the front yard????  Valerie aka Dana the county auditor website said with her “For Sale By Owner” house sign and the intruder signs.  What a piggybacking sneak!So after days of cleaning, a broken glass shard in my foot (minor flesh wound!) and hiring every friend’s child to wash walls and pulls weeks the house is on the market.  But being on the market means we have to evacuate the house for each showing and pretend no person and no animal lives here.  So with each showing we have a 10 point checklist that includes things like: Pack 4 dogs in car, hide two cats in crate under steps, put cinnamon rolls in the oven, rid house of pet hair (SHELTIE!!!), clean nose prints again from windows, turn dog room into baby play room (dog room is not kosher in home sales), turn off cinnamon rolls in oven (burned rolls would not be good!) and drive away all before the next realtor comes.  Oh wait, and pack up Isaac into his car seat next to the dog crates.  And then repeat process a few hours later for next showing.

But after Sunday’s open house with 12 people going through (3 of which were Dana/Valerie and family!), and two showings, WE HAVE AN OFFER!  Let the games begin!

Have a home buying or selling story you’d like to share?

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