Should You Sell NOW?

I was at a listing appointment today and the prospective seller was wondering if he should sell now or wait until the market picks up some more. That is a great question and the answer is not the same for everyone. Prices in the Bothell area have gone up nearly 10% in the past year so if he waits a year he MIGHT pick up $35,000 or so in more value (if the economy does not completely tank in the mean time), but it will also cost him 10% more to buy his next home. In his case he is downsizing so the 10% gain in his new home would be less dollar wise than he would gain by waiting to sell his existing house. However, other clients are upgrading to larger homes, so for them their new purchase would be gaining dollar value way faster than their existing smaller home. The other consideration is the NEED to move. One client I have was recently married creating a blended family with 7 kids so they are busting out at the seams with two sets of furniture and way too many kids in a small house with very small bedrooms. Another just got a job out of state and needs to move right away. Another is retiring and just needs to downsize when the time feels right or he finds a smaller house he likes. Each of them have different time frames and monetary considerations that need to be taken into account. That is where a good real estate agent comes in. As their consultant he can give them as much data as they need to help them make the right decission for their situation. Residential inventory in the Bothell area is as low as i have ever seen it in the 10 years i have been an agent and interest rates are bouncing around the lowest they have ever been so the demand from buyers is about as strong as it is going to get right now. Houses that are priced right in good condition sell in a day or two with mulltiple offers common. So if you need to sell it is a great time to do it. Call me today so we can talk about the current value of your house, the options you have, and how the process works. d

Great article about getting your home ready to sell.

Check out this article about getting your home ready to sell from The Washington Times. It reinforces what I have written about before and adds a few other tips too. Just keep in mind to not go overboard with the updates when you are getting ready to sell as you will probably not get dollar for dollar back when you sell. d

Top 10 Worst Home Showing Mistakes

Here is a great article from the National Association of Realtors that mentions some of the points I have already written about and adds a few more. Some of the pet issues and embarising photos on the walls are pretty funny. Click the link to read about the 10 worst home showing mistakes.

Pricing your home to sell

Now that you have prepaired your home to sell, you need to bring in a professional to tell you what it will sell for in the crazy housing market in Bothell (or anywhere around the Puget Sound area for that matter). Your home will be worth what the market thinks it is worth; not what you want it to be worth, not what you owe on it, not what your mother thinks it should be worth, not what Zillow (or any other internet site says); only the market will tell you the exact price your home is worth for its condition, size, location and style. An experienced real estate agent who has studied your local market and has the skills to analyze the sales comparables that are on the market or have sold in the past few months can give you a really good idea, but even they will not be able to tell you the exact price these days. For the past 4 years the market pricing has been dropping every month, then when we hit 2012 something strange happened...we ran out of inventory. The demand is still there, but there are fewer houses on the market that at any time in the past 30+ years so we are seeing multiple offers and houses on the market for HOURS instead of months. I saw a new listing in Kirkland the other day only an hour after it was listed on the MLS at about 10pm. I did some comps and figured it was over priced by about $30,000 at $400,000, but it fit what my clients were looking for so the next day when my buyer got off work we went to see it. They liked it so i called the listing agent about putting in an offer and was told there were 3 offers on it already and 2 more coming in. Two were all cash with the inspection waived and 2 others had escilation clauses raising the already high price even farther. I asked the agent how he came up with the price since the comparables were so much lower. He said that he figured it was about $20k high, and he figured it would sell in a few weeks. He was totally shocked by all the offers on the first day it was available. Another in Bothell was very similar. Priced at $390k it needed some updating, had a dumpy back yard with medium large power lines just past the back fence. It took a little longer to sell, but had 2 offers in 2 days. To show that price really matters, a split in Bothell that was priced at $330k was judged by the market to be way over priced and has not had much of any activity in 60 days and they are now starting to drop the price. Everything about your house affects the price. If it is a split level that lowers the value, a rambler increases the value. Updated kitchens will help you get the best price for your home while all of the other things i told you about in previous postings will affect the price in a lesser way. Find a Realtor you trust and who has the experience in YOUR neighborhood to get the ball rolling and start packing.

6 Worst Remodels When Selling Your Home

Here is a good article about the 6 worst remodels when selling your home from Yahoo! Finance. The thing to remember is to not go overboard with all sort of high end bling that you may love, but the typical home buyer will just think is a waste of space or money. One recent example they do not list in this article is an in-ground, outdoor pool in Bothell (or anywhere in the Puget Sound region for that matter). I saw one at a house yesterday that took up almost the whole back yard and cost over $30,000 that the seller thought was a valuable feature and reflected that in their asking price. As soon as my buyers saw the pool, all they could think about was the liability of keeping the neighbor kids (and their own) safe, plus the expense of heating all that water in our cool weather. They would not even look at the rest of the house and we left. Another house i saw a few months ago had a custom hot-tub/steam room in the basement. It must have been at least $15,000 to build and all my buyers wanted to know was how much it would cost to get rid of it. So if you are thinking of selling in the near future, be sure your updates are not complete remodels and that you think of the monitary return on your investment not how much you would enjoy that expensive 'feature'. If you are thinking of selling your home (or any type of real estate in the Puget Sound Region for that matter) please call me at 206-214-5408 so we can discuss how you can get the most money when selling your property.

Return of the dreaded Clutter

This is a rerun of an earlier post, but one of the most basic rules about getting your home ready to sell!! I was showing a nice looking home yesterday that i had not previewed. When we got to the finished basement rec-room we discovered it was being used for a teenager's (we assume) bedroom/rock band practice room and general junk storage. There was so much stuff in there we could not even walk around and were afraid of what we might find amongst all of the junk. Needless to say we moved on to the next house. It would have been a challenge for the sellers to clean up all of that stuff (just from the volume of it), but it is going to have to be done when (or if) the house sells so why not do it before the house is on the market so potential buyers can actually see the rooms and not have to worry about tripping over piles of cloths, instruments and other misc teen junk? When you are selling your home it is like you are a retail store. You would not go to a store that has junk all over the floor or dirty dishes all over the kitchen would you? While talking about junk it also important that if you cannot get rid of most of it, at least be sure the doors can open into rooms and people can reach the light switches. Twice this week I could not get into a garage because there was so much junk it had fallen in front of the door so it would not open. Messy houses do not show well and will take longer to sell and they will not get as high of price than a clean, neat home. Cleaning up junk is by far the cheapest thing to do to raise its value. I know i have written about it before, but it is really important and my buyer's reaction to the messy houses we have seen this week were perfect examples of that.

What to Update to get you home ready to Sell

This post is a tough one. There is no single answer to the question of what to update in your home to increase the value and help it sell faster. Once you have done the easy, inexpensive stuff like cleaning up the yard, removing a lot of clutter and painting, the rest is a matter of money and how much you can spend. The biggest updates that help sell a house for more are the kitchens and bathrooms. If you are not a contractor, these projeccts are probably not something a do-it-yourselfer should try to tackle. You can spend $20-40,000 on a kitchen and $10,000 for each bathroom. Surveys have shown you only get about 90% return on your money for the updates. So those items may not be the best thing to try to accomplish just to get your house sold. I just did comparables for a seller in the Thrashers Corner area of Bothell and there was $100,000 difference in the selling price of nearly identical homes that had been completely updated vs ones that had not. Of course the updates cost $100,000 so it would be a wash for making money when you are trying to sell. Here is my list of updates i would do from the least expensive to the most. I cannot say exactly how much each of them would gain you in price, but even the cheapest will help your house sell faster. 1. Cleaning. You will have to clean up to move anyway, why not make your house look like a model home to start with? The only expense is your labor. Isn't that what kids are for? Get them to help keep the house clean for showings. 2. Yard work. Get those over grown shrubs and bushes trimmed back, the lawn mowed and the flower garden planted with fresh flowers and new bark. Might cost $100 and will make an inviting first impression. 3. Paint. Inside and out. You may love that bright pink room with pink shades, or the deep blue bedroom with the funny wallpaper around the edges, but most buyers will not. Keep it neutral. This one will cost several thousand dollars if you are not skilled at painting, but will definatly give you a good return on investment. 4. Update the light fixtures. No one likes those old 60's bedroom lights anymore. You can get nice ones for $15-20 and it is amazing how much better it makes a room look. 5. Sink fixtures for the bath and kitchen. This will set you back $3-400, but will help update the rooms without spending thousands. 6. Baseboards and window and door trim. This is another one that is best left to the professionals. An poor job on trim will be worse than not doing them at all. This is another multi-thousand dollar job, but it will give your home an updated look. When we replaced the windows in our home we redid all of the trim and it is unbelievable the difference it makes in the look of our house. It was about $3,000 and well worth it. 7. Floor coverings. Pick the worst areas to do first. If the kitchen or bathroom floors are nasty do them and leave the carpet. If there are dog stains and worn spots on the carpets then that is where you need to go first. Keep the colors neutral and put in a medium grade. This is a big item so allow $3-5,000. If your carpets are shot this will make the biggest difference in the value of your home. In the next segment i will continue this conversation.

Lighting Helps Sell Your Home

When it comes to lighting to help sell your home, more is better. Nothing turns off a prospective buyer more than a dark house (except bad smells which we covered in the earlier blog). The first thing is to update any ceiling mounted room lighting. Most older houses still have the original light fixtures from the 80's or even the 70's. New fixtures are only about $25-$40 and make a world of difference in a room. If you cannot change the fixture at least put in new brighter bulbs to lighten the rooms. Make sure all lights work and the glass covers are clean. Dead bugs in the light cover are really icky. Be sure to clean them up. When we moved into our house the living room did not have any over head lights and we only had 2 table lamps for a giant room. There are a lot of windows so during the day it is fine, but at night you could hardly read a newspaper in the living room. We finally installed track lighting on a beam in the ceiling with 5 flouresent flood lights and it makes a world of difference in the way the room looks and feels. I cannot believe we lived here 20 years before we added those lights. If you really want to go all out you can change out the light switches to the new style. They cost a little more than the standard ones, but look so much nicer than the old wornout original ones. When someone is coming to view your home, be sure to turn on every light in the house. It makes it more inviting and shows the prospective buyer how light and bright your home can be. It also makes it way easier for the buyers coming through to not have to figure out how to turn on the lights. One really fancy house i was trying to show had a bank of light 8 light switches on one wall. i figured that would turn on just about everything, but it did not do anything at all. There was a single switch in another room that activated all of the lights in the house and it took me about 10 minutes of trial and error to find that switch. Also if there is under counter lighting or over stove lighting in the kitchen turn them on too. It really brings out the warmth and charm when those little accent lights are on.

Get Rid Of The Clutter!!!

Nothing turns off a prospective home buyer than too much clutter around the house they are trying to imagine living in.

Even if you have to rent a storage locker or a mini-storage shed it is better than having the living room, kitchen or bedrooms so full of junk the buyers cannot even walk around the rooms.

I had a listing that was not very large, but the sellers had huge furnature and way too much stuff in the living room. The were finally convinced to store the extra stuff in the garage (which is a step in the right direction). The living room was then opened up to foot traffic and looked much less crowded. The house sold in a couple of weeks after that. Plants in a home add a nice touch, but too many in places where they do not belong also need to go.

Getting the Interior of your Home Ready to Sell

Now that you have the exterior cleaned and ready for the home buyers to drive up and see, you can start working on the interior. Start at the front door. Is it old and beat up? Would a coat of paint help it look like new again? Is the hardware loose and worn? How about the entrance inside? Is it cluttered with coats, shoes, and umbrellas? First impressions are lasting impressions so start cleaning up all the extra stuff you have acumulated over the years and get those coats hung in the closet. How does your house smell? You are so used to it you probably cannot tell so have a friend come over and give it the sniff test. If you have smoked inside or have dogs that have had accidents on the carpet you are going to have to do some heavy cleaning. Buyers who do not smoke will usually just turn around and walk out if the house smells like smoke and you do not want to lose prospective buyers before they even get inside. Speaking of carpet, is it badly worn or damaged or is it just dirty? A good carpet cleaning can do wonders if it is just dirty, but if it is worn it would really be good to replace it. Some people think that they will just give a 'carpet allowance' so the buyers can choose what they want, but you will gain more money and time in the selling process with new carpet even if it is not high end material. Most buyers have no imagination and are turned off by the look of a warn, dirty carpet. Replace it with a nice non-offeccive middle of the road color and style. It will make you home more inviting and it will be one major item you will not hae to worry about in the negotiations.

Advantages of getting an Inspection before you List

Here is a great report from our guest blogger, Vicki from Rinehart Inspections. If you call her at (206) 901-1549 and mention you read about it on this blog you will receive a $100 discount off of your next inspection. Home inspections conducted prior to a home being placed on the market is one of the wisest moves a seller can make. The initial response from sellers when approached with the idea of an inspection done as the home is about to be put up for sale is amost always the same - "What?! Why would i want to do that?" Let's review a few of the most common concerns about Pre-Listing Home Inspections 1. "The buyer will not accept it." That is correct! The inspection done for the seller is not intended to replace the inspection done for the buyer. The purpose of the pre-listing inspection is to put the seller in control! Given that no good surprise can come to the seller during the home inspection, regardless of when it is done or whom it is done for, it makes perfect sense to get every strand of information as soon as it can be gotten. Bad news doesn't get better with time. If there is some bad news, or more correctly, some items that needs attention or might have an impact on the home's value, who better to receive that information than the seller? And when is a better time to receive that information than before the home is placed on the market? The simple fact is this - a home inspection at the time of listing will put the seller in the best possible position. With the complete and clear view of the home's strengths and weaknesses, the home can be marketed to the best benefit of the seller. 2. "I don't want to pay for the inspection" This is certainly understandable. The seller generally perceives that the inspection is intended for the buyer, hence, should be a buyer's responsibility. But to have the benefit of the information it must be paid for. Never have we had a complaint from a seller about the value of the inspection! In every case at the conclusion of a pre-listing inspection, the seller felt they had made a good choice in spending the money to get the inspection done. In most cases, the seller's feel good getting the peace of mind of knowing that no major event or expense will be uncovered by the buyer's inspector. And on the rare occasion when it is discovered by the pre-listing inspector that the roof is completely shot or there is some other big expense or danger, the sellers, while not happy to have the problem, are glad to have discovered it on their own terms. The small expense of the inspection is always less then the cost and aggravation of a hurried hunt to get something repaired or replaced after the home is under contract. Save the pain, spend the money. Get every home inspected prior to putting it on the market! 3. "The home is selling 'as is'." This may be the best reason of all to inspect at listing! If the home is being sold "as is", reduce your risk and liability as the seller by getting a pre-listing inspection. In order for the home to sell quickly and at the highest price, disclose every condition of the home. The inspection gives both the buyer and the seller the comfort of knowing that the home "is as it is". With a pre-listing inspection, there is a high likelihood that the home is as represented. Even in an "as is" contract, the buyer may still have their own inspection performed. If these two inspections are similar in content, it is rare the buyer will walk or counter offer. That, in fact, is the goal of the "as is" sale. Another concern of sellers is that they will have to repair every item that is discovered to be discrepant on the inspection report. This is simply not true. It would be true that every discrepant item needs to be disclosed, and those disclosures may impact value and hence asking price, but nothing need necessarily be corrected.

Preparing your home for sale continued...

To continue our discussion of how to prepare the outside of your home for sale, branches of bushes and trees that touch the siding or hang over the roof of the house need to be trimmed back. Home inspectors will write them up has a maintenance item and the leaves or needles will clog gutters and downspouts causing more inspector write ups. As long as we are talking about shrubs and trees, you should trim them back to open up the areas around windows and sidewalks to let in more light and to keep walkways clear. I showed a really nice house recently where the shrubs in the front of the house were so overgrown that we could hardly walk past them to get into the house. Besides having to brush up against the wet bush, it made the front porch look like it was part of a jungle and very dark. Another problem that is easy and cheap to fix is to look for wood siding or decking touching the dirt. All you need to do is push the dirt away and clean off the wood. The home inspectors really watch for that 'earth contact' as it causes rot in the wood and real expensive damage if not corrected. The last item is the moss on the roof. This is sometimes more than the average homeowner can handle, but with a little moss killer sprinkled on the ridges of the roof, most of the moss will die off and blow or wash away in the weather after a month or so. Moss will distroy a roof and all inspectors will write it up as a repair item. Most of these fixes are very expensive to fix and most homeowners can do the work themselves for little or no money. Next time we will start on the interior of your home to get it ready for sale. d

Getting Your Home Ready to Sell

Remember - When selling your home, First Impressions Are Everything To ensure a successful sale of your home, it is important to present your property so that it will make a good first impression on all potential buyers. Here are a few suggestions on how to get the exterior of your home properly prepared for sale. 1. Look at your property objectively. Pretend you are seeing it for the first time through a potential buyer's eyes. 2. Keep the lawn trimmed and edged. 3. Put some new beauty bark in the flower beds and maybe add some new flowers to brighten up the entrance. 4. Keep the yard clear of hazards such as tools, toys, low hanging branches or hoses. 5. The front door and porch gives a vital first impression. Be sure they are scrubbed and repainted if necessary. Repair any loose stairs or railings. 6. Presure wash or touch up the siding and trim to give the front of the house a fresh clean look. It is amazing how some buyers will not even go in a house with a really messy yard or a bad entrance. It really puts a bad taste in their mouths so you have to make the street view a clean as possible to at least get them in the door. That first impression is so important that they may miss good features inside or if the outside is nice they could over look something not quite right inside. If you would like a room by room analysis of your home contact me at 206-214-5408 or check out my website www.DennisGouldRealEstate.com

Why Some Homes Sell

Check out this quick video on pricing your home. Of course each neighborhood and style of home will have its own price point, but this video talks about taking into consideration condition and pricing of homes "in the market" so they will sell, or 'out of the market' so they will just sit. You, as a home seller can not control the price the market will pay for your home, you can only control the condition your home is in to help attract buyers and to get the most you can for your home. Your real estate agent should be able to help you find that perfect price point where you will be able to sell your home and not leave any money on the table. I will be posting lists of key things buyers are looking for and what they run away from in the near future. Stay tuned and come back often. For more information go to my website www.DennisGouldRealEstate.com for neighborhood information and MLS searches so you can see what your competition is trying to sell their homes for.