resolution
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Post by resolution on Apr 4, 2016 9:54:21 GMT -5
Can you have a priest come out and bless your house? Our priest offers that to the congregation, although I don't know if anyone has ever taken him up on it. I think there is some kind of new age cleansing you could do as well, if you don't like the idea of a priest coming out. Lol, I don't actually believe in ghosts (or god), but I'm still a 34-year-old woman who is afraid of the dark! Irrational fears aren't supposed to make sense! Ha! Oh I know they aren't supposed to make sense, but sometimes having a little ritual or explanation can make you feel better about things. We have a dog that's been buried in our yard for about 35 years, and once a month an older lady comes by and places flowers on its grave. So I can either say that the lady is unhinged hanging around in our yard for crazy reasons, or there is some reason to placate the dog spirit, or I can say that was one happy dog that was well loved. So I just go with the happy dog to make myself feel better about it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2016 11:48:03 GMT -5
Hoping you guys can settle an argument. My husband wants to sell our house within the next couple of years. We have been here for 9 years and the house is probably about 14 years old. In my opinion, for a quicker sale we will have to put some money into refreshing/upgrading the house in order to get it sold quickly. Part of our problem is neither of us is particularly handy or interior design oriented. But I think realistically we have to spend at least $20,000 upgrading the kitchen and bathroom. I think our actual cupboards are nice enough, but at our price point we need to upgrade the counter tops to quartz or granite. Put in a backsplash. I've always kind of hated the color of the floor tiles but might be able to get away with not replacing them. Replacing the lights and drawer pulls is probably the cheapest part of the kitchen reno. Whole house should be repainted inside. Upstairs bathroom need to get rid of the blue wall tiles at the very least. Ideally replace all the tiles. Possibly replace the sink/counters. Upstairs bonus room over the garage will need to have the carpet replaced. I think if we did those upgrades the house would sell quicker and at a higher price - probably could price around $360,000+. His idea is to do nothing and price low and people will buy the house because it is cheapest. I said people do not buy houses rationally and the way it looks will influence buyers more than the price. If you could purchase a brand new house in all the current styles for the same price, most people wouldn't want to buy the older house and have to do renovations. On the other hand we have a location that the newer houses do not have. Our neighbour across the road cut down all the trees on his property and now we have a panoramic water view that was not there when we bought the place. So would you try to be cheapest house on the block or do a few renovations for a pricier but likely quicker sale? I think he forgets that when we bought this house it was at the top of our price range and it was simply because we fell in love with the feel of it right away. As a veteran of nearly a dozen home purchase/home sale transactions I have some strong thoughts on selling homes. First, there are two types of buyers. Those looking to buy cheap. And those looking for a move in ready house that will take no repairs. The folks looking for cheap are cheap in every aspect of the transaction. No matter how low the listing price, they will lowball you even further. And they will want you to pay the closing costs, often because that don't have the money needed to buy your house. And repaint or recarpet. And closing will be delayed for weeks or months while the cheapie buyer struggles to arrange financing. The other cheapie buyer is a flipper or landlord, looking to buy distressed properties at below market prices. Either of these cheapie buyers is likely to consume lots of your time and cost you several additional mortgage payments before the house is sold. The folks looking for move a ready houses are more than happy to pay a fair market value for what they get. Often, these folks are doing corporate relocations. So, they don't have a lot of time to house shop, they are often experienced buyers so you don't have newbe buyer delays, and they aren't buying their forever home, so they are willing to live with some things that other buyers fuss and dither (and waste your time) over. My advice is to get the house in the best shape possible without over spending. Then deal with serious and financially qualified buyers. I guess I was the oddball cheapie buyer. I was willing to forgo the latest and greatest updates and was looking for a well maintained house that suited my needs, in my price range. I preferred to get more bang for my buck in things I couldn't change about a house than things I could change. The only thing I asked the seller to do as far as the house was to address the one major concern in the inspection report. That required an engineer to determine whether the running crack in the bricks was a foundation issue or not. I did ask him to pay closing costs, well, just because. He agreed, but if he hadn't, I still would have bought the house lol. My financing was already approved before I made the offer, so no delays there. In fact, he ended up asking me to delay closing a couple of weeks, he needed the extra time because of something to do with the house he was buying. No problem, I agreed. Him leaving the appliances was in the listing, I didn't need them so I sold them and used my own. The HVAC system was old, the water heater was old, but everything worked. The water heater finally died 3 years ago after 23 years of service, the HVAC is still going. He left owners manuals and paperwork for everything that had ever been installed in the house, down to the garage door opener, which was a surprise, but a nice one. Before I moved in, I painted the colors I wanted and pulled up the carpet because I preferred the hardwood floors underneath. I've changed other things over the years. I don't think I was a PITA buyer and he wasn't an obnoxious seller.
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Anne_in_VA
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Post by Anne_in_VA on Apr 5, 2016 11:09:35 GMT -5
I've bought and sold several houses over the past 40 years, but each market is different. In each case we made sure the house was squeaky clean, had no major issues, had good curb appeal (new mulch, mown grass, etc) but didn't upgrade anything just for the sale. In every case, the house sold quickly as it was priced right for the market.
Of course, YMMV
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kittensaver
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We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. - Mother Teresa
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Post by kittensaver on Apr 5, 2016 17:06:32 GMT -5
I agree with others here that you should probably wait on the cosmetic stuff until you get much closer to actually selling. Then you can work with a local realtor to decide what the local market - at that point in time - will and will not bear in terms of salability.
But keeping the house up maintenance-wise (HVAC and plumbing systems maintained in good order, minor repairs attended to promptly instead of just letting them go) will go a long way toward reducing your costs in the future. "Deferred maintenance" (the realtor's code for "these people did nothing and just let the quality of the house slowly slide downhill") can be terribly expensive if you wait and try to do it all when you're ready to move.
That said, if you want to do something now, have a thorough inspection of the house done. Pick the meanest, baddest inspector you can find - the one every real estate agent trying to sell a house cringes at when they see him or her coming. Take that person's report and fix everything on it - that will keep your house in good working shape. I can GUARANTEE you that report will have NOTHING about cosmetic décor. It will be all about the quality of the infrastructure of the house.
If you keep the house in good working condition, I'm gonna guess like Bonny - when you go to sell you will just need to do a deep cleaning, declutter and paint. The upgrades will be unimportant because your buyer will either be willing to live without them, or they will have specific ideas of how they intend to upgrade.
You can spend literally thousands on upgrades and STILL have a buyer tear it all out and do something else to suit themselves.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Apr 5, 2016 21:09:57 GMT -5
You can spend literally thousands on upgrades and STILL have a buyer tear it all out and do something else to suit themselves. Or you can spend thousand on upgrades and it still doesn't matter. It sounds like you were smart when you bought your house, and bought in a great area. But, location trumps everything followed closely by layout. My uncles house is a prime example of that. He passed away in January, and his house went on the market last week. It needs a lot of comestic upgrades. It has the original carpet from 1991, original builders grade bathrooms, kitchens, and original appliances. It was priced about 5% less than the upgraded houses and his house sold in less than 12 hours. Because despite the comestic issues, it is in a great location, has a great layout, and the big ticket maintenance items were kept up with.
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spartan7886
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Post by spartan7886 on Apr 6, 2016 8:20:36 GMT -5
That said, if you want to do something now, have a thorough inspection of the house done. Pick the meanest, baddest inspector you can find - the one every real estate agent trying to sell a house cringes at when they see him or her coming. Take that person's report and fix everything on it - that will keep your house in good working shape. I can GUARANTEE you that report will have NOTHING about cosmetic décor. It will be all about the quality of the infrastructure of the house.
Probably not a bad idea, but just be aware of the fact that you will likely have to disclose this report, so be sure to note on a copy of it what you did and didn't fix. The people who were originally under contract on the house we bought got scared off by their inspector, who was one of those types. They looked at the thickness of the report, not the fact that a lot of the issues were stupid crap like "The hot water line is reversed in the guest bath". Hot water was still on the left where you expect it, but OMG you had to turn the knob opposite of what you would expect to turn it on vs off.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Apr 6, 2016 13:22:34 GMT -5
You can't paint those blue tiles. No reason to live with a house you don't like either.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Apr 6, 2016 13:22:45 GMT -5
Can I mean
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