A Home Selling Solution Worth Mentioning…
In this blog, I’ve shared a variety of ideas for helping frustrated home sellers, such as considering a temporary or permanent home exchange, renting out a piece of your home, your land or your entire property, and marketing your home using today’s latest technologies.
But there’s another possibility I’ve never mentioned… If you’ve been having trouble selling a home the traditional way, or suddenly find yourself in a situation where you need to sell quickly because of financial difficulty, divorce, relocation, or you’ve just inherited a home and don’t want to invest the time and money it takes to prep and sell it, you may consider selling it directly to a company that buys houses.
These companies can assist in selling a house fast and possibly, avoid foreclosure and damage to your credit score. Such companies can close a deal quickly and provide sellers with cash for an “as is’ house. One group that does this, Express Homebuyers, which specializes in purchasing homes, condos and other properties in Washington DC, VIrginia and Maryland, say on their website that they’ll buy your home directly from you, offer a fair market value, and usually close in under seven days.
For some worried home sellers, this may be the ticket out, or at least worth investigating further. And it’s comforting to know that this option does exist. It might just short-circuit a midnight anxiety attack where you’re wondering whether you’ll be stuck with your home forever…
For hundreds of other ideas on staying sane — and even happy — during the home selling process, read Home Seller’s Blues and How To Beat Them. Available in paperback and as an ebook from Amazon.com or at http://housesellingblues.com
Home Selling Tip: Getting The Inspiration
I was reading Joe Manausa’s Tallahassee Real Estate blog post from January 17th, 2012, “Should You Wait Until Next Year To Sell Your Home?” and chuckling at the image of a skeleton sitting on a park bench. The blog post mentions that a lot of people are sitting it out… waiting until next year, when hopefully, the market starts to look better.
Manausa contends that as you sit on the sidelines waiting, the market is dropping lower and lower. During the last six years the sellers who waited it out, got less, on average, each year for their home.
There’s lots of reasons for waiting it out, financially and otherwise. Home selling is a lot of work and it takes guts these days! (And choosing to hold on to your house takes guts too.) So I wanted to let you know about a gutsy project I just finished myself:
I just published an Ebook on Amazon called “Instant Guts! Smart Risk Taking and Decision Making To Win in Every Area of Your Life.” What’s gutsier, I decided to sell it for .99 cents.
I want to encourage and inspire anyone sitting on the fence… holding back, into taking action — whether that means doing what it takes to get your house sold, renting it out and moving to Costa Rica, or staying put and setting up a new home business for extra income.
Whatever it is you’re holding back on doing, this Ebook is a shot of courage to get you moving ahead in 2012. So please, take a moment and check it out. (And sorry for the blatant advertisement… I’m just excited about my new baby!)
And thanks for reading my posts and leaving comments. I love hearing from you!
Home Selling In Winter: 10 Tips To Make Buyers Fall In Love With Your House
The good news about selling your home in the winter is you face far fewer competitors than you will come springtime. And, the home buyers who are looking right now tend to be serious. Why else would they be trampling around through rain, snow and mud to get to your front door?
So, now is the time to charm these buyers into falling in love with your cozy winter house. Here’s 10 home selling tips to help you sell your house no matter what the weather brings:
- Don’t bake your house. Real estate sites everywhere are advising home sellers to crank up the heat before a buyer comes over, so your home doesn’t feel like a refrigerator. Although you don’t want it to be freezing cold, you don’t want it to be toasty either. House hunters may be wearing winter wear and a too-warm house can make them leave just as fast as a too-cold one. Opt to keep the temperature a comfortable 65 degrees instead, which is perfect for someone touring your home wearing sweaters, thick socks, coats and jackets.
- Create a focal point for each room. The focal point is the first thing a home buyer sees when walking into a room. In the spring, summer and fall, this might be a beautiful view of your garden outside your windows — but in the winter, when the outside may look cold and grey, you can shift the focal point in every room to your interior. For example, your focal point can be a fireplace, a vase of yellow roses, or an art piece depicting a warm, tropical theme. What ever you choose, you can accentuate it even more by framing your focal point with contrasting colors or warm accent lighting. For example, let’s say the focal point in your bedroom is usually a big tree outside your window. In winter however, you can change that focal point by placing a beautiful tray on your bed with a shiny red tea pot, cups and saucers.
- Make your home feel festive. Bake some chocolate chip cookies or cinnamon rolls, put them on a decorative plate, provide paper napkins and put a little sign up saying, “Enjoy!” Not only will it fill your house with an evilly tempting aroma, it will uplift a buyer’s mood and make them remember your home. Many sellers know the trick of making a house smell as if something is freshly baked, but it’s great to take it to the next step and actually offer your house hunters a little treat.
- Take the majority of items off your countertops in your kitchen. Yes, this may mean temporarily stashing your beloved coffeemaker, toaster, food processor, blender or crockpot. These appliances take up so much room and distract from the beauty of your kitchen. Opt instead for a wire basket of fruit, a display of gourmet olive oils and a cookbook, with the cover facing outward, showing a gorgeous meal. Even though you may never make this meal yourself, by association of having it on your countertop, it uplevels your kitchen into looking like the kind of place where gourmet meals like this are prepared.
- Set your table. Put out two or four place settings with sparkling dishes, glass wear, and cloth napkins. It makes your dining room look even more inviting — as if it’s a bed and breakfast inn. I’ve heard, however, that sometimes silverware walks away, so it’s best not to show off your finest cutlery.
- Show off the spaciousness of your kitchen. If you’ve got room for a table and chairs, add them to the room and put a rug under the table to further define this separate “dining space.” Keep the table on the smaller size though, to emphasize the spaciousness of the room. If you don’t have a table present, house hunters won’t be able to visualize if there’s enough room in your kitchen.
- Make the interior cozy. Put a few throw blankets on the sofa along with some soft decorative pillows that will make house hunters want to plop down and make themselves at home. After all, that’s the essence of the entire game.
- Keep some warm, glowing interior and exterior house lights on a timer. Home buyers may take a ride past your place at night after work, so it’s smart to keep it looking good in the evening hours. This might make the difference between a house hunter scheduling an appointment to see it for the first time, or someone who has already seen it, deciding to take your home seriously. If your lights are on a timer you don’t have to worry about being home or not to make an attractive presentation.
- Add outside color. Install colorful shutters or window boxes outside your windows and plant some hardy winter flowers. That way, if your garden is looking a little grey and disheveled, a house hunter’s eyes will be drawn to the attractive, cheerful house itself.
- Keep a basket of paper booties by your home’s entryway and ask people to please slip them on over their shoes. Buyers will appreciate that you care enough about your home (or their future home) that you want to take care of it for them.
You can read addition winter home selling tip in my previous post, “Home Selling Tip: Get Easy Winter Curb Appeal.”
Are you tired of not being able to sell your house? Do you need a lift? Check out Home Seller’s Blues and How To Beat Them. Available in paperback and as an ebook from Amazon.com and at http://www.homesellersblues.com.
Home Selling Tip: Get Easy Winter Curb Appeal
During the winter, it’s a lot harder to think about gardening – especially if you’re a home seller who is sick of trying to sell a house!
It’s much easier to think about winter feasts or sitting around the fireplace holding a mug of hot chocolate with a couple of half-submerged marshmallows.
But I’ve noticed something happening out on the streets in Portland, Oregon and in many other places — city crews are outside planting new flowers, sprucing up the street’s winter curb appeal.
Home sellers can take a hint from this: If colorful pansies and other plants can thrive all winter-long in street dividers and pots around town, why can’t we do the same thing in our own front and back yards?
Here are a few quick, easy ways to boost your home’s winter curb appeal:
First off, this can actually be a good time to shop for plants. Many nurseries and stores are selling their inventory for up to 75% off, because people aren’t doing much gardening right now and stores don’t want to deal with this inventory either. This makes it a good time to replace any plants that sizzled and died in the summer with hardy perennials that will make it through the winter.
This can also be a good time to go pot shopping and see what kind of discounts you can get. There’s a good chance those fenced-in pot and sculpture places have a lot of inventory but not too many takers. Find a few colorful pots of varying heights and load them up with bright pansies and green plants which will perk up your surroundings all winter-long. You can place these along your walkway as well as throughout your garden.
Next, think about adding a blanket of winter mulch to add color and consistency to your garden, as well as to protect your plants from harsh conditions. The best way to buy this mulch is to have it delivered by truck instead of buying it by the bag. By doing so, you can get as much as five times as much mulch for your money.
Take a look around your house for broken items that can be given new life in your garden. Cracked or chipped flower pots can be partially buried, or you can fill them with ground cover plants that will artfully flow over the pot’s broken parts. Even broken garden tools with long handles, such as rakes, hoes and shovels can be used as posts for training vines. These unfortunate items can give your garden character and add varied elevations to your landscaping.
Now here’s a few more easy enhancements: Put an attractive wreath on your front door, keep your front entryway clean and swept, and move a few lamps (inside your house) close to the windows. For added ambiance, use warm hued or pinkish lightbulbs to give your home a welcoming glow.
Make sure your home’s sales material includes photos of your home in all seasons. Take pictures of your attractive winter garden and your home’s windows glowing in the dim evening light. Show these photos alongside shots of your home in the height of spring and summer.
Now you’re ready for that rewarding cup of hot chocolate, knowing if a house hunter drives by this winter — they’ll see an unexpected winter garden worth stopping for.
For hundreds of other home selling tips check out my book, Home Seller’s Blues and How To Beat Them. Available in paperback and as an ebook from Amazon.com and at http://www.homesellersblues.com
Home Selling Tip: How To Sell Your House In Three Days
A dear friend of mine in Las Vegas just reported that the couple living next door to them just sold their house in three days.
I’ll repeat that: They sold their home in Las Vegas… in three days.
My response, knowing the slow housing market, not to mention the slowness of the season, was, “WHAT?!! GIVE ME THEIR NUMBER, I WANT TO TALK TO THESE PEOPLE!”
A few hours later I had Rose, the home seller, on the phone. She graciously gave me an hour interview, in the midst of packing up her boxes. During this conversation, she told me all the home selling tips that led to her success:
First off, she was motivated. Rose and her husband wanted to move to Arizona to be close to their kids and grandkids. They didn’t want to spend months, or years of quality time waiting for an offer.
One of the most important steps was to get an appraisal. Even though they were once told, during the height of the housing price boom, that their house was worth around a million dollars, the appraisal value in today’s market was in the mid $300′s. They blinked, swallowed hard, faced the cold bite of realty, and set their asking price just a wee smidge above that figure — taking into account they had one of the only models of a particularly sought-after home style on the market.
Then they got to work. They brought in a Realtor and home stager to go through the property with a fine-tooth comb and tell them exactly what to do to make buyers fall in love with their house. Rose took copious notes and then set out to execute every last detail of what the stager told her to do.
During the next four months, they held off listing the house until it was perfect. Rose knew that the first few weeks a home is on the market, are the most critical weeks for landing a sale. What this meant though, was their home wouldn’t be listed until mid November… right before Thanksgiving. Even though this wasn’t exactly the high season for home sales, she prayed the right buyer would find her house.
Then they started upping the home’s curb appeal. She brought in a truckload of new landscaping gravel and varnished it until it gleamed in the Las Vegas sun. Then they refinished the driveway and added a coat of varnish so it also gleamed.
Rose’s friend suggested she bury a Saint Joseph statue next to her “For Sale” sign at the property line, which she felt contributed to her own quick home sale. So Rose bought one online and followed the instructions carefully — burying it upside down and outward, facing the street. She was also told that she had to truly believe it would work, so Rose’s next task was to change her own belief system.
In terms of the interior, Rose’s stager told her she had to make the house “Turnkey-Ready,” so buyers would feel all they needed to do was carry in their toothbrushes.
Here is a list of the changes Rose made:
- When the stager first visited Rose’s house, it was crowded with decorations, furniture and Asian art from the couple’s travels. They immediately moved two-thirds of the furniture out, took almost everything off the walls and emptied the place of every last stone lion head.
– Next, they painted all the rooms a soothing celadon green, which is a newly-defined neutral that goes with practically any furniture.
– Rose took down all the draperies, leaving only the honeycomb shades, which she kept open to show off the gleaming landscape outside her window.
- She was also instructed to take the majority of knick-knacks out of her China cabinet, so visitors wouldn’t get distracted and ask, “Oooh, look at those cute little temple figurines! I wonder if these people traveled around China?” By taking out the personal items, buyers focus on the details of the house — instead of the details of the seller’s lives.
– Next, Rose updated her lighting fixtures. Even though she loved her expensive Tuscan fixtures, she was told today’s buyers prefer contemporary, classic designs. So Rose went to Lowe’s and bought some beautiful, yet economical fixtures that instantly updated the interior.
In terms of marketing, Rose piggy-backed their open house to coincide with others in the area, to maximize their exposure. She also had gorgeous photos taken of the home, put them on an attractive flyer, and set the flyers next to their “For Sale” sign.
Two days after setting out the sign, two buyers driving by the area with their Realtor saw the flyer and made an appointment to tour the house. Within 30 minutes, they made up their mind to buy it and presented a cash offer for $30,000 less than the asking price.
Because the house was immaculate, Rose negotiated to split the difference and they settled on a price of $15,000 under the asking price. The buyer wanted the house badly, and both parties wanted a no-muss, no fuss deal.
This week Rose and her husband are going to Phoenix to start shopping for their new home next to the grandkids and to get an early jump on celebrating the holidays. They earned it.
For many more details on how to sell a house quickly in a bad market — and how to stay happy while you wait — check out my book, Home Seller’s Blues and How To Beat Them. Available in paperback and as an eBook from Amazon.com.
Trying To Sell a House? Protect Your Home’s Value Through Targeted Upkeep
When you’re trying to sell a house, you’re probably not in the mood to spend time and money on expensive maintenance and repairs.
However, it’s a lot like going to the dentist. If you put off checkups and maintenance, because you want to save time, money and pain, you’re taking the chance of lettings small problems grow out of hand.
Is it better to find that small cavity and pay for getting it filled right now? Or, wait until an achy tooth requires you to get a root canal and a crown?
It works the same way with home maintenance — even though you would rather have your home sell before it needs expensive repair, in this slow housing market, you can’t tell which is going to happen first.
That’s why it pays to keep an eye on those things that will cause you the most trouble and expense to fix. The number one item on this list is anything that involves water intrusion into your home.
Make sure your roof is inspected regularly to check for leaks that can cause major expense and lower your home’s value. Catch the problem early and you can save yourself the equivalent of having to give your home a root canal and a crown.
Don’t wait until you see a large stain on your ceiling — just as you shouldn’t wait until your teeth hurt — before getting a regular checkup.
You should also look for any drainage problems around your house, which can result in major foundation issues later on. Keep vegetation a few feet away from your walls so you aren’t accidentally watering your home. Make sure your roof gutters and downspouts are clear, especially now — when the rain is starting to pour down and fall leaves can clog up the works.
Perform maintenance measures that are the equivalent of dental flossing: Repaint your home’s siding and trim to keep moisture, mildew and dry rot out. Seal cracks in exterior stucco. Recaulk showers, bathtubs, sinks and windows.
And remember to service your heating and air conditioning units regularly. Poor maintenance can cost you much more down the line — from needing to replace your current units, to potentially creating a major fire hazard.
Also, change your air filters regularly. Dirty air filters can cause larger issues — the least serious is watching your walls slowly darken over time to the point where you ask yourself, “Why are my walls grey? I thought I painted them white.”
For many more home selling tips and advice to cheer you on if you’re having trouble selling your house, read Home Seller’s Blues and How To Beat Them. Available in paperback and as an ebook through Amazon.com and at http://www.homesellersblues.com.
Home Selling Tip: Should I Change Realtors or Not?
A question many frustrated home sellers ask is whether they should switch real estate agents or not. Out of desperation, many sellers want to switch agents, hoping that will help them sell their homes faster.
If an agent isn’t putting forth the effort and is not responsive to your communications, that’s understandable. However, that might not be the problem:
Before taking this course of action, ask your agent to review the average days on the market for similar properties in your area. This will show you whether your home has been sitting on the market longer than others, or if you’re suffering from the same fate as other home sellers with different agents.
Also ask your agent to run a comparative market analysis (CMA) for similar homes in your area to see if your asking price is too high. Both of these factors may be a factor in why your home isn’t selling, independent of your agent’s efforts.
If you’ve felt that your agent has been putting forth a good effort to market your home, has been responsive to your questions and provides ongoing status reports and visitor feedback, the problem may just be the slow economy. Changing agents won’t make any difference. It’s a lot like trying out different cars to see if you can go faster during daily rush hour traffic.
You can switch from a reliable Honda to a fast Porsche, to a luxurious Cadillac and still be stuck in the same slow-moving conditions. And that is the exact same situation happening with many agents.
In fact, changing agents might even work against a seller if you gain a reputation for doing this repeatedly. Since agents put up their own advertising money and don’t get paid until a home is sold, they may grow concerned about investing fully in a property if they think the seller is going to drop them in a few months–if the seller has already demonstrated this behavior with a slew of other agents.
So before changing agents out of frustration, do your homework and find out if the problem is out of your agent’s control.
For hundreds of home selling tips — including how to stay sane when your home is on the market, read Home Selling Blues and How to Beat Them. Available in paperback or as an Ebook from Amazon.com.
Home Selling Tip: Use Your Rooms Right
How you use your home normally might be very different from how you need to display it when it’s on the market.
Let’s say you don’t need your dining room, so you’ve turned it into a home office. That might work well for you, but if you keep it looking like an office when you are trying to sell your house, you’re going to turn off a lot of buyers.
They won’t be able to visualize your house having a dining room, even though it’s right next to the kitchen and has a crystal chandelier hanging right over your copy machine.
You are much better off reverting your rooms back to their original purpose before trying to sell your house — or you just might confuse some potentially unimaginative buyers.
This goes for any room you’re using for an unexpected purpose. For example, if you’re using a bedroom as an office, consider adding a futon or daybed to the room, just to give buyers the signal that yes, this room really, truly is a bedroom.
This also goes for your garage. As tempting as it is to park all your boxes and extraneous items in this precious space, you’re better off moving them to a storage closet when your house is for sale, and using your garage for the luxurious purpose of parking your cars.
For hundreds of other home selling tips and inspiration, read Home Seller’s Blues and How To Beat Them. Available in paperback or as an Ebook from Amazon.com.
Home Selling Advice: Upgrading Your Kitchen For Way Less Money
As the days get shorter and the nights get colder, people tend to gravitate to the warmth and safety of the kitchen. But what if warped cabinets, ugly flooring, or cracked, crowded countertops distract from your kitchen’s ambiance?
Well, you might think about doing a remodel… but the average price these days for a good kitchen remodel can be over $100,000. Yow! So what if you’re not exactly in the mood to spend that kind of money?
There is an alternative. Portland, Oregon Real Estate Broker, Alexis Halmy, just sent me some great information on kitchen remodeling that lists many ways to drastically reduce the cost of upgrading your kitchen.
Let’s look at the key components of your kitchen and what you can do to upgrade each one:
Cabinets - New cabinets can cost you $20,000, but instead of replacing them, you can paint or resurface them for much less. You can repaint your cabinets for under $200 or resurface them for $2,000 to $4,000. Add eye-catching new drawer pulls and you’ve just made a major change to the look of your kitchen.
Flooring – There are a wide range of inexpensive flooring options that will look great with your revamped cabinets. For example, you can pick from thousands of colors and types of ceramic or porcelain tiles that can run as low as $1 a square foot for ceramic tile and $2 for porcelain. (Or choose from laminate flooring or easy-to-install vinyl tiles and sheets.)
Countertops – You don’t have to spend thousands on granite countertops to give your kitchen that high-end look. Now, you can find beautiful ceramic tiles from $20 per square foot, or you can replace your countertop with an elegant, easy-to-care-for laminate from around $10 a square foot. These laminates come in a large variety of colors and patterns, and can possibly be installed directly on top of old laminate, eliminating removal time and expense.
Appliances - You can save yourself up to $7,000 by revamping your current appliances instead of replacing them. In my blog post from 7/12/11, I mentioned that you may be able to repaint your current appliances to give your kitchen a quick update. Now there’s an additional option: you can apply a “peel and stick” stainless steel film to your appliances to give them a whole new look. Imagine that… stick on stainless steel!
Painting - Finally, there’s nothing like applying a fresh coat of $12 to $30 a gallon paint to brighten up your whole kitchen. If your home is on the market, or about to be, select a zero or low VOC paint to drastically reduce the smell of paint fumes in your kitchen area.
If you are trying to sell a house now, or thinking about it in the near future, upgrading your kitchen will not only make a big difference in your ability to attract serious buyers, it will also enable you to seriously enjoy your kitchen right now, this winter, while you are spending quality time at home.
For hundreds of other home selling tips and fresh marketing ideas, read Home Seller’s Blues and How to Beat Them. Available in paperback or as an Ebook from Amazon.com or at http://www.homesellersblues.com.
A Home Selling And Moving Tip to Save You Money
Let me tell you a quick story — actually a confession — about one of my own home selling experiences:
Many moves ago when my husband and I listed our house for sale, I knew the importance of decluttering — so we promptly threw two tons of belongings into boxes and hauled them off to a storage closet.
These boxes sat there for three years — until we finally found the perfect house where we could unpack them and enjoy their contents.
Meanwhile, the cost of renting that storage closet grew into the thousands. Then those boxes had to be trucked to our new home–far away–costing us several thousand more.
Finally, we unpacked the boxes only to realize that we didn’t need most of the items in them. They contained out-dated reference books, out-of-style outfits and dust-collecting doodads that didn’t fit with our new surroundings. And to think of all the money we paid storing and trucking these things. (We could have taken an all-expense trip to Fiji for the price we paid to keep that stuff!)
So, the moral of the story is to get your moving act together early. Don’t wait until you’ve moved to your next place to sort out your old belongings. Do it now. If you need to put things in storage, only pack up the things you need, love and truly want. Get rid of the rest. There are dozens of charity organizations, recyclers and probably even friends who would appreciate your spare parts.
For more inspiration, here’s a moving house checklist from Homebase with useful information to make packing and moving easier. You’ll also find a “moving timetable” to help plot out the entire process ahead of time. This site also provides many moving home and selling tips — for example, including your home’s floor plan and high-quality wide-angle shots of your rooms in your online home promotions. This will give potential buyers a better feel for your home’s layout.
The important thing is to plan ahead — before the house is sold, before the moving trucks come, before you’ve even figured out where you’re going to move next. A clean, organized house and a well-packed storage closet (if you need one) will save you time, money and your sanity in the long run.