"Fixing" to sell

[ivinsfan]

Sometimes people just aren't buying, but if you had 40 showings, people are buying in your area. If you had 40 showings and only got one offer, your price was too high. It may have been what you thought was fair, but fair is what someone will pay and if 39 different people wouldn't pay it, it wasn't fair.

Let's face it. Most people are not that smart and they wont pay for money saving features that they cant see or use.

I don't know if I agree that the price wasn't fair..the buyer did pay 299 which is only 11k under asking. I think people have somewhat unrealistic ideas of what they can get for their money and buyers shoot down a decent fairly-priced house for all kinds of petty reasons. HGTV makes it seems as if that if you can't put a bowling alley in your main "open" floor plan, the house isn't worth buying!

 

[utrecht]

I agree that most people are unrealistic about what features the house should have, but anything will sell if the price is right.

Some of those 39 people who didn't make an offer may not have been serious buyers but that's a huge number of showings. If 20 of them bought a different house, it was probably either a cheaper house similar to his or a house listed at his price but with more updates. Either option means his house was overpriced.

 

[athena53]

Congratulations on your sale,so your offer ratio was 40-1? Did you think the 310 was a fair price or a pie-in-the sky? I'm sorry you felt your potential buyers didn't appreciate the money saving improvements you made.

Two days before we put ours on the market, a house down the street went on the market for $315K. Slightly more square feet but about the same floor plan. Their pool was smaller. Their family room ceiling was that awful popcorn; ours was wood paneling (cathedral). I'd gotten rid of popcorn on all but the cathedral ceilings; theirs was still there. Their landscaping was fancier (and, to my eye, higher maintenance). We'd enclosed our deck and made it a 3-season sunroom. Theirs was still a deck. They'd put hardwood floors in the family room and laminate in the kitchen; we had new carpeting in FR and bamboo in the kitchen. Our walls were all light/neutral colors; theirs were more fashionable colors, but the mustard-yellow they used in the FR (including on the stone fireplace!) was not to my taste.

So, pluses and minuses on each side, but as close to a valid comp as you can get. It sold the first day so I have to assume it was at or near full price. Based on that, $310K looked reasonable.

 

[Going Sailing]

SumDay we were in more or less the same position 3 weeks ago. Called in the realtor to figure out if I should be spending the next few years pulling out the old butyl pipes, redoing bathrooms, furnace, what exactly do I need to do. His answer was forget about the pipes, that comes way later in the sales process. Get rid of the ugly carpet in the master ensuite (the only room in our late 80s house that has never been redone.) New tile, new vanity, toilet, paint, listing agreement and now the only thing I will be fixing up is a sail boat. Sold in 3 or 4 days. Nearly lost the sale because my wife liked the new ensuite so much, she was thinking she would like to live here for a few more years. I have always had joy in updating my house, but once I figured out that it wasn't part of the long term plan, improvements became an unwanted chore. Now I am free.

 

[athena53]

Get rid of the ugly carpet in the master ensuite (the only room in our late 80s house that has never been redone.)

Yeah, WTH were those builders thinking? (Other than doing the cheapest possible thing that would sell.) We'd put bamboo in the floor of the master bath years ago but I tiled the floors of 2 other baths; one was still carpeted, the other had cheap plastic linoleum. I don't regret THAT fix-up expense at all.

 

[Going Sailing]

Yeah, WTH were those builders thinking? (Other than doing the cheapest possible thing that would sell.) We'd put bamboo in the floor of the master bath years ago but I tiled the floors of 2 other baths; one was still carpeted, the other had cheap plastic linoleum. I don't regret THAT fix-up expense at all.

The ensuite was always going to be this huge project, because I planned to run new pipe down to the crawlspace, put in a deluxe shower, rework the adjoining walk in closet area etc. So it never got done. As soon as we decided to sell, the project shrank in scope and got done in 3 days. Wish I had done it 15 years ago.

 

[Walt34]

I agree that most people are unrealistic about what features the house should have, but anything will sell if the price is right.

Like I told DW when she was fretting over selling FIL's house "We'll have plenty of buyers at $50,000 and none at $500,000. Somewhere in between is our buyer." And it sold for the asking price of $268k in three days. We'd done a lot of fixing up.

She was fretting because her father was in a nursing home at ~$10k/month and had about three or four months before cash was exhausted so having it sit on the market for long was not a viable option.