I'm in the trickle down phase as well, but the trickle stopped about 2 weeks ago. I have to get over there today and mow the grass before it swallows the house. Actually I just need to put all the ceiling fan blades back on, put up one more fixture in the bathroom, and do a bunch of little caulk and fill jobs here and there. I derailed the indoor work by bringing in 3 yards of topsoil and 3 yards of chips to fill in all the holes my dog dug, do a little foundation grading and dress the place up a little. Once again I found a 5 year olds joy in playing with dirt for a couple of days...
Are you painting by hand? I pulled out all of the carpets, masked and sprayed mine. Got a little cambell hausfeld airless sprayer for $199 and that worked beautifully. Practiced on the shed out back for a couple of hours and I was off to the races. The prep, masking and caulking actually took 4x longer than the paint job.
The house sold the day before yesterday for our full asking price after 30 days on market. With a second full price offer the next day as a backup. Funny how these things come in bunches. But then all the fruit trees on the property just went into bloom a couple of weeks ago and they're peaking right now.
We used a broker, but I only paid her 2% and 2.5% to the buyers agent. You can go with one of those internet brokers at 1.5% on the selling side. I still continue to be PO'd at buyers agents who dont show sub 3% homes to their buyers. Both people who made offers said they just saw it on a drive-by. When I bought my last house the agent didnt show me either of the two that I ended up finding myself...and wouldnt you know, both were paying 2% to the buyers agent! What a coincidence! There are some high end properties that are offering 3% to the sellers agent and (i'm not kidding) 4, 5 and 6% to the buyers agent. What you're buying there is every single buyers agent within a 2 hour drive is going to take every single client they have to visit that house.
Sold my last house 2%/2%...but it took a month longer than I figured it should based on the price and the property.
I guess the good news is most people in the $ bracket to buy a home also probably have a PC and an internet connection and many of them do their own snooping around. At this point I'll be glad when selling and buying homes becomes a private business matter. The internet, virtual tours and so forth should have led to significant economies by this time.
Unless you buy and sell a LOT of property and really know your way around an offer sheet, or are willing to do a lot of reading on the subject, a broker can be a good idea. If its a really, really clean property with no potential problems and you really, really know what you're doing, a fsbo can work.
Sure, sure, sure...I can already see the posts saying "but I did a fsbo and nothing bad happened". You can also put a bag over your head and run across the highway 20 times with nothing bad happening...its just not recommended.
The first time you do a fsbo and you get sued over a disclosure problem or have a problem with something that was done intentionally or accidentally on a form that results in you getting shorted a few grand...