House sold in 3 days

Housing slowdown?

We went through a lot of work to properly stage and prepare our house. Greg Wells, our agent, looked at the comps and we listed for just over where the appraisal should come in. Since there were so many recent comps and since appraisals are really driving mortage ability, we didn't have a lot of leeway.

We listed on Friday morning and had 12 people through the house this past weekend and three full price offers on Monday. Sold.

There are not a lot of places for sale right now - which meant the perfect timing for us. We are moving to a buyers market from a sellers market.

 

Awesome! Congratulations. And I told you so

I'm sure you're looking forward to those hot Texas summers! Good luck with the move.

 

Did you use any staging expert help ? Planning to put our house on sale in coming months so wondering what the prep would be and if it is helpful to use some help.

 

Congratulations!

 

WOW - that's great - there are two houses in our neighborhood that have been on the market since October and not sold yet!

 

No help - wife is good with decorations and real estate agent Greg Wells helped with all of it. JK Moving helped with a 2 stage move - half the crap out prior to the sale and stored - then coming to get the other stuff later in March

 

I know when we were looking there were no less than 8 homes that were a total disaster. I'm not talking a lack of staging but a lack of picking up dirty underwear off the floor, dirty dishes in the sink, bowls of cereal next to beds, clumps of hair in the shower.

I think if anyone prices their homes competitively and makes an effort there is no reason it shouldn't sell. For me, once I saw they made no effort to clean I made no effort to look any further.....

 

Agreed. What seems obvious to some...

When my sister and her husband were shopping for houses they attended several open houses and can recant similar storys to yours. In one grossly filthy house they found a doorknob caked with food and some kind of mucus :scaredeyes:

 

And if that's how the owner takes care of the cleanliness factor you can imagine the state of the more major items.

And Docsaba mentioned that they put some things in storage before putting their home on the market. We did the same thing to declutter our house and I think it made a big difference. We emptied stuff from storage closets, put away a lot of knick-knacks, our CD tower (it just made things look "busy"), and things like that. That way when people walk into a house for sale it doesn't look cluttered and the closets look more spacious. You're going to have to pack them up when you move anyway. You might think people can look past those things and maybe some can, but it can make a difference between a quick sale and a house lingering on the market for many months. We used a company called Boxcart for the storage and they also handled the move. When we got to the new place they brought the storage cube (like PODS) along with the truck of our other stuff. Oh, and the townhouse we were selling sold in 3 weeks.

Never underestimate the selling power of a clean, uncluttered house!

 

If my house sold super quick in this market, I would be worried that is was priced too low, but that's just me

 

We also stored with "Store to Door" items such as out of season clothes, personal pictures, some of the art work, most of our books (the ones we decided to keep), kept only what we needed in the linen closet - i aready keep bins for first Aid, etc. to corral everything. We even put our cats with grandma...of course, since they were neutered before they spray, the house didn't smell.
Carpets were cleaned and wood was fixed or shined back up.

We were amazed this past fall after we had just had the entire house repainted inside and out - after almost 7 years - a house a few doors down put their house up for sale, had an open house - and then brought in the painters, and repaved the driveway. You have to have a streamlined interior so peeps can imagine living there, and curb appeal is also a big deal. People like to move in and not have too mcuh work to do to fix things up.

Realtors have said that buyers now watch shows such as Curb Appeal, Divine Design, etc., and have come to expect things to look like that! I don't like clutter in my house anyway, so it is never too much to clear out.