Help! I want to sell quickly, but don’t want to spend a lot of money. What do I do?

People often tell me they’d like to sell their home, but first they want to fix it up before putting it on the market. But exactly what should you do to prepare your house for sale?

There are many different suggestions ranging in expense as to what a seller should do to prepare for getting the most out of the sale of their home in the shortest time possible. The most important thing, however, is to hire a real estate professional to sell it for you and guide you through the process. Once you have selected the broker you would like to use, that person can help you decide from the following list, which of the following will help you maximize your ROI.

1.  Get an Appraisal and/or Home Inspection

It is try that an appraisal is something required by lenders and paid for by buyers. However, sometimes finding comps on a very unique or rural property is challenging. You may net more money in the long run by paying for an independent appraisal prior to putting your home on the market. Likewise, paying up front for a home inspection will allow you to learn of potential deal breakers or major issues that need attention. As with an appraisal, the buyer usually pays for any inspections themselves, but by being proactive, you gain negotiating power, especially if you provide potential buyers of copies of the appraisal and the inspection report, along with a list of any repairs you have already taken care of.

2.  Get Estimates for Repairs or Replacement

No matter how well you have maintained your home, the inspection will always list at least some items that need attention. If there is anything major that you know you do not have the funds for, go ahead and get estimates for the work and consider factoring those costs into your listing price.

3.  Make Minor Repairs

Some of the suggested repairs will not cost much at all, such as leaky faucets, cracked caulking, missing GFCI outlets in the kitchen and bathrooms, so go ahead and fix those. They may seem trivial, but they often give buyers a sense that your home has not been well-maintained.

4.  De-personalize, De-clutter and Purge

If you have a lot of furniture, remove some and put it in storage. Consider hiring a stager to assist with deciding what to keep and what to store. Remove family photos and personal items from sight. If you have your child(ren)’s name displayed anywhere, particularly their bedroom, remove it as well. In today’s age of technology, a predator who views your listing online can then have your child’s name and address. Remove or hide as much evidence of pets as possible for both photos and showings.

5.  Do a Thorough Cleaning

Cleanliness, or lack thereof, can be a dealbreaker. If your house is not tidy and clean, a buyer may be too distracted to notice all of the great things your home has to offer and may also feel like the home has not been well-maintained.

If you can, hire someone to do a very deep cleaning before putting your house on the market. It will allow you to spend less time on that and more on other details that need attention.

If not, open and wash interior and exterior windows to air out your rooms. Vacuum and clean carpet and mop and wax floors. Also clean curtains and upholstery. Wash light fixtures, mirrors, moldings and baseboards and clean and remove fingerprints from all appliances, doorknobs and light switch plates.

Attention to detail is important, too. Clean and organize inside closets and cabinets and make sure to clean your garage and basement, too.

Can St. Joseph Help You Sell Your Home?

What? Who is St. Joseph, you ask? Well, most people know that Biblically, Joseph was a carpenter and Jesus’s earthly father. Joseph was long ago declared the Patron Saint of Carpentry. In modern times, he is often referred to as the Patron Saint of Real Estate. Call it tradition, folklore or superstition, many believe that burying a small statuette of St. Joseph can help your home sell faster.

How does it work, you ask? The most common answer to that is simple. Bury your St. Joseph, head down, near the For Sale sign in your yard and facing in the direction of where you wish to move. Live in a condo or patio home with no yard? Easy, bury him in a flower pot.  Once your house is sold, dig up St. Joseph and move him with you, displaying him in a place of honor in your new home.

Do people actually believe in this, you ask? Curious to find out myself, I took to the ever so scientific research pool of Facebook and asked my friends if they had ever heard of this method of speeding up the process or even tried it. The response was varied, as one can imagine. Several friends shared personal stories of trying this themselves or knew of friends who had tried. Some of my fellow realtors make it a habit of giving a statuette to every seller whose house they have the opportunity to list. A pastor I know believes it is only superstition, as do several other friends who responded.

My friend Krista shared her story. “We had our house for sale for eight months. During that time we had a buyer’s loan fall through, and a buyer back out at the last minute. My mother-in-law had the statue blessed and buried it in our yard without telling my husband. He doesn’t believe in praying to idols. The first couple came back, and we accepted their offer within a week of when she buried it. My husband still won’t admit it was due to the statue. In those eight months before she buried it, we didn’t show the house once.”

Another friend, Kristen, also has had a positive experience using St. Joseph multiple times. “My staunch, Catholic mother-in-law got us one when we were trying to sell our house in NJ when I was pregnant with the boys. We listed in November. Matt was going to start his new job in Ohio in the Spring, and by Jan we still had no bites. Buried our statue (skeptical, but desperate), and people came during a snowstorm in mid-Feb, and we closed in mid-March. We dug him up when we moved and buried him again when we put our second house on the market, and it sold in 10 days (again-during a snow storm, and this time far faster than we anticipated-we wound up in a rental for seven months!)”

These are just a couple of examples of St. Joseph seemingly helping these friends. But is it divine intervention or simply coincidence? I had a pretty equal distribution of proponents and naysayers in the responses I received in that oh-so-scientific survey. Regardless, nothing sells a house for more money and faster than a highly skilled real estate professional. Although, if you list your house for sale, give ole St. Joe a try. It certainly can’t hurt!

Sellers Need Preapproval, Too

As a Real Estate Broker, I know the rule of thumb about working with buyers – get them pre-approved before driving them all around to multiple listings. Why waste their time and yours, not to mention the sellers of the homes you are showing? And why break the hearts of your buyers who find their dream home, only to learn they cannot get a loan?

Well I’m here to tell you a new rule of thumb for myself to follow that I learned the hard way…pre-approve your sellers, too! As a new agent a few years ago, I had a major falling out with someone I went to high school with, let’s just say a few years ago, because she couldn’t get approved for a loan.

She reached out to me on Facebook to list her house because she wanted to move back into our old school district so her daughter could attend the same schools she did. Of course, I agreed to help and proceeded with listing her house. I sent her to my preferred loan officer who was unable to approve her. So I then sent her to another broker that I knew specialized in credit repair. The broker outlined a few steps for her to take to bump her score up just a little and clear a couple of things from her report with an estimate of only 60-90 days IF she did as instructed.

My client proceeded to start the repair process, but continued to request to see houses. Only because of our prior relationship, I agreed. After 3-4 outings and 6-8 houses, she realized she needed to get her credit fixed before looking anymore. So I waited.

Finally, about four months into the listing contract, she told me she had done everything she needed to do, and she should be pre-qualified within a couple more weeks. I agreed to show her a few more houses. Meanwhile, the loan officer pulled her credit again and discovered she had only taken care of one of the three things required.

Fast-forward one more month and suddenly my client starts calling and emailing both the loan officer and myself, blaming us for her predicament, and claiming we weren’t doing our jobs. She told me to immediately cancel her listing agreement, even though there was only a month left on the contract. I was more than willing to send her a listing withdrawal form to sign. However, for some reason, she never signed and returned it.

The listing expired. Finally. So I washed my hands of that situation. But I learned a lesson that I will never forget. Every listing I’ve taken since and will take in the future, I’m making sure that seller is a pre-qualified buyer before we start looking at houses!

Why Should I Sell Now? Won’t I Lose Money?

I hear that a lot from clients, friends and family. It is true that while the real estate market is rapidly rebounding, home in many areas are not quite back to pre-recession values. However, if you want to “move up” to a larger home, it is the BEST time to sell your current home.

Let me explain. Using the example below from Keeping Current Matters, if you bought your current home in 2006 for $300,000, but it is now only worth $240,000, you are looking at a 20% loss in value, but perhaps your family has outgrown that home, and you are looking for something a little larger. A house that sold in 2006 for $450,000 probably has lost around the same 20% in value, or $90,000. So even if you take a $60,000 loss by selling your current home, when you move up, you are essentially gaining $30,000.

Wouldn’t you love to save $30,000? I know I would. So with mortgage rates still at historic lows, a shortage in the home inventory and the net gain that you could earn by moving up, there isn’t a better time to list your house. And THAT is why you should sell now, and not only will you not LOSE money, you will GAIN it!

From KCM Blog