<p>We are approaching retirement a bit faster than originally planned. My husband’s company is reorganizing and he will probably be retiring this year rather than next. We still have one in college, but we should be fine with retirement income. </p>
<p>Reading the flip this house thread (no, I am not a hoarder), I got to thinking about what we need to do before ( potentially) putting the house on the market in the spring. </p>
<p>We have a 25-year-old house with updated baths and kitchen, and new windows, doors, roof, siding, and a maintenance free deck and screen porch. Our heat pump is two years old.</p>
<p>What else must we do? Should we replace the water heater? Should we hire the guy who has done lots of the work to go around and advise is as to what needs to be done? </p>
<p>Other than decluttering, what other things should we do? </p>
<p>We have sold two other houses ourselves and we may try it with this one too.</p>
<p>It sounds great. I would do a fresh coat of paint everywhere inside if that hasn’t been done recently. Get any carpets shampooed. Weed the flower beds.</p>
I don’t think anyone buys a house (or not) based on how new the water heater is. If yours is working okay, just leave it as-is.</p>
<p>It’s all about appearances. Just pretend you were looking at it as a buyer and consider what you’d notice - landscaping, condition of facade (paint, siding, etc.), condition of paint inside (and no weird paint schemes - preferably something appealing to most), condition of the carpet (if it’s 25 y/o then probably replace it), move into the kitchen and see how that would appeal to a female since they’re usually the ones who care the most, make sure the house is uncluttered and not decorated too personally with pictures of the family covering all the walls for example, make sure the window coverings are decent, back sure the backyard is decent. If you have old popcorn ceilings you might want to have that removed to modernize the look. </p>
<p>Make sure your furniture isn’t overpowering the rooms, i.e. too much furniture in a room, a king size bed in a bedroom that can barely fit it, some furniture in bad shape. When in doubt leave it out.</p>
<p>Make the garage neat as well. Park a couple of classic cars in there so the buyers can relate to the potential of that garage. ;)</p>
<p>It sounds as if you’ve already kept the house updated so it shouldn’t be too much work.</p>
<p>Ask around and find a home inspector who is recommended by the realtors in your area and who is known to give realistic evaluations, and to find the real flaws in a property. Pay the $300 or $400 to have that person inspect your home as though he/she were inspecting it for a buyer. Then decide which of the problems that are identified are worth fixing, and which are worth dropping your sale price for, and by how much if a buyer would ask for that.</p>
<p>Funny one, GladGradDad, about the cars! After many years of driving dated cars, we now have 2011 and 2013 Volvos in the garage. </p>
<p>I am thinking we need to paint inside. I think my colors are too dramatic. I have painted every surface in this house at least once. Perhaps if DH retires, he can do the next coat. </p>
<p>It seems as though our buyers always have better inspectors than we do when WE buy. I do have a couple of real estate agents I can call for a name.</p>
<p>When we spruced up the place, we did hire a painter. We also had one cabinet repaired (a dog that was NOT allowed in the home) had ripped out that cabinet. We also bought new pretty shower curtains, soap dishes and fanciful soaps for the soap dishes. We put in new carpet because the old one was icky. The place sold at the first showing. The other home we also painted and that was it. It also sold immediately. Because both places sold so quickly, we were able to buy the home we wanted to purchase and have lived in for the past two decades.</p>
<p>We have never used an inspector, but did go through both places we wanted to sell with the real estate agent that was going to list it for us and got his suggestions on it. If we had wanted a second opinion, we would have asked another agent and chosen the one we were more comfortable with. H has looked at a lot of properties over the decades and is pretty good and sniffing out structural and other issues so that we don’t buy trouble. He is also pretty opinionated about what he does and doesn’t like.</p>
<p>I know many folks are fond of inspectors but we have never felt the need to use one.</p>
<p>Some of this stuff is really market dependent. If you are in a really hot seller’s market, you can get away without doing much at all. If it’s a buyer’s market, you may have to work a whole lot harder to make your property more attractive to a buyer than the 5 other houses on your street.</p>
<p>I’ve given this tip to several others…and they used it.</p>
<p>Get an extra set of rugs and towels for each bathroom you use. When a showing is scheduled, take YOUR towels out of the bathroom and hang up the nice clean ones…and put the nice rug down. When we did this, we chose a very pale pastel color that looked awesome in our bathrooms…but would have been VERY impractical with young children…and dirty hands and feet. Our bathrooms looked cheery and bright for each showing.</p>
<p>We kept these folded neatly in an extra laundry basket. For the showings, we swapped out the towels. When we came home, we put the pastel ones back in the laundry basket.</p>
<p>We had a realtor (ie ‘home coach’) insist that no closet could be more than half full so we trimmed down as best we could and rented a storage unit to hold the rest. He also told me to pop some slice&bake cookies in the oven when we got the “visitors coming” automated message. Not only did the cookies make the house smell inviting, he believed that every extra minute the shoppers spend in your home adds to the chance that they will buy it. He said “while they chew the cookies they are imagining how to arrange their furniture in your house” :-).</p>
<p>I don’t know if there was anything to either strategy, but it sold in 2 weeks.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t do anything that didn’t seem important to women. Your house sounds in pretty good shape.</p>
<p>I recently read an article that said that buyers hate gold/pollished brass fixtures and knobs. If you have those, replacing them with the polished or brushed nickel might be useful. Also, as a surprise to me, but not so much after thinking about it, apparently carpeting is a turnoff to today’s buyers. They want hardwood floors and see carpeting as a dated artifact where allergens lurk. You might think about how that fits with what you have. </p>
<p>Sellers I’ve spoken with recently have opened my eyes. Buyers are not indifferent between paying, say 450,000 for a nicely finished house, or paying 380,000 for a house that will need 70,000 of updating/finishing. They want the finished product, and not just because they don’t want to mess with the work. A good part of it is that they need to be able to “finance” the improvement in the 30 year mortgage.</p>
<p>Kitchens and baths updated put you way ahead of the game. Although you’re experienced at selling on your own, I’d be careful. I’ve never considered looking at a for-sale-by-owner. It just sends a message to me that it will be more trouble than its worth, even if I like the house.</p>
<p>I would not always hire a home inspector before having a potential buyer in hand. Most states require you to disclose problems when selling. If your inspector finds something you elect not to fix, you’ll need to provide that information in the initial earnest money contract. Even if he finds something you do elect to fix (such as a cracked foundation), your state might require disclosure about it. I agree with advice to fix things you can see. But, you may well be better off not knowing about latent problems until later in the negotiating process.</p>
<p>I recently watched a House Hunters on HGTV where a young woman kept telling her husband that wood floors and not carpet were a deal breaker for her. They went to a house that she actually liked in spite of the wood floors and she starting going on about tearing them out and replacing them with carpet. I decided if her DH let her do that and ruin their resale value (she didn’t want to entertain the option of just covering the floors with the carpet), I would lunge at him through the TV. :D</p>
<p>Another woman refused to buy any previously owned home because she was worried about the possibility that the house could be haunted by ghosts. She would only look at new construction. :)</p>
<p>One thing you might consider doing is to begin visiting the weekend realtors’ open houses in your area. Just touring what else is for sale at the moment and what features other sellers have given attention to might give you some sense of what you need to do to make your house attractive in the market. For example, I think our house might be the last one in the neighborhood without granite countertops–something we might have to address if we wanted to sell.</p>
<p>A real estate agent can certainly help with this as well, but some first-hand knowledge of what the “competition” looks like would be helpful.</p>
<p>(My sister’s hobby is going to real estate open houses every weekend. This means she is constantly on top of what type of house, in what condition, in what neighborhood, is selling for what price. When we were in the market for a house in her area, her expertise allowed us to recognize our house for the great bargain that it was and to jump right on it without hesitation.)</p>
<p>I have spent my entire career in either real estate or real estate related industries.</p>
<p>I completely agree with this from Nice Day…</p>
<p>“I would not always hire a home inspector before having a potential buyer in hand. Most states require you to disclose problems when selling. If your inspector finds something you elect not to fix, you’ll need to provide that information in the initial earnest money contract. Even if he finds something you do elect to fix (such as a cracked foundation), your state might require disclosure about it. I agree with advice to fix things you can see. But, you may well be better off not knowing about latent problems until later in the negotiating process.”</p>
<p>Also, in general, I am not a fan of home inspectors. I would always pick a licensed contractor over a “home inspector”.</p>
<p>The comment about new, cheerful towels for the bathroom is very good advice. Same goes for bedding - new, fresh, fluffy bedding goes a long way. Overall think model home - you do not see things such as toothbrushes, toilet bowl brushes, personal items on the night stand etc…</p>
<p>^^^I agree about the bedding. I’ve seen some icky looking beds, and it takes so little to make them look so much more appealing. Granted, the buyer is not buying your bedding, but it’s a psychological impact all the same.</p>
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