Tips on selling your home faster and for more money!
Copyright ©2001 Jody Hudson & Kate Baird, Realtors

Please read this article. There are many things you can do, that cost very little, compared to amount of the increase you will get in the market value of your property! Here is an article for you that is a summation of thirty years experience and dozens of books and seminars on the subject.

First impressions are important, even the first impression that the Realtor community gets of your property. Your listing agent, must enthusiastically involve some or hopefully all of the rest of the Realtors, so that the whole community of Realtors is aware of your property and excited about selling it to one of the folks they have looking for a home.

Once you have read this article, please feel free to call us for a review of your property. Any of us become blind to those less than perfect things in our own properties and can use the help of an outside expert. We will gladly come see you and your property to give you some help on increasing the selling value of your home, if it is within sales area -- Sussex County Delaware -- within about twenty to thirty miles of Rehoboth Beach Delaware.

If you're intent and serious about selling your house, it's imperative, before you sign a listing agreement or even invite the first caravan of cooperating Realtors to see your property, to prepare your home to excel against all the other similarly properties in today's market. We can help show you how to do that, but read on.

Selling anything, your home in particular, is based on a series of first impressions and sales. The first "sale", based on first impressions of your home, is to the listing agent. If your listing agent is not convinced that your home is a great buy on the current market, your chances of selling the home are severely reduced. So, before you even call a Realtor as a listing agent, make certain that the first impression you provide for that agent is the best possible one you can achieve! This means cleaning the home, organizing your possessions and putting away some of the clutter. You should cut the grass, pick up all the extraneous toys, tools, and unsightly objects around the outside of your home too. You can even fix some of the most obvious imperfections if they are fast and inexpensive to accomplish.

To excel in anything requires similar action and attention. You must do more, do it better, more professionally, more tastefully and do it more conspicuously than others in your market price and location. And, you must do what is wanted by the viewer or in this case the buyer.

Believe it or not, some sellers think that the black lights in their teenagers room, the four matching kitty-litter boxes, the orange shag carpeting, the chandelier made of pop-tops, the collection of twelve thousand beer cans from all over the world, the ten large nude pictures with the sellers mid-embrace, the collection of sharks teeth and the stuffed wild boars heads and Moose heads on the living room wall (taking up more space than the purple striped couch) -- which they so love will be attractive to another buyer.

I know I'm being seemingly facetious but you get the picture. Actually all these things are things sellers have provided and displayed as features, when putting their home up for sale and the aforementioned eccentric decorative details come from my experience. Most sellers make some terrible errors in judgment when they want to sell their home. That is good for you as it makes it easier to excel compared to them and beat their home in the competitive marketplace!

Most people can NOT visualize work that needs to be done on your home, not at all. A common error that carpenters and builders make is to ask a Realtor to start selling a home before it is 100% complete, right down to having the windows cleaned, the floors buffed and the window treatments as well as the rest of the house vacuumed and dusted. Work that still needs to be done, that will only cost a $1,000 or less, on a home that should sell for $300,000, can reduce the buyer's viewpoint of value by $20,000 to $40,000 perhaps more if that is something like bad carpet stains or a little water stain in the ceiling.

Another terrible mistake to make is too price a property wrongly by more than 5-10%. Having a property priced correctly the first time, instead of pricing it above the market and then coming down has proven to sell the home for more than starting high and working the price down. When the listing price is more than 5% over market value, the price alone discourages most active buyers from even looking.

An important thing to remember is that any buyer will usually study everything in the price range they are interested in. They usually know the market perfectly well in the exact range where they are looking. If your home is priced at the top of that market compared to others, they will frequently not even want to drive by it. That's because an overpriced house scares away potential buyers who think they can't even afford to look.

Since signs on a property are one of the cheapest and best advertisements a Real Estate Broker can have some Brokers will purposely take a listing that is well over the market (and even encourage an over priced listing so they can get it). In some cases they could care less about selling your home, if they can have a free billboard in your neighborhood for a few months or even years if your property is priced far too high.

Sadly, there are some unscrupulous folks who will tell you your home is worth far more than it really is so that you will hire them to sell it. It is NOT the Realtor who determines what the property sells for compared to other similarly priced and located properties.

It is your preparation and presentation of the property and the buyer's interest in your property compared to all other properties on the market. It is the buyer who determines what your property is worth and it is you who convinces the buyer with the condition and price of your property. We then work hard and effectively advertising, promoting, marketing and disseminating information to other Realtors and to the likely buyers. We seek to find a qualified buyer, convince them yours is as good a buy as they think it is (if it is) and handle the myriad details to get the property to settlement.

Buyers who do look at an overpriced house know, as soon as they inspect the home, that they can get more house for their money elsewhere. Buyers have or will be looking at other homes in general location and price range of your property and making comparisons. If you are 5% or more above the competition you may not even get an offer, perhaps not even a verbal comment of interest in your property.

The Realtor needs at least some interest from the buyer in order to get them to sign an offer. If the property is overpriced so much that the buyer shows no interest, the Realtor stands little chance of success. And the buyer will blame you, the home owner for overpricing the property unreasonably and not the Realtor.

Fixer-uppers are deadly for the selling agent and slow to sell at any price! Seldom is there a buyer who wants a home in As-Is Condition, in today's competitive market. I have a few who are looking for such homes, and they want to pay 30-60% under the market to sellers who refuse to fix up the homes... and they get a few. When the seller finally says he'll take almost anything to get the home sold. That is when I call my fixer-upper buyers. Some other Realtors called them with properties where the seller wasn't willing to take a big reduction in price yet, so now these frequent buyers are mine!

Most conventional buyers, those who want to live in the home themselves, will not even consider a house that needs fix-ups. And, if their Realtor shows them a couple, they often loose faith in that Realtor's professionalism and go to another Realtor -- that's why I call fixer-uppers deadly.

In contrast, a sparkling showcase home gets top dollar when it comes to the bottom line; THE FINAL CONTRACT PRICE! What most buyers are looking for is an inviting home in move-in condition, one that looks as good as a model home... or better! Please take this to heart; if you don't you will loose thousands on your sale and probably add months to time your home spends on the market!

Those few buyers who are willing to tackle the repairs after moving in automatically subtract the cost of needed fix-ups from the price they offer, and since they are concerned what they are getting into, they tend to estimate high by a factor of five or ten times usually. In other words if they see what may be $1,000 to repair or replace, they will ordinarily figure $10,000 off the offering price, if they even make an offer. Either way, you save nothing by putting off fix-ups and certainly slow the sale of your house. There are exceptions; such as tiny old homes in Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany, etc. There the buyer dismisses the value of the home, although they want it to be clean and cute, as they know the land is worth what they are offering or more.

My professional fixer-upper buyers hope to get a property at 50% or less under the market, including the repairs they will make, as they must also factor in two settlement costs, their management time, the cost of the mortgage, the insurance and other carrying costs for a projected time of ownership. They also want to make at least 20% for their efforts after all expenses.

One of my buyers, my best one, the one who is usually always ready with a check book, and a fast settlement, wants to make 50% or more on anything he buys -- after all expenses. He buys several properties a year, from those who couldn't or wouldn't meet the market place with the techniques described here. He fixes up the properties he buys, using the techniques in this article. He then puts the home back on the market and sells at the very top price in the area for a similar property!

Your home MUST have exciting drive buy attractiveness to the public and particularly to a prospective buyer or as we say in the business, it must have curb appeal. Frequently we've been with a prospective purchaser, looking at properties and had the buyer tell us to keep on driving by, as the home did not have enough curb appeal.

If people are not slowing down as they go by your home on a regular basis, pointing at it, taking a second look and bringing it to the attention of others in the car, you have not gone far enough. You house gets only one chance to make a good first impression. That's why "curb appeal" is one of the most critical points in selling. Buyers are apt to fall in love at first sight -- or not at all. They man not even want to take a second look at any home that is not well presented for a first curbside impression.

Get your camera, go outside your house, start at the far end of the street, where you can see your home. From the street, start taking pictures about every twenty feet, as you progress past the property, now turn around and repeat the process from the other direction, take two or three rolls of film 36 exposures each, get them developed, spread them out on the table all at once and start looking to see where you can increase curb appeal. Include in your picture the near edge of the street. You are ultimately responsible for the looks of your property from the street gutter or roadside ditch, including the sidewalk -- as far as your prospective purchaser is concerned.

If your home lacks curb appeal, chances are the first impression will not be counteracted by the most perfect floor plan or the most tasteful interior. Spruce up the view of the house from the street, including the lawn, freshen and add to the mulch, trim all the shrubs, paint the shutters, clean and caulk all the windows, repaint the front door, buy a new mailbox.

Add potted flowers out front, window boxes are great when filled with some nice flowers. Get a nice wreath on the door, a new door knocker for the center of it and freshen up or replace the doorbell button too. Replace or add brass outdoor lighting fixtures -- and generally do whatever will enhance your home's curb appeal, drive by attractiveness, that "buy me" look.

Clean up! Freshen up. Brighten it up; the entire inside and outside of your home. Get rid of dreary, old, dark drapes and replace with modern window treatments. New blinds are very inexpensive at K-Mart or Target. Replace all the burned out or energy efficient light bulbs with 100 watt super bright bulbs. By the way dust and clean all the lamp shades and wash all the ceiling light covers -- certainly get all the bugs out of the ceiling light fixtures. Get the carpet professionally cleaned if it is less than 5 years old, if not perfect and new looking after a cleaning, replace it. Two thousand dollars spent on the right kind of new carpet can increase the end sale price of your house by $10,000 if the rest of your house looks good too!

A clean, bright decor is what buyers want to see. Probably the best dollar-for-dollar investment for selling your home fast is fresh paint. And only shades of off white are to be used. No matter what shade of blue, green, pink, yellow, or chocolate you use... it will NOT enhance the value of your home. Neutral off-white colors are the only ones to use not any of those trendy celery or persimmon whites, citrus orange, adobe or mallard green! NO! Stay away from any latest and newest fad color!

Go ahead and replace the carpet if it is ten years old or more and use only a commercial grade off-white with texture and various shades of light browns and tans in it. Ask the carpet dealer to show you the one that he uses on the expensive condo rental units... that's the one. Now get TWO thick carpet pads to put under your new carpet.

The carpet salesman or installer will possibly balk and tell you that double padding is unnecessary and will shorten the life of the carpet. Thank him for his viewpoint and tell him to put his TWO thickest pads under the carpet and make certain he has his best installers do the work. You will then have the richest looking and feeling carpeting you can get and at the cheapest price. This carpeting technique will add at least 5% to the value of your home, well above the value of normal carpeting!

SCRUB! Get a professional cleaning service in for a couple of days or get out your rubber gloves, get down on your knees and scrub for a week or two. Elbow grease, sweat equity, getting all the nooks and crannies, can be as financially effective as spending cash to brighten your home. Start by getting rid of the junk you've accumulated. Rent a storage unit if you must.

Clean each room top to bottom. Wash all the walls and ceilings, especially if you now or ever did smoke. Wash all the woodwork, replace duct vents that are scratched or worn. Make a note of every slightest blemish and crack in the walls, ceiling, window and door trim. Make very certain that you get your home looking better than you've ever had it looking before.

Yes, some of this, in fact most of this costs a little money. But, what will it cost if you do these things (a few thousand dollars) and what will it cost if you don't (ten's of thousands of dollars perhaps). Go out and get a second mortgage on your home for this work if you must and get most of the work done professionally.

If you can't make the work you do look better than the pros do, get them to do it! I promise you, a poorly done paint job, spackling job, or anything else is not going to help much as it tells the buyer that you do NOT care enough to take the best care of your home and tips them off to look for all the other not-good-enoughs they can find.

Give us a call.  If you do what we recommend here you will likely sell your home before you have to make more than one or two payments and you WILL sell it for far more than the added expense to your home. Most of the things here will add at least five dollars to the value of your home for every dollar spent.

Focus on the rooms most important in the series of first impressions. The most important is the first view you get as you enter the home. Next is the kitchen. In the kitchen, clear off counters, unclutter and organize inside the cupboards. Get rid of all those unmatched dishes. Go to Dollar General or Family Dollar and get a whole set of matched dishes, cups, and glasses for almost nothing. Put all the rest, all those mismatched, plastic and advertising giveaway dishes, in storage or the trash.

Keep in mind, some prospects will judge the whole house by the looks of your kitchen, inside and outside of your cupboards, the cleanliness of the oven or refrigerator and the splarkliness of the sink. Clean the refrigerator inside and OUT! Take all the kids pictures, calendars, magnets and other refuse off the outside of the fridge and pay particular attention to cleaning the gaskets, vegetable drawers, etc. Dump the ice bucket and get rid of all the moldiest and oldest food from the fridge and freezer too. Or, if you dare, eat it! Many of the homes we go to give us too much insight in the dietary habits of the family and many of the refrigerators look like cold storage dumps! Clean up inside of the stove too! Buyers judge the entire home by your care of such things.

And then there are the bathrooms! YUCK! They usually need to be cleaned two more times and have twice as much stuff thrown away as was done the first time around! You get the picture!

Closets are all-important. First clean out about 75-90% of what is in them. Go to K-Mart and buy several dozen heavy plastic matching hangers and get rid of all of the wire hangers that came from the laundry. Install closet organizers in the master bedroom closets at least. Second in importance is all the non-bedroom closets and next the other bedroom closets. Again, if you shop at K-Mart, Wall Mart, or such -- the cost of the organizers is small for the added value they give your home!

Now let's concentrate on the master bedroom. First, take most of what's in it... OUT. Move or remove furniture to create spaciousness. Here is where you can reasonably spend a little money on two layer window treatments. I suggest new mini blinds and over the mini blinds can go those window accents of swags that run down the sides. Savvy decorators do this seamlessly with sheets they buy from Family Dollar and then have them cut into three foot wide strips, hemmed and sewn in long runs at the tailor shop. It is nice to do this in the other rooms too but in the Master Bedroom, make it FANTASTIC! Get new sheets, a new comforter, six huge pillows and matching pillow cases. There is no need to spend the big money. In fact you will likely see the same set in Wall Mart or K-Mart for $100 that you see in Polo for $1,000 or more.

Bathrooms are important and usually overlooked. Think about it! What do you think about a house where the dirtiest room in the house from a disease standpoint is also cosmetically dirty? Scary isn't it! While you are shopping for the Master Bedroom, get new matching towels and hand cloths for the bathrooms. Replace the shower curtain and get new rugs for in front of the tub, sink and toilet, matching rugs please. Ones that match the towels! Get a couple of extra towel racks if you need them too. Put all of your old towels in storage along will 95% of all the cosmetics and apparatuses in the bathrooms. Closet organizers in the bathrooms are good, but if you move or throw away all the stuff you are not using anyway you probably won't need them. In the bathroom there are probably shelves in the closets; if so get some new shelf paper, the stick down vinyl kind, from one of the "marts" again and paper the shelves. Make certain the shelf covering is neatly trimmed and without wrinkles.

Get a couple of new clothes hampers for wherever they should go, in the Master Bedroom, Bathroom or Laundry area. Old hampers that have seen their day are almost as bad as no hampers and piles of clothing on the floor.

Remember, you will not have much notice in many cases of a showing, after you list the property. All this work and you haven't even called a Realtor yet. So, plan ahead! You must have attractive places to put the dirty clothes when you get a request to show your house in 15 minutes. And, the prospective purchasers of your home WILL be looking in all the places you were going to hide dirty clothes and dirty dishes!

Oh no... You knew this one was coming didn't you. The garage! In America, homes with a two car garage usually have both cars parked in the driveway, because the garage is too full to get the cars into it. You may need to go rent a second storage unit now... or really get serious about throwing stuff away. Rent a big dumpster and fill it! Have a yard sale, and give everyone you know all the stuff you can foist off on them to take.

Even all that, the garage will still be too full, most likely. The ideal garage, ha! Anyway, let's start again. The IDEAL garage is one that is for cars and only cars. It's a great idea to put up a couple of sheets of pegboard on the wall and buy some peg board hooks to attractively display your garden tools, fishing rods, etc. All the rest goes to storage, probably even the fishing rods if it's not fishing season for you.

When you find the floor of the garage, yes it does have one... Get it very clean! Sweep it, scrub it, bleach it clean and then if you really want to get top value for your home...

You can do what a client of mine did. He bought cheap vinyl floor covering, with lots of patterns and in a neutral earthy off-white of course and covered the garage floor in it. It was the one thing every one talked about in his otherwise perfectly setup home! You have got to clean out the garage so that the prospective buyer can try to visualize it FULL of all the junk THEY should have thrown out, but haven't.

None of the things I written about here are costly and they all will gain you at least $5 for every $1 spent in the final sale of your home. Do NOT however put money into lavish, extravagant, trendy over-improvements. Yes, it is important to fix everything that needs fixing, right down to the leaky faucet and new screw down covers on the toilet bowls where it's screwed to the floor -- if you have that kind of toilets. Now is a good time to buy new toilet seats and seat covers at one of the "marts" and put them on all the toilets.

Please, be very certain that you follow the above and not some designers whims and theories or you will spend more by far, getting your home ready for the market than you will get back in an increased sale price. If you spend too much on improper decorating, remodeling or additions, etc. you will not gain what you spend in improved sales price or speed of sale.

 

And remember, you are in trouble again if you push your value more than 20-30% over the average neighboring home values, no matter how much you spend on swimming pools, super expensive wallpaper, expensive and trendy light fixtures, new windows, or even hundreds of little twigs and sprigs from the landscape architect; if you do the wrong things, don't expect to recoup the cost of adding them.