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We've bought one house, but never sold one. If you have sold a home what tips do you have for getting it ready to show? I'm pretty overwhelmed looking around at all the things I need to do to get it ready to 'show'.
Where do you stash all your personal stuff? We have limited storage space and lots of crap.
That's a good question! I honestly don't think I was ever around for any house selling. We rented when I was little, and my family sold the house I lived in from 10-18 after I had left home. I *do* however know from experience that moving is an excellent time to purge excess crap. Be ruthless. It feels good! If you haven't used it in more than a couple of years and/or could easily replace it for cheap, why bother moving it?
If that's not an option or you still have way too much to be able to keep the place show-ready for an extended period, can you pack up some stuff now that you know you won't need (like out of season things, christmas decorations, memory stuff, whatever) and keep it temporarily at someone else's house, or even rent a little cheap storage unit? Or get one of those U-Box units and pack a bunch into it, and then when the house sells you're already halfway there--just put in the rest and call them to come take the unit to your new house. Looks like a small one is about $65/m. Depending on how long you think this may take, that might be doable?
I know my SIL was going nuts trying to keep their tiny house clean with 3 kids under 5 while they were trying to sell while still living in it...good luck!!!!!!
Being the seller sucks in this market.
To get ready: you are supposed to take down any personal items (family pictures, etc) because you want people looking at your house to picture it as their house, not your house. And remove clutter as much as possible, as storage items can make your space look smaller. Luckily my brother lived within a half hour away so put all our crap in his basement. I would recommend having a yard sale and consider renting a storage unit. If that isn't possible, then organize as best you can. Finish any little projects that you may have been putting off, and go ahead and make the little repairs, because the buyer is going to ask you to fix them any way.
Also, I don't know what the market is like where you're at, but you're most likely going to pay the closing costs for both yourself and the buyer. And remember when you bought a house and you didn't pay any realtor fees? That's because they come out of the seller's fees when the house sells, so you'll be paying the realtor fees for both your realtor and the buyer's realtor. This stuff didn't used to matter so much when you could buy a house and sell it for more than you paid for it. But we ended up losing money on our old house just to get out of it. We had to, though, it was not a good place to be raising a kid.
Also, be prepared for the fact that people will make an appointment to see the house, so you'll spend time getting it ready and get out, only to come back and realize they had never even stepped through the front door. Used to piss.me.off. But it's all part of the game.
One more thought--I know you guys don't have a ton of extra money lying around or anything, but if there's any way to just move into a tiny, crappy rental in the new city while your house is on the market, I think THAT is what we did when we moved from NC to NY when I was 10. We lived in a horrible little basement with almost no stuff and didn't bother to set up tv or anything but it was kind of fun in the end. Of course, houses didn't take two years to sell back then. :(
We haven't sold yet. I'm not looking forward to it. Though we'll probably rent for awhile before buying our next home and therefore sell our current home when its empty. I think the U-Box is a great idea. You're going to have to pack it all up or get rid of it anyway.
Don't feel that you HAVE to get a realtor. You don't. We bought without a realtor and the seller was more willing to take our offer because he didn't have to pay a realtor's costs for us. Do a little research into selling yourself and see if its worth the hassle. It is a bit of a hassle.
If you have the time, it might be worth trying to sell it "For sale by owner" without a realtor and see if you can get it sold without one.
I used to work for a title company as an escrow assistant, so I learned a LOT about the whole buying and selling process. So I know what to expect as far the actual selling part goes. However, having never sold a house before I don't know where people generally put their stuff before they've moved out, while showing the house. When we bought this house, the owners at the time did NOTHING to stage it, and one of them was a realtor. In fact it was a mess. There was laundry piled everywhere, one room was so full of boxes we couldn't even get in there and it was FILTHY.
DH would never go for storing our crap in a storage unit. That's an unnecessary expense and he's just as soon not do any staging. But I feel like we're more likely to get more bang for the buck if the house looks fancy. I just don't know if I can do it. I guess I'll just do the best I can.
We are lucky to live in a town that has been virtually unaffected by the crappy turn in the housing market. Unfortunately, the town we are moving to is booming and growing like crazy and houses are very hard to find and sell super fast and are therefore super expensive. I don't know if I'm up for trying to sell by owner on this. DH wouldn't be comfortable with me showing the house while he's out of town, and it would be awkward with 2 babies and 2 dogs. It might be worth the money to have someone else do all the grunt work. It occurred to me earlier though that every time someone wants to see the house I'll not only have to do last minute stuff in the house, but also pick up any dog crap in the yard and load up the dogs and my 2 kids and find a place to go for a couple of hours that is dog friendly.
This whole thing is already very daunting. I wish I had people who could come over an help me get my house ready, or at least a friends house to go to when people come to see this one. I hate moving.
I'm glad you have some experience in the field, that will help!
Do you have a basement, or a storage area? I think if you just boxed everything up nice and orderly then you'll be fine. The u-box that Erin mentioned is actually what we used. It is nice because they bring it to your place, they load it up and you can either keep it there for a while and then they'll move it to your new place.
It is all very daunting. Could your mom or in-laws come help you get ready? When you need to be out, we always went to a park, or if there is a mall nearby with an airconditioned play area, that is a good option, too. Or even a McDonalds with a play area.
My mom still lives 6 hours away and is working on getting her own house sold, so she can't. I might have to take advantage of my IL's being in town on Saturday and clean stuff then. I'm hoping that DH is really motivated to help me out this weekend. Our mall does have a small indoor play area, but they don't allow dogs in our mall so I don't know where we could go since it'll be too hot to go to the park. We have corgis and they don't even go outside until the late evening. I'd worry they'd have a heatstroke. I guess I could just drive around town. . . I'll figure it out. I have to.Quote:
Originally Posted by BuckeyeK
Totally hear you on having someone else handle the grunt work--you have plenty going on already! The "extra expense" issue is why I mentioned moving pods. That's not an extra move or much expense, just taking your time to pack up the moving truck with the added benefit of being able to get a bunch of crap out of your house so it shows well and sells faster. Seriously, we're talking what, just a couple of hundred dollars if you sell your house in 4 months or so. When it comes to the cost of moving and selling houses, that's a drop in the bucket.
If you still don't like that idea, though, I'd at least purge as much as possible and then pack up everything but the essentials and neatly stack the boxes somewhere.
At least you're working with a decent housing market! There is NO WAY I could sell my house right now. Well, I could, but for less than half of what I paid for it. So, no way. I have no desire to be a landlord, but if we HAD to move, I'd find a renter and hire a management company to deal with them.