Long term planning of selling your home?

[not2old]

I've experienced paying 24.5% on my mortgage in the 1970's. A number of my friends lost their homes. My payments went from about $225.00 a month to a bit over $400.00. If I had started with $400.00 payments like my friends, I too, would have lost my house with payments of $800.00. This is probably the main reason I paid it off as quickly as possible. A secondary consideration is that in Canada, your personal residence is exempt from capital gains tax and interest charges are not tax deductible.

 

[EddieWalker]

In my previous post, I wasn't as clear as I think I should of been when I said that the money you spend fixing the house up to sell will not add to full amount when you actually sell the house. I also said that what you put into the house will also cause the house to sell faster. Sitting on the market for a year or more isn't a good thing.

Spending money on the house is how you sell it faster. Painting is probably the best way to spend money and get a faster sale. Trying to add the cost of painting to the sales prices isn't realistic. You paint it so people will want to live there enough to buy it from you.

Fixing broken things will not add to the price of the house, but it will make it sell faster.

I'm very hesitant about offering any sort of discount or allowance to the sales price of a house. I don't believe those words should ever be used when selling a house. Let the buyer decide if they want to offer a lower price then what you are asking, and then you can decide to accept that offer, or not, based on how many other offers you get.

One thing that I just thought of, and it's more towards when you are ready to put it on the market, is to install brighter light bulbs. Max out how bright it is in the house. Remove everything that you possibly can, including the closets. You want to present a clean, open, bright and positive home for the buyer.

Another thing to consider, is why somebody is actually looking at your house? More then likely, it's the land that will sell it. If that's so, they probably don't care about the house too much, and will just do a quick walk through to make sure it's livable. In my opinion, homes out in the country are harder and harder to find, and if somebody is looking for a home with acreage, that's ALL they are looking for.

Make sure the front yard is mowed, the flower beds are clean, the walkways are in good condition and the woods are in good shape. If you have trails, keep them mowed. If you have a pond, keep the shoreline mowed. If you have fences, make sure they are in good shape. I know you have a new deck. Is there anything in the view from the deck that cold be improved? Dead tree? Junk Pile? Ugly neighbors house? Removing stuff, or planting trees to hide something might be a good investment that will speed up the sale of the house for minimum money.

A really good realtor will walk through your place with new eyes. They will not see what you see. They will see what the buyers will see, and what they tell you to do should be considered gospel. Never question or argue their advice on what a house needs to sell. If they sell a lot of homes, they know what buyers want. Odds are very good that with your land, they will just have a few things to do to the house and everything will focus on the land.

 

[Thall303]

Excellent advice as always!

 

[ultrarunner]

Lighting has a huge impact…

Toured a home that had industrial fluorescents everywhere and it looked like a warehouse… just naked tubes.

 

[paulsharvey]

I have Scanned the comment, but not read every one; I think your money is best spent on Repairs, cleaning, and painting; rather than Updating. Repair damaged base boards, hard core carpet cleaning, scrub grout, pressure wash exterior/sidewalks/driveways; and paint. I wouldn't do any updating. Also, it might be worth it to have bushes removed/trimmed; yard as maintained/fertilized/sprayed as possible; but generally, your money is gonna be best when your home is general in the bottom 1/3rd to lower half of the neighborhood value wise. IE; in a neighborhood of $400k homes, they will bring up a $300k home, as long as it is clean/maintained/fresh paint. If yours is the 400k home in a generally 300k neighborhood, you might have a faster sale, but probably not gonna recoup the costs foe any upgrades.

Edit: maybe if you have 1970s lime green shag carpet; it might be worth it to have the cheapest institutional style Lowes/Homedepot $99/room carpet installed. Old old style vinyl tile; if it's really That ugly or damaged, some 1.20/sq ft ceramic tile, ect. Cabinets, I dont think you'll get your money back; counter tops, if the old are bad, replacing with a cheap laminate top might be worth it; all depends on if we are talking about a $800k home or a $300k home. New construction, even $350-450k homes typically base model come with vinyl in bathrooms, preformed fiberglass tubs, laminate counter tops, ect.

 

[Sigarms]

I'm very hesitant about offering any sort of discount or allowance to the sales price of a house. I don't believe those words should ever be used when selling a house. Let the buyer decide if they want to offer a lower price then what you are asking, and then you can decide to accept that offer, or not, based on how many other offers you get.

Another thing to consider, is why somebody is actually looking at your house? More then likely, it's the land that will sell it. If that's so, they probably don't care about the house too much, and will just do a quick walk through to make sure it's livable. In my opinion, homes out in the country are harder and harder to find, and if somebody is looking for a home with acreage, that's ALL they are looking for.

The whole post was good Eddie, but in blue is something I never thought about and GREAT advice IMO, and left in black is exactly why we bought the place to begin with.

In your professional opinion, will money on having the popcorn ceilings removed be worth it? Both my wife and I are leaning towards yes. I do know in both bathrooms and a guest bedroom, we removed the popcorn ceiling and repainted ourselves, and a world of difference IMO.

There is a buttload of ceiling space on the first floor though and no way would my wife and I have the time to deal with it, including on some of the height on the ceilings (goes up to the second floor with open space). Would need to hire someone to do it.

 

[Sigarms]

I have Scanned the comment, but not read every one; I think your money is best spent on Repairs, cleaning, and painting; rather than Updating. Repair damaged base boards, hard core carpet cleaning, scrub grout, pressure wash exterior/sidewalks/driveways; and paint. I wouldn't do any updating. Also, it might be worth it to have bushes removed/trimmed; yard as maintained/fertilized/sprayed as possible; but generally, your money is gonna be best when your home is general in the bottom 1/3rd to lower half of the neighborhood value wise. IE; in a neighborhood of $400k homes, they will bring up a $300k home, as long as it is clean/maintained/fresh paint. If yours is the 400k home in a generally 300k neighborhood, you might have a faster sale, but probably not gonna recoup the costs foe any upgrades.

The deck needed to be replaced, so it was done. The 2 bathrooms we wanted to update, and did it for ourselves and not for the resale of the house and more than happy with the work and both bathrooms.

Nothing else major is going to be renovated other than having the house repainted this summer (last time was about 14 years ago and really could use a "update" in some areas, same color as we have the paint color saved) and a couple of years ago we replaced some bad wood on the exterior of the home.

 

[paulsharvey]

Also, if you have old plated brass light fixtures that the brass is nasty looking or something; if your doing the work yourself, some $19 cheap fixtures can be worth it; but a buyer can't tell a $19 fixtures from a $120 one. Same with bathroom faucets, ect.

 

[plowhog]

will money on having the popcorn ceilings removed be worth it? ... There is a buttload of ceiling space on the first floor though and no way would my wife and I have the time to deal with it,

Be very careful. You can redo your popcorn ceilings on your own without oversight. Because I presume you don't know, yes or no, if any asbestos is present.

I hired a contractor to redo popcorn ceilings once. He promptly took samples and sent them to a lab to see if asbestos was present. Surprise! Asbestos was present. That added $8,000 on top of the quoted cost plus slowed down and delayed the job.

 

[paulsharvey]

One of the oddities of home sales; is the outside; people seem to recommend removing bushes, privacy screening, outbuildings; and then the new buyer, first thing, orders a prefab shed, privacy screen landscaping, ect.