PDX Renovations

Author: joseph

  • How to Sell a Home Quickly: Realtor vs. FSBO?

    When selling your home there is no decision more fraught than whether or not to work with a realtor.  Selling a home with a realtor and selling a home on your own both come with pros and cons.

    Pros and cons of working with a realtor:

    • Pros: experience; marketing and staging know-how; connections to buyers, inspectors, and mortgage companies; they handle all the paperwork

     

    • Cons: commissions and fees; less control over scheduling

    Pros and cons of selling yourself:

    • Pros: save money; can go faster because some buyers prefer working with owners instead of realtors; can price your home more competitively because you won’t “lose” money to a commission; more control over showing times

     

    • Cons: more work to advertise and schedule showings; you have to do all your own paperwork; lack of connections

     

    Deciding to sell your home on your own or to use a realtor can be a tricky decision. Some important things to keep in mind with this decision are your time, energy, and willingness to take risks. If you are comfortable spending your spare time  and energy on marketing and selling your home if you are comfortable asking questions and figuring out paperwork along the way, then selling your own home might be for you. However, if you are already under a lot of stress or feel pressed for time and availability then you should probably hire a realtor.

    There are a few niche real estate companies that will help you sell your own home. They will handle the paperwork and a few other details for a smaller commission. Sometimes this can be an advantageous situation for the seller. However, this can also end up leaving the seller handling things they don’t know how to handle.

    If you do decide to go with a realtor the best way to find one is word of mouth. Good realtors will be:

    • Accessible
    • Reliable
    • Good communicators
    • Good negotiators
    • Sociable
    • Honest

    Do you have a piece of property (house, lot, or land) you’d like to sell fast?  Fill out our Sell Fast Form and get a cash offer within one hour of us viewing the property.

  • How to Sell a Home Quickly: Staging Secrets

    Home staging is a relatively new concept in the real estate market, but it’s an important development. Some companies estimate that their staged homes sales rates improve by over fifty percent. Staged homes usually not only sell faster but also sell for more money.

    This actually makes intuitive sense. When people walk into an empty house very few of them can accurately envision where furniture will fit or what the rooms will look like when furnished.  Empty houses lack that homey feeling and prospective buyers fail to feel emotionally connected to them.

    Staging your house is easier than it sounds, though. You can hire a professional or you can try staging it yourself with these easy tips:

    1)     Put away 50-75% of your stuff.  You may like all your books, tchotchkes, family photos, and clothes but prospective buyers won’t. In fact, what looks homey to you will look like clutter to them. Box up most of your stuff and store it in the garage or a storage unit. Not only will it help with aesthetics but it will help keep it clean for showings, too.

    2)     Keep in mind the idea of homeownership. Remember that when people are looking at a house they are essentially engaging in daydreaming about their future. When they walk into your house they want to be able to envision themselves eating a healthy family meal around a kitchen table or entertaining friends in front of the fireplace. Hide the diaper pail and laundry pile in your nursery and put a lovely baby blanket over the side of the crib. It’s not practical but it will help people imagine themselves there.

    3)     Think about flow. Flow works in two ways in your home.  The first is traffic flow. Think about how people move through your house and move anything that impedes that.  Make your house easy to get around. Flow is also about how each room or space in the house blends in to the next. Make sure that your rooms work together to create a cohesive space.

    4)     Remember size. Your house should feel bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. Many times this means moving furniture out of rooms.  Keep only what’s absolutely necessary.

    5)     Cheap upgrades make a difference. When staging your home it is definitely worth repainting walls to neutral, trendy color and changing out light fixtures for a more popular style.

    6)     Clean, clean, clean! A clean home is worth way more than a dirty one. Put in the time to dust your light fixtures, clean your carpet, clean your windows, and shine your cabinets. Hire professionals if you want, but get it clean.

    What tips and tricks do you have to make a home sell faster?

    Do you have a piece of property (house, lot, or land) you’d like to sell fast?  Fill out our Sell Fast Form and get a cash offer within one hour of us viewing the property.

  • How to Sell a Home Quickly: Price it Right

    There are few things in life more stressful than selling a home—especially in the difficult housing market of the last few years.  There are a few things you can do, though, to make the process easier and faster. One of the most obvious is to price it right.

    Think about the last time you were house hunting. You probably had a good idea of the floor plan you wanted, how many bedrooms and bathrooms you needed, and how big of a lot you were looking for. However, your make-it-or-break-it-criteria wasn’t any of those things. It was most likely price. Pricing a home too high or too low can make it nearly impossible to sell because it will turn off prospective buyers before they even get a chance to look at any other details of your home.

    The biggest mistakes people make when pricing a home are:

    1)     Using poor comparables. Looking at comparable properties is usually the first step in establishing a price for you home. Whether you are using a realtor or selling your home yourself you need to look at homes in your direct neighborhood that are the same square footage, floor plan, and age and determine how much they sold for and are currently valued at. This is information that is all available through public records, but many people prefer to use websites like Zillow.com (LINK: www.zillow.com), realtor.com (www.realtor.com), or trulia.com (www.trulia.com). These websites are sometimes notorious for undervaluing or overvaluing things so it’s best to compare across all three.

     

    2)     Pricing too low.  Think about pricing your house like posting something on Craigslist. If you post a couch for free people will usually assume it’s junk and avoid it. However, list that same couch at $50 and you’ll start getting calls. Your home is the same. If you lowball yourself people will assume there’s something wrong with it and avoid it altogether. People value what they pay for.

     

    3)     Pricing too high. That being said, don’t price too high. People also won’t take you seriously if you price your home well above its value and the price of comparables. Even if you’ve upgraded your flooring, patio, and bathrooms you can’t add the cost of those upgrades into the asking price of your home. Remember, though, people will always be looking to haggle the price down a few thousand dollars so it’s okay to inflate the price a little.

     

    Also, when pricing your home figure out how much equity you need to be able to take with you so you can purchase your next home or investment.  That will give you a good range to work within.

    How did you decide on your home’s asking price? Share your tips!

    Do you have a piece of property (house, lot, or land) you’d like to sell fast?  Fill out our Sell Fast Form and get a cash offer within one hour of us viewing the property.