Selling your first house

The Coffee Shop
1

On the heels of Austin79’s much appreciated thread on buying your first house (http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1421017), I’d like to ask the same questions about SELLING your first house.

Anything you wish you had known, any regrets?

PS: I’m actually selling a house in order to buy my first house, so it’s twice as fun.

2

The best advice I could give you is; you should have sold it 18 months ago.

3

Unless you or Robin can help me with that, can you just use the Bat Signal to let people know about the place??

4

Ok, I will give you some more advice. Stay far away from me when it comes to trying to sell a house. Don’t listen to anything Robin says either; he hasn’t helped me and he won’t help you. The Bat signal doesn’t work, the red phone doesn’t work, and the Bat computer just gets frustrated. My house has been on the market for over 1 year, and I am about to hire the Scarecrow to fire bomb it for me.

5

If a buyer beats you down on the price for a “worn roof” indicating it needs to be immediately replaced, have the money put in an escrow account for the replacement, so you don’t drive by the house two years later and notice they didn’t replace the “worn roof.”
.

6

During a pretty good market in a very good area (The Woodlands, TX:)

  1. Tried to sell by owner. Very little traffic, no legitimate offers in six months.
  2. Hired the nice real estate agent neighbor next door. She put up a sign and listed it. Slight bit more traffic, no legitimate offers over the next six months.
  3. After a year of vacancy I hired the biggest name in real estate in the area. The guy with his face on the Freeway billboards and on the side of the ridiculous H1 Hummer he drives. He goes by one name! His rates and terms were a little stiffer, but in the first 30 days we had twenty people through the house, two offers and a contract at the end of the first month. I gladly paid him his commision and kicked myself for not doing it a year earlier. The property taxes I would have saved would have paid him! A good real estate agent is worth their weight in gold.
7

Have you read that thing about burying a statue of a Saint in your backyard? Crazy, but if it’s been a year, you might want to consider…

And get the bat mobile out of the driveway, it’s probably freaking the buyers out.

8

Oh yeah, St. Joseph went in the ground early. We have a second statue at the new Wayne Manor (which solves the Bat mobile issue) that receives many silent prayers on a daily basis. We are on our second real estate agent, and we have had tons of people go through the house, but only one offer, which was for $100,000 less than the very reduced asking price.

9

Yikes, sorry to hear. Never knew those offers on TNO were potentially viable!

Is your asking price in the market relative to what’s around you and property values etc? If so, that’s crazy. Zillow.com or Trulia.com to check on prices nearby just in case you don’t know.

10

LOL, no the offers on TNO were not viable.

As far as I can tell, from online research and talking to the realtors, we are on the low end for price range in our zip code, when you consider square footage and lot size. The house is only 3 years old, and I think a lot of people see the new builds advertised for considerably, but then end up spending way more when the finish the customized options. With all of the options we put in the house, and the lot size, you couldn’t build a new house for much less than we are asking, and turn any kind of profit. I have no idea what is going on to tell you the truth. I realize the market is slow, but with all of the people who have come through the house, I thought we would get more offers than we have; even if they we all low ball offers.

11

I totally feel your pain. My house (cape cod MA) has been on (and off) the market since May '05. The house is a traditional cape, built in 1986. Since we bought it in 2000 we’ve done the roof, windows and sliders, carpet, siding, carpet, kitchen cabinets, new toilets, and of course painted the interior. Nothing. Not a nibble. We’ve been all over the spectrum as far as pricing goes, always lower than the comps. Started with the warm and fuzzy agent who sold our first house in 9 days and after 10 months went for the local superstar who didn’t do anything that agent #1 hadn’t done. Next up was the agent who promises “I’ll buy your house if it doesn’t sell in 90 days.” But I took it off the market after 30 days. Tired of people traipsing thru and no offers.

The house has been back on for 3 weeks now, listed with C21. Seven showings with some really good feedback.

All I wanted to do was move further north to be closer to ski country. My youngest and I love to ski. We started this ordeal after his first year of high school and he wanted to move too. Now he’s going to be a senior and no longer wants to go. Figures, right?

I hope you have better luck than us.

12

Man, from what I’m seeing here, I’m going to hate selling my house more than I hated buy it. Not going to be fun. I think I’ll just keep this house forever and end up retiring in it. I may need to sell it in about 2 years. Hopefully, the housing market in Austin will still be hot in that time. Pretty much any house in my neighborhood that goes on the market is sold within a week. As usually, I’m going to try “for sale by owner” at first and go from there. Like I said, I may need to sell my house in 2 years or I will keep it for a long time.

13

My wife and I hired the agent who sold us our house and it was sold in two weeks. Heck, the day we were moving out we still had people coming to the door asking about buying it. She was great, we were very happy.

14

I wasn’t that happy with the agent who sold me this house. She wasn’t very proactive and I actually found my house on the MLS website myself.