Once again we are debating whether or not we should sell our house and move closer to our jobs. We've gone back and forth on this decision a lot in the past 4 1/2 years that we've been in this house. Our house isn't horrible, it is just that we didn't look at many houses and didn't know enough about the area or even what we truly wanted when we purchased the house we are currently in. Now that we have more experience in taking care of a home and how stressful a one hour each way 5 day commute really is, we have decided that perhaps this isn't the home for us.
This is where it gets interesting. Having never sold a home before we have absolutely no idea what we are doing! We know what we want in our next home, but that is jumping the gun slightly. First we have to get our house in shape to put it on the market and then find a real estate agent to help us sell it. Personally, I think that real estate agents are practically useless. They make roughly 3.5% of your selling price and essentially all they do is take some pictures of your house (something I've already done) create an MLS listing (the only thing that I can't do) and then when people want to see the house they show it to them (also, something that I'm pretty sure I'd be able to do, considering it's my damn house!) While I know that I am able to try to sell my house myself, home buyers, especially in this day and age, almost refuse to look at FSBOs. It is like they are afraid of something or they feel that the real estate agent is going to protect them from something. It isn't true, but people are irrational (mind you it took everything in me to not say people are fucking morons). So I have resigned myself to finding a real estate agent to help us. I also figure that I'm going to be doing much of the work myself, because obviously I'm far more motivated than the real estate agent who will only be making like $6,000 on the sale of my home. I have no background in marketing at all, but as a consumer, I know what people are looking for and I'm going to use every means available to me to make them realize that my house is what they are looking for. I'm going to blast my listing all over the internet, anywhere that I think it will help, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc. And I'm going to use word of mouth BIG TIME. Keeping the fact that your house is on the market a secret, isn't going to sell it. And because we live in such a secluded area, I'm going to have to work hard to get people to even come out to the boonies to look at our home.
What I would love would be for the agent to come into my home and tell me everything that I must change/fix in order to sell my house though. I have an extensive list of things that I think I need to do, but in truth might not really matter in the grand scheme of things. I have heard so many mixed opinions, but I am not sure who to trust. To me, it seems that buyers today simply have no imagination. They want to walk through a completely empty, move in ready home. That is just not feasible in our situation. We have to live here. People have a tough time seeing beyond what is currently there and I really just don't understand why. When we look at homes we ignore the cosmetics and focus on things like the layout and how our stuff could work in the house. I don't care what color paint is on the walls because I have painted so many walls, that I can just paint over a color that doesn't appeal to me. And I don't mind doing the work to make a new home personal.
Right now we are going to take it one room at a time and do the best we can on a budget. I think there are little things that we can do to help make our house market ready. Most importantly we can de-clutter and clean and spruce things up a bit. Last night I went to Lowes and purchased some things that I want to change in my bathroom which I feel will make it more appealing to people and hopefully sell our house faster and for more money. Don't worry, I'm not being greedy. I know what the market looks like and we are hoping to break even and at least sell our house for what we paid for it, maybe a smidgen more since we have done some nice upgrades already (whether people will appreciate the new water heater, deck, floors, counter tops, appliances, etc is up for debate).
The hardest thing for us is going to be getting rid of a bunch of junk we seem to have collected. I'm the complete opposite of a pack rat. My fiance tells me that I live like a rich person because I throw so much stuff away. But I cannot for the life of me figure out why people hold on to stuff that they don't need. Because of my minimalist lifestyle, my fiance and his family feels the need to over compensate and fill my house up with a bunch of shit that I didn't ask for, I don't need, and I would never want. Giving that back to people is going to be difficult and convincing my fiance that we don't actually need this crap that he is saving is another challenge. I'm beginning to think I'm going to be throwing stuff away while he isn't looking. Wish me luck on that one!
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