CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Phil Smith]

I'm getting ready to put my house on the market. I'm seriously considering selling it myself. Some people think that's a good idea, others think it will never sell.

What do you guys think?

[Zebu Fellenz]

I don't see any reason not to try, if it sells great, if not get some help selling it.

We sold our last house by ourselves, however the sale was really easy as some of our good friends had been interested in the house and were ready to buy.

Erik

[JustGreg]

Ooh. Ooh. I'll be watching this closely. Hopefully you'll share any trips and traps you run into as the wife and I are going to downsize as soon as we're sure the value of our home hasn't been affected by the housing downturn. We should be OK as it's in a desireable part of the city close to schools, shopping, a fire station; but we're getting an appraisal of our own to have on hand for any possible low ballers.
There are a few things we're willing to negotiate that we knew wouldn't be worth the investment to do given our short term plans, like replace the aging roof and put in hardwood floors in certain rooms.

We refi'd a few years ago and got a 7 year ARM because we knew we'd be down sizing and we got a better rate than a 30 year fixed. (Not that the rate matters overly much given the short time span we planned to stay). I'll knock off $6500 for a roof but I won't budge too much from there. We'll see.

Good luck! Having friends buy it is great. Now if I only had friends.

Greg

[jask]

It is much easier to sell than buy privately, do your research on similar properties,often renovation and update costs are 100+% recoverable and they add selling value and bring in buyers who might exclude your property because of "needed work". Make sure you know exactly what your costs are to end financing... often sellers forget to factor in pre-payment penalties or Interest rate differentials into the calculations. if you have a current lot survey,or property inspection/appraisal you could make those available to the potential buyer to help them minimize buyers costs(if they need these for financing) and count on the buyer wanting you to reduce the price by the amount you would have added to cover Realtor fees. Advertising is the hard part of private sales, a pro quality lawn sign from a sign shop is not too expensive and colour copy info sheets with all the info a realty listing would have makes it easier for everyone.You will have realtors phoning and offering to "take on" your listing..tell them you will pay them a standard buyers agent commission if they bring you a sale. If they want a viewing, schedule it so that multiple agents view at the same time- you can send a fax out to local offices to let them know when you will be having a "pre-viewing" and make sure that everything is done,that will be done before anyone comes through the door, and that all exclusions are itemized in the info sheet : IE: "the Barco 909 quad stack and audio system in the home theater are NOT included in the sale price, and are not negotiable"

good luck, and remember the offer that shows up on the first afternoon might be someone that has been looking for your type of property for a long time and is ready to make a serious offer,so make sure it is really ready before you advertise.

[MikeEby]

Try it ...I don't know if they have them in Texas but in Indiana we have discount brokers that is also an option.

Also check out this website if you have not already.

http://www.fsbo.com/

Mike

[wallace123456]

Well, this house we are in now is our 7th house. We have sold 3 buy ourselves. Most were easy, but we did a lot of homework before hand.

For Sale By Owner is pretty good as we used them once.

Whatever you do, most important things we have found are: Curb appeal, clutter free, clean, as much new paint (inside and out) as possible, even renting furniture if needed, carpets cleaned, no family pictures, make the kitchen and bathroom(s) look at best as possible.

These things are almost a must if selling on your own. If you do use a realtor, they will be more likely to show your house if they know they can get a quick sale (clean, clean, clean).

wallace

[MikeEby]

[Person99]

First, let me say I think Real Estate agents are pretty much the most useless people in the world. In an Internet age, they add zero value.

That said, I've read some claims that people that sell FSBO generally make 2-3% less than selling with an agent. I'm not sure I believe this. However, I've used agents and got them to cut their commissions. Our next door neighbor sold with one of the flat rate discount brokers--I think it only cost them $1100 instead of 3%. They of course still had to pay the buyer's agents 3%.

[WanMan]

[garyfritz]

In theory real estate agents should understand the market extremely well, and should be able to e.g. value the property correctly. In theory. In reality there are studies that show realtors go for a quick lowball sale rather than working harder to get the full value of the house; it might be $10k difference to you but it's only a couple hundred bucks to them so why should they work so hard. Whereas on their own homes, they keep pushing to get the full value. Steven Levitt (author of Freakonomics) found that realtors get 3 to 4 percent more for their own houses and leave their own houses on the market 10 percent longer.

On the other hand, realtors have direct access to a much larger pool of actively-looking buyers, both their own and those brought by other realtors. That might be worth a lot, especially in a slow market.

What work to do before putting it on the market is hard to say. Should you put in new carpet (so it shows well) or should you give the buyers a carpet allowance so they can pick their own colors? I'm not sure. A roof, though, I'd definitely do that. Roofs aren't a personal choice like carpet. Put some decent shingles on there and then the buyer doesn't have to worry about it, and it's not a factor that might disqualify the house.

[Phil Smith]

Thanks for the responses! I'm sorry for the late reply. I've been sick as a dog. Feeling better, so I started to respond yesterday morning, but got tied up with family stuff.

You guys bring up a lot of issues:

As far as the condition of the house; it needs carpet, yard work and the fence - while standing - is not far from needing replacing. I work out of my home, and if it takes a while to sell, I could potentially badly damage new carpet out before I found a buyer. So replacing the carpet is not a good idea. I've done a lot of painting, installed a new cook top and vent a hood (nice ones), new back door, fixed all sorts of problems, finished up unfinished projects, etc. With that and the fact the house is only 10 years old and built on solid rock, it's in excellent condition with no problems. Oh, and the roof was replaced 5 years ago after a hail storm.

Other obstacles I have that were mentioned are curb appeal and furniture. While my house itself looks pretty good, my yard does not. Last spring it rained like crazy and there wasn't much opportunity to spread my fertilizer/weed killer that needed to be on for 24 hours without rain. We finally had a what I thought was going to be a nice day, so I fertilized it. Before I was done, it started raining! It was early in the season before my grass was really growing, so all that happened was my weeds went nuts! It ruined my yard, which was not very nice to begin with. My grass was hard to get to grow, so it's a big problem. As I mentioned the house is built on solid rock, and the top soil is VERY thin.

I also don't have much furniture, and what little I had I got rid of, because it was too big to fit in wherever I'm going to move. So that's another problem.

AND another problem: I work out of my home. The garage is FULL of inventory. The study has BIG bags of peanuts in it. The master bedroom is my office, which also has studio lights for taking ebay pics. I have to make a living while I'm trying to sell the house. I rented 2 storage units to get as much out of the as I could. What's left has to be here for my business to function.

My biggest obstacle is my HT. Because of it, I'm reluctant to put much more time and money into the house, because I'm afraid it might be pouring time and money down the drain. For those that don't know, I have a built-in rear projection setup. There is a large hole in the wall between my family room and the garage. A soft type RP screen is in the hole and the projector is mounted on the garage ceiling. It took me forever to finish it, but it came out nice. I'm also leaving all the gear plus my HT recliners, so it's not like I'm leaving a unless hole in the wall. The buyers will get a complete HT ready togo. BUT, it still definitely limits the potential buyers on my house, probably by a LOT. So that's why I really don't want to spend any more money on it. I may not get a very good price for it, so why just throw money away.

Man, that's a lot of obstacles!

I am very encouraged that some of you have had luck selling your own homes (Wallace 3 times!). That gives me some confidence about this, and makes me feel a lot better about it. As Dave mentioned, in this day and age of the computer, I'm not sure that a listing agent really does anything for you. I think the buyer's agent often works their ass off and I can see the need for them. But as far as listing goes, it seems listing it yourself is a reasonable thing to do.

I'm working on a website. I need to borrow a camera with a wide angle zoon from one of my camera buddies to take interior pics, but I've got some of it done: http://www.dallas-music.com/House.html

[Ridebreck]

[garyfritz]

[Phil Smith]

LOL! You guys are killing me!

I guess should have been more specific about what kind of peanuts is was talking about. They're SPANISH peanuts. Everyone knows elephants don't like those.

[JustGreg]

Phil our stories/plans are twins from different mothers. I'm facing the same thing...well, with the exception of working out of the house. I find myself trying to think like a prospective with all the little nit picking things I see and all I'm succeeding in doing is driving myself (and the wife) nuts. My stockade fence is about like your fence. It's in good shape except the posts need to be replaced (some brain surgeon concreted the cedar posts in with no bottom drain in the concrete so they sat in a 'cup' of water and rotted).

I've got wind/snow/hail/locust damage to the roof from this weird assed winter we've had up here so I'll be battling the insurance company over that...and probably either losing or getting some pro rated settlement. All the wife and I want to do is get out before existing home values plummet any more, and get into a smaller more manageable home. I do ALLLL the outside work and with three back surgeries under my belt it kicks my ass royally. I don't even have any more slaves, erm, kids in the house any more to help out so 'tis just me.

We're going to be doing the same as you've done also; re: renting a big storage unit and tossing out what is old and/or might not fit into the 'as yet found' new residence. The rooms are all fairly small (ranch house) so the less crap in them (or nothing at all is my plan) the better.

As far as my HT, I'm leaving that up to the buyer to decide if they want to purchase what's in it. Knowing the people up here I'm guessing I'll hear (more than once) "Yeah. A home theater is nice but not for what you want. We'll give you $xxxx.00." If the sale is contingent upon that silly little item (the HT) then I'll take their offer and buy a G90 with some of the equity later on. (IF there's any equity left. I lost $22K on my last appraisal from the previous appraisal. 'Course, that could just be the subjective nature of that process performed by a different 'inspector' than the previous one). I'm not taking chances tho. I'm bailing now before things get any tighter.

But yeah, we have the whole carpet thing going on too. 4 kids can sure beat the snot outta things in just a few short years. The last one just moved out (again) and I walked in the room and it could have passed for a Hollywood set of a crack house. The ONLY spots on the carpet that looked new (berber...hate berber) were where his entertainment center and a bureau were. He left trash and everything in there. I called him the other night and told him to get his ass back here this weekend and expect to de-trash the room or buy stamps to communicate with us by letter. It's just plain disrespectful in my book. My dad would have knocked me into this century if I frigged up his house like that back in the 70's.

Anyway...I wonder how many of 'us' there are nationwide doing the same thing. Thousands and thousands I know are doing it because they had no choice (subprime anyone?) and I'll bet there are thousands who are downsizing and running for the hills (like me) as a hedge against the uncertainty of everything; COL, the tenuous nature of employment, the impact of long commuting costs digging into critical areas of the budget, rising out of pocket healthcare, etc.
<sigh> This is all seriously going to offend my inherent lazy nature.

Greg

[Phil Smith]

Greg,

I have no choice but to leave my HT gear. I wouldn't have much of a chance of selling it otherwise. It realy doesn't bother me though. Like you, I'll just new stuff. I already have another G70, and can get my with cheap audio gear in the interim.

I'm inherently hard on carpet. I'm at home all day for work, and at night on my off time. That amounts to a lot of abuse on the carpet. I have trails in the carpet that look like train tracks that run from the master bedroom (my office) to the garage (my warehouse), bathroom and kitchen. I'm also constantly moving inventory (acquiring and selling) through the house. It would take me a while to f*ck it up again, but it might be a while before the house sells. I'd REALLY hate to put new carpet in and screw it up before I can sell the house. That would SUCK!

[Phil Smith]

[Phil Smith]

Being the cautious type, I've been researching this a little today. I understand that companies like www.whymls.com will get your house listed on MLS, but it doesn't seem like they do much else. When it comes to contracts and offers, I'm not sure they give any guidance. It seems they say to get a contract lawyer. That could be a big expense, making selling yourself not such a savings.

I haven't a clue how to handle an offer and agreeing on terms and a contract. Wallace, since you're the old pro, hopefully you can clarify some of this.

[MikeEby]

[Phil Smith]

Hey Mike,

I think you're right, but I hate to risk messing new carpet up. Not only do I wear trails in it, it get stains from moving merchandise around. And it's not just this carpet I've f*ck*** up. Every place I've lived since I started selling music gear, the carpet has been trashed.

Really, I'd rather get less for the house than to live in fear of f-ing up the carpet.