…with an appointment!
Remember the story I told you last week about getting a random knock on the door and three people wanting to see our house right that very second? (If not, check out the story first or none of this will make sense: Protect Yourself: Never Allow Uninvited Strangers in Your Home.)
That odd knock on the door was a good wake up call for us. I started doing lots of research on additional security measures we could take with our home. And I got off on a huge tangent on home automation (the things where you can turn on your lights using your phone or web browser) and discovered a ton of cool products.
But I digress. The people that scared the crap out of us, made me a bit paranoid, and caused me to lose a little bit of sleep the first night… yea, they came back. This time with an appointment set in advance through our realtor.
They surprised us on Sunday and set up an appointment on Monday to see the house the following day. We made arrangements to get the house ready, get the dog out, and all that.
The day after the showing we had formal feedback that they were going to pass.
As much as that sucked to hear we were thrilled to learn it was a real agent with real clients that really wanted to see our house.
The agent must be a real winner, too. He didn’t leave a card inside the house like every other agent. Irk!
Good Showing Traffic
We’re seeing a lot of good traffic on our home. We’ve been really pleased, you know, except for the not getting an offer part. We’ve had four showings in the past two weeks, and had an open house yesterday. We’ve gotten excellent feedback on how our home looks and is priced. I think we have done a lot of good things that buyers are looking for. It’s just the game of finding the right buyer… that has the right money… at the right time.
No one said this was going to be easy!
In fact this home selling process has been very eye opening for us. We’ve never sold a home, and we are learning a lot. (I’m not so sure this is a good thing or not — sometimes learning is painful.)
Later this week I’ll be sharing two more stories about our home selling (or, attempting to) process.
First I tell you how we got our real estate agent to quit. Yea, I’m not kidding. That’s a good one. (This will post on Wednesday.)
The second story will focus on how we’ve staged our house in preparation for showings and hopefully selling. (This will post on Friday.)
But I’m all ears to writing about what you want to read. I’ve told you a story of us getting scared, and I have two more in the works this week. What else do you want to know about what we’ve learned?
Furthermore, I’d love to read your home selling tips. How many have you done this before? How many have sold multiple times? What tricks of the trade have you learned?
{ 3 comments }
Phew, glad it was legit even though the agent is clearly an idiot!
We only sold one home and it was a rental in a bad neighborhood during the subprime mortgage crisis. The realtor makes all the difference in my opinion. The first was useless, the second got our house sold in 5 days.
I made a book with pictures and itemized all the improvements on the property for the last 5 years and the cost/year. (to show it’s been upkept). The realtor also asked us whey we bought the property in the first place (it was the big yard), so we made sure we highlighted that.
I also painted everything I could. The first realtor said I didn’t need to, the second realtor told me that first impressions are super important. The apartment wasn’t fancy but it was spotless and move in ready. I also fixed everything that was broken and priced the house slightly under market value.. At this time there were 1100 similar properties for sale some that had been on the market for over a year.
So my learnings:
1. A house will sell in any market if it’s priced right.
2. People want to know the house has been maintained, so first impressions (like new paint) and a list of the work done helped a lot.
We had a terrible experience with selling our first home. Our agent was a client of my husband’s so we assumed he’d be good. Nope–he REALLY overpriced it so that we got almost no showings, didn’t understand our urgent need to sell right away and gave no feedback. We had already moved out of state and took the furniture with us (HUGE mistake). It sat for almost 1 1/2 years. We switched realtors and got a guy with 6 kids–talk about someone who’s motivated to get a commission! He gave us instant feedback on the price and a couple of items that needed attention. I think he sold it for us in about 2-3 months.
Lesson learned: Don’t get greedy on your price–be realistic and leave the furniture because buyers have NO imagination.
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