So You Wanna Sell A House?
Yeh, yeah, yeah. "Oh Jason, It's been forever since you updated."
Whatever. For the record, I STILL have people asking me where I can
get light bulbs for their
Easy-Bake ovens (the answer, I think is
Office Depot.)
So, a lot's happened since the last update. Among the major items:
we're going to sell our house. We've been hemming and hawing (and for the
record, I do not know how to either hem or haw, but it's a good expression and
I'm running with it) about selling the house for a number of months but around
the beginning of July, we decided to finally put the house on the market.
We thought about doing that about a year and a half ago, but one of the realtors
we interviewed told us if we waited until the new school was built and we were
zoned for it, we could have a much stronger selling position. It takes a
large amount of...um...what's the word that won't get me in trouble? Oh
yeah, gumption. It takes a whole lot of gumption for a realtor to tell us
to not put our house on the market, so we waited and when the time came we chose
him to represent us.
Lesson #1 of "So you wanna sell a house": Go with the Honest
Realtor. The person who says "you might want to wait" is probably the
person who you want to represent you.
The man's name? Bill Ward.
His job? Sell our house at a price that would be most advantageous to my family.
When my wife and I bought this house, Bill was the agent in charge of selling
houses in the subdivision, so we figured, if anyone can sell the house to
someone else, it would be the guy who sold it to us. Compound that with
the fact that he told us to wait for the school to catch up with us, and you've
got a force to be reckoned with.
So we brought him into the house and asked him what we needed to do to get
ready for putting the house on the market. If you've watched more than one
episode of "Sell This
House" then you know what he said: De-clutter, remove all vestiges of a
family, replace any carpet that the dog's thrown up on more than twice.
After consulting with him, we decided on an asking price and other normal
items and he became our listing agent. So the first thing we wanted to
tackle was our carpets. For the uninformed, our house is nine years old
and we've had a dog and a cat since day one of the house. Needless to say
(at least if you have a cat or a dog or a child under three years of age) some
puke is going to hit the carpet. Given the fact that we have a dog, a cat,
and have had two children pass through their potty-training years in this house,
the living-area carpet has seen better days. With that in mind, we headed off to
find some flooring to replace the carpet that has seen better days.
Our home is a two-story job with all the living areas downstairs and the
bedrooms upstairs. There are four major areas downstairs: the Kitchen, the
Family Room, the Living Room and the Dining Room. The Living and Dining
Rooms were a "great room," which meant they were connected without any
interruption. If you've had a two-year old eating in a dining room with
carpet, you understand the issue with a great room that is carpeted. We
decided to divide the great room using flooring. We wanted to replace the
carpet in the Living Room and install laminate in the Dining and Family rooms
(along with the hall that connected them). We went to both Lowe's and
Home Depot for price quotes. I think by the hyperlinking you can tell
who we went with. It wasn't a price difference. The problem with
Lowe's was by the time the Home Depot Estimate person had been scheduled, come
out, submitted an estimate, and the work on our floor been scheduled, the Lowe's
estimator had called to schedule an appointment. Depending on your area,
things may be different, but in ours, the Depot was the first, so they got the
business.
Lesson #2 of "So you wanna sell a house" : Listen to your listing agent.
If the agent says replace the flooring, do it! He (or she) is doing this
as a profession and odds are, you've not had as much experience selling a home
as they have. The people who installed our floors were professional and
did a GREAT job. We bought some matching are rugs and runners and sat back and
enjoyed the view. After that, the only flooring issue downstairs was the
carpet. We called a local company and got the Living Room carpeted for as
cheap as we could. That's not to say the carpet was of an inferior
quality, but we made sure that we got the best deal for something that we
wouldn't mind living with for a while. So after the carpet downstairs was done,
we concentrated on the upstairs.
After nine years of moving furniture and normal wear and tear upstairs, the
carpet not only needed to be cleaned, but stretched. So sayeth the agent,
so let it be done. We called a local company and they stretched and
cleaned the carpet for a nominal fee. The problem with stretching and cleaning
the carpet of three bedrooms was...? Anyone? Bueller?
Where do you put the stuff that normally goes in three bedrooms? The
answer? If it doesn't break down into individual pieces (think Wal-Mart or
Target furniture) then it goes in the bathrooms. You would be amazed how
much furniture fits into a bathroom. So after the bedroom carpets are
stretched and cleaned, now what?
De-clutter. But I'm out of energy, so that will remain a story for
another day. Keep reading, gentle browser, we'll get this house sold.
Gasucawa,
Jason |
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