1. When did you and DH decide it was the right time to list your home?
2. Did you look at any homes while yours was selling or did you wait until you had an offer (since most people need to sell their home before they can buy another)?
3. Did you clean through your house and get it presentable before contacting an agent or did you contact an agent first to see how much stuff you needed to clear out?
-Backstory: DH and I know we want to move before we have kids. I'd love to sell our house in the spring/early summer. The house doesn't need any work. We just have a lot of junk - mainly in our basement since it is storage that we need to clear out. I just don't know how to go about all this or how to even approach DH and figure out when the right time is. I'm praying that our house will sell fairly soon and that we could find another home and be moved in before the end of next year. If we can't find a home we would probably just get an apartment until we find something because we are going to be really picky and want our next home to be it.
Re: Those who have sold a house.....
We did not sell, but had ours on the market for several months, so I'll throw in my 2 cents.
1. We were considering moving to another area of town and thought we'd see if we could get what we wanted for it. We knew we did not have to sell and have done lots of things to our house, so we were pretty firm on price within $5K or so.
2. We met with our builder and knew what we wanted to do as far as home options, but we were unsettled on an area.
3. We had an agent come over and tell us what needed to be de-cluttered and then did a market assessment. We then decided to do FSBO to alleviate realtor fees. We had really good traffic because we listed with the MLS, so lots of agent traffic anyways. We had a few offers, but they were not what we wanted, so we're sitting on it for a while yet. The homes that have sold in our neighborhood recently have lost money in 8 years, so we're not willing to do that.
Good luck! Showings are a pain, but if you get what you want from it, it's totally worth it!
The big thing you will hear when you put your house on the market (watching HGTV), is remove a lot of your personal stuff out...ie personal photos. You want people to come in an picture themselves in your house. Get rid of any really crazy paint colors you may have. If you have a bright pastel green in the room, change it to a neutral color. If you have a dark green carpet, get rid of it.
Clean doors, baseboards, walls...basically spruce everything up.
If you have a room that is being used for something other than it's main purpose, look into making it look like its original purpose. IE some people will not use the dining room for a dining room but as a office/clutter space. Change it so it looks like a dining room.
1. When did you and DH decide it was the right time to list your home?
We aren?t married, but we knew it was time as we needed more space and knew we would be getting married soon and having kids.
2. Did you look at any homes while yours was selling or did you wait until you had an offer (since most people need to sell their home before they can buy another)?
We even looked before it was on the market to just see what was out there. We did sell our house in one day and had a hell of a time finding a new house. I thought the hard part was selling, for us it was buying a home. We looked at probably 75-100 homes (no lie). We actually offered on three, wanted to offer on another but they accepted an offer the day we looked at it. I?m so happy it all turned out the way it did, but let me tell you?I cried?a lot. It was emotionally exhausting. We were afraid we wouldn?t have a house and it took us three months to close. Have a back-up plan for where you would live if you house sells quickly and you don?t find a house. And DON?T settle. We almost did, and I?m so glad I was picky and that we waited. Totally worth the wait.
3. Did you clean through your house and get it presentable before contacting an agent or did you contact an agent first to see how much stuff you needed to clear out?
We cleaned everything out. Organized storage, painted, etc etc etc. We even put in new counters just to sell it?and I think it worked. We took down all personal photos, put away everything on bathroom counters and even cleaned out our storage closet so that it looked organized. We also cleaned out our closets to make them look roomier?that?s a big deal to some people.