Archive for November, 2010
How We Sold Our House By Owner
Well, I guess we haven’t actually sold our house by owner yet. That’ll happen at closing in mid December (fingers crossed). But here’s how we got an offer. We’re hardly real estate experts, so this post is just a roundup of things that happened to work for us. Here’s hoping they help anyone else attempting to DIY their house sale too. The cool thing is that the people buying our house aren’t blog readers (they’d never heard about us or YHL- but we disclosed the blog to them to ensure that they were cool with images of the house with our furniture remaining on the site). Anyway, we thought it would encourage other FSBO peeps to know that you don’t need a blog to sell your house. But it was interesting for us to learn that our blog had nothing to do with attracting the people who are buying our house. Anyway, enough jibber jabber, on with the show:
Tip #1: Pick the right asking price. This is paramount. And we didn’t do this at first. We priced the house too high and we only had two showings in the first two weeks. Then we finally got real with ourselves, dropped things by about 25K, and priced our house to sell in this less-than-ideal market based on what similar homes in our area were going for. Wouldn’t you know we had fourteen showings within two weeks of the price drop – and an offer within two days of it. Really can’t stress this step enough.
Tip #2: Clean and declutter your house within an inch of its life. Now is not the time to leave a pile of socks in the laundry room or a stack of bills in the kitchen. And dust bunnies have no place in your house when it’s on the market. Oh and make sure the house doesn’t smell funny while you’re at it. Because that’s just gross. Sure you’d hope prospective buyers can look beyond any lapses in cleanliness, but those dirty spots can signal to the buyer that the house isn’t cared for in other areas either. Here are a few posts about what else we did to get things ready for sale-age (here, here, here, and here).
Tip #3: Market the heck out of it. The amazing thing about using a realtor (which we definitely would have done if we couldn’t get ‘er done on our own after a few months of trying) is the fact that they can draw a ton of potential buyers to your house thanks to clients, connections, and widespread publicity on sites like MLS. To offset this advantage you’ll have to do a heckova lot of legwork yourself. The FSBO route isn’t easy by any means. We paid to put ads in the paper, re-listed our house on craigslist every few days, bought a for-sale sign and made countless fliers for the front yard, and eventually spent $295 to put it on MLS ourselves (using this service). All told we spent about $500 marketing our house- but it certainly beats the $12k that we would have spent on a realtor.
Tip #4: Learn how to show the home in a way that appeals to buyers. We learned that keeping Clara, Burger, and myself out of the house (we went on nice long walks) while potential buyers were led on a quick tour by John was the most professional and crowd-pleasing way to conduct showings. After John’s speedy walk-through he would step outside and let people poke around on their own just to see how they liked the feel of the house without anyone hovering. And if it was raining sometimes Burgs, the bean, and I would hang out in the car since walks were out of the question.
Tip #5: Make a strong argument for why your house is worth buying. Your flier (and the things you mention when you show the home) really can make all the difference. We learned that pointing out that many items would convey with the sale really helped people see added value (we tossed in all of our appliances, window treatments, light fixtures, dining room shelving, and even the master bedroom built-ins & our bed frame). We also pointed out things like the size of our large .75 acre lot and our two-car garage, which are both rarities that most other homes on the market in our price point don’t offer. And of course mentioning perks like the newly remodeled kitchen and baths, the new roof, the refinished hardwood floors, the new windows, and the other upgrades that we put into our home seemed to really set us apart from some of the other old but un-updated brick ranches on the market.
Tip #6: Figure out what to do if you get an offer. The whole purpose of selling your house is to get an offer, but if you don’t know what to do when you get there, you’re kind of sinking your own battleship. You’ll definitely want to bone up on your negotiation skills learn how to trust smart people. Sure we were selling our home by owner, but we didn’t do it on our own. Not even close. We even asked the buyers agent that we used to purchase our new house a few questions along the way- and we definitely relied heavily on help from our closing attorney and our lending agent (both people that we’ve used before, so we really appreciated their opinions). When it came to ratifying the contract and getting through all the finer points like inspection negotiations and closing date determinations they really were our sounding board. Hiring a closing attorney is only a few hundred bucks (again, a lot cheaper than hiring a realtor to do all the marketing, negotiating, and ratifying) and you actually have to pay for a closing attorney whether you FSBO or do things through a realtor, so it was a no-brainer to rely on ours for all the help we could get.
Oh and thanks to the fact that most buyers will present you with an offer on paper, you just have to tweak that and “respond” to it (instead of drafting anything up from scratch). But you’ll definitely want to have the legally necessary papers on hand (like a lead paint disclosure form and a residential property disclosure form- both things that we googled and found online). Your closing attorney should be able to help you with those if you can’t track them down. I guess the key here is that a good closing attorney can really be an amazing resource- especially so you’re sure that everything you’re doing is 100% legit. Gotta protect yourself!
Tip #7: Rest assured that realtors won’t boycott a FSBO house. At least that wasn’t our experience. AT ALL. Nearly all of the showings that we attracted were to people with a buyers agent at their side (the agents were actually the ones calling us to schedule each showing). In fact, the people buying our house came through a realtor (so of course we owe a small percentage to that realtor since she’s acting as their agent) but we definitely appreciated not having to shell out close to 7K to a sellers agent as well (since we took on the marketing and the showings ourselves and did all the paperwork directly with a closing attorney as opposed to using a sellers agent for those items).
So that’s what we did to get ‘er done. Again- we definitely would have used a realtor if we didn’t have much luck in the first few months, but we’re just such DIYers that it felt fitting to give the whole for-sale-by-owner thing a shot and share our experiences with you guys. Is there anyone else out there who sold their house by owner? Feel free to chime in with more tips and tricks. We’re certain there are at least a few things we forgot to mention and probably a ton of things that we didn’t even think of. It’s amazing what a learning curve the whole experience can be. Now we’ll just be holding our breath for a quick and painless closing in around a month’s time. Wahooo. Is it December yet?
Thanks Glassing
Sherry is a diligent gratitude journal keeper, so with Thanksgiving around the corner we thought it would be nice to adapt her daily practice and create a so-thankful activity that we both could have fun with. And that’s where this 99 cent apothecary jar from Salvation Army comes in (it was originally $1.99 but we scored it during a 50% off glassware sale).
We’ve both been itching to take on a glass etching project, and seeing this one on How About Orange just about put us over the edge. So we ever-so-creatively (kidding) decided that we wanted to etch the word “thanks” on the base of the jar. But we didn’t have/were too lazy to get a stencil (nor did we want to be limited to off-the-shelf fonts) so we decided to make our own.
Our homemade stencil consisted of a simple computer print out of our text (in Helvetica) scotch taped over a piece of painter’s tape stuck to the back of our wooden cutting board. I promise this will make more sense in a moment.
With everything taped down, I used an exacto knife to cut out my letters one by one – all the way through the painter’s tape, but not through the cutting board (I’m not that strong). Oh, and yes I decided not to be picky about preserving the hole in the “a.” But we did crack up when Sherry said “I don’t think we need to save the a-hole.” I know, we’re like fifth graders over here.
With the “stencil” cut, we then disposed of the paper print-out guide and slowly peeled the painter’s tape from the cutting board, being careful not to rip the tape or let it stick to itself. Once it was safely off the cutting board, we stuck it right onto the glass jar. Ta-dah! Tape stencil mission complete.
The hump in the “h” got a little wonky, but other than that we were pleasantly surprised by how well our makeshift stencil was holding up. And with a couple more strips of tape on the sides (just to be safe) we were ready to apply the etching cream without having to worry about getting it in the wrong places.
We picked up this Armour Etch cream for $6.50 at Michael’s (thanks to a 50% off coupon) and broke out this tiny paint brush to apply it.
After letting the cream work its magic for about 1.5 minutes, we washed it off in the sink and removed our tape stencil. We had a tiny smidge of bleeding between the “k” and “s” but otherwise it worked out beautifully. The instructions made it unclear how long we should keep the cream on (since that depends on your “stencil” material). But because our tape wasn’t as durable as a vinyl stencil might be (ie: etching cream probably could have eaten through it in a few minutes) we just kept an eye on the backside of the stencil through the glass and washed the cream off & immediately removed the tape when we noticed that the edges weren’t looking as crisp as they had in the beginning of the cream-application phase (since the etching cream was probably starting to break down the tape at that point). Amazingly, it turned out really well. Especially given our what-are-we-doing method of trial and error. Now we’ve got the perfect little spot to collect our “thanks” this month.
See, the plan is to each write something that we’re thankful for on these small colorful cards that Sherry cut out of scrapbooking paper from Michael’s (for 50 cents a pop, we got three autumn-esque sheets). Even though we’re starting a bit late, our goal is to write one per day all month long so by November 30th we’ll have accumulated sixty notes of gratitude (we already wrote extras to make up for the lost time). Oh and we have a no peeking policy so we won’t know what each other has written until the end of the month. That should be a fun little family reveal.
We’re also thinking at the end of the month we’ll punch holes in the cards so we can store the collection on a ribbon or a binder ring. That way when we break out our “thanks jar” next year we can relive all of the things that we were grateful for in 2010 and create another collection of things we’re thankful for that year. Who knows, it could become a great little family tradition with Clara and future kiddo(s) adding their thanks to the pile when they’re older. And we love that we’ll have a yearly account of everything that we’re grateful for. Kind of like a diary, but less high maintenance since we only have to scribble one small thing down each day for a month.
Do you guys have any fun Thanksgiving traditions? Any glass etching stories of success or horror? An acute attraction to printed scrapbooking paper like my wife? She can’t be the only one who geeks out in the paper aisle.
Psst- Big deal. Clara’s turning six months old and we’re about to start solids. Ahhh! Check out our roundup of cute kid plates, bowls, bibs, and placemats over on Babycenter, and feel free to chime in with starting-solids advice.
Fab Freebie: Love Is Blinds
*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!***
Sure, we’d all love to gaze out of our home’s windows at some breathtakingly beautiful vista. But in reality, some windows are portals to the back of the neighbor’s fence, an unwelcome glare, or even the view of a man walking around in his tighty-whities all night because he doesn’t realize his curtains are sheer (true story from my New York City days – yup, just like the naked guy from Friends). All the more reason to appreciate window coverings, like these beauties from Next Day Blinds:
This week Next Day Blinds is shucking out $200 to one lucky lad or lady to spend towards any custom-made, premium-quality, ready-the-next-day blinds, shades, sheers, rollers, romans or even shutters. And they’ve got enough styles to make your head spin (which you can browse right here).
Here are the giveaway deets:
- PRIZE: $200 towards any Next Day Blinds order
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “BLIND ME!” and…
- BONUS QUESTION: …tell us about a view you wish you could cover (or are glad that you’ve already covered). Maybe the neighbors can look right into your bathroom (or vice versa)? Or you once stayed in a hotel room with a not so nice view?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, November 10th at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
- PRIZE SHIPS: The 50 United States
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here Thursday morning for the announcement of our winner. Good luck…
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And our one lucky winner (as selected by random.org) is… Hien (who’s looking to cover up some sun-drenched kitchen windows). Congrats!
Note: We weren’t paid or perk’d for hosting this giveaway, we just take them on to reward our lovely readers! See our Giveaway FAQs page for more info. Pics from Next Day Blinds.
Showings A Plenty
We showed our house a total of 16 times. So eventually we got to be old pros at it.
At first we had no idea what we were doing. I mean of course we:
- cleaned the house like mad (vacuumed, dusted, etc)
- picked up all dog and baby toys
- turned on all the lights so everything looked bright and welcoming
- baked something yummy beforehand (so it would smell as good as it looked)
- removed the cutting board and the dishtowel from the counter in the kitchen so there was more granite on display
- removed the bath mat in the full bathroom (to show off more of the stone floor tile)
- polished all the faucets and fixtures to make them shine (water marks are easy enough to wipe down)
- tidied our bedroom’s built-in closets (since we were offering the wardrobes and the bed frame with the sale of the house, we wanted them to be neat when people poked around)
- emptied the garbage and recycling
- made sure all the toilet lids were down
- blew the driveway, front porch, and patio (so acorns and errant leaves didn’t sabotage our curb appeal)
- unlocked the separate entry basement door (so people could slip in and out more easily)
All those things were fine and dandy, but we didn’t actually get a handle on showing our house in the most professional way the first few times we tried it. Which was a shame because it was especially important since we were attempting to sell our house by owner. Seriously, we were nuts. Allow me to paint you a picture: the doorbell would ring and Burger would bark for five minutes while I held the baby and sang to her while letting people in and trying to quiet Burger. Then John would offer to give people the tour as dog and baby chaos ensued in the background. No wonder the first two showings were a bust.
But by attempt number three we got a bit more savvy. We learned that one single solitary person doing each showing (with zero dogs/babies in the background) was the way to go – heck, maybe we could even convince someone we were realtors in a past life. So I outsourced the showings to John since he’s the more detail and date oriented person (he actually remembers the month that we got new windows and when we last serviced our HVAC) while Burger, Clara, and I ducked out of the house for a nice long walk around the neighborhood before the doorbell rang. Can I just say that I’ve lost nearly five pounds thanks to all that walking? Well, that and maybe some house-for-sale stress. Sixteen showings might not sound like a lot, but it sure felt like it to us! Especially when we hit our all-time high of four showings in one day two Sundays ago. Yeah, that’s a lot of walking.
But where do pooch, bean, and I go if it’s raining out? Here’s where we got creative. John masterminded the idea of parking our car a few houses down. That way Clara, Burger, and I could hang out in the warm dry Altima while John worked his house-showing magic (and even rock out to the radio and approve comments via iPhone while we were at it). It sounds kind of depressing but it was actually pretty hilarious. In fact I snapped these pictures to document the good time that was had by all. First, my kiddos enjoyed sharing my lap:
And Clara had some fun with a granola bar that I found in the middle console (the wrapper kind of made a crunching sound like a rattle)…
I also learned that keys can fill in for toys in a pinch (you know I love working with what I have).
Plus Clara earned her varsity letter in napping. Just look at her go in the driver’s seat.
So in summary, we were so very fortunate to have so much interest in our home and we’ll share all the for-sale-by-owner tricks and tips that we picked up along the way soon (when it comes to marketing, getting traffic, and all that jazz). Until then Clara, Burger and I can be found hanging out in the car. You know, for old time’s sake.
Tag, You’re It
Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes.
Some of you already noticed that after Friday’s new house news we made a little tagline switcheroo in our blog header. Since it no longer seemed accurate to describe our site as “two young people falling in love with their first house” (and “two young people making the emotional decision to leave their first house so that they can take on new projects and have more room to grow” seemed a bit long-winded) we opted for this new one:
It’s no “Got Milk?” but we like that it now incorporates Clara & Burger instead of sounding like it’s the John & Sherry show (let’s be honest, our kids are the real stars of this production). And you know I love a good math reference worked in there whenever possible. We just hope it sort of explains what the heck “Young House Love” means in the first place. Because admittedly it’s not the most self-explanatory website name in the world.
