Shorewood on the Market

Eventually, it was time to move.  Shorewood was fun while it lasted, but the general layout of the older home no longer met our changing needs.  When our realtor came in to put a price on our house, she said, "You need to de-personalize and de-clutter.  Otherwise, everything else looks great and move-in ready."  Move-in ready is apparently a huge deal to non-do-it-yourselfers.  We wouldn't know anything about that!  My husband gets turned off by that phrase because to him, it means we are paying extra for something we could have done for ourselves.  Did I mention he's super cheap? :)  So, I went around the house as if I were a buyer.  I tried to imagine myself as several different buyers: old, young, family, single, different races and genders.  I tried to be very neutral with everything and we took down every single picture of people and replaced it with a picture of scenery.  While I was walking around as a buyer, there were several things I found to do for cheap that could deter a buyer, but I could easily fix before we sold.  Here are some of the finishing touches:

I forgot to mention that we removed some giant shrubs that overtook the walkway and replaced with Euonymus bushes.  We actually had a Euonymus bush that always looked great, year-round and thrived in our flower bed when we moved in, but it was in a weird location and was growing into the concrete stairs.  I had no idea about plants, so I cut a sprig of it off and took it to the barn nursery downtown and they showed me where I could buy them.  The main things I focused on were low-maintenance and pretty for most of the year.

Curb appeal is huge to buyers and this house didn't have lots of it.  Like I said before, we replaced all of our windows eventually, which helped with the general look of the house for sure.  I also color matched the paint from the soffit and touched up some areas that needed repair.  The front porch needed to be painted too and felt like a dark black hole when you walked up.  I chose a coordinating lighter color to brighten up the feel when people walked up.  It's actually the same color used on the stucco on the back of the house.

Another easy solution: pressure wash the stairs and sidewalks.  This was very cheap since my dad owned a pressure washer.  It looked so much newer after we did this!

Mulch is also very inexpensive.  We added black trim around the flower beds and then mulched to define the area.  Even though our flower beds look fairly empty, the lady buying the house told me, "I was so excited about your flower beds!  They have so much potential!"  She apparently loved to garden.  I think potential is really the key here.  You want your buyer to think your house has the potential to be great, not the potential to be a lot of unwanted projects and work.

Show off your assets.  We had some things going for us.  So we showed them off!  Every time I got a call or text that our house was going to be shown, I staged big time!  I opened every single curtain and let in as much light as I possibly could.  I also cleaned, straightened, and hid anything I felt like made the house too much my taste and not the buyers.

Upstairs guest bedroom: we cleaned out all of the closets (which were usually crammed full of junk!) and staged with neutral bedding and window treatments.   I also painted the ceiling bright white and the walls a light neutral shade.

This master bath was not so masterful.  Pedestal sinks are so in right now, and I just don't get it.  There is NO storage!  For living purposes, we had a small bookshelf packed full of our stuff between the sink and toilet, but I wasn't about the leave that out when we sold our house.  I did hang a small shelf above the curtain rod to hold our essentials in pretty jars.  It's very hard to actually live in a house on the market!

Take something weird and turn it into something cool.

A weird little nook turned out to be the perfect downstairs linen closet.  An ottoman (which made the den upstairs feel too cramped) made this area off of the garage feel more like a mud room and less like a funky space.  The thing you hate about the house you're selling could be the thing the buyer loves about your house! 






Now, I'm no expert, but I do watch an unhealthy amount of HGTV, and we sold our house in 3 months.  I think asking for a realistic price and doing the things our realtor suggested really helped us move our house quickly.

Other helpful advice if you are thinking about selling:  Take lots of pictures and try to make each picture make the room look its personal best.   Open the curtains, turn on the lamps, get the right angle.  Our realtor posted our listing on websites like Zillow and Trulia with the pictures, and we had several interested buyers. 

Also, big-ticket items such as: new roof, gutters, windows, and AC/heat units are really annoying to buy because you know when you sell, you will not get that money back dime for dime.  But, you will sell the house more quickly and have fewer people that see the lack of those things as a deal-killer. 

About the price:  Everyone wants a good deal on something, buying low and selling high.  My husband is one of the most frugal men alive.  He hated to part with that house for a penny less than we put into it.  But, it is a buyers market.  I had to remind my husband that if we sold low, we might also be able to buy low, which we did!  We found a great deal on a home that had the bones of everything we wanted.  And so begins a new adventure, starting over on getting our new house exactly the way we want it!