Fix it before you List it!

Thinking about listing your home for sale? Do a walk through with your agent a week or two before the list date. We spend a lot of time talking about “Staging” your home for sale, but what about repairs?

Generate a list of things in your house that need fixed, repaired or replaced before you put it on the market, here’s why:

1. Potential buyers will guess high for the repair, usually 3 times higher than actual cost. They will then try to reduce the price by that inflated amount.


2. When the home is inspected it will show up on the inspection report which here again calls into question cost of repair plus one more task that you as the seller may have to accomplish prior to closing.


3. When the appraiser comes out the needed repair will only call for closer scrutiny. Example: moss on the roof. A perfectly good roof may be called into question only because the moss on it drew the appraiser’s attention to it, thus forcing him to call for an additional roof inspection.

The goal is not to try to hide anything, rather to address items that are likely to be brought into question and may jeopardize a good offer or at least slow down the closing.

Regarding disclosure, you are typically better off to disclose any issues up front. Buyers will typically feel short changed or taken advantage of if they learn of a pre-existing problem late in the transaction. Most states have a property disclosure statement that needs to be provided by the seller. Filling one out fully and honestly will protect you as the seller by reducing legal issues down the road with the buyer. Talk with your agent or your real estate attorney for specifics in your area.
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Tomorrows Generation of Home Buyers are Here Today!!

Who are they? They are the Echo Boomers or X Gen. They were born between 1982 and 1995. They are between the ages of 10 and 23. They are the children of the Baby Boom crowd.

This group of 80 million have never known a time without a computer. They are more tech savvy then any previous generation. Much of their lives revolve around what their parents would consider gadgets, and doodads their grandparents never would have dreamed of. (Fortunately a few did or we would not have them today.)

This group will affect what a house looks like, how it functions, how we build them and how we sell them. In order to serve the Echos a typically older crowd of real estate professionals will have to change how they work, how they meet and how they communicate with their new buyers.

Wired houses....video, audio, security, networking and of course high speed internet.

Speaking of high speed, this generation wants quick and constant input. Prompt returned e-mails, updated photos, daily updates on their transactions. Their consumer pressure and improved electronic communication will decrease the time it takes to buy a home. What is now a 4 to 6 week process will become condensed into a 1 to 3 week transaction.

They are more likely to find and choose their Realtor from a web page, because their friend sent them an IM or through a Blog.

The home they choose will have been viewed from every angle without having even visited the house. They will have viewed virtual tours, a photo walk thru and downloaded pictures from space. They will know who bought it, when and for how much via information available on the internet.

Their offer will jump from electron to electron over miles of wire as it makes its way between buyer, seller, agents, lenders, appraisers, title and escrow....and these buyers would have it no other way.