By Mike Bodeen · 15 October 2018
For various reasons, my family moves a lot – about every 5 years. I used to think this was terribly abnormal, until I learned that Arizona leads the nation as the most frequent movers in the country. Oh, and the least frequent movers? Maine (15 year old study, take it with a grain of salt).
And though I’ve been a Realtor/Broker for four decades, I don’t like it one bit. Truth be told, the word hate would not too far off the mark either. I explain to folks that I subject myself to this so that I can adequately empathize with buyers and sellers – especially sellers about what they’re in for and what they’re about to go through.
Why are we selling? We currently have a two story non-split floor plan. For health reasons for one of our children, we need a single level split floor plan. We love our home, especially the private location with a wilderness view towards Daisy Mountain from our backyard. Really, Realtor puffery aside, the view is unmatched in the North Valley anywhere near our price range. Twenty years ago we moved here from the Lake Tahoe Truckee area in the mid 90’s where we enjoyed an awesome Mountain views, so for us a good view is very important.
“Dad,” he said, “you’re thinking like a seller. With this lot, and the right improvements, you’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table if you don’t do it.”
So anyway, we can’t control how life happens which can change lives, and this has. We found a home to buy on the same street in Tramonto where we lived previous. The gracious sellers agreed to give us a contingency to sell our home as they were buying a new build which wouldn’t be completed until next month.
So, I’ll confess, my thinking was to just get it show ready without making any major improvements, but my son (and business partner) Jonathan felt that we should redo the kitchen, floors, and master bath. “Dad,” he said, “you’re thinking like a seller. With this lot, and the right improvements, you’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table if you don’t do it.”
My rebuff was that we didn’t have time to do that as we were in a contract to buy the other home. He persisted. I relented to check out the cost and timing. We did have a really good flooring guy so we called him and in a day he was out here. Not only did “Kenny” have a very reasonable price on very cool wood-like tile, but he had connections to granite, a cabinet painter, and shower installer. He said we could get it all done in 3 weeks. Now it began to sound plausible.
Well as things usually do, it ended up being more like 4 or 5 weeks until all the improvements were finally done and we were able to get it on the market, which was just this last Friday. Check out a few before an after shots here, and if you want to see the rest, we’ve got it listed just below the article.
These sorts of decisions shouldn’t be embarked on lightly. It’s easy to spend money doing the wrong improvements or even spending TOO much money doing the right things. Case in point, we received two different quotes for having the bathroom shower and tub redone, $4,500 with one, and $22,000 with the other! Can you guess which bid we went with? And no, they did not do shoddy work. It’s easy to find company’s that will charge way too much for these sorts of things… hint? It’s usually the ones spending a fortune on advertising…
Ultimately some questions need to be answered so you understand the risk of improving your own home before sale.
1. What will it sell for now if I make no improvements?
2. What improvements should I think about making
3. what finishes should I pick out? (hint: don’t trust yourself, you’ve been with your own home too long and can’t see it the way potential buyers will)
4. What will these improvements cost me?
5. What will it be worth after I make X improvements?
The answer to each of these questions is critical, and the hard part is there are no definite answers, just educated guesses (usually we can have certitude within a range), which is why it is doubly important to get professionals you trust involved in the whole process from start to finish. Don’t worry, I know some good Realtors… 😉