Selling the house

[minkydog]

Metro-Atlanta/Cobb Co--I know some of you have bought and sold house several times, so I want to pick your brain. We have a 3BR, 2BA split level that is listed on Zillow at around $170,00. The surrounding homes are well worth over $250,000 (ours is the smallest house in the neighborhood.) I'm pretty sure we will not get that much for it, as there are several cosmetic things that need to be done (or not.) However, we have a spacious fenced backyard, which is great for dogs or kids. We have already re-done the kitchen, put up Hardy plank siding, put on a new roof, sump pump, & new hot water heater, and all new thermopane windows. We live in the metro-Atlanta area, in a good school district (Cobb), north of I-75, so it's a pretty nice area, and our small neighborhood is quiet, lovely, and safe. I would say our house is perfect for a young family just starting out.

I am hoping to retire in about 2-3 years, after which we plan to hit the road for at least several months until we decide if we want to have that arrangement permanently. I wouldn't be averse to selling now and investing the money, so we have an exit plan for the future. We would need to rent for a couple years, probably, and it would take care of the pesky problem of DS30 moving in and out from time to time. (He is currently with us finishing up welding school, after which we are all looking forward to him moving on!) That's a whole nother issue which I will not discuss here.

So, here are my questions. Understand that we will be unable to do these things ourselves:

• We have pecan colored inside doors and trim. Do you think it is worth the effort to repaint those white or just leave them alone? I'd personally rather not paint, as I would expect that to be an expensive project.
• The downstairs hardwoods are in decent condition, except for some wear & tear at one end of the dining table, an area 2' x 2ft near the back door, and an area of about 6ft x 4ft in one end of the kitchen. Otherwise, they look good. Would you sand and re-stain the whole thing or just polish real well?
• The bathrooms have dated tile. The tub and shower surrounds are in decent condition, white tile. I would be willing to put in new counters and sinks, and re-glaze the tub. Do you think we need to redo the floors or just go with it?
• Popcorn ceilings, ugh. We have taken down the popcorn in the kitchen and main hall, but the rest of the rooms have popcorn ceilings that are not attractive. Would you take them down, leave them up, or just dry-wall over them?

We plan to deep clean and re-paint the whole interior and that is probably something that I *can* do myself, with the help of the adult kids. We also plan to have our landscape guy come in and freshen up the front and backyards.We need to put down flooring and baseboards in the basement, and finish out the laundry room with flooring, trim, and drywall, all of which would need to be completed by someone else.

So what do you say? We plan to bring n a couple real estate agents later this fall and get their opinions, as well.

 

[DiannaVM]

Honestly, I wouldn't put too much effort into most of the stuff you listed, unless you can do it yourself. Yes, in some instances it would make the home more attractive to potential buyers, but it wouldn't necessarily drive up the value and it could possibly end up costing you more than what you would get in return. I am mostly talking about putting in new counters/sinks (unless they are in really bad shape, but not if they are just outdated), the issue with the popcorn ceiling and even re-tiling the bathroom floor (again, unless its in horrible shape with broken tiles and such). Basically, unless you can do it yourself, don't worry about it too much. As long as your home is clean, move-in ready and structurally sound, all of these things are extras you don't really need to snag a buyer who may or may not see the value in the upgrades you do.

Painting, staining the wood floor, and the landscaping I WOULD do to keep your home looking fresh and welcoming, but again, I would only do the minimum in the landscaping to make your house appealing. We don't have basements here the way you guys have, so I can't really say how much appeal having a finished basement has, but definitely finishing off the laundry room would be a plus and a worthwhile "upgrade" in my opinion.

 

[lovin'fl]

Well we have bought 6 homes and sold 4. We will be putting another on the market in about 8-10 months after living in it for 10 years. We have done a lot too and are cutting off doing anymore. I feel like the next owners can do it their way. Our next door neighbor just sold, same model but with addition on back) and they renovated top to bottom and got good $$ for their house. But they owned it for like 30 years (and bought from his parents) and walked away with a killing even after dropping all that $$ to renovate. I feel like we will get the same price whether we do some more work or not. Lord knows all the houses we've looked at, and we've looked at about 60 used homes, there has NEVER been one that was completely turn key (just the new build communities).

But, having said that, I know bathrooms and kitchens sell. Our 3 bathrooms are renovated top to bottom so they are good but our kitchen is in need of an overhaul. We just don't think we'll get that money back. We're already a larger model in the neighborhood and have the newly finished basement so we might out price what folks are looking to spend if we do anymore renovations. We bought in 2007 and our home value took a dive right after. Still down pretty low.

 

[firecracker725]

Metro-Atlanta/Cobb Co--I know some of you have bought and sold house several times, so I want to pick your brain. We have a 3BR, 2BA split level that is listed on Zillow at around $170,00. The surrounding homes are well worth over $250,000 (ours is the smallest house in the neighborhood.) I'm pretty sure we will not get that much for it, as there are several cosmetic things that need to be done (or not.) However, we have a spacious fenced backyard, which is great for dogs or kids. We have already re-done the kitchen, put up Hardy plank siding, put on a new roof, sump pump, & new hot water heater, and all new thermopane windows. We live in the metro-Atlanta area, in a good school district (Cobb), north of I-75, so it's a pretty nice area, and our small neighborhood is quiet, lovely, and safe. I would say our house is perfect for a young family just starting out.

I am hoping to retire in about 2-3 years, after which we plan to hit the road for at least several months until we decide if we want to have that arrangement permanently. I wouldn't be averse to selling now and investing the money, so we have an exit plan for the future. We would need to rent for a couple years, probably, and it would take care of the pesky problem of DS30 moving in and out from time to time. (He is currently with us finishing up welding school, after which we are all looking forward to him moving on!) That's a whole nother issue which I will not discuss here.

So, here are my questions. Understand that we will be unable to do these things ourselves:

• We have pecan colored inside doors and trim. Do you think it is worth the effort to repaint those white or just leave them alone? I'd personally rather not paint, as I would expect that to be an expensive project.
• The downstairs hardwoods are in decent condition, except for some wear & tear at one end of the dining table, an area 2' x 2ft near the back door, and an area of about 6ft x 4ft in one end of the kitchen. Otherwise, they look good. Would you sand and re-stain the whole thing or just polish real well?
• The bathrooms have dated tile. The tub and shower surrounds are in decent condition, white tile. I would be willing to put in new counters and sinks, and re-glaze the tub. Do you think we need to redo the floors or just go with it?
• Popcorn ceilings, ugh. We have taken down the popcorn in the kitchen and main hall, but the rest of the rooms have popcorn ceilings that are not attractive. Would you take them down, leave them up, or just dry-wall over them?

We plan to deep clean and re-paint the whole interior and that is probably something that I *can* do myself, with the help of the adult kids. We also plan to have our landscape guy come in and freshen up the front and backyards.We need to put down flooring and baseboards in the basement, and finish out the laundry room with flooring, trim, and drywall, all of which would need to be completed by someone else.

So what do you say? We plan to bring n a couple real estate agents later this fall and get their opinions, as well.

I think you should bring in the real estate agents because they are truly the experts on what needs to be done to get your home ready to sell. Also might not hurt to contact one of those TV shows that specialize in this type of thing. You're in a prime location for that.

 

[King Schultz]

Personally, I would talk with a realtor or two and find out if all that effort will add enough value to your asking price to make it worthwhile.

I've been in the construction business for the better part of 35 years (mostly painting and decorating, finishing drywall, etc.) and I can tell you that while you can paint stained and finished doors, it's a process and kind of a pain. Unless they are really beat up, I'd just use some furniture polish and shine them up.

If you decide to paint them, let me know and I'd be happy to give you some pointers.

 

[MickeySP]

I agree have a realtor do a walk through they will be brutally honest about what you should change or upgrade

Now saying that on the popcorn ceiling. Get it rid of it, it is very dated.

 

[Bluestars]

I think you should bring in the real estate agents because they are truly the experts on what needs to be done to get your home ready to sell. Also might not hurt to contact one of those TV shows that specialize in this type of thing. You're in a prime location for that.

I think this is great advice. When we sold our last house, we fixed up what we thought needed to be done. We contacted an agent and she went over what she thought needed to be done. She had companies that she used that charged very low rates because she got them work all of the time. We took her advice and sold our home two weeks after it was listed. I would definitely contact a good agent and have them look at your house and give their professional opinion. I wish we had contacted the agent before we did some of the work because it would have saved a lot of time.

 

[Darcy03231]

I would do fresh paint, get rid of the popcorn ceilings and do whatever minimal landscaping that needs to be done for curb appeal. It doesn't sound like you would recoup your money doing major renovations.

We sold our home 2 years ago. We did do some major renovations but in our area it made sense to do them. We more than doubled our money and our house was under contract in 48 hours.

One of the best things we did was to remove about two thirds of our stuff. We gave some away, donated some and cleaned out a bunch of junk. We rented a POD for things we wanted to keep but didn't need. We also painted all the rooms and did a deep clean.

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

We just accepted a purchase offer on our home of 30 years. DH is very handy, so it was a minimal investment to re-paint the entire interior in neutral (but not too boring!) colors and re-do most of the flooring (carpeting in bedrooms professionally done, but it was very much needed!) Removed all clutter, then some, making it look even more spacious, and clean clean clean. We got our offer in 2 weeks very close to asking price in an area of the Northeast that is quite economically depressed.Aside from the paint and cleaning I would definitely NOT paint natural woodwork, but that's my personal preference! Good luck, OP!

 

[HM]

I would not use Zillow as a basis for price. They are way off on the housing around us.

We did repaint every wall and take down the popcorn in the ceilings in our house before we sold it. Like you, we did this work over a space of time, mostly for ourselves, but also knowing we'd be selling in the future.

I don't know about the bathroom. We did redo our entire master bath (for us) and refloored our half bath (water damage).

 

[nkereina]

IMO, a realtor will likely tell you to do all the things you mentioned because all of the things you mentioned will help you sell your house faster. But the realtor may be able to tell you whether completing any of those projects would allow you to increase the asking price, because of the increase in value to the house.

• We have pecan colored inside doors and trim. Do you think it is worth the effort to repaint those white or just leave them alone? I'd personally rather not paint, as I would expect that to be an expensive project.

• The downstairs hardwoods are in decent condition, except for some wear & tear at one end of the dining table, an area 2' x 2ft near the back door, and an area of about 6ft x 4ft in one end of the kitchen. Otherwise, they look good. Would you sand and re-stain the whole thing or just polish real well?

• The bathrooms have dated tile. The tub and shower surrounds are in decent condition, white tile. I would be willing to put in new counters and sinks, and re-glaze the tub. Do you think we need to redo the floors or just go with it?

• Popcorn ceilings, ugh. We have taken down the popcorn in the kitchen and main hall, but the rest of the rooms have popcorn ceilings that are not attractive. Would you take them down, leave them up, or just dry-wall over them?

Just my opinions, I'm no real estate person!

1. I don't think painting the trim/doors would be all that expensive if you do it yourself. Time consuming and annoying, sure. But unless you have a ton of doors and trim everywhere, I'd think you could knock this off over a weekend or two for a couple hundred at most. I think it would brighten up the house and give it a more neutral decor, which I think most buyers would prefer. If I were a buyer, I'd prefer white doors and if they were any other color, I'd view it as a project. If the house has several projects like that which add up, I might knock the house down lower on my list.

2. Personally, I would just polish well and get them to look as best as possible. The new owner may want to sand and re-stain them a color of their choice after they move in.

3. I see both sides to the bathroom - it will help to sell and potentially increase the value, but a new owner may want to re-do this and pick out things like the floor and counter themselves. If the tile is in condition and is white/neutral in color, I may leave it.

4. I'd say most buyers would prefer no popcorn ceiling and know what a hassle it can be to remove it. If you're able to drywall over them, I'd probably do that for the least cost and effort, but still having a nice aesthetic effect.

 

[IDoDis]

We just sold our house less than 2 weeks ago. It was on the market less than 3 weeks in amediocre market. Last year a realtor told us we could expect to get $170 for our house in the condition that it was in which wasn't bad, but needed some help. Here's what we did over the course of a year:
1) updated stove, microwave (had one installed above the stove) and dishwasher to stainless steel -- $1000 plus $75 for electrician to install an electrical outlet for the microwave
2) replaced original (17 years) laminate counters with new laminate counters that looked more like granite -- $1700
3) had kitchen cabinets painted white and added cabinet handles and drawer pulls-- $450
4) painted 2/3 of the house (throughout the year when there was time) in neutral colors (not white) and touched up the rooms and all baseboards in the rooms that didn't get painted because they had been painted fairly recently-- $600
5) repaired outside stucco in spots where it had cracked or was worn -- $275
6) repaired carpet in 3 spots where dogs had chewed on it $100
7) put in a new porch light -- $40
Had a dead tree cut down and removed and had bushes trimmed --$200

Total: $3475-ish

Just sold the house for $198,500 -- $28k more than what we would have gotten last year, so that $3475k that we spent netted us about 20k when factoring in the housing price increase from last year to this year

When shopping for a house, big turn-offs for me were outdated kitchens, dark doors, and oak baseboards & trim. In your situation I would definitely paint the doors and trim white, fresh paint in all or most rooms, and consider updating your kitchen counters depending on the age and condition. People will pay for updated kitchens and baths, so if I could only afford to do one of those, it would be the kitchen. Don't worry about floors.

ETA I tried to attach a photo but it didn't work correctly

 

[indygirl99]

I would pay a buyers agent to come in and evaluate your home and what needs to be done.

If you only do some/half of the things that need to be done and I have to do the rest I'm going with the Zillow price.

I personally am over the white, white, white and glad to see it disappearing in our area.

If you have a fixer-upper and only fix half the stuff I am still buying a fixer-upper and not willing to pay the extra you put into it.

Of course I live in an area where people are having bidding wars and tearing down the houses to build multiple houses on the same property. So what I personally would buy may not be a good barometer.

 

[Darcy03231]

When shopping for a house, big turn-offs for me were outdated kitchens, dark doors, and oak baseboards & trim. In your situation I would definitely paint the doors and trim white, fresh paint in all or most rooms, and consider updating your kitchen counters depending on the age and condition. People will pay for updated kitchens and baths, so if I could only afford to do one of those, it would be the kitchen. Don't worry about floors.

But for every person that doesn't like them, there is one that does. When we sold our house two years ago the buyer was thrilled that we hadn't painted over the stained wood. She loved the contrast between the dark wood and the freshly painted light colored neutral walls. She passed over a lot of homes because they painted the woodwork white and she didn't want to either (1) strip it all and re-stain it or (2) go to the expense of replacing it all. It's much easier to paint the wood after you've bought a home if you don't like it stained rather that strip it and re-stain it.

 

[North of Mouse]

Seems like you home needs lots of work to make it appealing to most buyers. Have never sold a home in that condition, but our last home was ready for updating and new carpets (really needed them when we purchased it). I would probably do the least 'remodeling', would be hard to even break even (or not) plus going through it.

We decided 'not' to do any work except making it neat in and out as it was in a prime location. When we sold, the buyers had an inspection and made a list of what was needed, and what they would pass on. We made a counter list of things we 'would' do, and they accepted. May have gotten a 'little' higher price with more work done, but not enough to cover the cost, labor, and aggravation.

We sold several homes (even though guaranteed buy out with company otherwise) and all it takes is 'one' buyer!!!

 

[maxaroni]

This advise is from 25 years ago, from our agent. We needed to sell my MIL's house after she passed away and had asked our agent what we should do as the house needed quite a bit of work. We were told to basically sell "as is", but clean it as best as we could. We repaired minor things and scrubbed walls, kitchen, bathroom. The reason she said to sell as is was that with the house needing a lot of work, if we didn't do it all, the prospective buyer may think we were trying to cover something up. As in, why did they go through all of that to fix "x" and yet leave "y" undone. Don't know if that was correct or not, or if that philosophy would hold true today.

We wound up selling to someone for cash and it was his gift then to his newlywed son. Here's the house, your job is to fix it up. They did a wonderful job and from what they did, anything we would have done would have been a waste of money. For instance, it was a rancher (no basement) and they put more support beams in the attic, moved the furnace to the attic. Thus expanding the kitchen and making it an eat in kitchen. There was no garage and they added a breezeway to an attached garage. Therefore, when all of this was done, they repainted and put in new carpet etc. They also replaced all of the Windows.

 

[cvjw]

What school district is your house in? We are also metro Cobb County - in West Cobb. We sit in the Due West/McClure/Harrison school district. The houses in our neighborhood sell as is because the young buyers want their kids in our schools. If you have a desirable school district, a young family will want your home to get their kids in a great elementary school - and will probably take it as is.

If it is not as desirable to younger families, I would at least paint, update the bathrooms and try to get rid of the popcorn ceiling. I would also invest in getting your front yard looking warm and inviting - that is a excellent way to get potential buyers to tour your home

 

[Christine]

I've been out home shopping with my parents and have talked with a realtors. So thanks to all the home renovation shows out there now, people really seem to want a "turn key" condition how with everything updated done to it. I am in disagreement with that because I've been in many homes and have seen what they've chosen and I don't care for it. I hate dark beige tile in a bathroom and now we would be stuck with it for years. I would have been happy had they left the old stuff and gave me a cheaper price on the house.

I just went into a house last week that had 10 year old oak cabinets that were in good condition but dated looking. The countertop was laminate. The next day they were replacing the countertop with granite and they had the block sample sitting there showing prospective buyers. I told the realtor that it looked terrible and the high end granite looked ridiculous with the low end cabinets. He said "well if you want to write a contract today, I'll stop the install but otherwise, most people want this stuff done." I guess I'm different because I'd be miserable with those countertops and old cabinets.

Also, in our area, zillow seems to underestimate values so I wouldn't put too much stock into that.

I would probably leave the doors alone and let someone "imagine" what they want to do with them as long as they are in good condition.

I might tackle the floors but I might now.

I'd definitely fix the popcorn ceiling.

 

[IDoDis]

But for every person that doesn't like them, there is one that does. When we sold our house two years ago the buyer was thrilled that we hadn't painted over the stained wood. She loved the contrast between the dark wood and the freshly painted light colored neutral walls. She passed over a lot of homes because they painted the woodwork white and she didn't want to either (1) strip it all and re-stain it or (2) go to the expense of replacing it all. It's much easier to paint the wood after you've bought a home if you don't like it stained rather that strip it and re-stain it.

I suppose so. To me it's dated, but someone else might like it. When I bought my first house in 1990 I loved the dark wood and honey oak cabinets, but not anymore. According to the buyer's agent, the buyers of the house we are selling said the light colors, openness, and white cabinets are what set our house apart from the others in this price range.

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I wouldn't do a thing until you speak with a real estate agent except paint and freshen up the landscaping.

We have popcorn ceilings and I hate them but I'm not messing with removing them ever. Someone else can deal with that.
I'm in Gwinnett County, GA in a very desirable school district with not too many houses for sale right now - we've had people knocking on doors asking if we wanted to sell our house - both real estate agents and potential home buyers.
We aren't interested in selling but I found it fascinating that people were just stopping buy trying to find a house to buy.