Selling the Hellmouth

Dr. Frenchenstein

So i would REALLY like to be rid of my house in the next year or two. for one, i want to move elsewhere with my lady friend, and for two it is a portal to the realm of the gods of torment. I'm damn close to being breakeven if i take Zillow's estimate of value as correct. what do i need to do to start preparing to unload this bastard? i was thinking of calling a real estate agent and seeing if they can value it for me (does that cost money?) and also let me know if there is anything i need to fix/take care of/exorcise before it goes on the market at the highest value i can muster. is that something selling agents do?

mts

Just sold my house

Definitely find yourself a good agent. They will help give you an idea of worth and any updates you might want to do. Experience suggests that the effort you put in will come back k in your favor as you want it to present well

Thundyrkatz

A good agent should be able to pull together some comps and get you a realistic selling price. This may be different then what you think its worth.

Keep in mind that the agent has a strong incentive to turn your house as fast as possible, so aggressive pricing will trump the agents desire to make you an extra 10k. If the house does not sell he makes nothing, if it does sell at say 10k less then you want, his commission comes in at just 600 less.

bowen

You want to price it intelligently, Zillow is probably on the lower end of what it's "worth". I put that in quotations for a reason though. Some key things, as someone who's buying a house that I wish I could tell sellers when I do a walkthrough:

• Fix your god damned roof. Is your roof older than 20 years or showing serious signs of wear (Curling)? Replace it.
• Your house doesn't need to be gorgeous with stunning backdrops and shit, but it needs to be in good shape. Have a pool of water in your basement? Seal the wall with drylok or redguard and run a dehumidifier. On, and clean the god damned mold and stains up, seriously, nothing is a bigger turnoff than a musty basement... and then you find out it's riddled in mold and it's just not a damp area, but possibly deadly area.
• Clean your motherfucking house.
• Don't motherfucking be there when I walk through your house
• Seriously, make your god damned bed and pick up your shit all over the floor. It's not going to be my bed, but nothing turns me off than an unkept room because that's generally a good indication of how the house is being taken care of too
• Find out how old your appliances are. Fridge, Stove, Hot water heater, furnace.

Honest to goodness, Zillow's estimates are "market value of the house, on the conservative side if everything has been kept up to date and in good working order."

If your roof is 20 years old, and your appliances are at the end of their life, you're going to have to come down 10k from zillow's price at least.

I looked at over 60 houses and pretty much every single one of them needed 15k worth of "upkeep" that they should have done 5 years ago and it was obvious they wanted to sell their house to not do it. Yeah sure, maybe it's my job to do that shit as a homeowner, but it was also the sellers too, and you're not going to get top market value if your house isn't in top market shape.

Do you meet all that stuff, is your appliances and roof in the mid range? Good! You can probably go above what Zillow has. Don't mention the Indian burial ground and do your best to help sellers out. If you've got an old radon report, I'd recommend sharing it, because that's a $150 expense that you can save them (assuming it's not >10 years old)

Obviously still contact a realtor, because you gotta get that shit listed, you can't sell it yourself it'll never work. Remember it's still a buyers market right now so you have to be the one that negotiates or your house will sit there for a year and slowly lose its value. I've seen houses that keep getting listed over and over because homeowners think their collapsing turd is worth market value still.

If you'll end up underwater on your loan, you're going to have to front the cash to break even, or, hope you can do a short sale (lololololololololololol).

Seriously, short sales take fucking forever.

Davehead

Some home loans also require that the house be basically in move-in condition. The two specific things I remember were that there couldn't be any paint peeling on the outside of the house and the floors had to be in decent shape. My wife and I are currently looking for a home, and I can't tell you how many we've seen that we would have been happy to move into, offering what the seller asked for, but couldn't because the house was ineligible for our loan type and the seller was either unwilling or unable to make the necessary fixes.

Djeet

Zillow is just as likely to overvalue as undervalue, so just take that estimate as a starting place. Find good recent sale comps to get an idea of worth (I like city-data.com). Good advice is going to be heavily dependent upon local market conditions, so your best answer is going to come from a realtor/broker. I'm in a reasonably hot market, so the advice is to price it well (close to comps) and if you don't have multiple offer within days of listing then you've probably priced it too high and you need to cut price or delist/rent it out/whatever.

mts

Zillow is crazy, don't go by it for really anything.

If you are super concerned you can get a house inspection to see what they say

ceres

My advice: Next time, rent.

EggyToast

I think one important element to keep in mind is that there's estimates and there's what your house actually sells for. You have one item for sale, and you can sell it to one buyer.

I bought a house in 2006 in Baltimore, and sold it in 2011 for an 11k loss. That included the realtor fees. The market went down overall, so if I could have lived in the house until, I don't know, now, it probably could've worked out. I found a buyer that wanted what I had for sale, and they offered a reasonable price considering the market -- it had been posted up for about 4 months and there were essentially "joke" offers.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are essentially two kinds of (reasonable) buyers. There are buyers who are looking for a deal and are OK doing some of the maintenance, because they want to buy their own appliances, etc., after living in places with the cheapest cheap shit via renting. The other kind of buyers are those who want to do no work for at least a few years and expect to be able to move in tomorrow.

You have to assess your property to see which buyer it would appeal to, and then market it appropriately. Perhaps if your appliances are old, you'd offer to dispose of them (although this is smoke & mirrors, any new appliance delivered by a company (at least in baltimore) must take away the old one). This applies for a lot of the "basic" elements of the house. If you don't have a perfect paint job, your house could use an overall refresh, and you think anyone who buys it would have to do some work, then you're catering to the first group. That also means you should make it clean, at least, to minimize the deal they're looking for. This saves work on your end, thankfully.

The second group is easy to cater for if you already have newer stuff, in which case you should set a high price and not entertain anything from fixer-upper people. This requires a lot more prep on your side, as you have to essentially turn your house into a model home, and it can involve painting, patching, cleaning, buffing, and so on. Stuff you can do with a little money and elbow grease, at least.

There's no guarantee that any of this will work. It depends largely on what else is in the market, and unless things have changed a lot in Baltimore in the last 3 years, I think there's still a lot of houses on the market. However, also since it's Baltimore, there's TONS of fixer-uppers and houses that are far from move-in ready.

Dr. Frenchenstein

My roof is in good shape, i actually just put a white coating on that is supposed to last 15 years. There is an issue with my deck footer(it's not sealed correctly) and gutters that i need to take care of, but that will get done at the end of the month. the floors are in good shape, but have a couple rough spots on the main floor. my main concern is the basement. it looks great, but there is an odor. i had a rat problem, and recently got it cleaned out, i'm not sure if it's lingering from that or if it's something different. obviously, i'll need to get that taken care of before it goes on the market. none of that will add value though...

Honestly, all i want to do is break even at this point. i just want to get out from under this thing, and move on. worst case scenario i can rent it out, but i'd really prefer to be rid of it.

bowen

What kind of odor? Musty, mildewy, moldy, stinky uriney?

Djeet

OK, so maybe this advice is geared towards the seller, but I wouldn't try to "investigate" stuff too much. If you don't know about a problem then there is nothing to disclose. Repaint and recaulk and retrim. Off-gassing paint will likely cover any dodgy smells. If you have to do those adding something like crown molding or a chair rail isn't much extra effort. A new front door usually pays for itself.

Dr. Frenchenstein

stinky uriney, i think. i had a basement remediation company come out, and i think i'm going to call them back. they said they would do all this stuff, and i think they just shop vacc-ed everything up, and sprayed some chemicals. the guy that came out said he was only told it was a water problem, so i don't think he had all the right stuff. everything was covered up with the smell of the stuff they sprayed, so i thought it was good to go, but it came back.

oh i'm not planning on doing any exploratory repairs. i think the deck footer/gutter thing is the last necessary repair.

bowen

You may look into finding the source of the smell if you can, and get some enzyme cleaners so you can break down whatever's causing the smell.

It at least helps with cat piss, I can attest to that much.

Dr. Frenchenstein

it's tough because it doesn't seem all that localized, i think i should just get a gallon of natures miracle and douse the crawlspace.

bowen

Probably wouldn't hurt.

Is the crawlspace earth or on a pad?

Skeith

ceres wrote: »

My advice: Next time, hire an exorcist.

ftfy

Dr. Frenchenstein

bowen wrote: »

Probably wouldn't hurt.

Is the crawlspace earth or on a pad?

it's all concrete. it's hard to pin point the smell.

bowen

I'd definitely give nature's miracle a try. Get a big bottle and a scrubber broom and go to town. Then run the dehumidifer. I probably wouldn't try to "get it up" like you would in carpet because you want the concrete to absorb it if possible.

But I'm no animal smell abater.

Dr. Frenchenstein

i have some zorbex, and spray the shit out of the area every few days. Nature's Miracle is pricey!

bowen

Problem is I think you'll need an enzyme based one to break down the funk stuck in your pad. And you're likely going to have to flood the pad so that it's visibly wet.

Pantshandshake

Nature's Miracle will almost certainly do the job. I've got a whole lot more experience with that stuff and basement cleaning than I like to even think about.

Unless the rat problem was large enough and there long enough for urine to soak completely through the pad, it'll do the trick. If it did soak completely through the pad, then you may have to replace some concrete.

Then again, I actually have no idea how much rats piss.

Bloodycow

I actually just put our house on the market on Monday. I had renters there (in the military, bought a house thinking I was getting out, but not sure anymore) the renters trashed the house. They had huge dogs that literally chewed holes in my walls, a door, and every corner the baseboards had been chewed on.

On top of that I had a pipe burst in the basement last spring. Insurance covered it and I got new drywall in the part of the wall that burst and new carpet and padding throughout the basement (it's fully finished). Then this April the storm drain to the street froze over and the water backed up through the floor drains into the basement. Leading to 3 inches of standing water in the basement. This could have been caught early, but the tenants waited till they couldn't go into the basement before letting me know. Insurance wouldn't cover it. So I paid 3,000 to get the basement dried out and pitched the carpet padding.

I kicked out the tenants and took 17 days leave to go back home and fix up this house. It took every fucking one of those 17 days. I ended up wainscoting the bedroom in the basement instead of replacing the dry wall that was stained, but in good condition from the flood. Repainted every room in the house. Paid a maid service to do the cleaning, spent 5000 on new stainless steel Samsung appliances. Did all the landscaping that they failed to do for over a year.

Worst vacation I've ever had in my life, but I got the house looking amazing again. Got a good real estate agent and have had a couple showings already and will have an open house this weekend.

Then it rains about 5 inches in a few hours. I guess the wind knocked off one of my down spouts and water pooled near a corner of the house and when an agent was showing the house noticed the floor was damp in the basement......

Seriously, I cannot catch a break. I think we are kindred spirits.

Oh, I will be lucky to break even with this house on paper. In reality the amount of money I've spent in repairs and just my time in general I will be well in the hole.