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Selling the Hellmouth
Dr. Frenchenstein
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
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?
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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
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.
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.
If you are super concerned you can get a house inspection to see what they say
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.
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.
oh i'm not planning on doing any exploratory repairs. i think the deck footer/gutter thing is the last necessary repair.
It at least helps with cat piss, I can attest to that much.
Is the crawlspace earth or on a pad?
ftfy
it's all concrete. it's hard to pin point the smell.
But I'm no animal smell abater.
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.
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.
― John Quincy Adams