Unless a home has been totally abused and neglected by it’s owner it really doesn’t take a whole lot to prepare it for the market. The first place to start is with a thorough cleaning. It’s amazing what clean baseboards and wiped down doors can do for a showing and it doesn’t cost anything if the owner has the time and interest to do it themselves. And then there’s decluttering and removing any and all personal, kitschy and tacky items. They must be packed up at some point anyway. A stack of boxes in a corner of the garage is going to be far easier on the eyes of a potential buyer than needing to look past personal clutter allowing them to visualize their own belongings in the space. Then, of course, there’s neutralizing the color of the walls. If the home has been painted with a good color and good paint, then it may freshen up easily without doing a full repaint. Otherwise and full repaint of, at minimum, the walls may be needed.
Some homeowners will go the extra mile and update the light fixtures, door knobs, outlets and switches, faucets and blinds. And possibly even do low cost renovations to the kitchen and bathrooms. A larger budget is needed in that case, but I’ve seen it yield great results in getting higher offers. So what happens when a homeowner has no money for upgrades and no energy and enthusiasm to do the work themselves and then insists on listing the home “as is” expecting to fetch top dollar?
I had a client like this, or rather, a realtor friend of mine, Amber Fairbanks, had a client like this back in the spring. The homeowner wanted to sell his house for $315,000 without doing anything to it. And I do mean anything. No cleaning the very dirty baseboards. No removal of greasy, black fingerprints from any of the doors. No removal of any personal items and rearranging the furniture. Absolutely nothing. Amber had hosted 10 open houses over the course of several months with the highest offer being $275,000 which the homeowner would not accept.
(Before pictures below)
After not getting anywhere with her client, Amber called me to see if I would go out and take a look at the house. She was hoping I could work some very cheap magic and when I say cheap, the expectation was to paint the main floor of the house: kitchen, dining room, living room, 2 bedrooms, hallway for $1000. Luckily, I have a pretty good sense of humor and laughed out loud for a second saying that here was no way to deliver a good paint job with good paint in there for that price. At least not the way I paint. I’ve repainted so many houses for new homeowners who have bought flipped houses with awful paint jobs. There’s far more to painting than slapping color on walls. There’s nothing worse than running my hand across a wall and feeling all the dust, grit from improperly prepared walls, not to mention, the lint from having used cheap roller covers. I want my walls to feel as smooth as an eggshell or baby skin on all my jobs including the ones being prepared for the market.
After I politely declined the job, I felt comfortable to explain to the homeowner that not only did he need to get the walls and some ceilings painted, but he needed to do some quick and inexpensive things like changing the very dated, gold door knobs out and getting his outlet covers to match the color of his outlets and switches. These little things can make a huge difference and don’t cost a lot. I saw so much potential in that house and it was so obvious to me that he could get what he wanted for it by putting very little money into it.
Amber then wanted to show me the basement which she felt was a great selling point to the home even though it was really dated and there was no intention of doing any updates. I walked downstairs and my jaw dropped. The more I saw of this house, the more I wanted to paint it, especially the basement. I was seriously salivating over this house in my mind. I wanted to get ahold of that house so badly, but the challenge at that point was to show the homeowner what a little hidden gem he had. I knew it would take so little of an investment to get the money he wanted out of that sale and I was 100% confident he could get $315,000 for that home.
After I left, I was really excited about that house even though I had declined the job so I called Amber to hash over the meeting. We were on the same page about everything and we both knew what the outcome could be but how could we convince the homeowner to share our vision and let go of a little cash? I told her that I could do the main floor painting for $1700 at the very minimum to be paid upon completion and then I’d paint the downstairs main area, stairwell and a few other little things that I saw needed to be done for $1800 and I would allow the seller to pay me at closing for that work. I wanted to show him that if I was willing to invest in his home, he should be as well. He accepted my offer and the fun began.
Amber has incredibly infectious enthusiasm and no “off’ switch. Her excitement and work ethic matched my own so between the two of us we were even able to rub some of it off onto our client. He got excited when seeing the changes and really pitched in to help out with some cleaning and decluttering. Amber is also super creative, has a great eye for design and is very thrifty. She bought light fixtures, a new kitchen faucet, door knobs, tons of staging items and more off of BidFTA spending very little money. Talk about going above and beyond for a client. This was my first time working with her and I’ve never seen a realtor work so hard for a client. We had a lot of fun and over the course of 2 weeks in which we transformed the house into a market ready, turn key home. I had even been able to talk my client into 3 rooms of new carpet to replace the pet stained existing carpet for which I was able to get for less than $250 per room. I know a good guy who is an excellent semi-retired carpet installer and we got the carpet through Sherwin Williams. So when all was said and done the total cost of the transformation was right around $4500. I ended up giving my client a credit of $660 bringing down my bill to around $2900 so we could stay within his very tight budget. I really wanted him to get the carpet so it was well worth the sacrifice.
We shot new pictures and Amber had the house listed and under contract within the week for $316,000. Everyone walked away happy and satisfied. I like it when everybody wins. There’s nothing better. Cheers!
(After pictures below)
