Problems selling my house- get a new realtor, if I can?

Well, when I went by the house this evening to look into the cabinet pulls, the yard sign was gone and I found the lockbox gone and the keys in an envelope in the mailbox (brilliant, no way somebody would steal them from THERE...). So, the house is now officially off the market.

Amusingly, there was a business card from another realtor- from the same agency as the one I just dropped- clipped to my back door with a note from the guy saying how he had sold several similar houses to mine in the area fairly quickly. I have to at least applaud his initiative.

Question for you guys: the only remaining original appliance in the kitchen is the wall oven- all the others have been replaced since I bought the house 8 years ago. When I was at the hardware store I looked to see how much a new one would cost- and a black one that wouldn't match anything was $1800. The stainless one that would match was like $3000. So I decided to check Craigslist, and found this: http://lexington.craigslist.org/ppd/3911837418.html

So, I wonder- is being able to say that all the appliances are new (and having a new, modern oven) worth the $500 plus having it installed?

Agree, don't buy a replacement stove. You've already spent plenty, and wisely. Now you just have to do the work.

That's the answer I was leaning toward, since it would almost double the cost of the upgrades I'm doing. The current stove works perfectly and cleaned up very nicely, but is just rather old.

I pulled one each of the hardware from the kitchen cabinets to get measurements- and unsurprisingly they're all non-standard (for modern hardware) screw spacings. So I took one of them and checked out how well my carb cleaning dip would work to clean it in preparation for repairing them with metallic nickel Rustoleum and was quite happy with the results. Putting all of them in my blasting cabinet would be better, but far more time and effort so I'll likely go with the carb dip approach.

$3k on a new stove? No. $500 on a used one that matches the rest of the relatively new appliances? I'd be tempted to pull that trigger.

Would love to be starting on the kitchen & bathroom this weekend, but I'm probably going to get a big fat zero amount done thanks to my Mom being in town- which is rare and I'm happy about seeing her, but with losing next weekend to a convention, it'll be a LOT of time that the house isn't even listed. :/

On the good side of things, my girlfriend's landlord (who is a real estate agent) has been taking a look over the old listing and will be looking over the house Monday to advise us on it. The GF has been saying for a while that he's a really nice guy, and it appears her assessment isn't inacuurate in that he's said that he'll do what he can to help us out even if we don't list the house with him. He was surprised we'd not even gotten any offers since the market here has apparently been one of the best in a long while, and was even more surprised my old realtor wasn't more aggressive about helping out given she'd have gotten commission from both selling my house and buying a new one- in cases like that, especially when it was a case like mine where he'd sold a house to someone before, he'd usually take a reduced commission on selling the house.

She went over what the plans were in changes to the place, and his advice was to go with the changes and improvements but that with those in place the price should be pretty much right and he didn't advise that we lower it when putting it back on the market, just do a better job of showing and marketing the place.

Met with the GF's landlord over lunch today at the house and went over things. Holy Carp, what a difference in walking around the house and looking at stuff with him compared to my old realtor! He had a lot of really good suggestions and a few chastisements (I've not kept the landscaping around the front door up as well as I should have- something my old realtor never said a peep about...) as well as largely validating my current plans on what I'm going to do over the time the house is off the market.

Good example of the difference between him and my old realtor. With the exception of the 'wet' rooms (kitchen, bathrooms) that have linoleum & the bedrooms that have hardwood, the house is all carpeted. He wondered if there might be hardwood under the carpeted floors, and so carefully pulled back a corner of the carpet to check and confirm that here was indeed hardwood under at least the living room carpet- something which can be a major plus if somebody liked the house but wasn't that fond of carpet.

Only major thing different I'm going to be doing is to take out one of the massively overgrown bush-type things on the front right corner of the house- he pointed out that it's so overgrown that if I trimmed it back so it looked good that it would be nothing but sticks, so it would be wiser to just cut it out entirely and either sod over the area or to put something else in (like the other bushes along the front) in its place if I didn't have any particular attachment to that bush. Which I don't- I've always hated having to deal with that thing compared to the rest of the bushes. Did confirm that I should really do something about the vines, which I am really not looking forward to in the least...

REALLY should have been doing all of the stuff like this over 3 months ago, and it still pisses me off how much time was wasted for nothing with the old realtor. It really feels like if all of what we're doing now had been done initially and we'd had a more proactive and aggressive agent that we'd have sold the house and been in a new one already...

Housing market generally is improving. Your house might be worth a little more in 3 months. : )

clownkiller wrote: Housing market generally is improving. Your house might be worth a little more in 3 months. : )

At least here, it's been pretty healthy for a while. And while it may be worth more a while down the line, I'm not betting it will increase at the same rate that having to pay the mortgage on it and for the upkeep (both in my own time/labor and what I pay others for doing) on it cost me. I want to get it fixed up and sold so I can buy a new place and be able to work on my cars in relative comfort again!

After being gone for the latter half of last week and the weekend to a convention and not being able to do anything on it due to having a car to fix (and annoyingly my one that is usually not in need of it...), I can finally start working on the house in earnest after work today- and I have the majority of the weekend to throw at it outside of a few hours the GF wants to go to the big local arts fair which should be conveniently timed at the point at which I'll badly need a break.

The plan is to pick up the last of the supplies I (hopefully) need to prep and refinish the bathroom tiles- sandpaper, some cleaner, and tack cloths- and clean, sand, and mask it this afternoon and evening such that I can get started on actually spraying the tile refinisher first thing in the morning. First I'll need to take the tank off the toilet though so I can get to the tile behind it- this worries me a bit since the toilet is rather old and it's possible I won't be able to fine a new tank to seat gasket- but I'm confident I can figure something out if necessary.

While the water is off to work on the toilet I can move the fridge so I can get better access to the cabinets and start pulling the doors and hardware off of them for refinishing. I was smart for once and have my can of carb cleaner at the house from the storage garage so I can use it to clean off the hardware before repainting them.

My current plan is to take care of all of the stuff inside the house before finishing up the stuff on the outside- the inside work won't change once it's done, but if I were to go and trim the hedges and such now and THEN do the inside work, the hedges will grow- so I'm planning on doing the yard work last so we can take photos and get it listed immediately thereafter so I can save myself having to work on the yard for a week more than absolutely necessary.

I am going to be trying to get things done as quickly as is remotely possible (while still doing things right). A few days ago a place went on the market that has both the GF and I VERY interested in it, but unfortunately it will likely sell VERY fast: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1597-N-Cleveland-Rd-Lexington-KY-40509/77567584_zpid/

It will probably have been sold long before mine does and we can begin to make a move on it, but if we somehow manage to get the place it looks like someplace we could finish up and be comfortable in for a VERY long time. And while the garage situation is pretty weak with nearly 2 acres of land I can build whatever the berk I want, so I'm perfectly fine with it.

I like the round window in the upstairs room, that's pretty cool. Nice setup there!

Well, the weekend didn't go quite as I'd hoped, owing at least in part to the GF having the day off and being able to help on Saturday... which actually resulted in my having much less time to actually get work done (she's not a morning person...) though we did have a good day over all so on the whole I can't really complain.

I'd hoped to get the bathroom done and a start on the cabinets- but when I left last night for home (to a very nice from-scratch meal cooked by the GF) the epoxy on the tile in the bathroom was done and just has to finish curing... and then I'll have at least a day's cleaning and touch-up on it.

Here's a not-so-good before pic:

And the still-mostly-taped-off after pic:

The good: Though after just the first coat I was very worried, after the second coat went on the epoxy covers VERY well, and unless you're REALLY looking around the edges where I need to do touch-up, it covered the pink tile up completely. Once the painter's tape is off, I do touch-up on the edges, clean the overspray off of the accent tile that I taped off, and re-caulk everything it will look a LOT better in the pictures for the listing. I actually managed to get even the harder things like the soap dishes and such covered well with the epoxy.

The bad: Whether it's the product itself or how I applied it (with a Wagner HVLP power sprayer), it's not nearly the smooth, perfect finish that it's supposed to be... I'd unfortunately liken it to a fairly well-prepared rattle-can paint job on a car that had decent but completely garish and un-saleable paint: it will look great in the pictures, but once you're actually looking at it up close it will be quite obvious it wasn't a professional job.

On the whole, I think it was the smart thing to do- the bathroom looks a LOT better with the white 'tile' than the pink, and while there are flaws in the finish I just have to hope that people will not be completely turned off to the house as a result...

I unfortunately will have to spend a good bit of time finishing it up though... the sprayer had a LOT more overspray than I expected, and the tape we used for the plastic over thing like bathtub didn't hold up as well as would be ideal so I'm going to be spending a lot of time scrubbing with laquer remover getting the overspray epoxy off of the surfaces where it can be used, and am going to have to sand/paint the walls where little bits of the spray got unto. Hopefully I can get a lot of that done tomorrow and can then start tackling the kitchen cabinets. I'm unfortunately now expecting that I won't have everything done and the house back listed until around Labor Day...

It's been almost a month since I last updated this, but it took quite a while to get the rest of the things in the house finished up. Today the new realtor should be going over to take the new pictures of the house. The difference in the three rooms- kitchen, bathroom, and basement den whose wood paneling the GF managed to convince me really needed to be painted however is very striking- all three rooms look completely different, and all in a very good way. With luck the listing will be up in a few days, unfortunately likely for about what it was listed for before and not more- realtor says interest rates have been going up and slowing the sales market down, though we're not set a final re-listing price until he sees all the improvements and does an updated market comparison.

I wish I could be as optimistic as the GF is about all the updates/improvements, but having done most of them myself (she did the majority of the painting in the basement) I unfortunately can see all the flaws in the work and worry that the rather non-trivial amount I've spent on all of this will not have any real effect. Only time will tell I suppose- and hopefully it won't take much time, as I really want to get the house sold...

Pictures? The white tile looks way better, good job!

clownkiller wrote: Pictures? The white tile looks way better, good job!

We literally finished up at midnight last night and were more interested in getting the heck home and to sleep than taking pictures, so unfortunately don't have any of it all finished up.

The tile refinishing kit worked out quite well as did the cabinet kit- have to hand it to Rustoleum for those products, they were well worth the rather small amount they cost compared to how much of a difference they made.

Have varying thoughts on the vinyl floor tiles... the stone-looking ones in the kitchen look great and went down much more easily, but have taken a LOT of rollering to get to stay down properly. The all-white textured ones in the bathroom were MUCH harder to get to go down seamlessly- in part perhaps due to my using regular vinyl adhesive in addition to what was on the tiles to get them to stick down much more solidly (which worked like a charm).

The basement painting took a lot of pushing from the GF to get me to agree to it- in no small part because I knew it would be a very large task and take a good bit of paint- but it was very definitely worth it. The room looks MUCH larger and fits in better with the rest of the house now instead of looking like the 70s/80s finished den that it was. Though ironically the TV in the room now sits on top of a huge 1979 console TV/stereo unit instead of being mounted to the wall.

Though I had been leaning very heavily to just emptying the place out completely, the GF and several others convinced me that staging it more properly would be best- so she handled doing all of that and it does indeed look much more like it's staged and much less, as was said earlier in this thread I believe, 'abandoned'.

I'll hopefully have pictures later in the week, either taken myself or the ones taken with the realtor's nicer camera...

Aaaand, the listing is finally up and active. Two different links to it, both a 'normal' one and more of a realtor-detail oriented one...

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2157-Larkspur-Dr_Lexington_KY_40504_M31668-20064 http://lbarmls.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Lexington&PRGNAME=MLSLogin&ARGUMENT=hti4a4XGNCdhzEGy4r2a8kh0618NT0Qoe5ncMeYXGCs=&KeyRID=1

VERY happy with how most of the pictures turned out (the one of the front of the house isn't the greatest, but it is hard to get a good picture of it I'll admit), they look infinitely better than the previous ones did IMO.

The new realtor came back and said that there was a considerable lack of houses in the $129,500 to $134,5000 range on my side of town so said that we could probably put it toward the upper part of that fairly confidently, so ended up listing it for $133,500. That amount was essentially arrived at by taking what it was listed for before and adding in what was spent fixing it up.

Looks good! I LOVE the huge modern TV sitting on the old 70s woodgrain console TV. berkeleying awesome that is.

Night and day difference - nice work! My only advice on pricing is to price it so that it's the house you'd want to look at first if you were the buyer. We priced our home that way and it sold in two days for 99% of the asking price. Had we priced it higher, we would have had lower traffic, it would have been on the market longer, and we ultimately would have sold it for less.

From an economics perspective, the cost of your improvements shouldn't be baked into the price of the house they're a sunk cost). You should price it based on what the value of the home is, and then if you're serious about selling it, knock a few % off the price to make it more attractive to buyers.

You can't change the location, you can't make many more cost-effective changes to the condition, but you can change the price.

EastCoastMojo wrote: Looks good! I LOVE the huge modern TV sitting on the old 70s woodgrain console TV. berkeleying awesome that is.

Hehehe. Thanks! We came across that old console (it's actually a full stereo system- AM/FM/Phono/8-Track/TV, all of which works except the turntable drive which I need to fix, and it even has an Aux in that lets up hook up an iPod or my surround receiver to it!) when looking for old light fixtures at a Habitat For Humanity Re-Store where they were using its radio to provide music for the store. It was priced at a whopping $15. The GF and I both said, "We HAVE to buy this!" and did, took it back to the house and tested the rest of it, cleaned it up, and then put it down in the basement to put the TV on- and cover up the wiring for the antenna/cable/etc on that wall with its awesome largeness.

Once the house is sold I'll be tearing it down and repairing the console itself, fixing the turntable, and probably removing the TV. We're still debating what to do with the space the TV is in now once it's removed- I'm in favor of putting in shelves so we can use it as a cool entertainment unit, but the GF has latched onto my halfway joking suggestion of leaving everything but the tube and electronics and putting a fishtank in place of the tube.

dj06482 wrote: Night and day difference - nice work! My only advice on pricing is to price it so that it's the house you'd want to look at first if you were the buyer. We priced our home that way and it sold in two days for 99% of the asking price. Had we priced it higher, we would have had lower traffic, it would have been on the market longer, and we ultimately would have sold it for less. From an economics perspective, the cost of your improvements shouldn't be baked into the price of the house they're a sunk cost). You should price it based on what the value of the home is, and then if you're serious about selling it, knock a few % off the price to make it more attractive to buyers. You can't change the location, you can't make many more cost-effective changes to the condition, but you can change the price.

Thanks!

The decision on the pricing was made somewhat with that in mind- looking around at what else is available on the market in the area that it would be in competition with, with the exception of a short sale listed a good bit lower it's already one of the cheaper houses of its size in the neighborhood. We'll be keeping a close eye on things too- I'm sure that if our realtor sees thinks that it's not getting the attention that it should because we put it a bit too high he won't hesitate to have us drop the price and I won't hestitate to do so if he recommends it. I obviously want to get as much as possible out of it, but also at this point do want to get it sold quickly too given how long I've been paying both the mortgage and part of the rent at the GF's...

Wow, the basement and kitchen especially look different. Still looking at other places to move to, or waiting until this one sells?

eastsidemav wrote: Wow, the basement and kitchen especially look different. Still looking at other places to move to, or waiting until this one sells?

The bathroom does too, but it's much more obvious in person- and at a minimum it no longer screams, "LOOK AT MEEEE! I'M PIIIINK!" in every picture (interesting note: there IS still a little bit of pink til left- there is tile behind the vanity, and there isn't a back on the vanity so you can see it if you open it and look at the wall behind it...). I pushed back pretty hard on the basement since I (correctly) figured it would be LOT of work, but eventually caved and in the end it looks a LOT more bright and open.

We've never stopped looking at places, at least at the listings online, and may go out and look over a few that we've had our eyes on now that the house is back on the market but honestly we've not found anything that's 'perfect' yet- and we can't do much of anything until the house is sold anyway, so all we can really do for now is window shop.

My family is planning on coming up/over here for Thanksgiving, so I'd REALLY like to be in a new place by then- but unless the house sells REALLY quickly this time around and we can find the perfect place shortly after closing on the sale of my place that will be a challenge...

Kitchen looks spot on!
The painted pink tile did the job. The blue sink and toilet fit in a funky retro way. The vanity top in the bathroom needs to be epoxied white to finish the room. The pink in it cuts the balance with the blue and white. The pictures look great.

A+++++++

Great job!

clownkiller wrote: The vanity top in the bathroom needs to be epoxied white to finish the room. The pink in it cuts the balance with the blue and white.

That was the primary reason for having put the white vinyl tiles down on the floor, along with the fact that it was dirty and worn after 50 years of use. The vanity top though was something that there just wasn't a particularly good way to handle. The epoxy that was used on the walls MIGHT have also been usable on the vanity top but I worried that having it be white as well would just be too much white. I did consider replacing the entire vanity, but decided against that as it would have been a lot more work removing it and cost a good bit for a new equivalent one, and using the same refinishing kit that was used on the kitchen cabinets on the wood of the vanity worked exceptionally well.

Kitchen is killer, you did a great job! Can you put a before and after shot of the kitchen?

clownkiller wrote: Kitchen is killer, you did a great job! Can you put a before and after shot of the kitchen?

I unforunately didn't save off the picture that the previous realtor took, though I do have the brochures she made up that have them, albeit they'd not be the best resolution. HOWEVER... I recorded quick videos of the kitchen and bathroom before starting work on the, and then recorded similar (though unfortunately in the bathroom, the 'before' doesn't show the floor at all...) ones after the work that was done. I just haven't had the time to edit them together and upload them...