What I Learned When Our Home Sold In Less Than 24 Hours
April 30, 2018Editor’s note: This post is part of our Personal Stories series, where our financial coaches share their own financial journey. We hope you enjoy getting to know us a little better and ultimately learn from our mistakes!
OK, so here’s the situation…
Two years ago, my wife and I decided it was time to move to a bigger house. Our house had always been our “10-year home” and we had reached that decade mark and the time had come to try and sell our home. Our goals were to:
- Move into the school district we wanted our kids to go through middle and high school in
- Add 1,000 – 1,500 of finished square footage for our growing brood
- Update to a newer home with more modern finishes and floorplan.
The housing market in our area had been heating up over the several years leading up to the spring of 2016, so the timing seemed right to cash in on our home.
“I got this”
We met with our real estate agent and started planning the strategy for listing our home about 3 months prior to putting it on the market. We put in a lot of sweat equity to try to impress prospective buyers, including:
- Repainting the entire inside of the home
- Replacing all the carpet
- Refinishing the hardwood floors
- Decluttering – especially the unfinished basement that had turned into a grave yard of old baby clothes (our kids were 6 and 9 at the time), old sporting equipment (never know when you might need that broken treadmill from the 90’s right?), and everything else we had collected (and never used) from the last 10 years of life
- Having professional listing photos taken
At the end of the day
After working with our agent and agreeing on an asking price, we put our house on the market. After about 45 minutes of calm, requests for showings started to pour in. We had 12 requests the first day the house hit the MLS! Within 24 hours, we had 3 above asking offers in hand – we were floored! Despite our initial idea of not accepting any offers until after the first weekend passed, we agreed on the right offer and that was that. A little over a month later, we were at the closing table and the deal was done.
If I could turn back time
We knew we were in a seller’s market, but it turns out we were in a price point that was absolutely on fire based on lack of inventory. Our agent knew this and did his job in telling us, but we were still shocked at how quickly the home sold. In hindsight, I don’t think we would have spent the time and money on cosmetic upgrades as I am not convinced they did anything to help sell the house.
I also think we could have asked for a higher price, but we were concerned about the appraisal coming in to validate the deal (and our home before this home sat on the market for a long time, which was not fun).
We also needed to start our home search quicker. Things happened so fast, that we felt a bit behind the 8 ball in terms of where we going to move. We decided to build our new home (that is a whole other post) and ended up in an apartment for 6 months while that was being completed. We could have saved some hassle and cost by planning the build better around the sale of our home.
What we got right
The de-clutter was the best idea ever! It made our move so much easier and helped us get a grip and say never again to accumulating so much stuff we never use. Not to mention, we made a little extra cash in a yard sale and had a lot of donations we could write off.
If I could tell you just one thing
Do your homework. Understand your local housing market well in advance of listing your home. In our case, we spent unnecessary time and money staging a house that would have likely sold for the same price and in the same time without the things we did. But in other market conditions, staging can be the key to make your home stand out. Your real estate agent is a key resource in helping you understand the local market and is a crucial part of the process.