preparation for selling Archives - Richard Cricchio's Hawaii Real Estate Blog

Make a Splash When Selling

Our Oahu real estate market is moving! Just when you thought homes couldn’t sell any faster, they do! March sales of single family homes were up more than 20% over last year. The same was true for condos. And prices continue to climb, though not at the astronomical rates we’ve seen in the past. Year over year median sale prices are up just under 4%. Clearly, your Oahu real estate is your best investment.

In this kind of market, it is important to think strategically when selling your home. You’ll want to sell quickly with a minimum of inconvenience and you’ll want to walk away with as much cash in your pocket as possible. How can you accomplish that? Some thoughts:

Know where you’re going. Understand that houses on Oahu sell quickly if they are properly priced. Right now the median priced single family home is taking less than 20 days to go under contract for sale! Closing can take an additional 30 – 45 days. In this environment, it is not wise to put your home on the market until you have somewhere else to go within 60 days.

Price properly. That means at market value. It’s tempting when homes are selling so fast to push the price up, ask for a little more, try to cash in big. But that strategy fails over and over. Home buyers have lots of tools today to spot overpriced listings and most avoid them. Your aggressive price will limit showings and encourage low offers. Instead, price at market value and then let the market set the price. What you’ll find is that a great home in a good location will produce offers over and above asking price. And wouldn’t that be a nice situation!

Prepare the property. The day your home goes on the market it becomes a product that has to compete with other similar products. Before you make your home available for showing, make sure it is breathtakingly clean, neat and staged. You want every person who sees your home to dream of living there and the best way to do that is to make the home dreamy.

Plan to make a splash. Sometimes it’s smart to create urgency and anticipation when selling. ‘Coming Soon’ signs prior to the actual listing period can accomplish this, but I sometimes suggest other strategies. Having the first day of showing coincide with a well promoted open house – a Grand Open House – can ensure that the largest number of potential buyers see the property on that first day. Sometimes I suggest that we hold off reviewing offers until the end of the first week. This creates a sense of urgency, a deadline, and sets the expectation that there may be a bidding war for the home.

Listen to your agent. When you hire one of the professionals at Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties, you’re teaming up with a trusted consultant. We know this business and this market and there is no one better qualified to advise you every step of the way. Sometimes the emotion of selling can nudge you into poor strategic thinking. Our job is to help you stay focused on the business decision that selling a home should be.

Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties is a full service real estate company that provides exceptional service while charging less than ordinary Realtors. We’ve been successfully helping buyers and sellers all over Oahu for more than 12 years and we’d be delighted to help you achieve your housing dreams. Contact us at (808) 593-8811, or visit our website.

Tips for Home Sellers

Selling your home is a big undertaking. There are a lot of things to consider, decisions to make, action to be taken. This short video can help you in this process.

Preparation For Selling: What To Do Before The Sign Goes Up

At Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties, we help people get ready to sell every day. We usually walk through the property and make suggestions about what will help it show well. That’s very important! It’s hard for homebuyers to fall in love with a house that looks . . . well . . . lived in. W make lots of suggestions, but if I could boil it down to a few important, broad categories, it would be The Five D’s:

Depersonalize. It’s important that you take remove the ‘home’ from your ‘house.’ Anything that might stand in the way of a potential buyer visualizing his or her family living there should go: family pictures, kids’ art, collectibles, toiletries and tell-tale signs of pets (toys, food, etc.).

Declutter. Crammed closets and cluttered rooms suggest a lack of storage! Go through every room and closet, dispassionately sorting into three stacks: throw-aways, things to box and go to storage, and things to donate. This step may take a week or two!

Deep clean. Whether you do it or hire it done, a top-to-bottom cleaning is what’s required. Kitchens and bathrooms come first and deserve special attention (don’t hesitate to use a toothbrush if you need to). Next tackle living and sleeping areas. And don’t forget closets and cabinets!

Detail the landscaping. Trim shrubs, edge the lawn, touch up the mulch and repair any defects in decking, fencing or the like. Wash the windows and – as a final touch – add a planter of blooming flowers.

Do the repairs. Start with deferred maintenance. A homebuyer might not spot that you’ve not changed your furnace filter in awhile, but a home inspector (who will be part of the process) will. Then move on to cosmetics: paint if necessary, clean blinds, fix leaky faucets, caulk tubs and think about upgrading lighting.

Of course, if you are thinking of selling, we at Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties would be happy to walk through and give you a more detailed, no obligation consultation.

Remodeling that Makes Sense

I am often asked, what are the best remodeling investments when it comes time to sell? People want to know if they will get their money back (and more) if they re-carpet or paint, remodel the kitchen and so on. The answer varies because it depends on the specific house, the neighborhood and the type of buyer you are trying to attract. However, here are some basics:

1. Maintenance first. If the roof leaks and the carpet is worn, don’t expect a kitchen remodel to solve all of the problems. No matter how lovely your home is, any buyer will likely get a home inspection that will consider the condition of the major systems in the house. Things like heating system and air conditioning, plumbing, electrical systems, the roof, siding and foundation will be examined. Problems in these big system areas can change a buyer’s mind about a house quicker than you can say “Uh-oh.” If you have deferred maintenance, if there are things you know don’t work properly, take care of them first. Truth is, you probably won’t recoup much of your investment on these kinds of repairs, but you will make your home salable. In fact, a home in good condition will usually sell near the top of the range of market value, while one with lots of big ticket fix up items usually sits and sits . . . until the price is reduced drastically.

2. Exterior items. Your first task as a home seller is to get people in your front door. You can’t give them any reason to eliminate the property before they ever get out of the car. It’s true there’s not much you can do about the neighbor who seems to only cut the grass in a month with 5 Saturdays, but you can have your own yard looking great. It’s often worth the expense to hire a lawn and landscape maintenance company to bring your lawn into tip-top shape and add some blooming plants to the yard. The payoff will be more showings, more potential buyers and a better chance of getting a good offer. If you elect to hire professionals to handle the yard, start them a month or two before the house goes on the market. That will give their handiwork time to show results.

While we’re talking about curb appeal, take a look at exterior paint. Clearly if the house needs painting, paint it: that’s maintenance and is among the items covered in point 1. But, assuming the paint is generally in good shape, look for touch up tasks. One of my favorite touch up items is the front door. A fresh coat of paint there can make the whole house more appealing. Look at the windows. What do you see in them? Are they clean and are drapes and shades in good shape? Do you see stickers and signs? Time to remove them.

3. The Kitchen. Most people, when they think of remodeling tasks that will make a difference when it comes time to sell, start here, in the kitchen. On my list it is number three because, frankly, if the house isn’t in good shape and if it doesn’t look good from the outside, not too many people will be paying attention to the kitchen. But if your kitchen does need remodeling you may be able to recoup some of your investment on sale. Some.

Think about it for a moment. Let’s say the range of value for houses like yours in your neighborhood is $500,000 – $600,000. Your home comes in right near the center of the range because, while it is in decent shape and looks good from the curb, the kitchen is 20 years old! You know you will be in the house for a few more years and you’re thinking a kitchen remodel might make that time more enjoyable. Your remodel costs $45,000, the kitchen is beautiful, the house is now at the top of the range, and for the next thee years, cooking is a delight.

It’s now time to sell. You’ve had three years of average appreciation (say 3% a year), so now the range of value in the neighborhood is roughly $550,000 – $655,000. Your remodel is still fresh and you’ve maintained the house in tip top shape so you can expect to sell at the top of the range: $655,000. That’s a $105,000 gain from the day before you did the remodel, but about $65,000 of that could be attributed to appreciation. So, you recouped all but about $5000 your remodel cost. But the remodel did more than add value and make your home more pleasant for the three final years you lived in it. It made your home salable. Without the remodel, you could expect it to take much longer to sell.

4. Bathrooms. The story here is much as it was with the kitchen remodel. An outdated bathroom can be a drag on value and can prolong selling time. But you probably won’t make your home hugely more valuable by remodeling it. Truly nothing is going to boost the value of your home above the range for the neighborhood. What a remodel will do is make the home more enjoyable while you are in it, make it more salable when it goes on the market, and boost it’s value up within the range of value. Often bathrooms can be refreshed without a full remodel: replace cabinet fronts, paint, replace faucets and fixtures. But the most important thing about bathrooms, remodeled or not, is that they appear absolutely and spotlessly clean.

If you are considering a remodel and are curious about the possible impact on your home’s value and sale-ability, we at Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties would be pleased to consult with you on this. We’ll estimate the current value of your home, weigh the cost of the remodel against anticipated appreciation and help you decide if the project makes sense.

Preparation For Selling: Preparing YOU

You can find lots of information on the Internet about preparing your home for sale . . . in fact, just scroll down: you’ll find one such article here! But selling quickly for top dollar involves more than just spiffing up the house. It also involves YOU, your mindset, your preparation, your choices and so on.

Make the Shift

If you’ve been living in your HOME for some time, you wear it like your favorite sweater. You love almost everything about it. Every blemish has a story. The few little defects have been in place so long you hardly notice them. Every corner of every room holds a pleasant memory.

And somewhere, deep inside, you expect everyone who comes into your HOME to recognize and experience all of that warm fuzzy stuff. They won’t.

The day you decide to sell, your HOME becomes a HOUSE. All of the sweater aspects evaporate (you were the only one who perceived them anyway). It is now a PRODUCT, competing in the open market with other similar products. And you must start to view it that way as well.

In my previous post, I drew a parallel between detailing your car and preparing your house for sale. I think the analogy is good because we tend to become far less emotionally attached to our cars than our houses. When it’s time to sell a vehicle, we prep it and GO. You need the same mind-set when selling your HOUSE.

Open Up

Over and over I have seen home sellers create barriers between their HOUSE-product and potential buyers. It’s usually subtle little things like NOT having a lock box (that makes access easier for REALTORS), like NOT having a for sale sign in the yard, like requiring 24 hours notice for a showing. There are often good reasons for these little roadblocks – small children, ailing family members, day sleepers, valuables – but they still cut the pool of potential buyers AND make competing properties more attractive.

Before you insist that you can’t or you don’t want to or you’re not going to . . . ask yourself why. Is there a temporary change you could make in your daily lifestyle that would allow you to remove the restriction? Time on market right now on Oahu is very short. Most properly priced homes sell in 30 days or less. Most people can put up with even a drastic change for that short period of time, and it can make a big difference in sale-ability.

Do Your Homework

Ask your agent to walk you through the offer and acceptance process BEFORE you have an offer. What can you expect? What should you look out for? How will you work with your agent to sift through offers? If you wait until you have an offer to start educating yourself, the process will drag and your comfort level will sag.

In addition to simply talking about the process, ask your agent to give you a blank copy of the standard real estate purchase agreement and the sellers’ net proceeds worksheet that will be used. The time to become familiar with these important documents is NOW, before you’re having to make decisions based upon them!

Adjust the Bulls-eye

One of the biggest mistakes home sellers make is getting hung up on price. It’s natural: we are born shoppers and when shopping we usually start with price. But when it comes to selling your HOUSE, price is not the most important metric for judging success. What really matters is your net proceeds or walk-away dollars.

When you list your home for sale, work with your agent to determine a target net for yourself. Then when offers come in, you’ll be prepared to evaluate them properly. Many times, in multiple offer situations, the BEST offer is not the highest. If you stay focused on the right bulls-eye, you’ll be able to spot it.

Choose Carefully

If you are talking with real estate companies about what they can do for you, beware the marketing fluff. It’s fine for your agent to tell you how wonderful he or she is and what a good job their company will do. But where’s the proof?

Look for a tangible track record in a number of areas. And the company or agent with the largest number of sales is not necessarily the best. The kind of results that impact you, the seller, are:

Days on Market. On average, how long does it take your prospective agent/company to sell a listing? And how does that compare with the MLS average
Sale Price as a % of Listing Price. On average, how far off list price do sellers listed with this agent/company have to budge to make a sale? Do they have to come down 2%? or 5%? And how does that compare with the MLS average.
Seller Savings. On average, how much do sellers listed with this agent/company save in real estate commissions over what they might pay any other agent/broker? Ok, I know; that’s a loaded question because Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties is the only real estate company in the area that has a better deal for sellers, that is focused on seller savings like no other company. Our low set fee pricing and completely different business model delivers substantial savings to our seller clients again and again and again. It is the track record we are most proud of!
Seller Satisfaction. Does your prospective agent/company have raving fans? Can they share testimonial letters from former sellers with you? Are they willing to give you a list of references to check? You know if you were hiring an unfamiliar babysitter you’d check references. Why wouldn’t you check them when you’re dealing with your biggest asset, you home? I am very proud of the testimonials we’ve received at Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties, and you can view some of them HERE.

Work through this little list and prepare yourself (as well as your home) for sale. You’ll sell faster for more walk-away dollars, with less hassle if you do!