Selling house

[bearishgurl]

OP, there are several “flipper teams” in the county who will rehab your home and market it for a portion or percentage of your equity upon sale. Here is the link to one:

http://tomtarrant.com/tag/san-diego-house-flipping/

Perhaps you can call one of them for an appt and see if your house will qualify for their program.

A couple of homeowners around me with homes in disrepair did this and they eventually sold their homes for way more than they could get, otherwise. Both were senior citizens who could no longer work on their own homes.

Of course, I don’t know, but maybe you could recover more equity by doing something like this versus doing next to nothing and dumping it. $70K really isn’t a lot of (paper) “equity” when you have to factor in termite clearance work, costs of sale and RE commissions.

Best of all, you wouldn’t have to lift a finger! After you sign on with them and move out by an agreed-upon date, they will take over with a flipper team and gut it or whatever has to be done to get top dollar in your neighborhood.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=LeavingSD]Hi bearishgurl

I appreciate all of the input from you and others. I do take a bit of offense at your assumption that my home is “dirty” and/or “greasy” and what appears to be an insinuation that we are lazy.

I didn’t think that any of this was relevant to my question, so I didn’t address it, but in response to your comments, my home is clean. We’ve done a lot to improve it in the 8 years that we’ve lived there. We put in new fencing, we rehabbed a broken outdoor kitchen, we put in a patio cover, we re-landscaped the front yard, we put in new pool equipment, we put in a new hot water heater, we put in new ceiling fans, we’ve done work on electrical, etc. etc. The house needed a lot of things when we bought it, many of which we’ve addressed. The kitchen needs a significant amount, something we’ve been saving to do. The cabinets are the original from when the house was built and are falling apart. It is not a matter of resurfacing and painting them. The carpet is old and worn, it is at the end of its life. The hardwood floors have been scuffed and stained as a result of us living our lives in the home. We’ve made a significant effort to manage our resources and address maintenance and improvement of the home in an efficient manner. We would continue to do so if we intended to continue living there.

We are moving because I am transferring within my company. It’s a good opportunity and we have family in that area. I have no illusions about how expensive it is to live in the bay area.

I admit that purchasing this home was not a good financial decision. If you want to judge my overall worthiness to be a home owner based on that, feel free. It’s just not particularly helpful guidance for me.

I do not care what the next owner chooses to do. It does seem inefficient for me to put in a kitchen, carpeting, and paint that I like but they may not. It seems far more efficient to simply credit a buyer for such things or to have a real estate professional advise me regarding what is the most efficient way to address them.[/quote] Based upon this post, get your kitchen cabinets refaced and replace all your non-hardwood flooring with wood-look laminate. If your countertop is tile or formica, replace it with whatever is the cheapest modern material (FlyerInHi is our local resident “expert” on this :-))

Rent a sander and buffer for your real hardwood floor and spend a week getting it back into shape.

Make sure everything is sparkling clean (even under appls and furniture) and that all your screens, doorknobs, etc are in good working order and every window opens and closes. Clean your doors and walls with TSP and spackle and paint your whole house cream white (navajo white if you have large skylights).

Put your stuff in a POD in your driveway (or RV pkg area) while you go from room to room making these repairs while you live there.

This is the cheapest way to get out of your situation with the most money. If you have made all the repairs you say you did in the paragraphs above, just disregard my equity-sharing RE broker idea. You don’t need it. You can easily DIY and keep all your own equity upon sale.

[ljinvestor]

Contact Jim the Realtor (Jim Klinge) if you want a fair assessment of your home. His contact info and blog is at bubbleinfo.com. It doesn’t sound like the property has too much deferred maintenance, but if it does you have investors like Tom Tarrant who will pay cash and close escrow quickly. Hope that helps.

[bearishgurl]

OP, I do apologize if my previous posts sounded condescending to you. In your OP and previous posts, you really sounded like you didn’t want to do any work to ready your property for sale, yet you don’t have a lot of equity and really need to get out cleanly.

Gone are the days where buyers will pay anywhere near top dollar for a house which they can’t move into until they spend at least month in there with an air mattress, tools, supplies, a ladder and a pickup truck. With competent flipping teams working diligently all over the county, the vast majority of today’s buyers are buying “turnkey” homes (ready to completely move into at COE). That (and very astute sellers who have consistently maintained their homes to a high degree over their ownership period) is your competition.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=ljinvestor]Contact Jim the Realtor (Jim Klinge) if you want a fair assessment of your home. His contact info and blog is at bubbleinfo.com. It doesn’t sound like the property has too much deferred maintenance, but if it does you have investors like Tom Tarrant who will pay cash and close escrow quickly. Hope that helps.[/quote].

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=LeavingSD] It does seem inefficient for me to put in a kitchen, carpeting, and paint that I like but they may not. It seems far more efficient to simply credit a buyer for such things or to have a real estate professional advise me regarding what is the most efficient way to address them.[/quote]

I’ll stay out of most of this discussion which seems to go way behind what you are asking and just point out you already understand the issue and know your answer. Find a broker, have them come look at the property and ask their advice. Probably going to be much more reliable than advice you get sight unseen here on this board.

Personally I would interview 4-5 brokers that work in your area. Call them up, tell them you are looking to list the property, ask them to come out see the place and chat with you about 1) what you can get for the place, 2) what kind of repairs are needed, 3) how they would market the property, etc. Then pick from the broker you think is best and get on with your life. Good luck!

XBoxBoy

[treehugger]

I have 2 friends looking for houses right now and my cousin just bought….none are in your area and I am not familiar with the area; however, if priced right the houses are selling fast, even if they need work.

My cousin who just bought (southpark) and both buddies who are looking (Oceanside and Chula Vista/La Mesa areas) have put in multiple (+10) offers on homes and lost, in my opinion the homes they were bidding on needed way to much work, but they are frantic to buy something, anything and it seems to be a feeding frenzy out there right now!

Have you looked on redfin? You can put your own address in and it will pull up neighborhood comps, that way you can see what has sold around you-condition, sq ft, price, etc and get an idea if just listing the house is going to get you the price you want/need or allow you to evaluate if you want to put in any work….an easy way to get a realistic feel for the market around you.

[LeavingSD]

Thanks for all of the advice. I’m going to reach out to the broker recommendations I’ve received. If anyone wants to offer others, I’d be appreciative.

I do think that it will sell, I’ve just never sold a house before and I’m trying to educate myself. The house 2 doors down sold about 6 weeks ago. The owner passed away and their kids were selling it. I went to an open house and thought it needed work and wouldn’t sell. It sold for 10k less than asking (which I thought was an unreasonably high asking). I don’t know the details (if there were concessions), but that gives me some idea of what we are in for.

At this point, I’m going to focus on finding the right broker to guide us. Thanks for all the input! I’m going back to lurking 🙂

[Geedup]

I would be interested in buying as it is before you list it. Let me know what price you have in mind . I’ll send you a PM

[Coronita]

[quote=Geedup]I would be interested in buying as it is before you list it. Let me know what price you have in mind . I’ll send you a PM[/quote]

In a seller’s market, why would a seller not want to put this on the market and try to sell it without listing it to get the top price?

[FlyerInHi]

treehugger, I observe the same things you do. And in this market, I would hate for our friend here to not get top price, remodeled or not.

The retail price for remodel is much different from contractor’s costs (when I watch those TV shows, I always feel like the costs are low balled to encourage viewers to take on projects).

There is no point paying retail prices for remodel in a seller’s market. And I don’t think the OP is ready to sand floors and resurface cabinets. Lucky she’s selling in a hot market.

[recordsclerk]

It’s roughly $20 per sqft premium for renovated vs non renovated properties on average. That’s about $40K for a 2000sqft home in Penasquitos. That’s why I always recommend doing just the basics so you don’t turn off potential buyers. Overdoing it will only result in breaking even. There are some older neighborhoods that require complete renovations that will give you $100K in premiums but not in track homes built 1970 or newer. Basically if your home shows OK, don’t put in the work. This holds especially true for those that are not willing to do some of the work themselves or don’t have good cheap labor. In this case with what limited information given, the kitchen may or may not need to be redone. I would not do cheap materials, but something in the middle range for this neighborhood.
If you look at the recent trends, you will see that a lot of houses are doing carpet/paint to refresh the home. This includes bank owned properties. Even they are getting the hint.
***Never sell to a renovation company. They are the Payday lenders of the house buying industry. Just make sure that your home is lendable and you will get much more than a flipper would pay.***

[Geedup]

I just thought I would ask the seller for the asking price before it went on the market at 5% selling commission and before any repairs including Termite section 1 were completed.

[Coronita]

[quote=Geedup]I just thought I would ask the seller for the asking price before it went on the market at 5% selling commission and before any repairs including Termite section 1 were completed.[/quote]

There nothing wrong asking but
If the market is hot, perhaps the seller might try selling “as is”, start with a lower number, get multiple offers into a bidding war and let people’s emotions take over. Kind of like the way eBay works.
Especially, if the seller finds a buyer out of state itching to buy in a hurry. I’ve tracked a few purchases that closed recently and it seems like the out of the state buyers tend to overpay in order to close.

Well I guess that’s how it works in the bay area.

If this sounds horrible, its not. Because if this was a buyers market, buyers would be doing the exact opposite to try to get the lowest price possible.

[FlyerInHi]

Greed is good.

To relate to the rent thread, a guy told me that he went to a large complex. They quoted him a certain rent, say $1700. While he was thinking about it, they emailed him back “based on overwhelming demand, the rent is now $1,800”

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