Head Tale

The deal is done, the papers signed at the lawyer, the only thing left to do to complete the selling of our old home and finalize the transition to our new home is to hand over the keys on Friday (okay, the realtors do that.)

Anyhow, beyond the very obvious single answer that “There was a buyer looking for what we were offering at the same time we were selling”, there are a few things I think we did to help move our property so quickly.

Strangely, pricing below market value (which is what most people would expect for a house that sells in four days and which we did to sell our Calgary condo quickly) is something we *didn’t* do this time.  We actually listed above market value as we saw a big gap in what the market had for houses in our price range with the features our house had (five bedrooms!  Numerous upgrades! Great location!).  We were prepared to sit on an empty house for a bit to get our price and in the end, we ended up getting slightly more than what other similar houses in the area were going for, even with selling in December.

So what are some of the things we did (or were encouraged to do by others) to make our house sell so quickly?

1. Maintained Our House
We saw some houses in the same price range that were, frankly, dumps, and very few that had as many upgrades as ours did.  But you have to remember that until a couple months ago, we weren’t planning to move (in any serious way) so a lot of the things we had upgraded were things we chose to do to better our own home over the years – installing new windows, replacing the furnace, installing air conditioning, redoing the entire fence – with a rough objective of doing one major project per year.  Right before we listed, we also tried to do some “touch-up” repairs – painting over the chipped paint behind the garbage can, updating some trim that had come off in the bathroom, a new coat of paint in one room that really needed it.

2. Took Professional Pictures
I remember asking our realtor if she took photos or hired someone.  She said she normally just took her own photos but she’d recently had good luck using a professional photographer so I’m not sure if my question prompted her but she decided to do the same with ours. In the end, I think it made a world of difference to have a pro who knew how to stage rooms, photoshop out some blemishes (I wondered if that was ethical but I guess magazines do it all the time and really, any buyer would get to see the actual condition or where our daughter decided to draw in permanent marker on the carpet when they viewed the house!)

3.  Took Pictures Before Moving Out Completely
On a related note, we made the timing work so that we were able to have much of the clutter gone and the house clean then the photos taken only a couple days before the movers arrived to clean out the house completely of all furniture and any other large items.  This was great for a couple reasons – in the photos, the house looked clean and sleek but also lived in.  Also, some furniture in the pictures helped hide ding marks from over the years (again, ethnically, I think you have to disclose anything that’s not visible but if a couch is covering up some chipped paint on the wall, that’s visible to anyone who cares to look).  Also, research shows that houses that are photographed empty get much lower selling prices because, whether it’s true or not, an empty house conveys the message that you’re desperate to sell.

4. Were Flexible on Possession
Partly to reduce our own stress, we did not make the buying of our new home conditional on the selling of our old home.  But that also meant we were prepared to sit on two mortgages for a month or two and possibly well into the spring since the market in Regina is already quite soft.  In the end, not tying the buying and selling together meant we could move into our new house at a somewhat leisurely pace and then, by the time, we had it listed and started getting showings and offers, we were able to accommodate a buyer who wanted a very quick possession date instead of having to wait for our new house to be ready or whatever.

5. Decided To List Before Christmas
As I mentioned in a recent post, we seriously debated whether to even list before Christmas but our realtor earned her money more than in any other way by convincing us to list early (in fact, by the end of November very soon after we took possession of our new house) and that led to six showings and one solid offer within four days.  (Of course, that makes me wonder if we could’ve listed our house for even more but again, not having to carry two mortgages with all associated costs plus the stress of looking after two houses was offset by any “discount” we gave on our selling price.)

Bonus: Wrote Our Own Blurb
Real estate listings are sort of like obituaries – they tend to follow a similar template and use similar language, always with a goal of painting the subject in the most positive light.  When our realtor was getting close to listing our house, she said she would send it around to other agents in her office first and I offered to write a summary of our house to include.  Although I used a similar format to what I saw in other real estate listings, I put a few unique touches in my write-up about the home’s history, the neighbours, a couple unique inclusions that others might not even list – all of which she ended up including in the blurb that got posted to MLS.

And now the deal is done and we can focus on building our new life in our new house!