12 Tips to Sell Your Home, Part 1

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following is a podcast from a qualified senior care provider part on the answers for elders radio show. And welcome everyone to answers for elders radio network. And it’s spring is upon us. We are seeing the for Scythia is blooming and the Pacific northwest and for those of us that are rose gardeners that means it’s time to Prune our roses, which is very, very exciting, and I always love this time of year because it’s about new beginnings. The equinox happens. It’s the most powerful time really in our in our gravitational energy rotation, whatever it is, and the equinox brings equinox brings forward new divid new beginnings and as a result, a lot of us are looking to make a new beginning and a home change. This is the time when families are preparing for a homesale. They’re looking at their house and looking around and especially maybe either you or you’re planning it for a loved one. You’re saying, where do we even begin? And I know that many of you that have listened to our answers for elders radio program I always say selling a home feels like it’s too much to deal with the stay and too much to deal with to move, and so we’re going to talk about that this hour with our wonderful Rebecca Bowman, who’s the CEO of SAFTS, Sash Services, senior services, home sales and Rebecca, welcome to answers for alders and welcome back. Thank you, Suzanne. It’s so great to be here with you today. Well, I’m glad you’re here because the last time you’re on our show, by the way, we probably had, I would bet, five or six people that called and said this was really, really one of the best episodes, you know hours, because we put you on the radio and in the Pacific northwest. And so this is the really cool thing is this is going out to our podcast network exclusively, so a lot of you that are listening across the country you’re going to get a lot of insights for your own you know, home where, no matter where you live in the USA. But even more importantly, you’re going to have the opportunity to really hone in on what’s most important, either for if you were an adult child looking to maybe you know your empty nesters right now and thinking about I don’t need to live in this big house anymore. But I don’t even know where to start, or you might be looking for seeing you loved one. And so, Rebecca, thank you for coming back and thank you for being here and talking about this very important topic. And now is really the time. With so many people, it seems like spring the real estate market goes to way up. Doesn’t that it does it because it’s because everyone loves how their yard looks in the spring. The grass is super green and all of the hours are blooming like per scythias, the tulips are coming up, the daffodils and people go, Oh, my yard is so pretty cut let’s put it on the market now and not in the dead of winter. Yeah, and everything is barren and Brown, and so this is definitely a big time for thinking about listing a home. HMM. Well, I think to just logistically thinking about moving in a snowstorm isn’t very right. And when you start in the spring it feels like you’ve got about five or six months to do the whole thing. You can start getting the house ready in March, April, maybe put it on in May or June, have the sale closed in July or August. It feels doable. Yeah, and I think the other thing is it’s a lot of us are around maybe our senior loved ones over the holidays. We’re starting to see some you know, decline or concerns, you know maybe you know, things just aren’t the same as we’ve may be seen a senior loved one, and so families are touch starting to have these conversations and realizing that, you know, there could be a better opportunity for our loved one, and so that’s why we’re here. So I know you have twelve tips right now on how to best get your house ready. So, Rebecca, I’m just going to let you roll with it. Thank you, Suzanne. And you know, that conversation that that people have what they’re senior loved one, it’s starts to stall out right around the topic of how do we get the home ready for a that’s where it stalls out because there’s a couple of misperceptions about what has to be done in order to put the home up for sale. You know, mom or dad has lived there for forty, fifty years. It still has the s decor and finishes. It might be a little on the full side and people look around and go gosh, this doesn’t look like any of the homes on HGTV. How are we guide it to look like that? And I just want to put that myth to rest today on this podcast that we’re doing and say the home does not need to be renovated in order to be sold and people don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make it look like it belongs in a magazine. Lots of homes are sold every single day without doing updates. But there are a few things that can be done that are low cost, not too hard to do, that you can do on any budget to really help the senior loved one or yourself maximize that net proceeds at the end of the sale. So that’s what I wanted to go over with you. Well, that’s really important and I think one of the things that I’m glad you brought up the hgtv thing, because a lot of times I think there’s what is it the property brothers are always I go through when they say, Oh, you’ll only get three Hundredzero, but if you put Fiftyzero in you’re going to get seven Hundredzero. Well, it doesn’t work that way and that’s not reality. You know. Thank you for saying that, Suzanne, because I think like a lot of those shows are really miss leading and actually you know when you’re going to do a big remodel. Sure you might sell your home for a higher price, but you might also eat up all of that gain in the renovation cost through. So a good realtor will show okay, I think I can sell your home as is not renovated, for this price, but we could do a few things and sell it for this price and let people see the difference right and what they’ll make at the end of the sale. So these these tips that I’m going to bring today. I have personally done on many clients homes and of course, the first client I ever had was my grandfather, was twenty two years ago when I helped him with his home sale, and then I went on to open sash and start this business and we’ve helped hundreds of families since then. So this is based on both my family experience as well as working with many clients in the field. So we’ll just dive right in. Absolutely the biggest, biggest piece of advice that I can give is everyone plans to pack up all their belongings when they’re going to move. Nobody says I’m just going to leave everything for the next owner. Eventually they’re going to pack all their things to be able to move. The mistake that people make is waiting to pack until they’ve already had photography done in the home and they’ve already put those photos on the Internet and they’ve already listed the home. So the home looks very full and so hard for buyers to imagine it as their own home when all they see it every photo is wall wall wall full of personal belongings of the how and the whole floor space. So tip number one is do the packing before the photography. Not Everything you own, but as many things as you possibly can that you don’t meet on a daily basis. Buyers think nothing of having a garage full of boxes, or you can put them in a storage unit, but having the full rooms with nothing packed up just makes the room feel smaller and darker and it’s a little bit harder to imagine it all all done. We did this with a couple ladies that I helped into coma who were feeling overwhelmed and they said, well, how do we get the house ready? And I said you’re going to pack soon. Right, just do it now instead of the weeks before closing and your house is going to look so much better. Yeah, and that’s what we did. They packed up as much as they could put it in the garage. We ended up having a bidding war, sold their home well over asking and we did not renovate a thing. So that is that’s all amazing. That’s amazing. Good for you. Pack first. The second thing, and this is really important for for folks who are really feeling the budget of all the work that it takes to get the home ready, is almost everybody has things in their home that they’re probably not going to take with them to their next place. It doesn’t do it. Or, you know, it’s an old record collection they’re not listening to anymore, right, maybe some World War Two memorabilia that’s just been stalked away in the attic for forty years. And these are things that could be auctioned or sold in order to raise a little bit of money to pay for the sprucing to get the house ready for market. So even if you sell just a few things for a few hundred dollars or a couple thousand, that will pay for the next number three through ten. On my list that I’m going to give you. So a lot of folks think, Oh Gosh, I need tenzero or twenty thousand. Not at all. You only need a thousand or two thousand to do the list that I’m doing at the most. That’s a Nazy able to make that just with selling a few things out of the home. Absolutely and it accomplishes two things. By selling things in the home, it empties it out and you’re making a little bit of money to pay for helpers to come in and take the stress off of you as far as helping you with the job. A couple that I met a couple of years ago, I went to do the home visit and sit with them in their living room and their house was so empty and I said wow, you have done such a great job and they said, Oh, we’ve been selling things for a year, just one by one round they had been selling things off, and so what happened is when it was time to move them, it was such a very low cost move because we were only taking to few things that they wanted to take to their next apartment and not packing up a two thousand square foot home. So just selling a few things so you can use a live garage sale or or an auction. There’s online auction sites. There’s a state sales people who do that for a living. They can come in and do all the work, may just take a percentage. Or there’s for sale apps like offer up or things like that, that is to sell those and and that can earn a little bit on and one of the things that you’re saying is I always think about the transition from living, let’s as seniors living in a two five hundred square foot house and then they’re moving into a seven hundred square foot apartment in assist a living are, you know, senior living of some sort. There’s a there’s a sense of not necessarily knowing what the new lifestyle is going to be right. So there’s a lot of things that you may think you need in your next place where you’re going to live, and I’m one of the things, I think advantages in working with you, Rebecca, is that you understand, number one, what that lifestyle is going to be likely like, what items are probably going to be meeting and because you have build such a wonderful personal relationship with your clients, you also recognize the things, I think, that are most important to them, which is their highest values and things like that that they that they’re honored with, and so I am excited about that piece because, obviously, you know, that’s the extra secret sauce. I think that sash brings. Thank you. Yes, taking those items from the home that are really important and memorable to make the next place feel like home. Right, right. Well, in our next segment we’re going to keep going with this list and in the meantime, Rebecca, how do we reach you? Folks can find us online at Sash Servicescom. Lots of information on our website and our history, our values, testimonials and stories and even some before and after pictures. Fabulous, and we’ll be right back in segment to right up to this answers for elders radio show with Suzanne Newman. Hopes you found this podcast useful in your journey of navigating senior care. Check out more podcasts like this to help you find qualified senior care experts and areas of financial, legal, health and wellness and living options. Learn about our radio show, receive promotional discounts and meet our experts by clicking on the banner to join the Senior Advocate Network at answers for elders, RADIOCOM. Now there is one place to find the answers for elders.