Wednesday, September 22, 2010

[JessFinds] Buy My House

 THE BIG DEAL  - PART II

We are in situation that many American's are finding right now, needing to sell their home within a certain time frame and dreading it. I watched enough HGTV to know that I need to purge and clean and stage. I have never sold a home before! I have no idea what I am doing. I can fake my way through a lot of things, but this is one where I just feel paralyzed.

Picture w lush trees and fresh landscaping in the front.

We have the added bonus of being located in one of the worst states for the housing crisis - our home in particular has taken a 30,000 - 40,000 dip since May of this year. Ouch.

We live in a beach town. It has an interesting mix of haves, semi-haves and retirees.  Rural suburbia and coastal farmland. So you will frequently see a $800k+ home near a $200k+ home. It just is the layout of the land here. Our little town is sandwiched between an economically depressed city and a very desireable zip code.

Our home is a 1950's box that was turned in to a Colonial style home by additions in the 1980's and 1990's. It is just over 2,300 sq feet of hard-to-heat-in-the-winter home. It is a 3 bedroom / 2.5 bath with bonus family room. The master suite is sickeningly huge. The other bedrooms are 1950's small. An appraiser told us that our walk-in-closet can be listed as a den because it has a window and lighting/heating. Bulkhead basement that was encased for indoor access before we purchased. Sunroom. We have upgraded the kitchen and the master bath.

Bonus - Great lot. Lots of space for the $$. Flanked by incredibly well tended homes on both sides.
Bad - Needs new roof (no leaks but definitely at the age of normal replacement) and is on a busy street.

Ok. Purge. Clean. Have a realtor or two do a walk through. Choose a realtor. Stage. Right?

3 comments:

Joie said...

Yes, purge, purge, purge!!! Is there anyone in the rectory? If not, you guys should get the parish to let you use it for storage if there are things you want to keep but can't actually have in the house for staging.

Rick Falls said...

Is it the least of the homes in a nice neighborhood by chance?

Let me know, we buy places that needs updates.

Rick

JessFinds said...

They need to rent the rectory for income. So the rectory will not be available for storage or anything.

I would say it is a nice home in a rural neighborhood. It just needs a new roof. A Realtor told us that we should not replace the roof, use that as a negotiating point. We would never recoop the cost of replacement in selling the house at this point.