5 Things Under $100 to Sell Your Home for More

Spring is here and a lot of you are getting ready to sell your homes. Many of my listing appointments I end up imparting a lot of the same advice to folks looking to sell there homes. Here’s a few handy tips on how to make your home more appealing to buyers for under $100.

1.) Double Check the Curb Appeal
    
Whether you like it or not perspective home buyers will be flipping through 100s of properties and occasionally driving by them so the curb appeal is going to be the first thing they notice and draws them in. So make sure it’s photo ready!

Spruce up exterior, power wash, fresh pine straw, potted plants, clean/paint front door and swap any dated hardware

2.) Light Bulb Check
    
Whether seem like minutia, but if you want your home to tell perspective agents and their buyers you didn’t take good care of the home, give them subconscious  hints like dirty lighting fixtures or burnt out bulbs. Simple fix that will go a long way in to alleviating any surface level concerns and negate the question, ‘if they didn’t tend to the small things we can see, what may be hiding under the surface?’

3.) Paint and Spot Touch Up
    
Want to know every Agent’s trick to fixing something that looks old and tired? Spot touch ups and neutral paint go a long way into breathing some life into a pre-owned home regardless of how hard a certain space has been used.

4.) Deep Deep Clean and Declutter
    
There’s no quicker way to turn off a perspective buyer entering home than a dirty space, w/ odd smells or cluttered rooms. Buyers will decide within 15 seconds of seeing a home whether they’d buy it or not. So don’t give them a reason not to in the last 5 when they open the door. Clean the baseboards, appliances, swap the air filters and deep clean the bathrooms/kitchens where. Also if you’re living in the home, that’s fine, but you’re going to be moving so it’s time to put a lot of the excess in boxes so buyers can focus on the space and not your family vacation to Wyoming 2014.

5.) Organize the Garage

You know why i love selling homes for engineers and mechanics? Most of the time their garages are the most organized space in the house. Most use it as the space where they store excess and becomes cluttered quickly. We’re going to keep playing on the buyer subconscious here, in that a clean and tidy garage says ‘I’ve kept up the space where most keep the dirtiest/disorganized, so clearly I've kept the rest of the home in tip top shape’. Think about it, at this point the other homes prospective buyers have seen will be the place of dirty lawn mowers, boxes of Christmas decorations thrown haphazardly on a shelf, and tools thrown about. If this one space stands apart from the rest, it's yet another reason to choose your home over another.

These are some of the most common I find from home to home that will help set yours apart and cost you mostly time. There are (of course), many more things you can do to prepare your home for sale (and should), but these easy tips will set you apart from most and get your home sold just a bit quicker.

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2017 Year In Review - Charleston Housing

A big thank you for the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Charleston Trident Association of Realtors for putting forth the data to give all of us a comprehensive overview of this past year in the market. The data below and referenced in the the podcast reflects the entire year of 2017.

The Raw Data:

Sales: Pending sales increased 5.4 percent, landing at 18,726 to close out the year. Closed sales were up 3.1 percent to finish 2017 at 18,381.

Listings: Year-over-year, the number of homes available for sale was lower by 14.0 percent. There were 4,673 active listings at the end of 2017. New listings increased by 4.5 percent to finish the year at 24,054. Home supply was once again lower than desired in 2017.

Showings: Demand was high throughout 2017, thus showings were up. Homes for sale received, on average, 3.2 percent more showings. There were 13 showings before pending, which was unchanged compared to 2016.

Distressed Properties: The foreclosure market has dwindled from its peak several years ago. In 2017, the percentage of closed sales that were either foreclosure or short sale decreased by 8.1 percent to end the year at 5.7 percent of the market.

New Construction: New home building has improved acrossthe country but is not yet at a level to help sustain a balanced market. Locally, new construction months of supply finished 2017 at 3.8 months. While previously owned homes have seen months of supply drop from 6.0 to 2.8 months over the last five years, new construction supply has seen less change from a 2014 peak of 5.6 months.

Prices: Home prices were up compared to last year. The overall median sales price increased 4.7 percent to $251,333 for the year. Prices are expected to rise at a slow rate in 2018. Single-Family home prices were up 5.9 percent compared to last year, and Townhouse/Condo home prices were up 4.5 percent.

Client Testimonial: Kyle Dicke

Kyle Dicke, owner of Outline (a Charleston Based design studio, web and PR company) chose to call Charleston home over 6 years ago. With business booming, Kyle wanted to lay some serious roots to Charleston by purchasing a home in addition to some Investment property.

After initially helping Kyle purchase a cash flowing rental unit, we found him a new, turnkey home in James Island just a couple years later. The investment property quickly became a 'cash cow', generating positive returns immediately. The new build we dealt with several challenges of building a new home; unreliable sub-contractors, elusive completion date and quality control. However, navigated through to end up with two great deals for Kyle's portfolio.

I'm honored to call a two-time client, but more so a friend! Thanks buddy!