Within 1 week of changing the paint and then a price drop, we have accepted an offer! Not sure what was the bigger piece of the pie that brought the offer to the table, but we are happy! Thank you again for all your help and suggestions. - Sat Aug 2 2008, 15:00
Thank yoiu again everyone for your advice. We are doing the price drop today. It is significant, but still within our range of acceptable. We have our second home already built and are living in it. Well, partially built. Long story. So, we are in no rush to sell, other than just getting our liquidity out and paying ourselves. The house still appears to be lived in, groceries, clothes, things being moved around, all nice furniture, etc. Thank goodness we are not there, with all these showings and my three kids, that would have been a total nightmare. My agent did confirm this is the most showings in this time frame he has ever seen in his career. The house is open, we are not competing with new construction in our direct area, maybe 10-15 minutes north, but that is HUGE around here. Drive time that is... so cross your fingers and maybe we will see some new action with the combo paint / price reduction. It is amazing to me how many folks have been coming in. Perhaps, as mentioned, agents are using my home to boost the sale of that just 'bigger' home at the same price. Now, we are in a different league. In my zip, we will be the lowest at that range with a three car garage and at that square footage! It would be nice to get the monkey off my back so I can start building the rest of my new house and be well RESTED as my first kiddo starts kindergarten. I am so addicted to the CSS comments it is crazy. We did talk about an open house, then that fizzled. I will bring it up again to my agent. Thank you all again for your ideas and help. By the way, the idea of writing all the folks who have seen the house, I did like this idea - but I do suffer from foot in mouth episodes every once in a while. So, I pester my agent to follow up with specific things I am seeing commented on. He has been doing this pretty well and definitely earning his commission. Poor guy, I hope we get there soon. - Wed Jul 30 2008, 06:00
I am about to become one of the most unhappy clients no my agent's list. We have now had 8 more showings since the agent requested we repain the downstairs. DONE. We have had two people say they really love the house, one just wants it for 24K less than our price. The other is still pending thoughts... so, now my agent - less than one week after telling me a price reduction is not the way to go, but rather PAINT... is saying we need to drop another $7500.00 to be in the running. This is just less than 2 weeks after telling me he absolutely did not want to do any drastic price drops because he felt we were where we needed to be. I have a new CMA, which includes two huge foreclosure nightmares and ofcourse that is dropping the average down, but most agents are quick to point that out both to buyers and sellers. Understandably, the appraiser is going to use those numbers, but dropping my price down is now looking like we would be selling at UNDER our county appraisal, which seems ridiculous to me here in Collin County. We own multiple properties here in Collin County and it has NEVER been my experience that the annual appraisals go over market for any of our pieces. Perhaps things have changed. Please someone put my mind at ease. I am just sick to my stomach today and my agent, nor his assistant can seem to make me feel any better. In case anyone is wondering NO we are not using a discount broker and I do feel like we made a good choice in our selection of agent, but lately his advice seems to change with the rise and fall of the sun. Not sure what is going on here. - Tue Jul 29 2008, 15:27
Okay, latest request is to repaint the entire downstairs. We are not painted pink panther pink... but we do have colors throughout the house. Huge expense to repaint every room in the downstairs to a neutral beige... are buyers REALLY not able to see past paint? Especially when the colors are OBVIOUSLY visible on the MLS listing? Are agents NOT pointing their clients to preview online these days? We have had two comments out of 60 showings about the color... is it worth the investment to change to neutral beige from current colors? - Wed Jul 23 2008, 11:28
The feedback on the house is that it is a beautiful house, lovely house, shows well, very nice. Small kitchen, small master, small master closet. So.. I do think that could be part of the problem. We have had several people who LOVE it and simply want more closet or a second full size bath downstairs in addition to the master bath. The house is very open, not the traditional floorplan. That could possibly be getting in the way. Perhaps this week will prove more successful, if not, we really can only do so much. The house is staged, the furniture is very nice and classic. No wallpaper, no unsightly things. We had a lot of friends look at it that thought we did too much to get it ready. Cleaned too much, over did it with replacing carpet in master and refinishing the hardwood floors. It looks practically brand new. Great yard, established trees, although I am finding out some folks don't want any trees for religious reasons. Unfortunately, I am not cutting down trees. Shade is priceless for many of us here in Texas. New sod in the backyard welcomes children or adults... we'll see. - Thu Jul 17 2008, 12:05
Well, my agent feels pretty strong about our position. He thinks we have a lot of people looking who are also selling their homes and are simply keeping an eye out on the current inventory. We are going to offer a $3000 bonus for the buyers agent for 10 days to all of the people who have seen the home already. If we still get no bites, we'll do another drop. He feels the buyers are simply getting more closet and more kitchen somewhere else. We also have a three car garage, which around here is rare. The house is staged great and yes we are paying full commission and we have the air running. He said please don't get nervous, we are only 30 days in, election year, and that his figures on showings / offers in the past 12 months are not reflective of 10 showing or even 15 to one offer. Around here, we have just so much inventory. There is presently a 6 month inventory in my zip code. So, we'll give it a shot for 10 days. I just hate to be carrying the house through the new year. I would much rather get the monkey off my back and breath easy as my first baby heads of to kindergarten!!!! Thanks for all the great comments. - Wed Jul 16 2008, 19:41
Any thoughts on holding an open house in combination with a price reduction to have someone on site to hear the feedback live? - Wed Jul 16 2008, 17:44
We have no pet odors or anything obvious. We moved out and left all the nice furniture, so the house is fully staged, we have clothes and groceries (well staged) All clutter is out, fresh flowers changed out regularly, new hardwood floors, it really does show well. With the exception of the small master closet, and smaller kitchen. We have done the steps as mentioned below by Don Tepper, it really looks great. We know that some Asian families don't like it because the front and back door are pretty well aligned, but we knew that going into it. Also, bathroom in the center of the house is bad for feng shui. We love the traffic, and really it does appear that most people really don't say anything awful. I am going to call my agent right now and see how many other houses he has had 50 showings and no offers on. That is really starting to upset me. - Wed Jul 16 2008, 17:32
We dropped the price this past weekend $3,000.00, which was 1.2%. Agent seems to think we are very close to where we will ultimately sell, we have a little wiggle room to negotiate down a bit since that seems to be the game around here. We were told that the buyers must be able to negotiate it down or they simply won't take it. So, we have a little room there. - Wed Jul 16 2008, 16:57
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