Dear person who's trying to sell their home, - Page 2

[lavieenrose]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves! Our neighbor on the block behind us listed her house right after her husband passed away, nearly a year ago. The house is in quite a state of disrepair (neither of them has been able to fix things or afford a contractor for a long time) and being sold "as is." Still, they could take nicer photos!

[CariOfOz]

Originally Posted by PapayaMom

it goes both ways though. Our house is on the market and we get all sorts of people looking in our windows and wandering around our yard, it's very creepy for a SAHM to have people on my property and the pictures on the listing are clear that we still live here. Make an appointment people!

Yes that DOES suck as well. We live in rental homes and at the last place we lived I was sitting drinking a cup of coffee after finally getting the baby to sleep and there's a knock at the door. When I answer it there's a lady standing there saying she saw our house for sale on realestate.com and wanted to know if she could come in and look around!?! Um.. NO!:

The real kicker is we had not even been INFORMED that the house was for sale... I hit that site and there it was. OMG did the agent get an earful!

[soccermama]

I was house hunting this morning online and some of the things that people display are just crazy. Magnets ALL over the fridge, food boxes ALL over the kitchen. Just really, really cluttered and you couldn't see the kitchen or the house itself for what it was worth.

I can't wait until we can start purging and getting rid of stuff before we put our house on the market in May. It's going to make a HUGE difference.

[mightymoo]

My mom is a real estate agent, you can't imagine the amount of tidying up she has to do when she goes to take photos. And people were amazed I sold my house last year in 30 days - probably not in small part to the fact that the place was completely spotless for every single showing. Heck, I'd make sure the sinks were shiny!

[2cutiekitties]

wow, reading this I feel so much better about my dirty house right now
at least I dont have a cabinet full of old qtips :

[tree_hugger]

Originally Posted by oliviasaru

I really think that if the realtor had had more sense than to take pictures of disheveled rooms full of the detritus of an old man's last illness, our neighbor would have had at least an offer by now. What is the realtor thinking? Doesn't he WANT to sell the house?

Weird.

Some agents do keep a few old, disrepaired properties on their books, so they can show them to prospective buyers before they show the "better" houses. Makes the higher value house look so much better in comparison, KWIM?

I also wonder if the people living in the poorly presented houses are tenents, rather than the owners, and therefor are les likely to care if the house is sold or not.

[Delicateflower]

Originally Posted by 2cutiekitties

wow, reading this I feel so much better about my dirty house right now
at least I dont have a cabinet full of old qtips :

me neither, flylady would be proud of us.

[annekevdbroek]

I so totally can relate! We've moved 5 times in 10 years. I have looked at so many photos online and so many houses in person.

The last agent we listed with had a professional come photograph the house.

During our last search it became a hobby of mine to look for the worst interior house photographs. It is quite amazing how either the photo itself is horrible or the house itself is in such bad condtion that it should never have been photographed.

We certainly saw a lot of dirty and/or weird houses when we went house hunting. The *grossest* was a very very filthy house (dirty dishes overflowing sink, unmade beds, stuff spilling out of closests) including an attached garage that had been used for a dog pooping place (e.g. instead of allowing the dogs outside in the yard) for at least a month without bothering to clean up the poop. It was beyond disgusting.

When I see such a house I would *never* buy it - if you can't make your bed when you are trying to sell your house why would I think that you'd take care of more important structural issues with your house?

[PatienceAndLove]

My mom told me about someone inquiring about listing their home with her, and when she arrived, a path had been cleared through the junk to create a path and to open doors.
She told them that unless they cleaned, she was not listing their house. They went with someone else.
It sat on the market for 2 YEARS!

Whenever we moved, the dishes were put into the dishwasher after each meal and it was run. It wasn't always full, but there were never dirty dishes. Beds were made as soon as we got out of them, bathrooms were cleaned as soon as we were finished using them (wiping spots of mirror, water of counter, stuff in sink), and the floor was vac-ed every morning.

I don't think we ever had a house on the market longer than 2 months.

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by PatienceAndLove

My mom told me about someone inquiring about listing their home with her, and when she arrived, a path had been cleared through the junk to create a path and to open doors.
She told them that unless they cleaned, she was not listing their house. They went with someone else.
It sat on the market for 2 YEARS!

Whenever we moved, the dishes were put into the dishwasher after each meal and it was run. It wasn't always full, but there were never dirty dishes. Beds were made as soon as we got out of them, bathrooms were cleaned as soon as we were finished using them (wiping spots of mirror, water of counter, stuff in sink), and the floor was vac-ed every morning.

I don't think we ever had a house on the market longer than 2 months.

Next time, put a 30 minute notice on it. That's enough time for flush and wipes, plus you look extra-nice when they call up and ask if they can come by in 15minutes instead and you say "no problem!"

[PatienceAndLove]

Originally Posted by sapphire_chan

Next time, put a 30 minute notice on it. That's enough time for flush and wipes, plus you look extra-nice when they call up and ask if they can come by in 15minutes instead and you say "no problem!"

? There was no need for a 30-minute notice, since the house was spotless anyway.

[Delicateflower]

One of the listings I've seen so far had only exterior pictures, and a note saying that once they'd cleaned out the inside they'd post pictures. Ahhhh, no thanks.

[jtsmom]

Check this out:

www.lovelylisting.com

[skatterkat]

Originally Posted by jtsmom

Check this out:

www.lovelylisting.com

Ha! I can't believe some of the photos on that site.

[gwen's mom]

We were house searching a year ago. There was one house we wanted to see but the family was living there so our agent called to see if we could come by. The woman said the house was a mess and asked that we come by the next day. I am not sure what she did over the next 24 hours but it certianly wasn't clean the house! We could not walk into the bedrooms~there was "stuff" all over the floors, the laundry area was meant to be a walk-through area but there was just a "path" with laundry on both sides, at least 3 feet deep. One of my co-workers was also house hunting at the time and looked at the same house. When he looked at it there was marijuana all over on the kitchen table...and the real kicker...the house is across the street from an elementary school! Needless to say the house is still on the market.

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by gwen's mom

We were house searching a year ago. There was one house we wanted to see but the family was living there so our agent called to see if we could come by. The woman said the house was a mess and asked that we come by the next day. I am not sure what she did over the next 24 hours but it certianly wasn't clean the house! We could not walk into the bedrooms~there was "stuff" all over the floors, the laundry area was meant to be a walk-through area but there was just a "path" with laundry on both sides, at least 3 feet deep. One of my co-workers was also house hunting at the time and looked at the same house. When he looked at it there was marijuana all over on the kitchen table...and the real kicker...the house is across the street from an elementary school! Needless to say the house is still on the market.

That's the "mess" that was cleaned up before your visit.

[mommathea]

lol! My dh is a realestate photographer and cannot stand to look on the computer to look for a house. He's had some houses that he has had to tell the realtor that he would not shoot certain rooms because of clutter and junk being everywhere.
Umm, hello, you want me to shoot your house to make it look good, atleast clean it first.

[mamagemini]

DH and I have been househunting this past month, and one house was sooo disappointing.

The pictures looked great from the outside, but when we went to the open house, there were paintings everywhere. The guy was an artist. I halfway understand, because my husband is an artist too, but there aren’t paintings in every livable space in the house. I mean, there were paintings in the kitchen, in the 3 bedrooms (he lived by himself), and in the bonus room. You could not even walk into the bonus room for all the paintings that were on the floor. I was surprised to not see paintings in the bathroom. But—get this—he had 2 crawl space attic storage or even the garage, but he didn’t even bother to store any paintings in those places. We passed on that house.

The pictures looked great from the outside, but when we went to the open house, there were paintings everywhere. The guy was an artist. I halfway understand, because my husband is an artist too, but there aren’t paintings in every livable space in the house. I mean, there were paintings in the kitchen, in the 3 bedrooms (he lived by himself), and in the bonus room. I was surprised to not see paintings in the bathroom. But—get this—he had 2 crawl space attic storage or even the garage, but he didn’t even bother to store any paintings in those places. We passed on that house.

I just had to add all of the houses we saw that must have been extras for “That 70s Show”. We seriously saw about 5 houses priced competitively where my husband spent the whole time looking for Hot Donna and expecting to see everyone chilling on the couch in the basement. One house even touted “Triangle cabinetry”. Are you serious? One house did not have central air or heating, so there were old radiators and air conditioning units everywhere. Sure, we’d let our little one crawl around and get burned by the radiator, right? I don’t believe there’s anyway to childproof that.

All of the appliances were older than us, and one place even had a wood burning cooking stove. So I’m supposed to pay over 100K for these places and still have to update the entire house? Riiiiiight. I guess we’re supposed to make up the difference by selling all the old appliances on ebay.

[Kim Allen]

Haha DH and I looked at a home nearby that was for sale. The renter changed the locks so it took the realitors for ever to finally get in and when we did we wished we hadnt. lol I knew of the people that was renting and I kinda had an Idea of what to expect but it was bad. Dirty clothes all over the house not just in one pile. The food and dishes left out all over. Needless to say they had a cat that did not have a litter box. There was dirty underwear on the coffee table!?!?!?!?! They had some kids also which im sure should not be living in that condition. Shortly after that they were evicted. hmmm wonder why. I know the realitors were so embarrased and fuming mad. Oh well DH told them straight up that was the reason we would not be buying it. Because no telling how nasty the actual house was. I would be so embarrased to have my house dirty let alone a disaster!

[SAHDS]

Originally Posted by jtsmom

Check this out:

www.lovelylisting.com

I just wasted 30 minutes of my life, but it was worth it.

Thankfully, DH and I only encountered one cluttered house. Other than that, people were staging like CRAZY - cookies out, bottled water, music, fires (Realtors were there).