House selling options

[MrCallahan]

Reaching out to the CP brain trust to see how others have approached this.

I just bought a new home, and have now placed my existing home on the market (feels like a crazy time to do this! but we found the home we wanted). Not in a huge panic for it sell right now, but ideally the less time on the market, the better. Also reduces the amount of time I might be carrying two mortgages.

My Realtor listed it last weekend, had a few viewings, no bites yet. I expect this, and I imagine it'll take a little while. But I wanted to explore other options as well. Which my Realtor may not appreciate, but I want to understand more avenues that can be taken in the event this takes a while.

Has anyone ever used those "Cash for houses" businesses to sell their homes (like propertyoptions.ca and myhomeoptions.ca)? I know these are investors usually following their Rich Dad Poor Dad training. But I'm interested to see if anyone has any actual experience dealing with them? I know they'll low-ball the offer, saying you'll end up with a similar cash amount in the end, because with a Realtor they'll take their cut with the fees. For those that have dealt with them, was it worth it? waste of time? are they slimy to deal with? I feel like these guys may prefer to deal with folks that are in dire need to sell, so they can capitalize on low offers. I'm kind of curious to reach out to see what they would offer, but also don't want to waste too much time if they are as sketchy as it appears (at least that's my initial impression).

[Weitz]

I have no experience with the cash to buy businesses, but I am sure they are of no benefit to the average homeowner, especially now. My only comment is to price your house properly if you want it to sell in reasonable fashion. Houses in my neighborhood are selling quickly if they are priced properly. But some have been on the market for months with prices that are totally out to lunch.

[gasman]

Originally Posted by MrCallahan

Reaching out to the CP brain trust to see how others have approached this.

I just bought a new home, and have now placed my existing home on the market (feels like a crazy time to do this! but we found the home we wanted). Not in a huge panic for it sell right now, but ideally the less time on the market, the better. Also reduces the amount of time I might be carrying two mortgages.

My Realtor listed it last weekend, had a few viewings, no bites yet. I expect this, and I imagine it'll take a little while. But I wanted to explore other options as well. Which my Realtor may not appreciate, but I want to understand more avenues that can be taken in the event this takes a while.

Has anyone ever used those "Cash for houses" businesses to sell their homes (like propertyoptions.ca and myhomeoptions.ca)? I know these are investors usually following their Rich Dad Poor Dad training. But I'm interested to see if anyone has any actual experience dealing with them? I know they'll low-ball the offer, saying you'll end up with a similar cash amount in the end, because with a Realtor they'll take their cut with the fees. For those that have dealt with them, was it worth it? waste of time? are they slimy to deal with? I feel like these guys may prefer to deal with folks that are in dire need to sell, so they can capitalize on low offers. I'm kind of curious to reach out to see what they would offer, but also don't want to waste too much time if they are as sketchy as it appears (at least that's my initial impression).

100% those are scams, or targeted at people who are desperate. I happened looked at one back in 2009 when selling a house. The house was valued around $380k by a realtor, their offer was $200k, which didn't even cover my mortgage. Their next question was how much is my mortgage, I told them $290k. And magically that was their "new offer" Which was still insultingly low and obviously aimed at people that were going to lose their house to foreclosure.


I'm not sure about deals like the one that you always hear about from justin havre where he buys your house if it doesn't sell in 90 days, but im guessing the offer is well below market price.

[OMG!WTF!]

I think the broker sponsored guaranteed sold deal is pretty legitimate. They have to buy it close to fair market value...minus commission of course... and at a previously agreed to price for it to be allowed under reca rules.

The home buyer guys are pretty sad. They are exactly what you think they are.

[TopChed]

Since you listed with a realtor, I'm assuming you signed an agency agreement. You probably are not able to sell privately until that expires unless your realtor is not abiding by your contract with them.

[troutman]

The real estate market has heated up this Fall, instead of what usually happens in the Summer. I think COVID pushed things forward a couple of months. I hear many properties in the NW are selling within a couple of weeks.

[MrCallahan]

Originally Posted by TopChed

Since you listed with a realtor, I'm assuming you signed an agency agreement. You probably are not able to sell privately until that expires unless your realtor is not abiding by your contract with them.

Yeah, I definitely signed an agreement. This thought was more future planning in case I had to take another route at some point.

Originally Posted by gasman

I'm not sure about deals like the one that you always hear about from justin havre where he buys your house if it doesn't sell in 90 days, but im guessing the offer is well below market price.

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

I think the broker sponsored guaranteed sold deal is pretty legitimate. They have to buy it close to fair market value...minus commission of course... and at a previously agreed to price for it to be allowed under reca rules.

The home buyer guys are pretty sad. They are exactly what you think they are.

I hadn't even thought about asking about the broker sponsored guarantee! this is probably a more realistic approach I should look at when/if my agreement with my current realtor expires without selling.

Originally Posted by troutman

The real estate market has heated up this Fall, instead of what usually happens in the Summer. I think COVID pushed things forward a couple of months. I hear many properties in the NW are selling within a couple of weeks.

This is the impression I have as well. It seems like things are moving at a decent pace right now. I think the <$600k market seems to be the sweet spot for the houses that are moving, this is the market my house would fall under. So I'm hoping it doesn't take too long.

[Flamenspiel]

Yes, September was amazing, low interest rates and the general population is much more bullish on Calgary then CP.

[Erick Estrada]

I'm in the exact same situation where a house in an area we have been long interested in came down to a price range we could comfortably afford, and we agreed to an Oct. 1st possession date which was less than two months after acceptance of our offer. I felt it was pointless to list our old house while we were packing and tearing things down and after moving out it was easy to bring in painters and freshen the place up for sale. We can afford to carry both mortgages as long as we are both working so that's really the only scary part but of course I would like to sell the old property as soon as possible so we priced it to sell. Ideally we would have sold our place in the summer as we have a nice backyard and the premature snow kind of masks it, also it's kind of annoying as I have to shovel two places daily.

[jwslam]

have you done things to make your home more attractive to compare?
-Fresh coat of paint
-Professional staging; a well staged house sells sooner than a post-moveout house. An empty house to most people shows that the owner is moved out, looking to sell ASAP and therefore the buyer lowballs.
-Make sure your realtor used a real photographer and not potato-cam iPhone 4 photos
-3D virtual tour? (these are $200-$300 to do, I believe.)
-Freshly cleaned carpets (evident with the stripes)
-Professional cleaning to remove 99% of visible dust

[Tron_fdc]

Houses in the $400-$600k range are the ones moving at the moment. If you are above that in price, you need a good realtor. It's a buyers market so you have to put the work in.

I have bought or sold 4 houses this year, and when you sell it really comes down to a few things. The last house I sold was listed at $749, and within 5 days of listing closed at $719.

- Fix the little things. I spent a month getting the house ready for sale, and that included painting it entirely, fixing worn out door trim, knobs and closets, fixing faucets, burnt out lightbulbs, ANYTHING that looked worn I fixed or replaced. Washed all windows in and out, cleaned up the landscaping, shampooed carpets and deodorized. I literally vacuumed myself out of the house every day so there were no footprints in the carpet.

- stage the home PROPERLY. This is sooooooo important to do, because it gives buyers an idea what the house might look like. We emptied the house entirely, and then put in master bedroom furniture and staged the living areas. Left the other bedrooms empty except small furniture. We bought staging furniture that we were goign to use in the new house, and got rid of all the old stuff.

- update your light fixtures. It's about $1000 but you can transform the entire theme and style with new lights.

- clean the hell out of it.

- price it according to local competition prices. I've worked with realtors in the past that overvalue your home, tell you what you want to hear, list above market and then it sits for 6 months. You carry a mortgage for the better part of a year, and then reduce it to sell anyways. Total waste of time. Be aggressive with price if you have carrying costs.

Your realtor should be asking for feedback from everyone who looks at it. Take it with a grain of salt because some people are real dicks, but some people are honest and will tell you the good and the bad. They should also be giving you stats on how many times the mls number was clicked, length of views, and anyone who marked it as a favorite. They need to follow up with any potential buyers to generate an offer, and if they do generate one immediately go back to all the people who looked at it to try and generate a competing offer.

If you are interested I have the names of two top realtors that I completely trust. They are VERY aggressive salespeople who understand that the days of sitting around waiting for something to sell on MLS alone are loooooooong gone.

[MrCallahan]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

Houses in the $400-$600k range are the ones moving at the moment. If you are above that in price, you need a good realtor. It's a buyers market so you have to put the work in.

I have bought or sold 4 houses this year, and when you sell it really comes down to a few things. The last house I sold was listed at $749, and within 5 days of listing closed at $719.

- Fix the little things. I spent a month getting the house ready for sale, and that included painting it entirely, fixing worn out door trim, knobs and closets, fixing faucets, burnt out lightbulbs, ANYTHING that looked worn I fixed or replaced. Washed all windows in and out, cleaned up the landscaping, shampooed carpets and deodorized. I literally vacuumed myself out of the house every day so there were no footprints in the carpet.

- stage the home PROPERLY. This is sooooooo important to do, because it gives buyers an idea what the house might look like. We emptied the house entirely, and then put in master bedroom furniture and staged the living areas. Left the other bedrooms empty except small furniture. We bought staging furniture that we were goign to use in the new house, and got rid of all the old stuff.

- update your light fixtures. It's about $1000 but you can transform the entire theme and style with new lights.

- clean the hell out of it.

- price it according to local competition prices. I've worked with realtors in the past that overvalue your home, tell you what you want to hear, list above market and then it sits for 6 months. You carry a mortgage for the better part of a year, and then reduce it to sell anyways. Total waste of time. Be aggressive with price if you have carrying costs.

Your realtor should be asking for feedback from everyone who looks at it. Take it with a grain of salt because some people are real dicks, but some people are honest and will tell you the good and the bad. They should also be giving you stats on how many times the mls number was clicked, length of views, and anyone who marked it as a favorite. They need to follow up with any potential buyers to generate an offer, and if they do generate one immediately go back to all the people who looked at it to try and generate a competing offer.

If you are interested I have the names of two top realtors that I completely trust. They are VERY aggressive salespeople who understand that the days of sitting around waiting for something to sell on MLS alone are loooooooong gone.

We have been cleaning the house like crazy, It's only been on the market a week, but I do struggle with this a bit, because we're still living in the house at the moment (possession of the new house is in Nov)! So we've already packed up a bunch of stuff, and clean it as much as we possibly can before each showing, and stage it to the best of our ability as well.

I'm trying not to put too much money into the place to fix everything (I have done renos over the past couple years), but I may take your advice and do simple things like light fixtures. Those are little quick win things that should help.

As for the realtors you know, as another user mentioned, I imagine that would interfere with my existing agreement that I've signed with my current Realtor? He has been providing feedback from each viewing, but I haven't received any analytics from the MLS posting itself, but I think I will ask about this!

[Flames0910]

Rule of thumb is to remove 30% of your stuff to declutter. Small fixes can make a big difference in the minds of buyers (basically you want to remove as many barriers as possible for them). And to the point on light fixtures, we were amazed at what $600 did to transform our apartment.

If you're motivated to move and don't want it sitting on the market, you should be proactive and have the conversation with your realtor about the next price drop (when and how much). You can still wait to pull the trigger or decide to wait a little bit longer if the date comes along and there's still interest. At this point, you pretty much just have to be patient.

[Leondros]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

Houses in the $400-$600k range are the ones moving at the moment. If you are above that in price, you need a good realtor. It's a buyers market so you have to put the work in.

I have bought or sold 4 houses this year, and when you sell it really comes down to a few things. The last house I sold was listed at $749, and within 5 days of listing closed at $719.

- Fix the little things. I spent a month getting the house ready for sale, and that included painting it entirely, fixing worn out door trim, knobs and closets, fixing faucets, burnt out lightbulbs, ANYTHING that looked worn I fixed or replaced. Washed all windows in and out, cleaned up the landscaping, shampooed carpets and deodorized. I literally vacuumed myself out of the house every day so there were no footprints in the carpet.

- stage the home PROPERLY. This is sooooooo important to do, because it gives buyers an idea what the house might look like. We emptied the house entirely, and then put in master bedroom furniture and staged the living areas. Left the other bedrooms empty except small furniture. We bought staging furniture that we were goign to use in the new house, and got rid of all the old stuff.

- update your light fixtures. It's about $1000 but you can transform the entire theme and style with new lights.

- clean the hell out of it.

- price it according to local competition prices. I've worked with realtors in the past that overvalue your home, tell you what you want to hear, list above market and then it sits for 6 months. You carry a mortgage for the better part of a year, and then reduce it to sell anyways. Total waste of time. Be aggressive with price if you have carrying costs.

Your realtor should be asking for feedback from everyone who looks at it. Take it with a grain of salt because some people are real dicks, but some people are honest and will tell you the good and the bad. They should also be giving you stats on how many times the mls number was clicked, length of views, and anyone who marked it as a favorite. They need to follow up with any potential buyers to generate an offer, and if they do generate one immediately go back to all the people who looked at it to try and generate a competing offer.

If you are interested I have the names of two top realtors that I completely trust. They are VERY aggressive salespeople who understand that the days of sitting around waiting for something to sell on MLS alone are loooooooong gone.

4 houses in a year? Are you a house flipper or do you typically hold long-term?

[Calgary14]

Originally Posted by Leondros

4 houses in a year? Are you a house flipper or do you typically hold long-term?

That was my exact question.....investment? Flip? Or personal as well?

[DoubleF]

A few weird things I ran into that really stuck out in leaving a positive impression of the home:

- Sweep and vacuum the garage floor. It's like walking into a restaurant bathroom to get a sneak peek into what things are like behind the scenes. The place I bought was so damn clean, it was cleaner than my kitchen floor at home.

- Warm ish garage. It doesn't have to be toasty, but it's a pleasant surprise to open a garage door to not only a super clean garage, but a little bit balmy is a pleasant surprise (vs being a huge temperature difference). You can easily do this with a small wall mounted heater like 10-15 mins before a showing and then just take the heater with you when you move.

- Light bulbs and fixtures and switches, I have to repeat this. I discovered my townhouse had a totally different feel with different colored lights. It was really interesting to see how different colors lights and updated switches totally changed the aura of the home in good and bad ways.

- Covers. Fabric covers and stuff for chairs, sofas, small rugs, hallway runners, table runners etc. can be acquired cheaply for a few hundred bucks and again can really change the aura of the home. They can also help to improve the impression on the home and help you stand firm on a price, thereby saving extra money to what you spent.

- Buying $50 in matching rubber maid bins you can neatly stack to the side and use to recklessly throw things into to cover up messes also helps to improve impressions of a neat and tidy and well maintained home.


Things I learned from my dad and really good realtors:

- Consider that a certain things in your home is more about time than money and feeling good about things. A potential buyer is much more likely to be excited about a place that is straight up ready to move in irregardless of price rather than a place that needs around 5-10 hours and like $1K worth of work which is negligible overall. Something like that might cause them to prefer to attack the price for several times that amount because of the hassle of doing it along with all the other things they have to do. No need to do major work, but if there's minor fixes that you can do (minor touch up, squeaky hinges, base board or loose stone that could use a nail/glue etc.), make sure you deal with those things so a potential buyer can't use it as leverage to drop the price for many times the cost of fixing it yourself or even hiring someone to fix it. Honestly speaking, some buyers are fine with the price but if they see things like this, they'll use it to get an even better deal.

- Connected to the time concept above, definitely consider including extra chattel. Certain chattel you think a new owner might actually want, you're willing to potentially lose, isn't included in the opening price but can be negotiated into the price (ie: BBQ, extra fridge, deep freeze, large cabinets, patio sets, fire pits, hot tubs, tables, wall mounted home theatre stuff etc.). Rather than throw them in right away make it optional (Might be a headache rather than a bonus for some buyers). These items are probably not worth a ton and will probably cost you a bit extra to hire a mover to move further reducing the value of them to you. Plus they might not match your new place. Someone might have existing stuff but might not be opposed to getting something extra for the extra space they are getting (ie: Condo to detached house) rather than leave it empty for however long it will take them to acquire new stuff. When I bought a home that was staged by the builder selling several units, I asked what was going to happen to the staged furniture. He was going to move it to the next units till he sold the last unit, store it till he could sell it. He paid like $12K (not including the time and fees of the stager) and expected to get around $8K for it. I got all of the $12K of essentially brand new furniture that was color and theme matched to the home in lieu of arguing the price down an additional $5K because he wouldn't have to pay to store, move and spend time selling it. Recently when I bought a place, it seemed like the owner was moving out of province, so we asked for things like spare fridges, BBQ, deep freeze that you probably don't drag across provinces and we wouldn't mind and asked if it would shake free. That saved the owner the hassle to move and me the hassle to acquire. Basically random stuff that was probably going to be like $500-800 or more to buy used on Kijiji or something for free to seal the deal for both sides. If they said no, that's fine. But they said yes, so it was a win/win. As a seller though, I'd keep this as a final card to slow the negotiation on the last couple thousand or so. If you can save even $1K on negotiations by leaving it, that's $1K towards replacement stuff and extra on paying less to move the item.

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Leondros

4 houses in a year? Are you a house flipper or do you typically hold long-term?

LOL nope, just cashing out. Got tired of holding all these properties and managing rentals, bills, etc etc.

I have a day job and being a landlord in my spare time was a total PITA

[Leondros]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

LOL nope, just cashing out. Got tired of holding all these properties and managing rentals, bills, etc etc.

I have a day job and being a landlord in my spare time was a total PITA

I currently hold a rental house and a condo and know what you mean. When did you buy them and did you end up getting out ahead? What was your average ROI if you don't mind telling?

[flamesfever]

nm

[Poster]

I used Properly and couldn’t have been happier. I even made money post sale!

It’s not a scam and they paid me fair market value minus their 6% across the board premium. I could have had my cash in 5 days.

They also paid me a 75% of all dollars above a sold benchmark. In my case, they got $5k more than our agreed benchmark, I got 75% of that after the sale.

For comparison, my neighbor had his house on market for 7months, we closed the same week and I got more (before the post sale bonus).

No showings was great

Oh and they flipped/sold in March, during the start of Covid and the oil crisis.

Check them out, it’s really a great program if your house qualifies.