How We Sold Our House Quickly in a Bad Real Estate Market

When we put our deposit down on a new house under construction more than two years ago, we knew the most important part of the moving experience was going to be selling our existing home, since like most people, we needed the cash from our old house to purchase our new home.

Several months before we put our house on the market, we critically evaluated our home to see what improvements we could make. Luckily, we had always kept our home in good shape, but now we really went through to see what we could do further to make our house look even more special.

We had painted a few years earlier, but we did touch-ups throughout, including floor mouldings and doors. We had the outside pressure cleaned and even replaced our existing roof, since we knew most people in Florida would be more likely to buy a twenty year old house if it had a new roof. We had recently renovated our kitchen, so that was already done. We freshened up our landscaping front and back, removing overgrown plants, trimming trees, and putting in fresh mulch and flowers in the flower beds.

Next, we uncluttered wherever we could. I went through all of my closets and drawers, throwing out or donating as much as I could. The less cluttered our closets, the more spacious our storage appeared. We thoroughly cleaned out and organized our garage. I went through the entire house weeding out things that might have made my house seem cluttered or dated.

When we were done, everything looked so much better that I wasn't even sure that I wanted to move anymore!

Next, we went about setting the marketable price for the house. We hired a private independent property appraiser for a fee of a few hundred dollars, so that we could get a fair idea of what our house was really worth in the existing market, not the market of a year or two earlier or what we had optimistically hoped it to be.We priced the house according to the appraisal with the expectation that we might have to be flexible.

We listed with a reputable nationally known real estate company, who marketed the house aggressively, with two open houses in the first weekend. Several agents showed the house the first week. We made sure the house always looked perfect during this stage .

We were also prepared for the possible extreme inconvenience that if we had an offer before our new home was completed, we might have to rent elsewhere for a few months rather than let a buyer walk away from the purchase of our home. As it turned out, we actually had to do this. The double move was terribly difficult, but it was necessary in this buyers market.

We were very fortunate that a lovely family saw our house and really loved it almost as much as we had all of those years we lived there. They really seemed to appreciate the care that had gone into our home and they had very similiar tastes to ours therfore she loved my decorating. They certainly seemed to appreciate how clean and well-cared for our home was. They made an offer close to our asking price, so we were able to negotiate a fair price slightly lower than we originally had asked. We had to close sooner than we wanted, thus making the double move a reality, which I had really dreaded. We had a contract less than two weeks after listing our home.

In this buyers market, we considered ourselves very fortunate to find a buyer and especially such nice people to buy our home. We are now in our new home and loving it. I think the preparation we took before putting our house on the market really made a huge difference.