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25 Contradicts #1
It isn't often (lately) that I get mad enough for an outburst at my TV. Normally I'm too under the weather to care. But tonight, I caught up on the DVR-recorded HGTV special, 25 Biggest Real Estate Mistakes--and positively frothed at the mouth.
>> #25: Buying a House for its Decor
Remember that you are buying the house, not the stuff inside of it, so make sure you see beyond the decorations and look at the bones of the home. Focus on the floor plan and the square footage. You also might want to measure the dimensions and graph out how that's going to work with your current belongings. >>
Then...
>> #1: Failing to Showcase Your Home and Make Small Cosmetic Changes
When you are selling your house, you have to really look at it objectively and think about it from the viewpoint of the house hunter. Make minor enhancements to the house and maybe hire a professional stager to come and arrange your furniture. Staging is about decorating your house for the buyers' taste, not yours. A great place to start is with the front of the home and the main entryway. Home staging is designed to increase the potential selling price and reduce the amount of time the house stays on the market. >>
Say what?!
So #1 is to stage for the buyers' taste, but #25 is not to fall for the staging... is that right? WTF????
I guess the key is in "small" changes, but you'd never know any of that from the HGTV shows that pimp the big changes (including renovating before a sell, btw) to the poor, unsuspecting sellers. I mean these "experts" are some of the same people who advise the sellers to BUY new appliances and FURNITURE just for staging (or rent), pull carpeting, and renovate kitchens and bathrooms. Replace that frilly bed with a non-descript one for automatons, but buyers, please don't fall for it, you can't take the bed with you!
Unbelievable.
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Apr 15, 2008 12:14 AM
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As a home appraiser, my job is to appraise a home as vacant. As a seller/buyer it is really stupid to think that staging a house sells it while decor shouldn't be considered. Unfortunately, both are true although somewhat opposing. If a buyer decides to not buy a house that is perfect in everyway except the color of the paint on the walls, then that buyer is a moron. But, "curb appeal" has always helped sell houses, and a properly staged house allows a potential buyer to see how the house could be used in a positive manner. Most people arrange their house due to functionality or just plain laziness. As an appraiser, I value a house as though vacant, so decor has no bearing (unless things are permanently affixed in some way) so it is easy for me to look past decor when I'm shopping for a house. Most people, though, just aren't very imaginative. They see the house with the stuff in there and if the furniture is ratty or arranged clumsily, then they get tuned off...even though they shouldn't.
So while those 2 points seem mutually exclusive, they aren't. It's a sort of yin yang duality that although they oppose each other, they both apply to the process even if one (or both) shouldn't.
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Apr 15, 2008 10:41 AM
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Yeah but then I'm watching another HGTV show last night, and they're majorly renovating (to me, it's major) right before opening up the townhouse to sell. I thought one of the mistakes in real estate was not to do major renovations before selling? I've seen on these shows where they redo entire bathrooms and kitchens. To them it may not be major but it's major to me.
I still don't get entirely the dichotomy. Yet I do understand that it helps to make the house look nice and liveable. That's fine. But some of the extremes people are expected to go through... it just seems you're better off leaving all the rooms empty or ignore the staging. Ed and I have bought two houses in our lifetime and in each case, the owners have broken almost every rule.
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Apr 15, 2008 2:55 PM
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It's not a good idea to renovate a house before selling unless there is more equity than debt. if you buy a house below market value, say it's bank owned, and then fix it up and sell it for a profit, great! These days, however, most Markets are in decline and many homeowners are in a negative equity situation already. Renovations will just make it worse.
On the whole, even in good times, renovating a house usually costs more than the initial increase in value. This is particularly true of the cost or replacing windows or finishing a basement. Windows cost boatloads and you get very little in return for years.
Also, below grade areas, such as basements, are not part of the gross living space, so the cost/benefit ratio of finishing a basement is very bad in the short term...even if the basement is a walkout.
So all these "flip this house" shows are pretty much null and void these days for the typical owner occupied house, but now is a great time to buy houses as investments since it is a buyer's market (in most areas) and can get good houses that have been foreclosed for a song.
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Apr 15, 2008 4:28 PM
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