Good news to report on the countdown to our Big Trip: we sold our house! Not only that, but we got 98% of our asking price after only 3 weeks on the market with 10 other properties for sale on our block. Our planning paid off.
Want to know how we did it?
- We’ve spent the last few years downsizing and decluttering our possessions, which means our house feels more spacious than most, even though it is small. The closets, cabinets and garage are neat. We took it up a notch when we listed it by adding fresh flowers every week and making sure all the blinds were up every day for bright light and to showcase the spring views outside.
- Even though our house was decluttered, we made an extra effort to clean in unusual places – behind the dryer, tops of ceiling fans, doorway and window casings, etc. We also fixed any small nicks in doorways or walls. Make sure you look high and low – Warren and I are the same height, so we didn’t notice things our taller and shorter friends did. Have someone come in to help you find these things if possible, because your buyers will notice them.
- Depersonalize the space of pictures and mementos but leave artwork and flowers. Remember, you are helping your buyers imagine their belongings in the space, not show off your own. If the house is too much “you” they won’t make an offer.
- Spend the extra money to have professional pictures taken. Our agent arranged for our photographer, and it was the best $135 we ever spent. People do their searching online, and if they don’t like the way it looks there, they will never make it to your door. Don’t skimp on getting great pictures.
- For those of you in marketing, you’ll appreciate this next step. We created a letter for our perfect buyer about why we were selling the house and what we hoped for the new owners. We put this in an album full of information about the neighborhood, schools, restaurants, shopping, etc. You can get all of this online fairly easily, but take your time in writing your letter. I’m copying ours down below.
- We had a pretty specific budget in mind when selling our house, and we knew we couldn’t afford a full-service real estate agent and break even on the sale. We hired a flat-fee agent, Nick Southard of RSVP Real Estate, for $595 (including the cost of the pictures above) with a 0.5% commission after the sale. This was a great deal for us because we knew we could do a lot of the marketing ourselves but we had the benefit of being listed on MLS with a lockbox and a sign.
- Nick created a great video and website for our house as well as a flyer. How’s that for a flat-fee agent? Loved his level of service. If your agent doesn’t do this, you can make one yourself using vFlyer.
- We contacted the bigger companies in our area and asked to hang our flyer in their break rooms or have the info sent out on their non-business email lists and all agreed in some way or another. If you don’t have contacts at nearby companies, use your network – friends, Linked In, Facebook, Twitter – to get your foot in the door. Most people will gladly help you. We all like a short commute to work.
- We did some fun things, like setting up a Twitter account for the house and letting her send out sassy tweets about the experience. (Sample tweet: “Potential buyers are coming over tonight tonight to look at me. Is it slutty of me to bake cookies so I smell delicious?”)
- We highlighted the best things about our house with small laminated signs we made. For instance, we let buyers know that the blinds were bottom-up or top-down because that might not be immediately noticeable. In addition, we put all the pictures of our house together in a slideshow we could turn on when the house was being shown.
We made it very easy for people to see the house anytime they wanted, and we had a checklist of things to do each day to make the house ready at a moment’s notice. Things like turning on all the lights, turning on the slideshow of pictures on the computer in the office, and lighting the fireplace when appropriate. You have to be prepared to be “on” all the time.
Last, I’ll share with you the feedback we got from our agent as he told use the good news. The thing that sold the buyers on our house was one of the easiest steps we did: the letter. They loved what we wrote, and having just come back from a long trip themselves, they were moved to live in a house with the travel vibe.
Speaking to your ideal buyer really works.
Hi, there.
Do you ever wonder why a house you like is for sale? You don’t have to wonder about this one.
After four years of living the best time of our lives in this funky little neighborhood, we are taking off to travel the world for the next three years.
This house is where we decided to pursue our lifelong dream of exploring the world and where we made our budget, planned our itinerary, and held many dinner parties to discuss and celebrate with our friends.
In short, this house is full of love, adventure, dreams, and just plain good luck.
You can’t really put “karma” on a house description, so this letter is our way of letting you know that we love this place for more than the structural reasons, and we hope you love it, too.
Poke around, open up cabinets and closets, and see how your things will work in this space. Don’t forget to take in the view on the deck. It’s what sold us on the place!
Happy house hunting.
Warren and Betsy
About Betsy
I love this. Creativity and personality in the house selling process. Good advice.
This is fantastic! Why settle for the status quo when you can go above and beyond and make a seemingly daunting task–selling a home–into something personal, fun and quirky.
Well done!
Great job! We just got a contract on our house after 3 weeks. We did the decluttering(we have been downsizing ourselves), touched up all paint and repainted some rooms, opened all the blinds, very clean and basically it looks like Martha lives here. If we hadn’t gotten the contract I would for sure be following your advice on all those other steps. Congrats!
Alan, we try to make everything in our lives a little bit more fun and interesting than it has to be, and selling a house is no different.
Junebug, congratulations on selling your house! It is such a relief, isn’t it?
Just perfect – I think this could be a little book, full of such great info. I admire and respect the process (and success!) you created. Well done, friends!
Well done! I re-tweeted this blog as a great example of innovative marketing. You created a “brand” for your house and it connected with buyers and made you stand out in a crowded marketplace. Same principles as hold true for any business. Whether you are trying to sell a product, a service, an idea, a cause, a book, a house or even yourself for a new job, you have to think like a marketer, see things from your customers POV and give your brand personality and connection. Love it….
Congrats! I know that’s a pressure off. Now you can relax (sort of) and plan for the trip.
Congratulations Betsy and Warren, good job! Now the fun starts, yay for you!
Cheers
Congratulations! I look forward to following your blog as you travel the world together. Cannot think of anything more fun and interesting to do! Some friends of mine are back now from doing their 18 month world tour, a great backpacking adventure.. They loved it.
Very clever! I’m actually wondering about your flat fee real estate agent. Did you pay upfront? Does the fee apply whether or not the house is sold or is his fee paid once the sale goes through?
Also–you’re so right about clutter and possessions in photos. Here in France, we’re starting to look into buying a place and when we were checking online pictures the other day, my husband said, “Oouf! that place is full of junk and clutter.”
I tried to tell him to look beyond it, but it IS hard. I don’t think people in France get that fact because I’ve seen a lot of houses/apartments that seem very small because of all the junk inside. It’s as if the family is advertising–”We have to move because we can’t fit in this place anymore!”
Big congratulations!
I love the letter, not just because that’s what sold them on your house, but because they now know the history of the house and that’s important for both of you. We bought our house in Los Angeles during a time when the market was going up fast, tons of people would bid on a nice home, and we got into the house first and wrote a personal letter about how we saw ourselves in that home and how we appreciated how they’d taken care of it and would honor that. They didn’t even wait for other offers, they accepted it. It’s about money, but a house is a big deal and I think most people do appreciate the “good karma.”
Well done. One more step toward your dream.
Thank you for all the good wishes!
Simple in France, we did pay upfront for the real estate fee (and I didn’t put my decimal in the right place on the commission – which I am fixing in the post now – it is 0.5% at closing).
Funny about what your husband said of online photos. We like to think that we can look past paint, clutter, and bad decor, but in reality we often can’t. Best to make it as easy as possible for buyers to imagine their things in your home.
Angela, we had some friends do something very similar and they also got the home in the bidding war. This method works well both ways because it makes the transaction a bit more human.
Maria, thanks for sharing the post. This means a lot coming from a branding/marketing guru such as yourself!
Betsy,
Congratulations on this wonderful step in your adventures.
Also, thanks for such great advice. We will be using it when the time is right for us to take our next big step.
Lesley
Congrats on selling the house! I look forward to hearing about your worldly adventures! An I loved hearing about the tags you talked about putting around the house to let the potential buyer know things. This was another invention idea I had a few years ago and hadn’t gotten around to doing yet! It’s good to know others were thinking of the same thing…maybe I’ll pursue it more now!
Brilliant. Thank you so much. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a flat-fee agent. We are going to look in to that because we are on a tight budget as well. I also love the letter that you wrote, what a brilliant idea. I want the buyers of our house to know that we love our house and that is has been very good to us (Brian proposed in the living room). I want the next owners to know that we aren’t leaving because it is a bad house, but because we are ready to move on to a new phase of our lives.