How to Price Your House to Sell

This post is the second post in a four part series on how to sell your home without a real estate agent.

After making your house presentable enough to be shown, you need to price it appropriately.  The main complaint real estate agents seem to have about For-Sale By Owner is that the people who are selling their home do not have a realistic expectation of what their house can sell for.  It is important to pick the correct price because if you price too high then people might be reluctant to make an offer because what they are willing to pay is so far below what you are asking that they might feel like it is a waste of time. If you price too low, then obviously you might miss out on making the most money, and also possibly make people assume that the price is too good to be true and that there must be something wrong.

The first thing to do is research what homes have been selling for, and what homes are currently being listed at, and what direction the market is headed.  A few resources available are:

• Zillow is a great source of information.  The site contains estimates of what current houses are worth, and shows you what homes have sold for recently.  While the information isn’t guaranteed to be 100% accurate, I found it to be accurate enough.  I found their z-estimate functionality to be the most helpful.
• CMA (Current Market Activity) – This is a report that real estate agents have to aid their customers in pricing and purchasing.  The self-service real estate broker we used also provided us with this report.  While it was interesting, it seemed that the comparable houses that had sold near us were sold a few months prior, and the market was rapidly going down. It seemed that a price based solely on this analysis would be too high.  
• Pretend you are a buyer.  The site that I found the most user friendly to look at houses was John L Scott.com.  They have a neighborhood function where you can select a neighborhood and it will show you all the houses for sale nearby.  Once our house was ready, and I had photographed it, I pretended I was a buyer and searched for houses in different price ranges in our neighborhood and I then compared the photographs in those listings with ours to see how I felt we compared.  

When we were picking a price it was difficult because there was lots of new construction in our area.  Those houses were bigger, but had no yards.  Our house had a yard, but was smaller.  The houses with more property were priced higher, but you could get a much larger house for significantly less.  We found a price range where our house looked very comparable to the other houses, and at 5k less ours looked noticeably better.  We decided to go with the 5k less because the market was poor, and we knew we were saving money by not having an agent thus we could afford to pass on that savings to the buyer.  

The drawback of the low price was that the people who did buy our house were looking above their price range and because the market was poor no one is going to offer full price. Thus the offer we received was well below what we were asking.  That is the one problem when researching prices is there is no information on what concessions the seller made to the buyer.  I have heard rumors that this information may become more available, but at then (and maybe now?) it was not, so it is hard to say what is fair, or not.  

As a side note when we were buying, the agent we were working with was not happy with the fact we were not using an agent to sell.  Her number one concern was that our house was not priced appropriately.  She briefly ran a CMA and from the results it seemed that we had priced our home too high, BUT she did not know the neighborhood or area we lived in.  The houses she was comparing ours to were not in our specific neighborhood, which was known to be nicer, and some were in a neighborhood that were right next to a garbage dump (which was not noted on the report).  Which demonstrates the fact that if you do work with an agent, it is important to find one who knows the specific area very well.

If you find these posts useful and wish to offer monetary reciprocation I would gladly accept paypal donations or amazon.com gift certificates.  Even just a dollar would be nice. ;)

How To Stage Your Home To Sell

This post is the first in a four part series on how to sell your home without a real estate agent.

First impressions are very important when selling a home. A potential buyer will probably be in your home for about 5 – 10 minutes and while they won’t be able to specifically detect “defects” their subconscious will notice them and will cause them to either love your house or not. Staging your home for viewing can add value to your home, and in a poor market, be the difference between selling it or not. Most of the things involved in staging your home are not that expensive, but may take a bit of work. You will want to prioritize time and money spent versus impact. I checked the book 301 Simple Things You Can Do to Sell Your Home. It was a bit repetitive but the information seemed sound.

 Here are the things we did:

Removed half the contents of our house: We packed up and/or donated tons of things. We packed up almost all knick-knacks and cleared the counters in the kitchen of all appliances. We removed about five pieces of furniture. We stored the stuff we didn’t get rid of at our parent’s house, or in our garage (neatly). The goal was to have no clutter, and spacious walkways. Cupboards and closets needed to look like there was extra space in them, not stuffed to capacity. We cleared everything off all the kitchen counters.  No toaster, no coffee maker, etc.  Overall this makes the house look larger and more spacious.

Paint: Painting the entire house inside and out was a highly recommended task in everything I read. It claimed to be the cheapest way to improve the look of your house. It may be inexpensive, but it is very time consuming. Instead we scrubbed every single wall in our house and touched up every single chink and dent. This helped dramatically and basically looked like we had completely repainted. On the outside we did the same thing. We power washed the siding and touched up the areas that were fading.

Made repairs: We went around the house and fixed or replaced everything that was broken. This included replacing the faucet in one bathroom, oiling the hinges on all the doors, replacing the towel rack in the bathroom, replacing the laundry door that had a hole in it, replacing blinds that had broken. We also replaced the roof. This was the most expensive thing we did to prepare our home to sell. The roof was old and though it looked good from the street, when you walked on it we figured it probably would not pass inspection, so we decided to deal with it up front and not wait till negotiations with a buyer. Our carpets were in poor shape as well, but we decided to not replace them because we could make them look okay by cleaning them, and flooring might be something a buyer would want to choose themselves.

Yard work: We weeded, trimmed all the bushes, fertilized the grass, trimmed edges of the grass, put in fresh bark, power washed the driveway and basically made the yard look perfect.

Cleaning: We made everything spotless, which was hard to do with two small children. We hired a cleaning lady to do 6 hours of cleaning. 

Decorating: We took down all family pictures and put up generic pictures. Supposedly people have a hard time imagining themselves in the home if they see evidence that it is someone else’s. Some of the pictures we used were pictures of animals I took at the zoo, others were things we bought at Goodwill. We hung up some curtains where we didn’t have any before. When the house was going to be shown, we turned on all the lights, and opened all the curtains so it would be bright and inviting. The house we bought had soft elevator music playing when we viewed it.

Here are some pictures to show how it looked.

If you find these posts useful and wish to offer monetary reciprocation I would gladly accept paypal donations or amazon.com gift certificates.  Even just a dollar would be nice. ;)

How to Sell Your Home By Owner

We sold our house last year with a self service realty agent and when I was looking for information on how it worked, or how to sell by owner, I couldn’t find much that wasn’t marketing material of some sort.  I wanted a first hand account of someone who did it, so I am finally getting around to writing one. I will publish a four part series on how to sell your house.  The topics will include:

• How to Stage Your Home To Sell
• How to Price Your Home To Sell
• How to Use a Self Service Realty Service
• For-Sale-By-Owner Paperwork

Most of what I will write is applicable to people selling with an agent, or selling completely by owner, as well. I am not in the real-estate business in any way shape or form. What I write is based only on my MINIMAL experience and research. For more information about selling by owner I got the book, Sell It by Owner and Save. The book wasn’t spectacular, but it was useful.

If you find these posts useful and wish to offer monetary reciprocation I would gladly accept paypal donations or amazon.com gift certificates.  Even just a dollar would be nice. ;)

Knock Knock

Knock Knock

Who's there?
Baby in toilet
Baby in toilet who?
Baby in toilet

That's Allie's favorite joke to tell.  ;)

Allie is doing great!  She is potty trained.  There are still some accidents (most of them being malicious), but for the most part she is golden.   I was tired of her taking off her diaper and peeing on the floor so I had to decide what the perfect bribe could be.  With Selena sticker charts weren't interesting and there became too much candy which didn't even motivate to 100% in the toilet.  So I went out and bought little boxes that people use for wedding favors.  In the boxes I put stickers, junky toys, candy, money, and little slips of paper with fun things like a piggy back ride, or a cheer.  They work pretty good because the "present" aspect makes it a surprise.  The candy is the best one and it is intermittent throughout the day.  (Psychologists always say intermittent rewards work the best).  I was also unsure how I should include Selena in it.  At first she was upset because she wanted presents too, but I put two in each box so Allie could share.  Soon she realized the only thing she wanted was candy and since Allie shares with her she encouraged Allie to go in the potty too.  It has worked out pretty well.

She's also learned how to pedal her trike and been doing a lot of bike riding.  She's getting good at running and likes to run while I time her on my stop watch.  She still loves her baby doll and her puppy.  She loves Dora the Explorer and can spot Dora in a store from a mile away.  She likes counting, sometimes in Spanish and Japanese too.

She's starting to drop her nap, which is kind of good.  We have a hard time getting out of the house in the morning and having to be home for her nap in the afternoon made it hard to do things.  So she's been going to bed a bit earlier and sleeping in a bit later on the days she doesn't nap.

She's also had some rough times.  She got two bee stings.  Nothing a band-aid didn't help, but still kind of sad. She fell down the stairs at her cousins house.  That was really awful.  She had a bonk on her head, but was fine otherwise.  She got a bug when we went to Oak Harbor for the weekend.  She was throwing up constantly all morning, but by the evening she was just fine.

After refusing to eat any berries at the beginning of the summer, she suddenly changed her mind and we picked a lot of wild huckleberries, salmonberries, and salal.  We also did some blueberry picking at the local farm.  She really likes to chase her sister around with a banana because Selena doesn't like the smell and overreacts.  She also likes eating "stinky sandwich"  with me(canned salmon with mayo and mrs. dash), and both Selena and Floyd do not like the smell of.

She's a sweet little girl who is fairly sensitive and loves to snuggle.

Selena's Riding on Two Wheels.

The big news around here is that Selena is riding her bicycle without training wheels.  I'm not exactly sure what inspired her.  Our bicycle trip in Idaho, or the neighbor boy across the street talking about learning, but she asked me to take off her training wheels.  We practiced a few times at the school in the play-shed and in the cul-de-sac.  The neighborhood kids tried to help and pushed her around, after about 5 or 6 sessions her dad helped her and off she went.  It was amazing how fast she improved.  Her braking ability was pretty much non-existent the first two days, but now she is a pro.  Immediately she had to take her bike off road to see if it was a dirt bike or a mountain bike, and sure enough it was.  She is now a speed demon and dare devil.  Working on going up and down bumps, riding without feet and has even attempted eyes closed and with one hand (not at the same time, and I asked to not do those tricks).

As well as cycling she's been running a lot.  We did an all-comers track-meet and she ran the 50m, 100m, 200m and mile.  She was a bit upset after the sprints because she didn't win, but when she heard there was a mile she was pumped.  She ran a 12:50.  We also did a kids fun run a few days ago and she ran the 2k.  It was a real cross country course and I didn't get to run it with her, but she said that lots of people cheered for her and her and another kid were going back and forth and passing each other but he ended up passing her right before the finish.

She's really into dinosaurs and has been making some wonderful dinosaur books.  She draws a different dinosaur on every page and then traces out a cover and back cover on cardboard and has us cut it out, hole punch it, and tie it with string.  Very professional.  She also comes up with wonderful hypothesis on why the dinosaurs became extinct.  Her latest is that they evolved into dogs.

Some recent Selena quotes include:

• "I make a lot of accidents sometimes.  I'm making some messes."
• One day she decided she wanted to make some camping food.  She mixed marshmellow, graham cracker, cheddar cheese, cumin and salt.  I ask her, "How's your camping food?" She replies, "I'm feeding it straight to Allie."  I say, "Have you tried it yet" She says, "No."
• "I'm going to be a dinosaur hunter and a shoemaker when I grow up.  I'll make shoes that look like dinosaurs and give them to all the dinosaur hunters."
• One day I hear her explaining to Allie why people's hair looks darker when its wet.  She says, "Because the government said so."  Then asks me, "What is the government anyway?  Is it twinkling stars?"
• "You sure do need a haircut dad."  Floyd says, "Why is that?"  Selena replies, "Well your hair sure is getting long for a short haired boy."

Getting the Most Out of Your Library

Libraries are one of the greatest inventions ever.  I love libraries.  As a frequent user I thought I'd share some tips.  I'm in Western Washington and visit the Sno-Isle, King County and Pierce County library systems.

Reciprocal Borrowing Agreements
Many libraries in the area have reciprocal borrowing agreements meaning that if you have a card through one library system then you can also get a card in another.  If you live on the border of two library systems then you have access to a larger selection of books, but even if you don't live near another system getting another card will give you access to a wider selection of online resources.

Online Resources
There are a lot of resources that are available from your library that you can access from your home which include:

• Downloadable ebooks.  I have a Nook Color and can download ebooks from the library to my Nook.  I'm pretty sure that iPhone, iPad, and Android devices also have this capability.  If you have multiple library cards, then you have access to an even greater selection of online books.
• Downloadable audio books.  I have found that the selection of audio books is a lot better than ebooks.  This is probably due to accessibility laws.  But if you do a lot of driving, audio books can be really great.
• Music.  There are some CD's that are available for download.
• Kids online books.  Many libraries have downloadable computer books in there catalog, as well as access to websites that contain online books (for instance Tumblebooks).  I also found about 30 audio book mp3s of popular children's books.  I was able to download them and burn them to a CD and listen to them in the car on long car rides.
• Journal Articles.  Just as when you were in college and had access to various journal databases, many public libraries have access to these as well.  There is usually a database page on a library's home page that will lead you hear.  
• Consumer Reports.  There is no need to buy a subscription to consumer reports (though they frequently email me) you may be able to access the site through your library.
• Technical books.  King County library system has a huge database that allows you online access to tons of technical books.  This is great because these types of books are expensive and get out-of-date very quickly.  The books include lots of programming books as well as digital photography.
• Databases.  In addition to the above mentioned databases there are genealogy, newspaper, car repair, job training and other interesting databases.

Movies

The library carries most popular DVD's including TV show season's on DVD.  While there is usually a long wait for the newer stuff the library is a free alternative to Netflix.

Interlibrary Loan

If your library doesn't have a book that you want you can request them to borrow it from another library.  This may take a few months, but if you aren't in a hurry it can be a good resource.

Holds

While most people know they can place holds on books from home.  I frequently do not make it to the library before my hold expires and am always bummed.  Depending on your library system holds may just be put back on the shelf at the library you were to pick them up at.  I think Pierce and King county send the item back to it's "home" library, but Sno-Isle has a revolving selection and if the item does not have another hold on it they just place it on the shelf at the library you sent it to so you might be able to go in and still get your item.

Reading History

Sno-Isle and Pierce county systems have an option that you have to enable that will keep track of all the books you have checked out.  This is a nice feature to help you keep track of all the books you have read.

Gardening in the Pacific Northwest

I actually grew stuff!  It is amazing.  I've never been able to grow anything.  I always kill plants.  But I think it has more had to do with motivation rather than anything else.  I've been reading about vegetable gardening for almost 3 years, but hadn't been able to actually have more than a couple pots of lettuce due to being pregnant or moving.

This spring I actually got to try it.  Selena and I built six garden beds from fence planks and put them in our front yard, as we do not get much sun in our backyard.  I bought expensive vegetable garden dirt recommended by Seattle Tilth.  I bought seeds from Territorial Seed Company per the recommendation of Steve Solomon because the test grounds are in the same climate as mine.  I stuck the seeds in the ground and low and behold I got a ton of food growing.

We've had a really cold spring and summer.  We are still waiting for a heat wave to hit the Seattle area.  Luckily I chose mostly crops that do well in cold and rainy weather.

The things that worked great for me were:
- Oregon and Cascade Snap peas
- Cilantro aka Coriander.  I can grow this stuff anywhere and plant it at almost any time.
- Miner's Lettuce
- Spinach
- Carrots
- Kale
- Edible Chrysanthemum
- Rutabaga

Things that were okay or I have yet to find out
- Green onions.  I got about a quarter to half of the seeds I planted to grow.
- Gold summer squash aka yellow zucchini.  I've got 5 teeny zucchini's growing so I think this one will be good.
- Leeks.  Almost all the leeks sprouted, but they take a long time to mature so we'll see how they end up
- Strawberries.  Most of the plants I bought were just roots and weren't expected to produce any or many berries this year.  I did buy two mature plants, but even those have only produced a few.  Next year we'll see if we can get a decent crop.

Things that didn't work
- Garlic chives.  I got a couple to sprout, but then they shriveled and died.
- Dill.  I've had luck with this in pots in the past, but this year I haven't got anything to even sprout.
- Cantaloupe.  I know this one was a gamble, but I decided to give it a go.  After a pathetic start the plant is starting to look a bit healthier.  But compared to the zucchini that I planted at the same time it is pretty pitiful.
- Mini Peppers.  This one too was a gamble, but I was hoping that the fact that they were mini might help them out.  I got a few seeds to sprout inside and got two plants to get a few inches high.  I transplanted them to a self-watering container outside.  One is getting taller but has yellow leaves and no buds.  The other one actually had a little pepper growing despite only being 6 inches tall, but then Allie ripped it to shreds. :(
- Cherry Tomatoes.  I tried to get these to grow from seed and I could only get a couple to sprout and then they died when just a couple inches tall.  I still may try to buy a mature plant and see what happens.

Overall I've been really happy.  I've got a jungle of food.  It has also been great to see how much the girls enjoy it as well.  They love the snap peas and eat them all day long.  They also pretend to be dinosaurs and eat the leaves of the snap peas and spinach.

Vacation in Wallace, Idaho

While Floyd was in Vegas I drove across the state to Wallace, Idaho for a vacation with my family.  While the drive was not much fun the trip was.

We stopped in Vantage, WA on our way there for a while and looked at the stuff in the petrified forest museum.  They had some fossils of a saber-tooth tiger, and a tusk from a mastodon among other things and that was really neat.  Selena had kept asking me what fossils looked like and then I was able to show her.

My aunt had found a house to rent and we stayed there.  My other aunt and uncle came with there two girls and Selena and Allie loved playing with them and think they are the coolest ever.  I really appreciated the attention my cousins gave my girls.  My mom has broken her leg so she was unable to play with the girls, but they enjoyed playing "broken leg" and zooming around on her scooter and trying to use her crutches.  

The town is nestled in some foothill/mountains and has the Coeur d'Alene bike trail and a river running through town.  The town is only about a half mile wide and easily walkable.  There was a little store that had a lot of stuffed animals, as in animals that had been killed and stuffed.  So that was kind of interesting.  There was also a mercantile that had a replica of the T-Rex skull "Sue".  Selena and Allie really liked visiting the sharp tooth.  There was also an outdoor heated pool.  We went swimming once, the only bummer with that was they didn't allow flotation devices, so Selena couldn't swim with her noodle.

The main adventure for the trip was biking the Hiawatha Trail.  I assumed I wouldn't be going, but then realized I could rent a bike and a trailer.  The trail is an old railway line that has been converted to a trail.  The start of the trip involves riding in a 2 mile train tunnel.  It is pitch black and all you have is a small light on your bike.  The terrain isn't smooth and there are leaks in the tunnel where water from a river pours on you.  It is also extremely cold.  I haven't biked with a trailer before and for my first experience to be in the pitch black was pretty exciting.  When we got out of the trail Allie was yelling, "Most fun ever!"  and Selena was saying it was a lot of fun as well.  The rest of the ride is down a gravel road, over some trestles, and through a few more tunnels.  Overall the ride is 13 miles long and is a slight downhill grade, but due to the bumpiness of the road and the loose terrain it takes quite a while.  Half-way through Allie was done.  It was her naptime, but she couldn't sleep because she couldn't get comfortable because her helmet was in the way.  So unfortunately I was pedaling as fast as I could and was unable to enjoy the vistas as much as I wanted to.  When we finally got to the bottom and she could get out she was happier.

I also got to do a lot of running, which was fabulous.  It smelled so clean and fresh.  There was a 2 mile hiking trail 1.5 miles out of town called Pulaski Trail.  I did a couple runs on it and it was very nice.  It followed along an offshoot of the river.  I also took the girls up there one day, but Selena got distracted at the trail head and just wanted to climb the rocks there. I also ran and biked a bit on the Coeur d'Alene trail.

I miss my puppy

Allie is embracing her role as a two year old.  While she has always been an independent sole, she is going through a streak of being even more so, which unfortunately means that she is starting to run away.  I swear it is the most stressful thing in the world trying to walk through a parking lot with two children, one or both of which may decide they do not want to do what you want them to. 

She enjoys playing the big bad bear and superheroes.  The big bad bear throws someone in the dungeon and the other ones have to be superheroes and rescue the captured one by providing a stick for them to grab onto as the superhero pulls them out.  She likes to include a sharp-tooth or Swiper as an enemy in the script as well. 

She also likes to play with her baby doll.  She takes out blankets and lays them out over and over for her baby.  Or she'll snuggle them up with Dyna and all three of them will snuggle.

She really loves Dyna, or as she calls her, her puppy, her Dynamite, or her doggymite.  When we went on vacation she told me that she really missed her puppy and she wanted to go home to see her. She is pretty good about checking Dyna's food and feeding her, though sometimes she gets distracted and starts putting all of Dyna's food in the water dish and in general making a big mess.

At night she is so sweet and as I am cuddling her she says, "You are the best mama I've ever seen."  And she's the best two year old. :)

If there is a rock, and there is no sign, I need to climb it.

"If there is a rock, and there is no sign, I need to climb it," was Selena's quote the other day.  Rocks, trees, and everything else are fair game.  She is definitely getting in touch with her inner primate.  She is also doing great at the monkey bars.  Last summer she was really close and could do them alone sometimes, but now she can do them pretty consistently.  The other day she had impressed a group of pre-teens and they were cheering her on.

Preschool has ended and it has been wonderful.  She has been sleeping in till 9-10am and she is a lot nicer person.  There are far fewer outbursts of name-calling and mean behavior.  Now we just need to break Allie of the habits Selena taught her.  Her preschool teacher also called and said another little girl signed up for afternoon preschool next year, so we're planning on the afternoon again! :)  At the graduation ceremony she said she wanted to be a builder when she grows up. 

The ballet session ended and she has decided that she wants to sign up for soccer now but I think we are putting Papa in charge of that.
  
She's into dinosaurs right now and has watched many of the Land Before Time videos.  The problem is those movies are scary and sometimes sad.  At one point we were discussing what happened to the dinosaurs and I was explaining that many scientists think a meteor killed all the dinosaurs, but she got a bit confused and a couple days later she said, "I think a meat eater (meteor) like T-Rex ate all the dinosaurs and then he died and so they were all gone."  

We've been meeting more of the neighborhood kids and I enjoy it so much when they are all running around the cul-de-sac playing with the older kids accommodating the younger ones.  I just hope we get more opportunities as the summer goes on.

She's already starting to feel bad about her height.  The other day she sadly says to me, "I'm the smallest four year old I know."  I told her that she probably would always be the smallest of her age and that both her dad and I were always the smallest, but that sometimes being smaller is better because you are faster and can climb trees better.  She's also deduced from her dinosaur movies that if you are smaller you have to be smarter. I feel for her.  I spent most of my life wishing I was taller.