Category Archives: Market Value

Ready to Make Your Move If Rates Go Down?

If, as many experts are predicting, interests come down this fall, we can expect the real estate market to warm up. According to Forbes magazine, “… the housing market will only see renewed momentum once mortgage rates drop enough to ease affordability challenges and incentivize homeowners locked in at low rates to move so inventory grows substantially to meet demand.”[1]

If you’ve been waiting in the wings for the most advantageous time to sell your home and/or make a move to another one, this rate drop, when it happens, might be your opportunity. You’ll want to be prepared to take quick action. Here are some things you can be doing now to prepare your home for sale so when the timing is right, you are ready for action!

I can confidently say that first impressions matter, and a well-prepared house can fetch you the best possible price. So, let’s dive right in!

  1. Declutter and Depersonalize

The first step in preparing your home for sale is to declutter and depersonalize it. This means removing any excess furniture, knick-knacks, and personal items. The goal is to create a clean, uncluttered space that allows potential buyers to envision themselves living in the house. Remember, you want them to see their belongings in the space, not yours.

  1. Repair and Replace

Before putting your home on the market, ensure that all necessary repairs are completed. This could include fixing leaky faucets, patching holes in the walls, and addressing any issues with appliances or electrical systems. Additionally, consider replacing outdated fixtures and hardware, such as cabinet handles or light switches, to give your home a more modern and polished look.

  1. Clean, Clean, Clean

A clean house is essential when selling. Deep clean your home, paying special attention to the kitchen, bathrooms, and high-traffic areas. Don’t forget to clean windows, curtains, and baseboards, as well as any appliances that will be included in the sale. A spotless home will not only make a great impression but also make it easier for potential buyers to imagine themselves living there.

  1. Enhance Curb Appeal

First impressions are crucial, so make sure the exterior of your home is just as inviting as the interior. Enhance curb appeal by trimming overgrown bushes, mowing the lawn, and adding some potted plants or flowers. Power-washing the exterior, repairing any damaged siding, and applying a fresh coat of paint to the front door can also go a long way in making your home more attractive to buyers.

  1. Neutralize Colors

While you may love your bold, colorful walls, potential buyers may not share your taste. To appeal to a broader range of buyers, consider repainting your walls in neutral colors, such as beige, gray, or white. This will create a blank canvas that allows buyers to envision their own style and design preferences in the space.

  1. Light It Up

Good lighting is essential when selling a home. Ensure that all light fixtures are in working order and replace any outdated or damaged fixtures. Additionally, consider adding additional lighting sources, such as floor lamps or table lamps, to brighten up dark corners and create a warm, inviting atmosphere.

  1. Stage Your Home

Home staging can make a significant difference in how potential buyers perceive your property. Consider hiring a professional home stager or follow some basic staging tips, such as arranging furniture to create a natural flow, adding decorative accents, and setting the dining table to create a welcoming atmosphere. Remember, the goal is to make your home feel warm, inviting, and ready for its new owners.

  1. Organize and Optimize Storage Spaces

Buyers are always on the lookout for ample storage space. Organize your closets, cabinets, and other storage areas to showcase their full potential. Remove any unnecessary items and neatly arrange the remaining contents to make the space appear larger and more functional. (Need help with this one? If you’re local to the Gig Harbor, Washington area where I am, I highly recommend Northwest Home Coach.)

  • Select Your Real Estate Broker and Be Ready to Go

Obviously, there are a lot of eager agents to choose from! Make sure you select one with home you can have a trusting relationship and good rapport, and in whose negotiating and problem-solving skills you can have the utmost confidence. Preparing your home for sale requires time, effort, persistence, wisdom, and attention to detail. By following these tips and selecting the right agent, you’ll be well on your way to showcasing your property in the best possible light, attracting the right buyer, and locating and purchasing your next new home.

Doug Lawrence is a Managing Broker with Better Properties in Gig Harbor, Washington. He can be reached at 253.341.5287 or by email at douglaslawrence15@gmail.com.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/housing-market-predictions/. August 14, 2024

Overcoming Deferred Maintenance: Prepping a Fixer for Sale

So, you want to sell your house, or maybe someone else’s house—an aging or deceased relative, for example. And, for whatever reason, the property has experienced “deferred maintenance.” It needs a lot of work!

Bringing a “fixer” home up to a sellable standard can seem overwhelming sometimes, especially when it needs significant improvements. Getting top dollar for a property that needs work can be challenging, especially if your budget for improvement is tight. That being said, with the right perspective, some creativity, and strategic emphasis on the right things, it can be done—for less time and money than you probably think.

Where to Get the Most Bang for Your Buck

Experts often say to put your energy into updating the kitchen and bathroom for maximum impact. However, a major renovation in these areas can set you back tens of thousands of dollars and take weeks to complete, which simply isn’t possible within a tight budget and time frame. So instead, make your focus on the areas of the home that will make a good first impression and enhance the overall look of the house—for a minimal outlay of cash. Here are my top five recommendations:

1. Get rid of the clutter. Buyers need to be able to visualize their own life in the house—impossible if there are piles of stuff everywhere! The clutter has to go. (If this feels overwhelming, hire a high school or college student who wants to make a few extra bucks to help you sort.) Have three categories of bags or boxes available as you move through the rooms: throw away, give away, put away (keep). The “keep” pile will be the minimal amount of stuff you either want to take with you to your next home if you are selling your own home, or perhaps mementoes or heirlooms you want to pass on to family members, etc. in the case of liquidating a home for a relative. “Give away” goes to Goodwill or other similar charity (often these organizations can arrange to pick up your stuff). And “throw away,” well, that just goes straight into the garbage or to the dump! (You may also have a “garage sale” pile as well.)

2. Give rooms a facelift. Repaint the interior walls in a neutral color. Replace carpets (opting for a low-cost but good-quality laminate floor is often a good choice). Paint and new flooring not only improve the look of the house, but also the smell, giving the impression of fresh, clean, and new.

3. Get rid of dated or dodgy furniture. Keep only the nicest furnishings (less is more). If you don’t have any, consider borrowing statement pieces from friends or neighbors temporarily to improve the look of the home for showing. Or pick up a few new inexpensive or free things on Craigslist or local give-away websites. If staging isn’t your forte, ask a friend with an eye for style to help you arrange the rooms attractively. Your real estate professional may be able to provide assistance with this.

4. Give every surface a deep clean. Include exterior surfaces and windows, interior walls, floors, trim, doors, bathrooms, tile, etc. If you don’t have the time or energy for cleaning, hire some help. It will be worth it!

5. Tidy the front and outside of the house. Weed and trim the gardens, prune hedges, and mow the lawn. This makes a tremendous improvement in the curb appeal, for little to no money. The changes that will make the biggest impact may actually cost nothing more than a few weekends of hard work! Tip: adding bark mulch is an affordable update that is especially effective, as it injects color and makes garden beds look neater. Also, clean the roof and gutters. (If the roof needs to be replaced, do it now. You don’t want the roof to be an area of distraction and it will likely be required anyway.)

 Keep Your Buyers’ Goals in Mind

Consider that potential buyers of a dated or fixer property will likely be planning on renovating themselves, and will have their own ideas on what changes they want to make. So you don’t have to do everything, especially things they will likely later undo. That’s why spending big on significant improvements can actually be counterproductive in these situations. Your job is to make the home and property liveable, neat, and tidy, so they can best see and appreciate its potential.

Your buyer can take it from there!

(c) 2018. Doug Lawrence Real Estate. All Rights Reserved.

Doug Lawrence is a licensed real estate broker with Keller Williams West Sound in Gig Harbor, Washington. Do you have a “fixer” you’ve been thinking of selling and are dreading getting it prepped? Give him a call, whether you’re around the corner or across the country.  He’s happy to help you get the process started and guide you all the way from sorting to SOLD! 

On Low Inventory: From Challenge Comes Opportunity

The last few months have been a bit frustrating for a number of my clients as it took longer than anticipated for them to secure contracts on new homes. Finding suitable and available houses, and then securing the winning bid among competitors, has been a challenge!

My clients are not alone when you look at what’s going on around us: low inventory is the foremost issue in the housing market right now. Buyers in today’s market in our area face relentless demand for a scarce supply of reasonably priced homes. In fact, in a recent survey by the National Association of Mortgage Professionals (NAMB), fifty-eight percent of mortgage professionals cited low inventory as the biggest hurdle for homebuyers today.

The inventory dilemma has even overshadowed concerns about mortgage lending standards. These standards, which some still view as too strict, have relaxed since the early, strong-armed days post-recession. In fact, according to a recent survey by Fannie Mae, more lenders have taken steps to open up access to credit since the start of 2017, and more plan to continue to do so in the future. This is good news! And coming up with enough money for a down payment has also become less of a factor, according to the same NAMB survey.

I was glad to be alongside my clients, helping them navigate this challenge, and ultimately helping them find and secure their homes. At the same time, my clients who are sellers have also appreciated the  professional assistance to deal with multiple offer situations.  Face value is not always an accurate representation of reality. That’s why having an experienced real estate agent is more important than ever to help both buyers and sellers navigate this intensely competitive market.

Undeniably, there are fewer homes on the market—but there are also many opportunities. How will you use today’s environment to your advantage?

Doug Lawrence is an agent with Kellers Williams WestSound in Gig Harbor, Washington. You can reach him at dlawrence@kw.com for advice or assistance on your upcoming home sale or purchase.

Determining Your Home’s Accurate Market Value

I recently contributed several hours to the Keller Wiliams booth at the Gig Harbor Maritime Festival, our town’s annual kick off to the summer season. Somehow the first weekend in June always turns out to be gloriously sunny, and a significant portion of the town’s population turns out for the parade, live music, street vendors, and the “blessing of the fleet,” harkening back to our fishing village roots.

At our booth, in addition to offering kids’ activities and a raffle for a wine basket, my colleagues and I endeavored to engage festival-goers with the teaser, “Would you like to find out how much your house is worth?” I was surprised by the number of people who were confident they already knew.

Do you know what your home is worth? I mean, do you really know its accurate value in today’s market?

With the advent of real estate search engines like Zillow and Red Fin, and our increasing reliance on technology, there is a general assumption that the app on your phone is accurate. Not necessarily.

House values can be determined in several ways. There is the tax assessed value, which is the formula your local government entity uses to determine the taxation value of your house and land. Then there is the market value determined via a professional consultation with a licensed real estate professional, which factors in square footage, amenities, location, and, most importantly, what similar houses have sold for within a reasonable distance from your home.

I used my own house as a test case and was surprised, although not really, to find a more than $100,000 spread between four different real estate apps. Most apps rely on algorhythms and public records to determine house values. Depending on their public record source, the information will vary based on the accuracy of the record. I’m sure this contributed to the erroneous values assessed to my own house, considering that, between the various reports, there was up to a 1000-square foot difference in the stated size of my house! (This is probably one reason why one of the best-known real estate search engines is currently being sued for inaccurate valuations.)

It’s important to remember that these discrepancies exist. If I were a seller, I would obviously want to sell my house for the highest price possible. And if I were a buyer, I would want to purchase for the lowest price. In the case of my home’s online assessed value, that could be a $100,000 discrepancy! That’s why, when it comes to determining your house’s value, it’s imperative that you enlist the help of a real estate professional to be your expert advisor.

In the current frenzied market (at least, in our area), it’s easy to become emotional and get caught in the trap of overpaying for a home just to have the winning bid. It’s not uncommon these days to see a house deliberately listed below market value, in anticipation of a bidding war between prospective buyers that can actually take the price far over market value. Don’t get sucked into this trap!

What I do for both my sellers and my buyers is to systematically assess a home’s true value. This takes into consideration:

  • location
  • size of house and property
  • number of bedrooms and bathrooms
  • overall condition of the house and property
  • age of the home
  • degree of finish
  • energy source and heating/air conditioning
  • fireplace and if so, what kind
  • kind(s) of flooring
  • number of covered parking spaces

All of these factors and more go into a systematic process of determining the value of the home you want to sell or purchase.

So back to my original question: Do you know what your home is worth? Perhaps you are pausing now before answering, because you realize the answer isn’t necessarily found in an app or an assumption. That’s where your local real estate professional can be an invaluable asset. Call for an APP-ointment today; it’s the most accurate real estate “app” at your disposal!

Doug Lawrence is a licensed real estate broker with Keller Williams West Sound in Gig Harbor, Washington. His mantra, both personally and professionally, is “love where you live!” He is an avid fan of the beautiful Pacific Northwest and enjoys helping people find their perfect fit. You can find him at www.douglawrencerealestate.com.