Home Seller Preparedness

Selling a home involves many moving parts, so it’s best to be proactive. Start planning upwards of 6 months ahead to avoid rushing at the last minute to complete deferred maintenance repairs, consider your next living arrangement, and be able to time the marketing strategically to local market conditions. Deferred maintenance can affect not only the value of what your home can sell for, it can also affect your time on the market. If you plan on selling without taking care of maintenance that you have not done on the home, then be prepared to price your home accordingly. Getting these critical components in place prior to listing could enhance the value of your home, ensure a smoother listing experience, and mitigate buyer negotiation leverage once you accept that offer.

Create a punch list of repairs.

Using an Excel spreadsheet, a pad of paper, or your smartphone or tablet, go room by room identifying what repairs are needed.

1. Windows open and close easily.
2. Install GFCI certified outlets.
3. Doors close and doorknobs turn easily.
4. Chipped or nicked trim?
5. What else?

Perform a deep clean

Closets, oven, range, refrigerator (pull it away from the wall to vacuum the coils), carpets/hardwoods, windowsills, chandeliers/fixtures all need attention.

Hire a professional painter

Liven up the walls and doors inside and outside with fresh paint. When you’ve lived in a place for a while, your mind begins to ignore little inconsistencies. A new visitor to your home will notice these details, so keep in mind they contribute to the overall first impression. A professional painter can help repair cracks in ceilings and walls as well.

When getting your interior or exterior ready to be painted, think base colors like creams and whites for your paint colors at time of sale. You may love that purple colored room for your own use, but these more extreme colors can influence a buyer’s interest in your home. Provide the new buyer with a fresh palette to introduce their own color scheme to their new home. This one preparation can save you on market time, putting more money in your pocket at closing.

Install new smoke and carbon monoxide detectors

Oregon law requires new detectors to be installed. There are some affordable smoke and carbon monoxide detectors available at your local hardware store.

Landscaping

It’s all about curb appeal! The first impression is usually the last.

Prune, weed, clear brush, mow, lay down fresh bark mulch.
Hire an arborist to shape existing trees (never refer to it as “thinning” a tree). In fact, this should be done even if you’re not selling!
Having a tidy home on the outside bodes well for the inside.

Assess the roof

One of the most overlooked components of selling a home is the roof condition. Inspectors will assess the condition of the roof after you receive an offer, so if repairs or even replacement are necessary, it will mitigate the need for negotiation on the price of your home while saving time on repairs already completed.

Organize Documents

Have your paperwork and invoices available for work you’ve had done on your home. If you had work completed by a contractor that required a permit, verify all permits were finalized with your local bureau of planning and permitting. You don’t want to get into a transaction on your home and have an open or voided permit come into question. If a final inspection was not completed, you may have to open walls, cut into sheet rock, or pull up flooring so as to prove to a city inspector that work was done to code. Avoid a potential nightmare in the middle of a real estate transaction.

If selling a condo, line up all your HOA governing documents and proof of insurance. Your management company may have a login to access documents electronically. Request access for your yourself and your agent, so a tedious yet critical detail is taken care of in advance.

Appliance Check

Ensure all appliances are in clean and working order. If there are any dings to the enamel, thermometer adjustments needed in the oven, thaw a freezer, replace the dryer lint filter, or anything else you find, these will be good to have taken care of before people start viewing your home.

Staging

Consider coordinating a staging company with your broker as the final step in preparing to sell. Staging will showcase your home to people who may not have an imagination or need a physical visual in order to imagine themselves having the lifestyle you’re selling. Part of staging involves decluttering and depersonalization. You want the new buyer to imagine themselves in your home, not what it was like for you to live there. Another side benefit? Packing up personal items saves you time for when the real move happens.

Photography

Use a professional real estate photographer. They have the digital technology to deal with minor touch-ups, enhance lighting, and streamline your photos for use in virtual tours and/ or 3D tours.

Pricing your home

Your broker should provide this “apples to apples” home sales comparison of properties within a mile or less and over the last 3-6 months. This information helps determine the best listing price. Keep in mind the market determines the actual sales value of your home.

Strategy

Pricing your home too high can cause the home to stagnate on market and necessitate a price reduction. Don’t wait too long to consider a price reduction if showing activity is not producing an offer. If you have been seeing double-digit numbers in showings without an offer, then a price reduction should happen within a few weeks. Perception is reality. If buyers see a home on market for more than a few weeks, their perception can be that there is something wrong with the home.

Portland is also known as a “polite market” where buyers will usually not make offers on homes they think are overpriced, so as to not upset the seller with a lower offer. Buyers in the Portland Metro area will often wait for the seller to make a price reduction before submitting an offer. Real estate values can be unpredictable, so keep an eye on factors like the state and national economy, unemployment rate, interest rates, and other factors.

Showings

Be ready to accept raw feedback about your home. You have memories and emotions attached to your property, so it’s best to remember to try to not take constructive criticism personally.

Create a showing schedule with your real estate broker that works both for you. Maximize the availability of the home to buyers to see your home, such as evenings, after work, and weekends.

I’d love to learn more about what your greatest challenges have been when selling your home. Did I miss anything on this list? I look forward to hearing from you.

Published September 10, 2020

Five Gardening Tips You Can Use Right Now

There are more than five things you could do right now, but why not start with your landscaping? Here are five helpful tips:

1. Take inventory of the native and non-native species in your yard.

Are the non-native species crowding out native plant life? Native plants and trees in the Pacific Northwest like rhododendrons, ferns, Pacific Madrone, to name a few, require less maintenance than say, Black Lace Elderberry or bamboo. Even though there are benefits to the non-native plant life in your garden, consider weighing more on the side of the native species in the native-to-non-native plant ratio. Oregon State University has great information on native plant life.

large dark-leafed bushy tree with pink blossoms — Black Lace Elderberry (before pruning)

2. Identify your plant cycles

This is key when it comes to transplanting and pruning and is most obvious regarding when to plant. Bulbs and seeds will have different timing, depending on the plant. Lilacs should be pruned in the spring before they bloom, just after the blooms are gone, or in the fall.

3. Remove dead, dying, or out-of-place plants

You’ve heard the expression, “dead weight”. This applies to gardening, too. Removing anything that is on its way out means creating space for things to thrive. If the leaves on an artichoke are failing, for example, cut them off and you will see new growth emerge within a week or two. The plant is still feeding energy to the dying leaves, so the cutting away encourages newer, healthier growth.

4. Identify the borders

Remove or move anything that interferes with the boundaries previously set. The defined lines will lend a tidier look to your garden. Sometimes it hurts to remove some of the plants that have been nurtured over the years, but those could be transplanted elsewhere or given away to neighbors in your local free group. Or, redefine your borders.

5. Pruning is for suckers!

Ever notice little green shoots coming out of the base of your lilac, trees, or other woody shrubs? Those are called suckers. These should be cut back so the plant’s energy is focused on the main growth. See #4 for when to prune your plants. If you’re pruning a tree in the City of Portland, the code is very specific. Street trees require a pruning permit unless the diameter of the branch you’re pruning is ½-inch or smaller. There are many more restrictions and in-depth tips on the city’s website.

I hope these quick tips get you started with a garden maintenance road map! Please feel free to send me before-and-after photos of your work if you’d like it to be featured here. Or, tag me on Instagram at @seanbessorealty. Happy gardening!

Published June 16, 2020

Winter Cleaning Tips & Tricks For The Environment

Published January 13, 2020

Western culture celebrates the merits of spring cleaning. But what if we shifted our focus to our homes during the winter? We Pacific Northwesterners spend most of our lives during the cold and rainy season inside. And what if we approached our homes’ cleanliness and orderliness from an environmental perspective?

The Japanese tradition of “o-souji” may be extreme for our multi-room, multi-level homes, but we could apply some of the principles to indoor home maintenance and living at the beginning of a new year. An oversimplified explanation of the principle is based on the removal of everything from the home, cleaning/airing everything inside and out, and putting back only the essentials. We’ve all heard about the Kondori Method (Marie Kondo) of putting everything in a pile and keeping only the things that “spark joy.” This method could work for each room of the home, including the garage.

Moving

If you’ve recently bought a home and are preparing to move, this is an excellent time to exorcise the things that are weighing you down. Set a box aside for things you don’t want. Place them into the box as you remove items from shelves for packing. You will probably go through another filtering process as you unpack. Keep in mind that what you donate, you will not need to find a home for in your new space. For people in the Portland-metro area, refer to my list of places to donate once you’ve parsed out the things you can leave behind.

Re-gifting

You could also create categories for some items, such as those that could be re-gifted. While it’s “the thought that counts,” ask yourself if this is something the person you’re giving to needs, wants, or would appreciate. If they, too, are making efforts to streamline their homes, consider gifts such as consumables, experiences, or a donation to their favorite charity in their name. Over the holidays, my wife and I participated in the Icelandic tradition of re-gifting books we had read. It not only recirculates beloved reading material, but provides a basis for conversation at the next gathering.

Recycling

There are stricter regulations on what may be put in the recycling bins here in the Portland area. Please refer to Metro’s guide for recycling waste. If you have Styrofoam you’d like to recycle, please contact me about collection. I frequently travel by Agilyx who recycles Styrofoam and #5, so I’d be happy to make a run for our community.

Bags

Oregon now charges 5 cents per bag (yes, even paper ones!) at all stores. Consider making totes out of scraps of fabric you already have stored for that some-day craft project. Or see if your creative friend would make one for you with your materials. Buying new non-biodegradable but reusable petroleum-based bags might not be the perfect solution. You can make your own change by using what you already have.

What are some other tips you’d like to share for your environmentally-conscious winter cleaning projects?