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My 2 millennials like homes with character, one likes old and the other ancient. Seriously, he'd buy a stone castle if he could. Realistically though, if they were to buy something it would probably be a 1980'ish beige box of some sort because that's what they could likely afford but they wouldn't turn their noses up at the "millennial special" if it was in their price range either since those do show well. Ultimately, it's all about show.
I'm a millennial - 31 now so right in the middle of the pack. I bought a ranch from the estate of an 85 year old lady. It had had no cosmetic/landscaping updates since the early 80's but the construction was solid and nothing needed to be done to make it livable (assuming you can live with wood paneling, floral wallpaper and pink trim in the bathroom).
The reasons I bought it were (1) it was within my budget (2) it backed up to a community park (although you couldn't see it at the time because the backyard was so overgrown - nothing a fire pit and a box of $2 lighter didn't fix). (3) It was a 15-30 minute commute from 3 of the 4 main employment areas in my city. Regardless of if I change jobs, the commute will still be manageable.
I've really enjoyed this thread and all the comments. With all houses, I think it comes down to location, price and condition….and whether you really want the house to sell -- OR SIT -- on the market.
I don't think the 400K house from 1964 completed updated -- and the 350K house not updated SINCE 1964 -- are going after the same buyer. Oh, they may be on the same block, are are they really even in the same "sub-market." Or let's say they may be in the same market -- but they sure are not priced or aiming toward the same buyer.
Which of those two houses will sell FIRST? How long MIGHT the other house sit? Depends on the "inventory" of buyers looking to buy at the time. Just like what a buyer might have to offer to get the house (I bought my house in the RED HOT Washington DC market of 2003, contract had escalation clauses, buyers were throwing in cases of wine, even their cars to get a house) -- the market also dictates what the seller might have to do -- to sell….especially if they want to sell quickly (when it's not a seller's market.
Here now, with spring coming (or technically here) agents tell me they expect a seller's market. They say inventory is tight and there are more buyers than sellers already, and its not even April and the selling season hasn't heated up yet.
To the question of millennials and what they want…..from the comments here….just like any other generation…..it depends on the person and their situation. I do think most cases, buyers want the most updated house they can get for the money. But by definition…most isn't all.
I'm 26 now but I purchased my first house (townhome) when I was 24. I'm definitely in the millennial category. My #1 requirement was that it was in my price range. I live in Orlando and the market here has been very hot for a few years, so beating out buyers to get ANY place in my range was my #1 concern. Granted, I did skip over the properties that were total nightmares and complete gut-jobs, but as long as it was in decent shape and not in any major immediate disrepair it was good in my book.
My budget was low and I knew having a father that is a contractor who could help me with upgrades allowed me to look past cosmetic issues. For people in my age range I think they'd just be happy having their own place. All throughout college I had multiple roommates everywhere I lived and it was nice having my own place where I don't have to worry about other people's noise, dishes left out, unpaid bills, etc.
As others have said, millenials do not have a lot of money or net worth considering they're coming out of college and (most) have loan debt. They can be picky all they want but the reality is going to hit them in the face when they're preapproved for half of what they thought they could buy. All of a sudden that smaller budget is not going to get them all the checks on their wishlist.
Follow the general rules of listing. Keep the property clean and easy to show. Don't have any disrepair or half-done projects (big holes in the walls, flooring ripped up, etc.). Price the home right. The real estate market doesn't need to bend to any one particular category of people if it doesn't need to. In the case of millennials, it doesn't need to, at least right now. Bottom line is still not enough of them are buying homes yet. They'd rather rent for longer to experience life, travel, etc. than commit themselves to a mortgage and a more permanent location.
We only perform tasks we're expert or proficient in, so we save a lot on electrical, framing, ducting, drywall, painting, tiling, cabinet setting.
Plumbing is just one of those things that takes me too long to do correctly so we're happy to pay an expert to do it. Fixing a leaking pipe, or swapping out a water heater, no big deal. But larger projects? We hired out trenching 60' and running a main sewer line, and roughing in the plumbing in our bathroom and I'm glad we did. If it took 2 professionals over a week to do it properly and to code, it probably would've taken me a month between research and sourcing the correct materials. The plumbing sizes seems so arbitrary to me, I can't figure out the rhyme or reason, especially when they step up and step down from size to size within a run. I went to HD 3 times just to finish connecting my bathroom sink and drain p-trap, haha.
To the question of millennials and what they want…..from the comments here….just like any other generation…..it depends on the person and their situation. I do think most cases, buyers want the most updated house they can get for the money. But by definition…most isn't all.
Totally agree! That was my thinking before I started the thread, and glad to see it seems to be the way a lot of people think.
Someone suggested looking through the listing photos of all the other houses in my area. Forget who it was, but that's great advice. It took us a while to figure out how to get MLS access to all the homes in our zip, but we have it now and it's extremely helpful. We can see how many homes did the trendy redecorating (a good number, but not even half) and which homes are selling quickly, which are not. Found out a house two blocks away just sold after 3 weeks and it has red walls and a yellow room. Some of the all grey homes have sold fairly quickly too. Now that I've read the comments here and seen these listings, we are feeling much better about the likelihood that people will at least look at our house.
As for the realtor, we decided to move on. For this reason and a few others. If you've ever watched Modern Family, we really need a Phil Dunphy type of realtor, not a Mitzi. I'm sure she'll be very successful with other sellers, but we'll wait to find the right person for us. We don't need to sell the house this year, anyway, so time is on our side. We have plenty of time to follow the other homes for sale and see for ourselves what works.
I haven't read the whole thread, but I'll chip in my 2 cents anyway, with apologies if this has already been thoroughly discussed.
I live in a "master-planned" community of Orange County, CA. Our neighbors were original owners who bought in 1988. Over the years they did very little to the house. It wasn't filthy or trashed in any way, but it had not been upgraded and there were little things that had not been fixed. A couple of months ago, they decided to sell and move out of state near their adult children.
The house sold before it was even put on the market, by a local realtor who had two more families lined up in case the first one didn't work out. The new owners are a young couple in their early 30s with a 6-year-old and 3-year-old. What I heard from the original owners, before they left, was that this couple wanted them to clean this and fix that, but both parties agreed on a slightly reduced price to sell the house "as is." (For what it's worth, the purchase price was still over $600k).
Original owners left, and for the last 3 weeks, there has been a constant stream of contractors coming in and out. They have replaced every cabinet, every appliance, and all the flooring. They completely repainted. They took all the plants out of the front yard (which annoyed me, as the flowers were blooming and actually looked very nice, and they haven't been replaced with anything yet).
The fact of the matter is, in my area, this house was not going to sit on the market no matter what. It's nothing special as a house, but the location is desirable. Why on earth should owners knock themselves out to upgrade the house so it will "show well"? The new owners, whoever they are, are just going to redo everything to their own taste anyway. (As it happened, our neighbor's house had very attractive kitchen tile that was only a couple of years old, but it was torn out because the new people wanted hardwood).
Obviously it depends on one's location, but this concept that a house needs to be pristine or it won't sell, or that Millennials don't want to have to do anything to their new property, is not at all accurate where I am.
These questions come from my recent experiences looking for a listing agent. I couldn't believe how many people we had to interview, all of whom adamantly insisted that we needed to make expensive decorating changes to appeal to Millennials.
The funny thing is we interviewed people we thought would be very different, and in some ways they were. But all seemed to insist on marketing to Millennials and said things like "this group in particular has no vision and won't even look at your house unless they see listing photos with all these decorating changes."
We are talking about major changes including removing giant bathroom mirrors and builder grade vanities, removing all carpet, everything is painted grey, all hardwood is stained a dark color, etc. Surprisingly, they don't seem to think people care that much about roof or HVAC, but putting in a new trendy back splash is urgent. Some of the realtors were apologetic, some were pushy, some were very logical--but all were very insistent that making such renovations is a trend that cannot be ignored.
We went along with some of it (the carpet, mirror and vanity, not with the other changes), and we'll just have to see if Millennials will look at our place or not. Or if we sell it to someone from another age group. I'm trying to look at it as a scientific experiment to see if what they say is true.
Our listing realtor thinks we will be in for an unhappy surprise and is really pushing for us to do more. Not going to happen until we see how things go.
But it does make think this would be an interesting topic for this forum:
Is there a difference between what do Millennials say they want vs. what Millennials realistically buy? Also, are they really the only group worth marketing to?
Your post points perfectly to the shallowness and idiocy of the millenials. "Oh look: a cool backsplash!!" Meanwhile, the roof is leaking a like sieve, or the HVAC is on its last legs......
......... But sellers like you don't get top dollar either. You either linger on the market forever or you sell your home for less than an updated home would fetch. ........
And so what? If the next door neighbor with an identical house paid $50,000- $60,000 to get all updated and you sell your clean standard house for $20,000 less than he gets, you are far ahead of him.
My observation is that the Millennials all have it in their head exactly what they want. After 4-6 months of shopping and seeing that all their dreams houses cost 2-3 times their top budget, they get realistic and buy a house that they can qualify for the mortgage on, and that house is not going to be the one with a marble soaking tub, an open floor plan, 4 bathrooms, and a huge yard and deck within walking distance of all the shops and amenities.
Color: I just sold a house with a brand new coat of natural tan paint. The buyer went on and on about how she loved the color. You don't have to use gray. You need to consider the house, the light, and the color of the trim, baseboards and flooring.
There were 4 offers in the same week for this tan interior house, so the color was not turning off buyers.
My opinion is that gray paint only looks good with white trim. This house had real wood trim and I wasn't about to hide that with white paint. The interior paint was chosen to accent the trim and the flooring.
Just to address the gray paint issue---Half of our house is painted shades of gray on the inside. We picked it because it was the best at hiding smaller imperfections in plaster walls. It also makes any colors you put against it pop more than a tan or off- white. We do have white trim original to the house. I am Gen X and my husband is a Millennial.
We listed right before noon today and have 10 showings scheduled for the next 24 hours (not saying this is necessarily due to gray paint... I'm just really excited)!
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