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You have listed a 4 bedroom house with 15 photos; 8 of those photos are of the outside.
Hint: If I don't see at least one photo of each interior room I wonder what is not being told.
I like the house, and I didn't know one could buy a four bedroom house in Western Washington state for so little. In my opinion, it looks like a great house to retire to; quiet community, near golf, and close to the water for fishing.
This house is going to be hard to sell and it will be impossible to get top dollar if there is a tenant living there while it is for sale. I think that you and hubby should make a decision as soon as possible whether to keep it as a long term rental property or to sell it. If you keep it as a rental, you need to try to increase the rent while trying to refinance to get the payment down. You must also realize that even if you do all of that you may still have a negative cash flow for a long, long time.
If you decide to sell, you both need to get used to the idea that you may have to take a loss, and maybe a big one. I have been through the same, and if you really want to get rid of it, you have to get the idea of a loss through your head in the beginning so that you can price it competitively and not waste time and lose prospective buyers with a high listing price. I didn't do that and wasted a whole summer and fall by continuing to ask a high price. If selling is your choice, the place to start is with your tenant. Does your tenant want to buy? Can they buy? There is only one way to find out. Don't call a realtor, a lawyer, or a banker; get a mortgage broker from a mortgage company. You need a person who has been in this business for quite a while, a broker so good at getting one a mortgage he could probably get a dead dog a mortgage. Have them talk to the tenant and if they say it can't be done, you will know to move on and list it with a realtor.
The listing as it stands is lousy. The real estate agent should have her license revoked. It states four bedrooms, but how many baths? It gives the square footage of the house, but not the lot. Nowhere does it state the annual property taxes. How is the terrain? Flat? Hilly? Is there a grassy front or back yard? Is there any grass anywhere? Is there a yard at all? All of that information is very important to me if I were in the market looking. If prospective buyers have this information up front, they won't waste your time or an agent's time. Also, it wouldn't hurt to have on the listing a drawing of the property from overhead showing the locations of the house and garage on the property and their proximity to the street and neighboring houses. I have seen this on listings in some places. One should be able to look at a listing without visiting the property and know whether they would be interested, without any surprises. The listing pictures are terrible. One cannot get any idea of what the house looks like. I quoted from the above poster because their advice on the photos in the first three lines of their post is spot on. You need a full front picture to begin with, then a full back picture, a couple of side pictures. You can toss the picture of the big tree; how that got in there is beyond me.
Good luck.
respectfully, that is a little much..
could the listing use some improvement, sure. A fresh set of photos, interior and exterior, and a revamp of the listing remarks will breath some new life into the listing. Whether these changes will populate on any of the syndicated sites that the local association might be in bed with is unknown, but it's still worth the work.
I send my listings to an associate of mine for "another set of eyes". I'll let him pick it apart and then it's on to the client for their approval.
I also cannot see any photos on the agents direct website for some reason. even turned off adblock on my laptop but no difference. The listing remarks on the agents website are a little garbled. Notes about the house. next sentence, the community amenities, then next sentence back to the house..
It's possible this agent is newer, and all agents started out once in their life. I'd see if maybe the office broker could schedule some time separately with you to discuss the listing, recent comps, and the market in that area in general right now.
I had to smile to myself, when I read that this house has been on the market, for "years '.
I live in Toronto, and here the market is so hot that time on the market is measured in "days ", not weeks, and for a house to be unsold after a month is considered to be quite odd. And, the vast majority of the listed properties sell for "over the listed price " and in some cases, 20 percent over list.
If that house was located in the Toronto area, with the same features, it would be worth around $650,000, and it would be gone/sold in a week.
Why ? The largest city in Canada, the business hub of the country, and where most new comers to Canada land.
If that house were located in hundreds of other places, it could be worth twice the money and sell in a day. What does that have to do with this house? Absolutely nothing. In case you dont know, its location location and then location.
'Well staged, pretty listing pictures' are like a resume. They only get potential buyers to look at the house, but, will not 'sell it' (or, like a resume, it may get one the interview, but, not the job!)
As I stated earlier, a 4-YEAR failed sales effort reveals a fatal flaw ... that cannot be covered-up with a wide-angled lens and a nice couch in front of a fireplace.
On the other hand, we are all giving ideas here. This is one aspect.
On the other hand, if a purchaser wanted to make an offer if all else was right, hey, guess what, they would have. I seem to remember people discussing low offers somewhere on the real estate topics so I get the idea this is actually a possibility. I seem to remember a low offer or two I made (fecetious) ; I seem to remember a low offer or two others in the world made over the decades (facetious again.)
This is true, but you gotta get 'em in the door, and good pictures and staging help with that.
Yes, and nowadays you need to get them before the door. I am constantly reminded just how visual people are, how short attention spans are for all the reading and that they want more visuals. Increasingly so even in one generation as time goes on in that person's life but definitely in each descending generation.
I also looked at the Zillow listing and found that it is on .32 of an acre. I would have wanted to know that up front. I found out on Redfin that the lot is flat.
I agree with everyone else:
You need new pictures (and likely a new realtor if they think those pictures are fine). The first picture made me wonder if it was a mobile home, the second made me wonder if it was a condo, it wasn't until the third that it seemed like it may be an actual house. Isn't there a vantage point that will show the exterior from the "curb?" There are a few good interior photos (kitchen, bathroom), but the one with the red brick wall and exercise stuff and couch in front of it has me wondering just what/where is that room? The living room photo is great with all that random furniture it in.
See if you can move the renter's stuff around, maybe just out of the range of the photo, then put it back. It's not showing well. And ITA, in general buying with a renter makes me a little nervous. We recently sold a renter-occupied home and it wasn't until they moved out that we received many multiple offers...that was the ONLY thing that had changed.
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