Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If your house can sell for X as is and you have to spend Y to sell it for X+Y, what difference does it make?
You don't usually get dollar for dollar returns for fixing it up.
According to one page:
Quote:
The catch is that they won’t pay anything close to fair market value, or how much you could make selling it conventionally. That’s your tradeoff for a fast, easy sale. Some reports say that We Buy Ugly Houses will pay as little as 50% of a property’s fair market value, which is a steep price to pay for convenience.
I guess maybe my home isn't bad enough to really even fit in their category?
My home is definitely livable as is - it's not some Adams Family heap of trash/fixer-upper.
I don't know a lot about homes/home ownership - that's partly why I'm asking some of these questions here.
You do the exact same thing the flippers do: you call in the specialist to do the job.
If you need flooring replaced, you call the flooring company. If you need new paint, you call a professional painter. If the house needs something done with plumbing, you call the plumber.
You can hire a general contractor to manage the work, but for cleaning up and refreshing, it is not worth paying him to do the job.
Get some estimates on the paint job. If you aren't doing the floors yourself get some estimates for that, too. You are selling it, not living in it, so price carpet as well as vinyl or other alternative flooring. You are just trying to make it look fresh and clean, you aren't fixing it to your tastes. If houses are moving as fast in your area as mine you shouldn't have any trouble selling it as is, either. People are willing to do cosmetic work.
Get some estimates on the paint job. If you aren't doing the floors yourself get some estimates for that, too. You are selling it, not living in it, so price carpet as well as vinyl or other alternative flooring. You are just trying to make it look fresh and clean, you aren't fixing it to your tastes. If houses are moving as fast in your area as mine you shouldn't have any trouble selling it as is, either. People are willing to do cosmetic work.
I've done some painting. My buddy's dad and I did the entire upper level - I paid him to help me with that but we removed all the wallpaper (NIGHTMARE), and primed and painted. We also ripped out all the entire carpeting up there (a cat or two had been using some of it as a toilet so it had to go) and the flooring, exposed now, is plywood, which kind of sucks. But we did a lot of work up there. I dealt with the areas that the cat used as a toilet and there are no odors or anything. I want to lay some kind of vinyl flooring up there - not sure if I'll recruit someone to help me or pay a company to come in for that.
General contractors will do that for you. You tell them what to fix, they fix it, you pay them. I'd go the extra mile and have a home inspection done first and have them do the repairs on the inspection as well as the cosmetic work you want done.
The reality is that if you don't have a high volume business relationship with your subs doing the work, you're not going to see a ton of ROI on things like painting the garage or putting in new flooring. Especially with the current market conditions. You also run the risk of putting in flooring that your prospective buyers don't like and wouldn't want to pay a premium for.
I'd say put it on the market and see what sort of activity and feedback you get.
I have some friends that put the home they moved into about 4 years ago on the market, just to test the waters. Marked up $300K from what they purchased it at. The feedback was all the same - "Overpriced", "Overpriced", "Overpriced", then they got a buyer who bit at asking. I think it was on the market for about 3 weeks.
What have you got to lose? 2-4 weeks of testing the waters as-is should tell you if you "need" to perform updates.
I actually have considered that - my neighbor two houses down was in her home for like 18 months but after a shooting and numerous thefts outside her home, she got out of here. She made a nice bit more than what she bought it for though she did put in some work on it as well.
I think she sold it for a quarter million ($250K) last year but had bought it for like 200K prior to that.
I would like to mark my house at $250K (I owe $100K on the mortgage) and see if anyone would bite as is.
I actually have considered that - my neighbor two houses down was in her home for like 18 months but after a shooting and numerous thefts outside her home, she got out of here. She made a nice bit more than what she bought it for though she did put in some work on it as well.
I think she sold it for a quarter million ($250K) last year but had bought it for like 200K prior to that.
I would like to mark my house at $250K (I owe $100K on the mortgage) and see if anyone would bite as is.
So basically you're saying your home as well is not in the greatest neighborhood, since the shooting and numerous thefts were only two houses away. In that case, I'd hire decent contractors to get the place cleaned, painted, have some new basic grade carpet installed and put the house on the market. I wouldn't install vinyl upstairs unless it's LVP, but decent basic carpet is cheaper, IMHO.
So basically you're saying your home as well is not in the greatest neighborhood, since the shooting and numerous thefts were only two houses away. In that case, I'd hire decent contractors to get the place cleaned, painted, have some new basic grade carpet installed and put the house on the market. I wouldn't install vinyl upstairs unless it's LVP, but decent basic carpet is cheaper, IMHO.
I don't know. You probably have to have lived here to form a decent opinion about it.
There is a golf course a couple blocks away, a lake across the park, rec center across the street. In St. Paul, it would probably be considered one of the better neighborhoods, IMO.
A mile south is worse - a mile north is a suburb.
The shooting didn't phase me - it was three young men, stealing my neighbor's catalytic, and when she opened her back door at 5 am they fired a pistol into the air. Definitely horrible and unnerving, but it isn't why I started this thread. I have long ago been well aware of inner city trash - it's always something that's always there.
That doesn't have any bearing on my selling though - the selling of the house would be to make some money on it and downsize. A 2K sqft home is way too big for me.
, have some new basic grade carpet installed and put the house on the market. I wouldn't install vinyl upstairs unless it's LVP, but decent basic carpet is cheaper, IMHO.
Ok. I think I might just paint the plywood flooring up there.
Is that a horrible idea?
My cousin thinks that would freshen it up a little - he did that in his home (though only in one small bedroom.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
In that case, I'd hire decent contractors to get the place cleaned, painted, have some new basic grade carpet installed and put the house on the market. I wouldn't install vinyl upstairs unless it's LVP, but decent basic carpet is cheaper, IMHO.
