Today's hacking

[textualdeviance]

I guess it's a good sign when the person doing your staging consult is visibly impressed with your house. She said it all looked nice and bright and well-kept, and said the floors were gorgeous. She also mistook one of our bedrooms (my former office) for the master. Heh. She also loved the view from the front yard, which is a bonus.

Now I just hope that the agent and potential buyers are equally impressed.

There is a good sign, though: We got a revised tax assessment from the county, and it's pretty much dead on for the price I suggested to the agent. I also looked up the new number for one of the places nearby that sold recently, and it looks like they sold for about two percent off of their new assessed value. Applying that to us, and adding in the things we have that aren't easily counted by a tax assessment (the AC, the new flooring, the hot tub, etc.) and I think we should be right on target.

The only issue is whether our odd price range is going to be a good or bad thing. Most of what's sold recently in our zip code has been either Stepford boxes going for less than $360, or high-end luxury places up near the golf course. It could be that there just isn't a buyer pool for us because we're not cheap enough or plush enough.

Or, we could get lucky, and straddle both pools. We could find people on the low end who are willing to pay a bit more to get a nicer place that isn't within sneezing distance of its neighbors, and people who are willing to sacrifice a few of the higher-end bells and whistles for something a lot cheaper.

If we luck out and hit that latter, we should be able to sell pretty quickly. I've noticed most of the stuff under $400 has gone off the market within 30 days of listing or changing to that price. Which would be a very good thing, because the sooner we can sell this thing, the sooner we can stop paying its mortgage and bills and move on to paying bills for a new place!

We really are getting veeeery close to the end of this stage. We do still have a long list of stuff to do, but most of it is dinky little stuff that'll take an hour at most. The biggest major project is installing the baseboards, and that should be done in the next couple of days. I honestly think we should be ready to put a bow on it and let the agent do her thing by late next week. GAH!

Comments

[iolanthe-rosa.livejournal.com]

We just re-fi'ed and had our house appraised. I was expecting it to be worth much, much less than it had been during the "bubble." I was shocked that it had lost very little value at all. I think the nicer houses are maintaining their value.