Seattle Bubble

News & discussion about real estate & the housing bubble in the Seattle area.

Seattle Bubble - News & discussion about real estate & the housing bubble in the Seattle area.

Entries Tagged as 'how-to'

How-To Sell Your Home: Deep Clean to Make Your House Shine

By The Tim on June 15th, 2009 at 1:39 PM · 24 Comments

A few weeks ago we kicked off a new series: How-To: Sell Your Home in a Down Market with an overview of the important factors that home sellers must address if they want to succeed in selling their homes in today’s market:

  1. Pricing
  2. Marketing
  3. Cleaning
  4. Extras

Rather than tackling these in the above order of priority, we’re going to hit them in chronological order. Therefore, today we’re going to take a closer look at the first thing you should do when you decide you are serious about selling your house: cleaning.

If you really want to sell your house, you’re going to have to do a lot more than just vacuum the floors and dust the shelves. A proper pre-sale cleaning is a thorough deep-clean of the inside and outside.

Here’s a good starting checklist for your pre-sale cleaning:

  • Steam-clean the carpets and/or buff/shine the hardwood floors.
  • Take everything off the walls and wash them.
  • If it’s been more than a few years since the interior has been painted or if you have any walls that are “bold” colors, put on a fresh coat of paint in a neutral color.
  • Pressure-wash the roof (edit: use caution or another method if your roof is asphalt shingles).
  • Put on a fresh coat of exterior paint or pressure-wash the siding.
  • Manicure the landscaping: pull the weeds, mow the lawn, prune the bushes & trees, kill anything growing in your driveway or sidewalks, put down some fresh mulch around the bushes and flowers.
  • Clean every window, inside and out.
  • Clean out the gutters.
  • Thoroughly clean inside and out any appliances that stay (oven, fridge, etc.)
  • Take down and wash any light fixtures with dust / dead bug buildup.
  • De-clutter and simplify every room.

You can do these things yourself, or hire a professional. Either way you will probably be spending between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars, but by presenting a high-quality product you will be reducing the buyer’s ability (and desire) to negotiate a lower price.

Pay special attention to maximizing your “curb appeal” through pre-sale cleaning. The first impression your house makes on the potential buyer will set the mood for their entire viewing. You want a house that says “you would be proud to live here” from the moment they drive up.

It is also impossible to over-stress the importance of de-cluttering. A lot has been made recently of “home staging” to improve a home’s chances of selling. Paying a professional home stager is the easiest way to de-clutter your home, but you can accomplish much of the same results by doing a few simple things on your own:

  • Take down all personal decorations: family photos, etc.
  • Eliminate any furniture that looks old or “eclectic”
  • Sparsely furnish each room, making sure that all furniture and decor fits the overall “feel”

If you’re the DIY type, the best way to prepare the interior of your house may be to go through the house one room at a time and completely empty the room, clean the floors, paint the walls, then “stage” it per the suggestions above.

The end result of a thorough inside and out deep-cleaning will be a house that looks great in pictures, and makes potential buyers say “wow” when they see it in person. If you truly want to get the best price possible for your home, do not put it on the market until you have achieved the “wow factor.”

How-To: Sell Your Home in a Down Market

→ 24 CommentsCategories: Features
Tags: , , , , ,

How-To: Sell Your Home in a Down Market

By The Tim on May 21st, 2009 at 1:12 PM · 122 Comments

We spend a lot of time on here with posts directed toward helping home buyers to do their research and make smart decisions, but the housing market is made up of buyers and sellers, so let’s turn our attention toward home sellers.

Just a few short years ago, the home-selling process went something like this:

  1. Put your home on the market in any condition.
  2. Receive multiple offers within a month for 10-20% over asking price.
  3. Profit!

Sadly for you (the home seller), it’s not quite that easy any more. Average days on market for sold homes has gone from the mid-30s at the height of the bubble to the upper 80s today. Meanwhile, thousands of homes continue to sit on the market month after month, as the average time on market for unsold homes has climbed to nearly four months.

If your home is one of those that are sitting on the market unsold, or if you’re thinking about putting your house on the market, don’t just sit on your hands and hope that buyers will want to buy your home. The housing market is a competition, and you need to be proactive to grab the attention of a buyer pool that is much smaller than it was during the bubble.

In order of priority, here are the things you need to focus on and get right when you put your house on the market:

  1. Pricing
  2. Marketing
  3. Cleaning
  4. Extras

The first three are critical, and make up the absolute minimum requirements for what any home seller should do if they really want to sell their home for a fair market price. Unfortunately, many sellers only tackle #2 (i.e. – list it on the MLS), and then wonder why their home isn’t selling.

We will go into each of these points in detail with dedicated posts in the coming weeks, giving sellers the tools they need to appropriately price, market, and clean their homes to attract a buyer.

For today, I’d like to hear from anyone who has recently been successful at selling a home. What tips do you have for sellers that are watching their home sit on the market for months? What should a potential seller do before they list their home?

How-To: Sell Your Home in a Down Market

→ 122 CommentsCategories: Features
Tags: , , ,

Action Call to Seattle Bubble Readers: Condo Sales Status Project

By The Tim on March 20th, 2009 at 11:15 AM · 93 Comments

So just how many unsold condos is Seattle sitting on, anyway? As I mentioned in a post on Wednesday, figuring out just how much unsold condo inventory exists is a daunting task, requiring many hours spent with the public parcel records.

However, the task could be far less intimidating if we split it up. Here’s what I propose we do to get a more complete picture of the local condo inventory: Each reader (that’s you) spends just a few minutes with the King County Parcel Viewer pulling up the records for the nearest condo project to your home or work (both new construction and conversions). Then post the results here, I can compile all the records into a single spreadsheet that will then be freely available to everyone.

Here’s a step-by-step on how to get the data we’re looking for:

  1. Head over to the King County Parcel Viewer
  2. Pull up the parcel report:
    • If you know the address of the condo building, click “Search by address” then enter the building number and street.
    • If you don’t know the specific address, use the map to zoom in to the general neighborhood, then click the “identify” tool to pull up details on each potential lot.
    • Once you have found the right lot, click the “Get Property Report” link in the lower-left.
  3. Click the text “Units in this condominium complex” to expand a list of all the units in the building.
  4. Units that are unsold will list the developer (usually an LLC) in the “Taxpayer” column.
  5. Post the link to the property report here (or here), along with the name of the complex, its address, and a summary of total units and the number of units sold.

Examples:

Queen’s Court
124 WARREN AVE N 98109
http://www5.kingcounty.gov/kcgisreports/property_report.aspx?PIN=7015800000
34 units, 14 sold

Pittsburgh
117 JOHN ST 98109
http://www5.kingcounty.gov/kcgisreports/property_report.aspx?PIN=6815500000
31 units, 17 sold

So what do you say? If we all put in a little bit of effort, I think we can get a pretty good picture of the overall situation. One caveat is that this method will only work on condo buildings that are fully completed. In-progress construction will not necessarily have the individual units listed in the parcel report, and this method does not give us any information about “pre-sales,” which doesn’t really matter much anyway since so many pre-sale buyers are now forfeiting their earnest money and backing out of deals (see this ongoing comment thread re: Olive8)

I have also created a forum thread for posting results, so that we can continue to easily add to the project even after this post has moved off the front page of the blog. Feel free to post results in either location.

→ 93 CommentsCategories: Features
Tags: , ,

How-To: Challenge Your Property Taxes

By S-Crow on February 4th, 2009 at 9:43 PM · 9 Comments

It’s been tough to post here and at Rain City Guide because of work and family obligations, but here is some helpful information about petitioning to reduce your property taxes:

In escrow, now is the time we start seeing some (not all) 2009 property tax assessments show up in title reports when working on transactions.   Do not be confused.  These are in fact 2009 assessments that were formulated in 2008.   The new assessments for 2010 are what this post is about.  What?  2010?  But I need relief now!  Sound odd?  That’s how taxes are done.

And, a snippet from the Snohomish County Assessors office:

Snohomish County updates all taxable real and personal property assessed values annually as of Jan. 1st of each year. The next update will be mailed for most properties in June of 2009 and the assessment date will be as of Jan. 1st of 2009. The 2009 assessments will be used to calculate property taxes owed in 2010.

Since real estate market values have been dropping, it’s high time to put some change back into your wallet where it belongs.   The links below are for the assessor’s offices and the forms needed to submit to challenge/petition your property tax bill.

There have been very few conversations I’ve had with recent clients that have not circled back to “the market.”  I don’t bring up “the real estate market,” the client does.  A few times I have mentioned that they may want to take the time to fill out the forms and petition the property tax bill.   Cool, they say.  How do I do it?  Here’s how:

  • Find out what property type you have:  is it a rambler?  How about a Tudor?  Two story with basement?  Or, a garage house like The Tim’s (couldn’t resist Mr. Ellis)
  • Go to Redfin, or Estately website or any other website that posts sales data that is searchable by your zip code, neighborhood or any other mechanism.  Or, call your Realtor and have them pull comps (comparable) to see if they can find a few homes that have sold that would be a good case to show the assessors that they need to humbly reconsider the property tax valuation, downward.
  • Always spy on what sales comps are in your neighborhood.
  • When valuations drop, get moving and petition your tax valuation.

Being complacent will cost you money.  Take the time to do this.   Typically (check your own county assessor rules & regulations) you must file your appeal/petition by July 1st or within 60 days after receiving your tax assessor notice (see your county petition rules).

I did this and saved $1,000 per year for the 2009 tax year.   That’s nearly $100 off my monthly mortgage payment (for those that include tax impounds in your monthly mortgage payment).

On a side note, it is pretty tough for anyone to not be personally impacted by this difficult economic and employment environment we find ourselves in, either by knowing of someone or a family member with job loss or equivalent (or impending job loss), but it is important to keep in mind that if you have the means to reach out and support them, do it.   The smallest thing can help reduce someone’s stress.  It could be me or you that needs it next.

-S Crow

→ 9 CommentsCategories: Features
Tags: , , ,

How To: Research Property & Loan Records

By The Tim on December 26th, 2008 at 1:04 PM · 35 Comments

There are many reasons you might want to do some research into the loan documents and other public records for a certain property.

  1. You’re thinking of buying a house and want to know how much the seller owes when crafting your offer.
  2. You’re looking at a home for rent and want to know if the landlord is at risk of foreclosure.
  3. You’re considering buying a bank-owned home and are curious how much the bank was owed when they took possession.

What follows below is a simple step-by-step guide to help you do this kind of research on your own.

First, you’ll need to find out the legal owner of the property in question. The best way to do this is to head over to your county’s parcel viewer website. I have conveniently linked the parcel viewers for King, Snohomish, Pierce, Kitsap, Thurston, Island, Skagit, and Whatcom counties on the Real Estate Resources page. Simply enter the house number and street number of the property and you’ll be able to get the county’s property report.

On the property report page you’ll see either “taxpayer name” or a record of the most recent sale which will tell you the name of the current owner, usually in the form of last name first. This page will also usually tell you how much the property was most recently sold for, although with all the equity extraction that has gone on in the last five years, that number is not as useful as it might seem.

Armed with the legal owner’s name, you’ll now need to head over to the county records search website, which is also conveniently linked for you on the Real Estate Resources page.

To search for loan documents, put in the owner’s name, a date range beginning with the most recent sale of the property and ending on today’s date, and search for document type “Deed of Trust.” The deeds of trust will state which property they are for (pay attention to this, because the owner may have more than one property) and the loan amount. For King County, you won’t be able to view Deeds of Trust online, but will instead need to write down the document number and go to the records office to request them in person.

If the home is bank-owned or already in foreclosure, you can search for the document type “Notice of Trustee Sale” or just “Trustee Sale,” which will show you how much was owed on the property at the time of the notice. These are viewable online for King.

By doing a little bit of digging through the county records, you should be able to paint an accurate picture of the property owner’s loan picture. The only trouble you might run into is if a property was purchased prior to the late ’70s (as far back as most online county records go). In that case if you really want to find out the loan information you’ll probably have to go to the county records office and shuffle through papers. Of course, the main reason for doing a search like this is to find out if the property owner in question treated their home like an ATM, and if there aren’t any records since the ’70s, you’ve got your answer anyway.

→ 35 CommentsCategories: Features
Tags: ,

Where to Search for Rentals in Seattle

By The Tim on October 8th, 2008 at 10:39 AM · 16 Comments

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Seattle Bubble regular “perfectfire.” Thanks for taking the time to put together such a useful guide! Also be sure to check out this related post from February: How To: Use Craigslist & RSS to Find a Great Rental

My wife and I just signed a contract on a rental house after searching for about a month. It was stressful and difficult because the rental ad space is so fractured. There are smatterings of listings all over the place. Some listings are at several different places, some at just one. A lot of listings aren’t deleted when the house is of the market. The biggest source of listings has an awful, awful search experience. A lot of landlords want to hide the location of their house for some reason.

Anyway, I have a friend that is also looking for a rental house so I sent this email advice to them.

[Read more →]

→ 16 CommentsCategories: Features
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,