Is there a realtor in the house? (semantics: finished vs. unfinished space)

[Sky King]

Ask yourself these things

1. what attracted you to the house when you bought it, chances are those things will also attract someone else

2. How much are you comfortable spending and if you do spend, does it equate to a higher sales price - this can be very tricky in today's housing market

3. What are you willing to do to make the home sales ready - ie) Be prepared to put a huge amount of your belongings in storage - off site. Buyers rarely have the ability to see beyond the clutter

4. Be realistic and do visit with some realtors, again, what is the market, what is the average sales price for a home like yours.

5. Many times, it doesn't pencil to spend several thousands of dollars to make your home purchase ready. Money is better spent cleaning, storing and staging the home for sale.

Good luck!

[zoom-zoom]

Ask yourself these things

1. what attracted you to the house when you bought it, chances are those things will also attract someone else

2. How much are you comfortable spending and if you do spend, does it equate to a higher sales price - this can be very tricky in today's housing market

3. What are you willing to do to make the home sales ready - ie) Be prepared to put a huge amount of your belongings in storage - off site. Buyers rarely have the ability to see beyond the clutter

4. Be realistic and do visit with some realtors, again, what is the market, what is the average sales price for a home like yours.

5. Many times, it doesn't pencil to spend several thousands of dollars to make your home purchase ready. Money is better spent cleaning, storing and staging the home for sale.

Good luck!

1. I was ovulating the egg that would become our son...I am so not kidding on this one. We blame him for the purchase of this place. We do love the yard. It's the biggest lot in the neighborhood and when we saw it it was lush and green. It's very shaded, though, so we really want to work on curb appeal to plant as many things as we can that will grow AND not be deer food (we've given up on hostas...aka "deer salad). We've spent so much over the years on stuff that gets eaten or can't thrive in the shade. After lots of trial and error we need to simply plant lots of the few things that do thrive (ferns, lamium, myrtle, bleeding hearts).

2. I'm not convinced doing major $$ renovations would be of much use. I think just updating the rooms simply will go further.

3. Yeah, we've talked about the storage unit thing and probably would go that route, at least with anything that we'd need to put in that storage room.

4. Definitely. We want to set our place apart from the similar listings out there.

5. I think this is the key. This is why we don't want to spend $$ on new flooring upstairs or trying to build-in wardrobes. Anything we buy from Ikea we can take with us, but they will look nice and keep clutter down while the house is on the market. I'm loving Overstock.com for things like window coverings and art, too.

[Sky King]

We sold our 1939 cottage last July. We opted not to put any more money into it. We just made sure the yard was always neat, the flowers watered and we focused on simple, sparse and clean (rented a storage unit) Wish we had an Ikea close but then again they are so dangerous Now I have no yard, no pets and live above our shop - when the kids were home for Christmas our son had to sleep behind a makeshift wall(bike boxes) in the shop but I love the lock and go freedom