My Seller Lost 50K When They Sold Their Home. He Was His Own Worst Enemy!
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- Опубліковано 31 січ 2024
- How do you price your home right? Kati breaks down a terrible client who was completely unreasonable and didn't listen to her advice. What could she have done differently and was she right to walk away?
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I've got a real estate story to share that's all about navigating the tricky waters of selling your home. It's a journey filled with valuable lessons on how to sell your home fast, avoid common mistakes, and understand the nuances of the housing market.
A couple of years ago, I encountered a challenging client situation that perfectly illustrates the difference between staging and decorating, and why it's crucial in the home selling process. This story is a deep dive into the complexities of real estate and is packed with home-selling tips that are gold for anyone looking to sell their house fast.
When I met with a couple who thought their home was perfect to sell right away, I knew we had some work to do. This is a real story from the North Shore of Chicago.
The couple’s home was full of their own decorating, but I explained that staging a home is different. It’s about making the house appeal to as many people as possible. Despite this, the couple really didn’t want to change anything, showing how hard it can be for homeowners to let go of their personal touch.
Then, we hit another big issue: they wanted to list their house at a high price, not considering things like their home’s location. This led to a lot of stress and not much interest from buyers. When a low offer finally came in, it was a tough moment that showed the importance of setting a realistic price.
In the end, things didn’t work out between us, and they decided to go with another agent. This experience taught me a lot about working together with homeowners and the need for clear communication and trust.
Selling a house involves many steps, from choosing the right real estate agent to understanding the housing market. Whether you're looking to buy a home for the first time or sell your property in places like Northbrook, Glenview, or any part of the North Shore Chicago, it’s crucial to know about home staging, the real estate market, and setting the right price for your house.
For anyone thinking about selling their home, whether you’re a first-time home buyer or looking to invest in real estate, this story has valuable lessons. It shows why listening to advice on home staging and pricing is key. Also, it highlights how every home sale is a chance to learn something new.
So, if you’re interested in real estate in the Chicago North Shore area, or just need tips on how to sell your home fast, make sure to watch this video. You’ll get insights into everything from home staging hacks to why working with the best North Shore realtor can make a big difference in selling your home. We sell homes all over the North Shore including Northbrook, Glenview, Wilmette, Winnetka, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Highland Park, Deerfield, Lake Forest, Lake Bluff and Northfield! And, our office is located in St. Augustine Florida as well! We serve the St. John's County area including Ponte Vedra, Nocatee and Palencia!
In Illinois or Florida? Kati can list your home and sell your home fast! Get in touch with Kati directly by calling or texting 847-318-3431 today!
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Hey, Kati Spaniak here, I’m a top Chicago North Shore Real Estate Agent. Thanks for watching my channel your ultimate guide to selling and buying homes in the Chicagoland area. Specializing in the vibrant communities of Northbrook, Glenview, Northfield, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, Lake Forest and Deerfield. I offer expert advice and insider tips to navigate the North Shore Chicago real estate market with ease.
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Kati Spaniak | Team Leader & Broker
Terra Lux Homes - eXp Realty
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“Houses contain energy”. 100% agree. I was an appraiser for 20 years. Not something I ever discussed on a professional level but anyone who knows me personally will have heard me say something similar many, many times. One of the biggest mysteries of my career.
Totally!!! After being in thousands of homes… you can feel it!
I'm actually attracted to strong women. But one lady realtor annoyed me in a way that made me not use her to list my house.
My wife got car sick in a moving vehicle if she wasn't watching the road. So when we first got into the realtor's car, I let her sit in the front, and I got in the rear. The realtor said, "I can always tell who makes the decisions in the relationships by who sits in the front, so good, we've got that established." It was so arrogant, and wrong, that I dumped her from consideration.
I love this story!!! CRAZY that an agent would say that!!!
Unbelievable that an agent would say something so insulting. Completely unprofessional.
Several years ago a house in my neighborhood went on the market. They were asking a comparable price to what other houses in the neighborhood had sold for, with about the same square footage, lot size, etc. The problem was that the house was a dump. Yard totally overgrown with weeds, fence falling down, peeling paint, and it had not been updated, EVER, since it was built in 1960. I thought they were insane to be asking that much. It stayed on the market for over 6 months without a single price reduction (this is a neighborhood where it's common to get multiple offers on the same day a house is listed) -- then sold for the asking price. I was astonished. It's now fixed up and beautiful, and prices have surged so it's probably worth 20% more than what the buyers paid. You never know. As far as your example, the clients might've countered at $10K over the offer that you got, and sold it then for the same price they eventually sold it for. Would've saved them a ton of time and frustration. I guess they just had to learn their lesson first.
My husband and I will be selling our house in about two years. I dread it. We live in a very high-end area and the houses here go very fast. If you were in my area, you would definitely be my first choice as broker. I, too, am a strong-willed woman, but I've learned how to back off when I hire people who know more than me. I want my house sold and will do what is needed to accomplish that sale. I love your posts and am learning so much. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your comment! And I would love to help you find an agent in your area if you want someone like me!! Always nice to hear!!! Reach out anytime!
Trust your gut! you knew from the start that they were trouble ;-) When I have clients like this, I just walk away and let somebody else handle the trouble. We don't need a listing at any cost.
I love my house and I bought it for the view. A house down the block with the same floor plan had recently sold for a great price so she priced it at the same point. It sat on the market for six months with two price reductions. I was the only offer ever and finally bought it for $80,000 less than the original price. Your advice on pricing is right on.
I don’t think any house here (greater Toronto area) goes on the market without staging. The realtor usually unclouded this in their fee which is over $40,000 for an average house (based on 5%)
I think the #1 red flag when dealing with a potential client is when they don't value your time, and this was reflected in how the husband refused to respect your expertise. For independent contractors, time is money.
Our first house we bought had a great vibe in it! It was built by the original owner who was buried alongside his wife in the church cemetery next door. I’m selling my mom’s house after she died and it also has the best vibe! Got snapped up right away with a cash offer $5,000 over asking price. I paid for a detailed cleaning after the handyman patched and repainted the ceiling in the kitchen and laid the luxury vinyl flooring I bought in the bathroom. I got the offer a day before it went online! The daughter of the guy who fixed the garage door is buying it!
Yep! Homes carry energy!!! A happy home is felt by the buyers. I hate to say it... but a home that has a lot of turmoil can be felt by the buyers.
@@KatiSpaniak We lived in a rental for a couple of years and we always felt something dark halfway down the hallway. Asked the neighbors if anything happened there. A couple lived there years ago and he was very abusive to his wife. So much so, that when she shot him dead in the hallway, the police didn’t press charges on her. There were years of reports of his abuse. We got our pastor to come in and give a house blessing. Everything fine after that!
Wow! Great story!! @@beckywebb1916 I believe you can feel the energy!!
I agree that someone from the realtor company should be at the showings. All these strangers tripping through makes me uncomfortable.
They always are represented by their own agent. But many people do feel that way!
@@KatiSpaniak unfortunately, a couple can separate. And our seller said they had a family who let their kids keep jumping down the stairs!
Comps are not often actually possible especially when the home is not a home in a cookie cutter homes area. You cannot always trick people into having an emotional reaction if it just isnt there.
So much great information in this video. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful! Thank you for your comment!
This video was so helpful.
My condo will be on the market tomorrow. I trust my Real Estate Agent as the expert. I am on the other end as it relates to price. Over the years I’ve been keeping comps in a spreadsheet. My comps were lower in price. My Agent walked my condo and showed me how he came up with the comp. I was surprised to learn due to the current market that my condo is worth $40K more. I had to digest this fact as I thought originally we will be changing the price often if it is too high.
The open house he mentioned will give us feedback on the price.
All the things you said about the first two weeks and foot traffic is exactly what he told me. If in that time there is no traffic after a good online marketing, the price is too high.
Good luck!! Hope the home sale is going well! Thanks for your comment!
Thank you for this story Kati! It is unfortunate that the seller did this to themselves.
Hi, Charles. Yep. You know it!!!
Thank you.
Thank you for all this information 😊
That poor wife having to put up with him. He sounds very controlling and obviously always thinks he's right.
Great video!
Thank you!!
Wow, So much great information to think about. So good. Thanks
Glad it was helpful!
Experienced agents walk away from sellers like this.
I don’t think you are a strong personality!
I really believe you know your facts and when I get ready to sell…you’ll be the Realtor I call!!! 👍🏼👏🏼
I appreciate that! AWWWWW Thank you!!!
Nothing wrong with having a strong personality
I like your knowledgeable personality. And I appreciate your content very much. 😊
@@Julia.Mandelbrot Thank you!
I would too if you lived near me!
Thanks so much for including the final results for that seller! Very important for us all to remember as sellers. In all seriousness, at that price point house, the 6 months on market actually cost them if it sold only 20k above the offer you had gotten them. This is some very good info but was very repetitive. This video could probably be a maximum of 10 minutes and still include all the important points.
HAHA!! Thanks, Jennifer!! I was just saying that to my team!! I rambled on this one. I'm working on getting more to the point quicker. When I say that I would turn off the video... then it's too long! :)
As a buyer, we have always enjoyed looking at poorly staged homes with obvious repair needs and inappropriate stuff scattered throughout. Why, less money in the end. On the sell side, you just have to deal with keeping the house in great untouched shape once it is staged.
Over the top, helpful, Thank You. This video was so personal about the clients and about you and your experience and needless to say, or not, Expertise! So that client, and I wanted to say... was a piece of work. He lowered the price $100k when dealing with a male Realtor, now I gotta say, Male Chauvenist Pig, in my opinion. They are out there and he was better off with a male realtor from the get-go, true. That is the conclusion that you came to as well.
At the beginning you spoke about a house having energy, I wish I could have someone tell me if they can feel a certain "vibe," that my own abode provides? Did you know that in Cal. an Agent told me, "Asians or Chinese people will not even look at a house if someone had passed away in the house? fyi.
Thank you for your comment! I know you can sage your house and that can get better energy!
Great story, they would have saved a lot of hassle if they had listened to you in the first place. We have always listened carefully to what our agents have told us, even if is hard to hear because they know best. We have sold multiple homes and have turned down agents because they didn’t give us constructive criticism, we felt like they just wanted to get the listing.
YES!! You listen! It's not that the agent is always right... it needs to be a team decision based upon the information the agent provides.
Would you suggest listing below estimates or at? In this case the couple got lucky (got offered higher) when they lowered the listing price but in some cases people tend to offer less than listing price especially when economy is not great.
Great question! So they actually got $75,000 less than their last listed price. It just happened to be higher than our first offer. :) I do have a video about pricing your home. ua-cam.com/video/Pv3BoDF1j7E/v-deo.html
I do think that you need to be super strategic and price it right at or below appraised value and lower than market value. Does that make sense? You want people to think that they are getting a deal.
If they sold for $20,000 more than the first offer, that means they still sold for $230,000 less than the original list price and $130,000 less than the second list price. After 6 months. What a dummy.
Yeah. Not very smart.
I just have to say that “staging your home to get the highest dollar“ seems counterintuitive, because 5% of the sale price of the highest dollar is going to go to the real estate agent and the higher dollar means more money to the real estate agent and you’re going to have to pay The staging company. I understand that staging a house doesn’t mean that you’re going to be purchasing or even renting the most expensive furniture but it does mean you’re probably going to have a cleaning crew come in you’re going to have a moving company come and take all of your furniture out And store it and then they’re going to bring all of the furniture that they’re going to use to stage the house in and then they’re going to have to come back when that contract is over or the house is sold and remove all of that furniture. All of that has a cost on top of the highest dollar that the real estate agent is going to receive. And in the end you might have received more money for the purchase of that home than you might otherwise have realized, but once you subtract the real estate agents fee and the cost of staging the house, including having your personal furniture stored somewhere off the present premises, it doesn’t seem to me that the average home is really going to bring you that much more money. This seems like a great deal for people who have huge expensive homes and maybe the money doesn’t matter all that much but for the average working person I think they’d be better off taking a few things out of the house decluttering maybe put putting them in the basement of their parents home or their friends home for a few weeks Repainting a room if it absolutely needs it washing a few walls if they absolutely need it and making sure everything else is clean and neat and just put their house on the market. You need to show me data where the average selling price of a home after the real estate agent has taken their cat and the stager and the storage has been paid Still is bringing a significantly higher dollar to that seller before I’m going to believe that staging is absolutely necessary in most instances. I can certainly see that if you’re walking into a home that someone has lived in for 50 years and they’ve let things go or they’re just people that don’t have any taste and don’t know how to look after anything that there would be work to be done if they want to get Reasonable value for their property but this top dollar argument, I don’t buy it
Thanks for your comment. I've worked with thousands of buyers and sellers and I can tell you that staging does work. Now, many houses do not need to be staged. And that is why you need to bring an agent in that is specific to your area.
My neighbor, a lawyer, had a nice home with acreage, however it was decorated as if a lawyer and his elder mom decorated it with dark wood and 80s floral valances. A style at odds and very dated. It was listed at 550,000.00. he did zero staging sold as it looked at 650,000.00. 100,000.00 over the asking price and the folks that bought it have been working on it for months. Staging is not necessary in these times, for most. reducing clutter, cleaning etc. In many places they flatten even good houses and rebuild from the ground up.
People from California are buying site unseen.
Ironically, you've explained the various situations were staging, versus decorating, versus cleaning are appropriate. It depends how good or bad the starting point is! To me, 'staging' in it's broadest sense means presenting your home to its full potential. Hiring a pro is one option, as you say, depending on your budget and what the needs are, but all sellers should, as Kati says, be aware that their house is now a _product_ .
Maybe I'm biased as it's not only my experience of preparing houses for sale, that have sold over the asking price, but my experience of being a graphic designer working for a market research company. If a major international grocery company, for example, is spending thousands on market research to explore the optimum display and placement for their fresh flowers (down to the design of the swing tags) you can bet they are doing it because they know the return will far exceed their initial investment. Or a major organic yoghurt/yogurt producer wants to test various designs of packaging, again they will spend the cash to find out which one clicks with consumers.
Products need presenting. And presentation, as they say, is everything! 😁😁✌✌
@@ac1646 Yep! Thanks for your comments!
I think 2008 is around the corner again because credit card debt is in all time high with people paying high interests. With core Inflation through the roof, and mortgage rates rising. People filling for unemployment has risen for the last 3 months in a row. How do all these people have money to buy homes when they have high credit card debt. Are people doing FOMO at the end of the bull run in buying a house? 🤔
It's hard to say right now... back in 2008 there was a lot of inventory, so prices plummeted. They also had mortgage arms... so when it was time to refinance, their home wasn't worth what it was when they bought it... so they couldn't refinance and they couldn't sell it. So they were upside down. Things are a bit different right now because there is no inventory... if inventory picks up, it could be the same situation.
Agree with the energy. Sometimes just a spirit of poverty--nothing upgraded/fixed.
If they are selling the house/condo they are doing it for the money. He wouldn’t reduce the price.
True.
You deserved to be fired. You did so many things not in the sellers interest. A multiple checklist.
😳
No, you should have fired them!
Haha! Let's say it was mutual!! @@chloezapata4152