2020 is here and so is the start of another busy spring real estate season. With the end of the slower holiday months, it’s time to prepare for a different market with more inventory and home shoppers coming to the table. Shaking off the holiday mindset (and holiday clutter) to make room for serious home listing preparations is the task at hand. We asked our founder, Justin M. Riordan, for his best tips to get back in the game this January.
6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, front facade.
Q: Agents are ready with open arms to help home owners who wanted to wait until after the holidays to list their home. So, Justin, what’s the best way to get a homeowner from holiday mode to being really prepared to list and sell?
A: With almost every homeowner, the biggest challenge is finding the right mindset. Many of our sellers come to us feeling very much like a client. We do our best to help them change their perspective from “client” to “small business owner” with one big item to sell. The big difference is getting them to understand that they must be more concerned with the buyer's needs than they are with their own needs. Usually the sentence, “Of all the people in the world who might buy this house, you are are not one of them,” is a fairly effective tool for mindset change.
Q: Holidays bring more clutter, gifts and seasonal stuff than ever — what are your best tips on cleaning house and getting to the nitty-gritty work of moving/storing/selling/donating everything top to bottom?
A: Rome was not built in a day. The toughest way to declutter is doing it right before moving out — especially after years or decades of living there. My best advice is to start slowly, with one medium size box. Fill this box with items that you think you might no longer need or want. Place this box in your storage area, garage or closet with a simple label like "Packed January 2020” or “Donate January 2021." Do this every three months in winter, spring, summer and fall. Throughout the year, you will test the idea if you in fact need these items or not. If, for a whole year, you did not attempt to open the box, it can be donated to your local charity. Each time you pack a new winter box, it will replace the box packed laster year. The good news is you only have four packed boxes at any given time, and you can keep your clutter in check with little to no anxiety.
If you have to declutter right now because you are getting ready to sell, I would highly recommend the colored tape system: Create a color key chart with a square of tape next to each of the following lines:
RED: Move to next home
ORANGE: Trash
YELLOW: Storage
GREEN: Leave here for staging
BLUE: Donate to Charity A
PURPLE: Donate to Charity B
Print this key chart and tack a copy of it in each room of the house. Take the tape with you and mark every single item with a piece of tape telling the packer (whether it be you or somebody else) where that item is supposed to go. Now you can wordlessly communicate where each item is going to go to anyone assisting you in your move. Even if you are the only person packing I find this system makes the separation between thinking and doing quite easy.
6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, living room.
Q: Depending on the market, December might have been slower — either less inventory or fewer home shoppers. Now that we’re headed in the right direction towards spring, both will increase. What are your best tips for a competitive listing?
A: Get listed early. The market has been slowing during the past year and we are starting to see our first uptick in listings in a while. We have had a high volume for houses that will be going on the market in March, April and May. If you can beat that rush, you might standout better in your market. Be sure to follow the golden rules of selling a house: prepare properly, stage properly, price properly.
Prepare Properly: Get an outside eye like from a home stager like Spade and Archer to take an unbiased look at your house. Create a list of the improvements they suggest. Assign a value to each item in terms of time, money, and energy. From there, decide which of these items to complete. Keep in mind the more you complete, the faster the house will sell, and for a higher price!
Stage Properly: Stage your house from soup to nuts. Stage every room completely. Putting a chair and a rug in an empty room is not staging. Staging only a few rooms and expecting your buyer to be impressed is a huge mistake. Virtual staging is like having a profile picture that has been photoshopped within an inch of fiction and expecting to get a second date. Paying a stager to rent furniture means the longer they fail to get your house sold, the more money they will make. Build your team in a smart and thoughtful way. Make sure your stager has their goals in line with yours. With Spade and Archer Guaranteed, we only get paid when you do… when your house sells. We win together, we lose together.
Price Properly: Your real estate agent will perform a Comparative Market Analysis. This will give them a very good idea how your home should be priced. They will want to pricing your listing at a nice round number like $600,000 vs. $599,999. Trust them, with a nice round number they will be able to capture two categories of the search engine like $500,000 to $600,000 and 600,000 to $700,000 where as $599,999 would have been missed by the $600,000 to $700,000 searches. You can nearly double your clicks by choosing round numbers rather than numbers that end numbers other than zero’s.
6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, dining room.
Q: Home staging — like in most things — is you get what you pay for. What should an agent and a homeowner look for in a stager before adding them to their listing team?
A: Take a look at the stagers website or social media then ask them for links to projects similar to yours. Ask them for a free consultation and pricing based on that consultation. Ask them about their education and work history. Then ask them if they will still get paid if your house never sells. Ask them if their work is guaranteed to be successful. Ask them if the staging is free if the house does not sell.
Q: Lastly, a lot of expenses can come when listing a home and it can be tough right after a spendy holiday season. What’s your best advice for getting quality staging on a budget?
The best deal on the market right now is Guaranteed Home Staging® by Spade and Archer. For just $750 we will stage the entire property for as long as it takes for the home to sell. The remainder of payment will come from escrow when the sale of your home closes. If the sale never closes, we simple remove our furniture and return your $750. Full house staging for unlimited duration of time for only $750 up front sound like a heck of deal to me. Did I mention that 96% of our guaranteed projects sell?
6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, master bedroom