So, in the hunt for our very first home, we decided we had looked at enough unimpressive rehabs, with their miserly dive rooms, and we should focus back on the resale market. As soon as we did, we started to notice a couple of cool places by the lake in Rogers Park. Maybe it was time to think location, location.
So we checked out a couple of units in a bigger building on the lakefront. The building wasn’t that old, so we figured we wouldn’t have the kinds of problems you usually get with older buildings, but we might still find something affordable.
One of the units was a For Sale By Owner – in this case, the owner had paid a small amount to a company that listed the building on the MLS, but wasn’t doing any other advertising for her. She shows buyers the unit, the FSBO company handles the contract negotiations, and the unit’s owner only parts with a small percentage of what the buyer pays her, instead of forking out the standard commission to a real estate agent.
It was a little strange meeting the woman who owned the unit. I instantly took off my shoes as I walked in the front door, and trod around a little gingerly. I found myself trying to simultaneously butter her up and play hard-ass. So both strategies probably cancelled each other out. I probably clued her in to a lot of things about myself. But at the same time, I was sizing her up, too, and wondering if my assumptions were correct, and if I could use them to my advantage.
As we chatted, she mentioned she had a partner, who lived elsewhere, and she had another place in the ‘burbs. Hmm, so maybe she’s in no hurry to sell and can hold out for a better offer?
She seemed a little frail. Was she anxious to get out of the city and go somewhere quieter?
She wanted a break on the amount of real estate tax she would have to pay us – this one was probably because it’s one of those one-in-three tax re-assessment years and the rates could be about to skyrocket. But I also wondered if she had a cash-flow problem.
She was a little too eager to please. Maybe she really needed to get out of the unit, fast.
The unit was way-overpriced. Not sure how to read that one; it could be interpreted in any number of ways.
But the most difficult moment of the showing came when she proudly declared that she had just finished re-tiling and decorating the bathroom.
Bridgeport Joe, you know what you said about eighties decor? There is a difference between buying a place with “great bones” at a good price, that has a few eighties touches that you can fix up later, as happened to you, and buying a place that has been messed up, and looks very eighties, because of the seller’s misguided attempt to add value.
I stared blankly at this bathroom and gnashed my teeth as I took in the dark green and mauve floor and wall tiles. My FSBO had already high-balled the price of this unit and we were going to have to insult her by asking her to lower the price even further, in order to bring the bathroom back to a socially-acceptable condition. At this rate, we’d never get this place below market rate, which would have given us the cash to pay for redecorating the bathroom.
Sellers, a word to the wise: if you’re going to try to add value to your home before you put it on the market, please DON”T trust your instincts when it comes to home decoration. We all lose out.
EVERYBODY thinks they have good taste, so please stick with something “classic” ie. at least a block color, not a pattern, and preferably something neutral, that buyers can always sex up with towels and the like, until they can afford to rip it out.
Hell, the buyer might even find they are able to live with it, if it’s versatile enough that the buyer can add a few of their own flourishes to it.
But no amount of towel-therapy can sex up garish green’n’mauve tiles, so in this case, the seller had detracted dollars from her investment.
Ok, that’s off my chest, now. Sorry seller, I didn’t mean to be rude about your bathroom.