Tag Archives: Selling a home

Looking to sell a home in Austin? Doreen Zelma is a real estate professional ready to help. Doreen is a seasoned listing agent and offers only best marketing in Austin.

Where you Live and How you Live

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As I often say, where you live has to work with your lifestyle or it is never going to be a home. I can easily rule out many homes just by knowing how you live. Do the kids eat at a kitchen table or will a breakfast bar do? Do you need to fit a table for 10 in your dining room? Do you barbecue and spend a lot of time in the backyard? Football is a big part of many people’s lives. If it’s a big part of yours — I need to know!

My football buyer isn’t going to buy a house if there is no room for a big TV. Yes, football often trumps where the kids are going to eat. You laugh, but again, this is all about lifestyle. There are many things buyers will forgive like bad paint and carpet, if the house works for their lifestyle.

Sellers need to help too. I was recently invited to a home in South Austin because a fellow agent wanted my opinion on how much the current décor would influence a potential buyer. I entered from the front door, directly into the living room which was painted University of Texas burnt orange. There were 2 large flat panel TV’s on the wall with a gaming console in between them. This was the ultimate UT man cave that only a UT gamer could love. It is very hard for a buyer to mentally separate that lifestyle, with their own. When a seller leaves the house that personalized when they put it on the market — they  send the message to potential buyers that it is their home and they really don’t want to leave. I recommended at least one TV come down and the room to be painted a neutral color.

Curb Appeal

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We often focus on the inside of a home when planning to sell it and forget about the outside. Curb appeal gives a buyer a first impression, not only of your home — but also of you. To a buyer, a well kept home on the outside tends to reflect pride of ownership on the inside. Whether or not the assumption is true, is irrelevant when you are selling your home. You may never get a second chance to make first impression.

When we live for awhile in the same space, we often become blind, deaf and well, sometimes even dumb. How many times have you walked around that overgrown bush that has taken over your walkway, instead of just trimming it back? How often do you look at the weeds in your planting beds and try to convince yourself they are wild flowers? We all do it to varying degrees, so here are some reminders of things that need tending to when you are going to sell your home — clean the gutters, weed and mulch planting beds, cut back bushes, paint or power wash if the house looks dirty.

Sellers worry about the foyer in the entry, because in their minds it is the first thing a buyer will see. The truth is that the first thing a buyer sees is the front lawn.

Flooring has a Fashion Season

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When I bought my first home way back in 1993, I installed hardwood floors. My options were pretty basic, so it was an easy choice, simple traditional oak floors that would match the aesthetic of my 1929 built home. Oh how 18 years have changed the options for hardwood flooring. Now we have engineered hardwood, a greater selection of green materials, exotics and colors galore. We have a variety of textures to choose from and sheens as well, making the selection not only overwhelming, but somewhat confusing, since not all of these newer woods hold up the same over time.

Sometimes we remodel because we want to and other times it is because we have to. Foundation repair may require drilling through those hardwood floors, dishwashers leak or at some point we decide to replace the carpet in bedrooms with wood. It’s important to note that flooring whether  wood, tile or even carpet goes in and out of style these days just like clothing. Matching up flooring becomes a nearly impossible task, so plan ahead. Buy extra tile and wood flooring, so if disaster strikes, you have some backup. My clients picked a home last year, purely because it was original. From the bathroom sink to the tile floors, it was mid-century modern throughout and it was being sold by the owners who built it. The house failed the static test which required the plumbers to go in through the 1965 tile flooring in order to fix the leak. It was so wonderful that the owners had planned ahead and had two extra boxes of the original tile, which really saved the aesthetic of the house. So, when you think about flooring, think ahead it may save you some grief and money in the future.

The Power of Wow

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Every house needs a wow factor. As a listing agent, I try to highlight one when marketing a home to appeal to buyers. Buyers often have their own wow factor when touring a home as it can be a personal thing. A wow factor can be anything: an island kitchen, hand scraped floors, even a great price can turn a buyer’s head. I was in Driftwood two months ago and the neighboring house has an outdoor fireplace that was amazing. My clients and I just stood there and said “wow” in unison.

Austin area real estate is unique in that the hill country landscape adds some natural wow factors.  City, hillside and lake views all add an additional backdrop to many of the homes here.

A wow factor puts the exclamation point on a home and really sells it. Do you know what’s really interesting though? Rarely does the wow factor translate over the internet. You might be in like over the internet, but you won’t be in love until you see it in person. Even when price is the wow factor, it is often hard to see what might appeal to you over the internet.

Subdivisions by the Numbers

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How many homes are for sale in an Austin subdivision near you?  What are the median list prices?  Let’s explore some random subdivisions look at the numbers.  Note these numbers are by specific subdivision name, not by local market area.  There may certainly be more homes available nearby. 

When Austin real estate buyers are looking in a general area, like Spicewood or Northwest Hills, I typically set up a map search.  Older neighborhoods are made up of many micro-subdivisions as the land was and is developed. 

The subdivision list below is random.  It will give you an overall idea of what to expect in terms of available inventory and price points.  If there is a particular subdivision or neighborhood you would like me to highlight in the future, please ask.

 Milwood

Number of homes for sale                       57        

Median List Price                                   $187,500          

Where is Austin?                                   North

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For Sale or On Sale?

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Have you ever gone into a store and notice the items for sale on the clearance rack? Have you ever wondered how they got there? The items may have been damaged and therefore weren’t worth the same as its fellow items in ‘mint’ condition. For others, the items weren’t priced right to begin with. The product wasn’t being marketed the right buyers, so those that would have bought it — never saw it.

The real estate market is no different. There are houses that are in need of repair and therefore wind up on the ‘clearance rack’. Other times, houses wind up ‘on sale’ when they start out over priced. When your home is listed over the market, it won’t sell, because the listing is missing its intended market. Now, one might think that the home might seem like a deal for the next market up. The problem though, with that mindset is that the next market up is either bigger, more updated, or in a better location. An over priced home really doesn’t have an audience, so it ultimately sells for less than what it would have – if the home had been initially priced correctly.

The Butterfly Effect

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The Butterfly Effect is a term used in chaos theory to describe how a minor flutter of a butterfly’s wings can trigger a series of events.  I have seen the Butterfly Effect in real estate with both negative and positive results.

Distressed properties can drag the prices down of all resale and new homes in a community.  Foreclosures can and do, contribute to the pricing of new inventory as it becomes available in a community, because they are competing with aggressive prices.  Distressed properties elongate the impact to a community even after they have sold.  They can have a ripple effect as a community’s new inventory is priced against the distressed properties as sold comparables, so it takes longer for the community to bounce back.

A ripple causing change in a given market can be positive as well.  A few houses in the neighborhood get remodeled.  A commercial building fills with a coffee shop, wine bar and cupcake bakery.  The flutter of hip, trendy happenings brings a new a fresh new perspective, to a once settled area.  The neighborhood slowly starts turning and house prices go up as it is now a modern, progressive place to live.  This happened years ago in what is now the trendy 78704 zip code and is currently happening in East Austin. 

Both of these Butterfly Effects happen not only in neighborhoods, but condominium communities like The Island on Lake Travis as well.