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Re-Defining the Home Selling Process
43 Plays2 years ago
Many older adults want and NEED to sell their homes for top dollar, ensuring their hard-earned equity ends up in their own pockets and not those of investors or others looking to make a profit. As the real estate market continues to change our process of supporting mature sellers stays the same: putting YOU at the center of the equation. Lauren and Erin discuss the factors needed for a successful transition and ultimate home sale for older adults and why the various techniques used matter greatly.
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Transcript
Introduction to Engaging Aging Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Engaging Aging with Erin and Lauren. Join us as we share laughter, tears, and demystify the realities and silver linings that occur later in life. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to our Engaged Agers. We are located in the Northeast for anybody that doesn't know us. And we are in the midst of a crazy, crazy real estate market. I mean, I can't even tell you the,
00:00:32
Speaker
what we've been seeing over the past year and a half, things are starting to change. We also work with older adults that are listening and selling their homes.
Positive Psychology in Real Estate
00:00:43
Speaker
And I think we're coming into, I don't think, I know that we're coming into a time where we have to really look at things from a new lens, take a new perspective and take real estate in a new way. Yeah, absolutely. We talk about this often. There's so much fear.
00:01:02
Speaker
You know, a lot of quote unquote leaders are leading with fear and fear tactics to kind of scare people to make choices and decisions. That's never been our philosophy or our approach.
00:01:17
Speaker
We, Lauren and I started studying before the pandemic positive psychology, which is the opposite of fear and doom and gloom. It's about motivation and finding helping people find a way to live their best life in an authentic way that's in alignment with their values. And it's amazing to me and I try not to watch a lot of television. Anyone who knows me knows I don't watch the news and I try to stay away from television. But I can't get away from these advertisements like
00:01:46
Speaker
You know, we'll buy your your decrepit home and we'll take care of all of your pain and just, you know, interest rates are going up. Buyers aren't going to be there anymore. Sell your house now. Yeah, this is everything just seems so pressured and rushed. And for our mature sellers,
00:02:05
Speaker
They're already usually in some sort of pressure rushed environment where they feel like they have to make a change due to a recent diagnosis or some changes in their life. And so we just organically have experienced and provided a completely new way for our mature sellers to not only sell with ease, but take a breath and take a minute
00:02:31
Speaker
to gain clarity, put a plan in place that works for them, and then ultimately they receive every penny from the equity that they've worked so hard to build in that home.
Valuing Homes and Educated Conversations
00:02:45
Speaker
So when people are in dire situations and feel that they have no other option than between a rock and a hard place, they oftentimes will take less money for their home because it seems like the easy way to do it.
00:02:58
Speaker
However, they think that they're talking to a professional and because they're talking to a professional, that person knows what their home is worth. So they're going to take them at that face value versus let's get really educated and have an educated conversation about it.
00:03:14
Speaker
I'm talking about some of these places that, you know, you get the postcards in the mail all the time, I'll buy your house cash really quick close. That's not always the answer. No, it's not. And so we want everyone we talked about patients, the value of patients in a previous episode, take a minute, take a breath, get the information and do things in a way that are going to make the most sense for you and
Partnerships with Curbio and Dovetail
00:03:37
Speaker
your situation.
00:03:37
Speaker
So we have a partnership with a company called Curbio. Curbio is a brilliant business model, so they will help clients, so they help our sellers make any adaptations or updates or changes to their home.
00:03:53
Speaker
And they are compensated for their work upon the sale of the property. So I'm going to back that up a little bit. So let's say our client really needs to sell their home rather quickly to get to their next step. We at Dovetail Companies first help figure out where is your next step? Where are you going? What is a timeline that makes sense for you?
00:04:15
Speaker
Is there an opportunity for you to have a bridge loan, whether that's through your investments or through a home equity line of credit or there's some other private bridge loan options available, so that you can first move with ease, start living the life in the new environment that you want, and then second to that,
00:04:36
Speaker
dealing with the rest of the contents of your home that you cannot take with you or decide you don't want to take with you, so managing estate sale, donation coordination, and clean out of your property, and then culminating with how are we going to get top dollar for you for your property.
00:04:54
Speaker
That always usually means at least having it cleaned out while you're living comfortably in your new space. But then do we need to do any adaptations to the home? So I'll give you an example. Let's say you don't go down that road. Your house needs work. It's full of stuff and you go on the open market. And I'll give a clear case study of this. I had a client
00:05:13
Speaker
was working with another agent, wife had cognitive impairment, she had dementia. He was second generation in that home and he was 90 years old. So this home had been lived in by his family for well over 100 and something years. So it was full to the gills with stuff and emotions and his wife.
00:05:30
Speaker
had dementia. So this was going to be an absolute nightmare. This other agent said, don't worry. It's going to be fine. You're probably, again, we're in the Northeast, about $750,000 is what this home will sell for. And they would have to live through the listing. So I came in with a very different approach that I just explained about breaking this process down into manageable bites, helping them move first. And if we did a little bit of work, clean out the house,
00:05:55
Speaker
fresh coat of paint and they had hardwood floors underneath shag carpeting. So pull up the carpet, the home would just be cleaned out and we could stage it. That home sold for $1,035,000 by taking the process. Yes, it took a little bit longer.
00:06:14
Speaker
But it resulted in much more money in our client's pocket to afford that next step for as long as possible. Again, they didn't have to come out of pocket for those expenses.
Maximizing Home Equity
00:06:26
Speaker
And so when we come into these high heightened emotion situations where everyone feels like we have to do this because it's a crisis,
00:06:36
Speaker
take a breath, do we? Just ask yourself if you're listening today and you're in the middle of a transition or thinking about a transition, do you have to do it that way or is there a different approach that you could take that allows you to ensure you are the one receiving every penny from the equity of your home and you're not handing that off to some buyer who's going to do those small updates and then pocket the money themselves?
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, there isn't a one-size-fits-all situation either or result, right? Like, I think that we always have to take a step back and say, what is going to be the best thing for this seller? And what's gonna help propel them forward? Are they gonna get money back? In some situations, they're really not gonna get that much back, right? And so it's that honest conversation of, yeah, just leave it as is. We've had a lot of those cases because you're not gonna result or net in a lot more money from the sale of your home.
00:07:30
Speaker
But in a lot of these cases, we have seen paint and, you know, sprucing up the hardwood floors and making some small improvements really go a long way. I'm talking about like tens of thousands of dollars, 50, 60, 70, 100, $200,000 more in your pocket to help you afford your life for as long as possible. We have a one of our agents right now has a case. It was a small condo.
00:07:58
Speaker
Normally on paper, it would not have made sense to do all of that work before going on the market. It was a six-month process to do all this work. But this client, to your point, every case is different. This client literally, that's all she had, was the equity from the sale of that property. Her income was very low.
00:08:17
Speaker
and she needed care. She was moving to a community that she really wanted to go to and she literally needed every dollar to afford the next step. She did the work and we're under contract now. We have an accepted offer well over asking and far above what she invested to do the work. And so it's also important for people to know what buyers are looking for. It's
00:08:39
Speaker
God forgive me for saying this with this new gen this younger generation is impatient. They don't want them. They don't want to do the work. So you're shortening your pool of buyers in an as is situation. There are people that won't you have one time for a first impression if they're seeing pictures
00:08:58
Speaker
with old wallpaper and your stuff all over the house, they may not even come in to look at it. So your pool of buyers is minimized greatly. So we have to look at all of that, not just your personal situation, but who's the type of buyer for your unique home and what would it take at a bare minimum
00:09:18
Speaker
to increase the amount of potential buyers in your property, and that goes into this equation as well. We are lucky in the Northeast that we are buffered a little bit from the volatility of what we're seeing in the marketplace, but we want to make sure that you, as the seller, have your best foot forward to ensure successful outcomes.
Emotional and Financial Benefits of Home Updates
00:09:41
Speaker
Now, I mean our business is based on helping somebody successfully move to their new place and then listing and selling their home. We have been set up that way. I think finding a partner in Curbio has been really successful for us too because our sellers aren't incurring those costs upfront to make those
00:10:01
Speaker
improvements to their home. The beauty about Curbio is they are holding all of those bills until closing. It does go on, you know, as part of the settlement statement. But you can make these great improvements. You can get more money back in your pocket and you're not having to deal with managing and overseeing all of these providers, the painters, the construction guys, the flooring guys. I mean, it is literally
00:10:29
Speaker
been a blessing in disguise for a lot of our clients. Also, you want to feel good about what you're leaving behind. This is a very cathartic process for our clients. If it's a physical or cognitive reason that you have to leave your home, maybe you don't want to, but you have to, or you and your spouse raised your family there and
00:10:53
Speaker
It feels good for our clients to leave their home in good order for the next people to enjoy it. It's been really exciting. Our clients have loved seeing and actually sometimes because the homes could look a little different after a refresh.
00:11:08
Speaker
It doesn't it's not as hard. It's like, oh, it doesn't totally look like it once did. But you're feeling good about leaving your home in top quality to the next people. Not just financially, it feels good. But emotionally, it does. Sometimes there may be some embarrassment or
00:11:24
Speaker
if you weren't able to upkeep it well, it's, you know. I love that you brought that up because I had a seller and we made some improvements and she looked at me and she goes, this is everything that I've always wanted to do with my home. So you are right on point to say, she felt so incredibly good to have that closure and to give that next family exactly what she always wanted in that home but she couldn't do it for so many other reasons.
00:11:51
Speaker
But yeah, it really helps them kind of close that door and hand over the key the way that they wanted to.
Seller Control and Pre-listing Inspections
00:11:59
Speaker
And I want to just say, you are in control every step of this process. If you are like, oh, this does make sense to me, this is resonating with me, but I'm working with someone else who maybe is advising me differently, you're in control. So if you want to change your plan, you can tell them, you know what? No, I'm actually thinking I'm going to do this a different way.
00:12:21
Speaker
Give yourself the autonomy to be that decision maker because we understand, although this isn't rocket science, it is a different way of thinking about listing and selling your home. One thing we didn't talk about is a pre-listing home inspection. We do advise that a lot for our mature sellers. If you had a spouse that always managed the maintenance and upkeep of your property and you're not sure the condition of certain things in the home, but also
00:12:49
Speaker
It takes away some of the negotiating power from the buyers and buyers feel really good when you're disclosing things to them that it's kind of like here is everything on a silver platter of what we know they feel better about going into your home versus.
00:13:06
Speaker
I think something might be wrong here, but I have no idea. Yeah, and sometimes it's small. Shows what the process is going to be like. Yeah, and sometimes it's small things. If you have a pre-listing home, and actually this came up with the property that I was referring to, the $749, and we listed and sold above a million dollars, there was water coming into their main electric box in the basement. They never knew. No one would have known without an inspection. It was a small fix. I want to say it was $2,500 for
00:13:34
Speaker
a new electrical box, that could have been a major issue. Here in Massachusetts, there's an inspection after the accepted offer. So that can put a huge... Do so backwards. I know. So that if you didn't do a pre-listing home inspection and disclose what was going on or address or fix it, that could come up and put a big... A lot of our clients don't need any surprises.
00:13:58
Speaker
They're in the middle of a major life transition and so we can get around a lot of that. But that is something you can ask your listing agent for ahead of time to have the information and knowledge up front.
Professional Marketing in Real Estate
00:14:09
Speaker
And to just have the conversation from my house. Here's the story behind my house. Here's what I love about my house. But what would buyers in this particular situation be looking for?
00:14:20
Speaker
And then have a conversation of, here's what we can do at bare minimum. Here's what we really can do. How much do you actually want to put into it? I think that that goes a long way when you're just planning, you know, and you can see that from a buyer's perspective when, let's face it, I mean, with this day and age and technology,
00:14:39
Speaker
your house is being viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by buyers at all hours of the day. They don't even care. They're scrolling at 12.45 a.m. You know, they want to be able to see that and it just allows them the technology to see what you've done but to really get familiar with your home before they're actually stepping foot. So if you're
00:15:02
Speaker
I always say first impressions are everything, right? It starts with the photos and it starts with the love that you can feel coming through in those photos when they're looking on Redfin or Realtor.com or whatever it is. To that point, it is imperative
00:15:21
Speaker
that your commission that you are paying to your listing agent be spent on quality, high-end marketing. And this is for all price points of all homes. You mean the cell phone pictures that I see all of the time with terrible angles are not a good way of showcasing someone's home for sale? Everyone to all of our mature sellers and engaged agers who are listening to this podcast.
00:15:42
Speaker
You absolutely need professional photography, virtual tours, professional floor plans. Your buyers are looking online, like Lauren said, and when you are up against other homes for sale that have a better marketing package, you are coming out behind the gate. It's absolutely imperative that you ask for because you're compensating well
00:16:06
Speaker
for a quality marketing experience. There's more that goes into that, and we're happy to answer any questions anyone may have on what you should be asking your agent for. But you absolutely have the right. You are the decision maker and the leader of this process. And don't fall victim to deadlines. There aren't deadlines. I always think about, too, and I'd be curious to hear what your opinion is on this, Erin, but the spring market, the summer market,
Timing Your Home Sale Effectively
00:16:33
Speaker
Sometimes I feel like we're not even in that anymore, right? There's very low inventory. People are still looking at homes. It does bring up a point where we are coming out of a crazy market right now. We do have to exercise patience in a bit of a different way.
00:16:49
Speaker
One, to prepare our house properly, but two, it might take a little bit more time to actually sell it and getting under agreement just because of what's happening out there. But educating yourself and doing everything that you possibly can, I think at the end of the day, is going to help you feel, I've done everything that I possibly can, and it takes one right person to want my house.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah, it does take that patience of it, too. Julie Ford, who's our director of real estate services, always says you need to put yourself at the center of this equation and not the market. So to Lawrence Point, Spring Market, Fall Market, again, we're buffered here in the Northeast.
00:17:33
Speaker
Your home it could be the week this happened last year It could be the week of Christmas and you're the only home on the market and inventory was already low That was the best market time for that client because they had no competition So we could really set the price on that property So you the time the best time to sell your home is when that it's best for you and your time frame and timeline
00:17:57
Speaker
could be really variable based on your personal situation or circumstance, we have proven it over and over again with our clients that our client's best timeline is not based on traditional market times here in real
Closing Remarks and Social Media Engagement
00:18:11
Speaker
estate. So get your plan in place, get the information, the rest is gonna fall into place. We've seen it hundreds of times here at Dovetail with our clients. You will receive top dollar on the sale of your home when you put a plan in place that makes the most sense for you.
00:18:27
Speaker
Great. Join us again for more tips on real estate, and we will see you again. Stay engaged. Thank you for joining us today. To continue the conversation, follow us on social media at Dovetail Companies or visit us online at dovetailcompanies.com. And remember, change can be difficult. Aging doesn't have to be.