Nuts and Bolts Resources

I've told you to find a Realtor and then sent you forth without any really hard information on Realtors. That was mean. I apologize. I am not the All-Knowing Realtor Yellow Pages, but I do know and have worked with some very skilled Realtors. I will now tell you about them.

Paula Harpole—our Realtor, serving the greater Orlando area. Paula is the best. She is professional, knowledgeable and a tough negotiator. She is also empathetic, compassionate and nurturing. This is a great combination. If you are selling in the greater Orlando area, or planning on moving to the area, contact her. Paula is also a certified Relocation Specialist as well as a Fine Home Specialist. She knows her stuff, and I am so fortunate to have been able to work with her and call her my friend!

Mary Lou Dingman—Mary Lou is your lady if you are moving to the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina. With 20 years as a resident and 8 years as a Realtor, Mary Lou brings not only her knowledge of the area but her love for the area to the table. With extensive experience in new construction, a finger on the pulse of the market in general, and a manner that will instantly put you at ease, Mary Lou is a force to be reckoned with in The Triangle.

KC Covington—Your go-to guy for real estate in the Charlotte area. Licensed in both North and South Carolina, KC is a native Charlottean and knows the area inside and out. With over 23 years of experience and as one of the top-performing Realtors in the greater Charlotte area, KC mixes intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of the market in the Carolinas with southern charm that just can’t be beat.

If you are selling in the Charlotte/Rock Hill area, the Triangle of North Carolina or in Central Florida, do look them up. They are experts. If you are selling a house anywhere in the Southeast, give one of them a call. They all have extensive networks, and even if you are looking outside their specific areas, they will be able to recommend a wonderful Realtor.

What Role Does Luck Play?

If you believe that keeping a rabbit's foot, a silver dollar or a special shell in your pocket is going to magically draw your buyer family to you, maybe now is not the time for you to sell. If, however, you believe that you make your own luck, then I say to you, "The more focused the intention behind the work you do to sell the house, the better your luck will be."

I'm sure you've seen someone on a talk show explaining that they "Just got lucky." Well, unless they are talking about winning the Power Ball Lottery, they didn't "just" get lucky. Whatever they have achieved in their lives--either personally or in business--that got them on the talk show in the first place was the result of a concentration of focus and effort on achieving a goal.

When you decide to sell your house, you will 1)disengage emotionally from the house, 2)act with intent to prepare it for listing, 3)stage it effectively, 4)find a great Realtor and work with them to market effectively 5)keep the house show ready at all times, and 6)do at least one thing every day with the express intention of selling the house. Your buyer will find you, and you will be at the closing table before you know it. You and your Realtor know how much work you've put in to realize this sale. If your friends want to call you "lucky," let 'em!

Should You Hire a Professional Stager?

You've made peace with the idea of selling the house. You're even a little excited about it, because you know it's the right thing to do. It's also the start of a new chapter in your life. Whether or not you are still living in the house you are selling, you will need to stage it to sell. Statistics and sales figures show that furnished houses sell more quickly and for closer to the asking price than do vacant houses. If you want to sell quickly and profitably, I suggest you stage.

While home staging is not difficult, it does require you to objectively decide whether you can stage your house or not. If you think your house already looks awesome, hire a stager. If you are too emotionally tied to the "stuff" in your house to be able to make decisions about editing, hire a stager. If your personality is splashed all over the walls, hire a stager. If you are a hoarder (or just a pack rat), hire a stager.

Staging the house will require you to edit furniture pieces and decor items to suggest a single purpose for each room. When we live in a house, most rooms are multi-purpose. In the kitchen in our home, we cook, pay bills, watch TV, do homework and art projects and leave notes for each other on the fridge. In the staged kitchen in the house you are trying to sell, you cook (neatly). If there's a breakfast bar or a table in a nook, you eat there, too. But that's it.

If you are the kind of person who loves a challenge--a person who can approach staging objectively and who has an eye for minimal but inviting design, then go for it. You might visit my Squidoo lens Top Seven Home Staging Mistakes for some ideas to get you started.

Do You Really Need a Realtor?

Many people want to go it alone and try and sell their house without a Realtor. If they can sell quickly, they'll save a 3% commission. Let's say that they can sell their house in four months, with a mortgage payment of $1200/month for $150,000. The seller saves $4500 in commission to their Realtor, but while they saved $4500, they also spent $4800 in mortgage payments. Not using a Realtor cost them $300!

I'm not saying that it is impossible to sell without a Realtor. I am saying that having a full-time professional on your team who has a vested interest in helping you sell quickly can be a life saver. They can help you focus your energies. When you're staging, if you're wondering if it's worth it to buy new valances to put over the windows in the guest bedroom or to put down self-stick vinyl tiles in the kitchen, your Realtor can let you know if it's worth your time, money and attention to do those things. They know because, if you've chosen a good Realtor with years of experience and an intimate knowledge of the market in which you're selling, they've seen what works and what doesn't.

A good Realtor will not only list your house on the MLS, but they will make professional flyers, make sure you have an info-tube and a professional sign, and they will work with you to market the house in as many creative and effective ways as possible. You and your Realtor are partners on Team Sell This House. You two will be the Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh of the real estate world.

In a sellers' market, go for it. You will probably be able to sell so quickly that you won't have to factor in the cost of your mortgage payments. In this down market though, it is a real concern. It is best to have a professional on your side, working for you and with you to help you sell that house.

Who Lives Here?

The way you approach staging a house is very different from the way you approach decorating a house. And both are very different from the way model homes are staged. You decorate your house by choosing a color scheme that you like and then filling the rooms with furniture and rugs and pillows and lighting and art and knick-knacks that all speak to who and what you are all about. You decorate a house to make it a home and to live in it. The designers who stage model houses know that at least two groups of folks will wander through--those who are interested in buying, and those who are looking for decorating ideas. The designers stage accordingly, using furniture and props to suggest uses for each space, but also going overboard with themed rooms. You've seen them--the "gentleman's room" with the dark paneling, burgundy and hunter green wallpaper, hunting prints on the wall and a bagpipe on the coffee table; the "media room" complete with popcorn popper on wheels and a Coke machine and lined with framed movie posters; the "football playing kid" room with football shaped pillows, astroturf on the floor and a comforter cover that's green and white to look like a field. It can all be overwhelming. While folks looking for ideas might have a grand time, folks looking to buy can get distracted by all the hoo-ha going on.

When you stage your house to sell, you want people to be able to see the house and all its potential, not the stuff in the house, and certainly not your personal stuff or taste. Serious buyers are looking to project their lives on the stage of your house. Help them do that by suggesting uses for each space with just a couple of key pieces and keeping visual cues to a minimum--don't clutter everything up. Denote "bedroom" with a bed, one nightstand (or two, if it's the master bedroom or a guest suite) and a chest of drawers/dresser with a mirror. A couple of lamps, a couple of non-descript but pleasing prints on the wall, a couple of simple props--a book on a nightstand, a mirrored tray, a vase of flowers. And that's it. It's not a lot, but you're not staging to live in the house. You're staging to sell the house. All that other stuff that's usually in the bedroom--ironing board, computer, dog bed, big storage chest, basket of videos, television--all need to go. The stage says, "This room is for sleeping. Period."

Take yourself and your personality out of the house, and your buyers will say, "Who lives here? There's no way anyone lives here--it's too neat and clean!" I know--it happened with our sale. I even asked our buyer what made our house stand out, and she said that it "felt good" in the house and that she and her husband couldn't believe that anyone lived there!

The Power of Scent

So many home staging and house selling tip sites and books will tell you, "Bake a pie. Bake some cookies. Bake some bread. The smell will drive people wild and make them whip out their checkbooks on the spot." I admit it, it is possible that the majority of buyers out there might like to smell pie upon entering a house. But I submit, friends, that we are trying to reach the broadest range of folks possible. Statistics show that less than 1% of sales come from Open Houses, so most sales come from individual showings. In a perfect world, we would have prior notice of showings, but in today's world of tons-of-houses-for-sale, we're lucky to get a phone call a half hour before a Realtor shows up with a potential buyer in tow. Hardly time to throw the laundry into the washer and turn on all the lights before you have to skedaddle, let alone bake a pie.

Well, okay, how about candles? Unattended candles, hmmmm. I suppose you could light them and then blow them out right before you leave, but then the house would smell like wax. You could use some of those plug-in thingies or one of those remote spray jobbies, but who knows how many people really want to walk into a house that smells like a Mai Tai or a laudromat?

So, what's a seller to do? What worked well for me was a combination of air sanitizer in a neutral scent with a fabric refresher, again, in a neutral scent. I wanted the house to present as blank a canvas as possible--for all the senses. I wanted the potential buyers to be able to project their lives onto the stage of the house, and that included their being able to decide what they wanted to bake, not being forced to think "If I live here, I must bake bread and drink umbrella drinks." Maybe an extreme view, but, again--I wanted to appeal to the broadest market possible with potential buyers being greeted by a non-specific neutral, clean smell.

The Minimalist Lives Here

Now that you have somehow managed to settle down and know that selling is the right thing to be doing right now, you need to start taking the U out of your HOUSE. If you can't you're HOSEd. I hope you see what I did there--I wake up at night with these sort of thoughts.

At any rate, you have to step back and depersonalize the space. If you have items that have special emotional significance to you, you need to get them out of the house. I know that sounds mean, but if you're really going to sell it, you have to wipe away any trace of yourself. Not only do I mean that on a spiritual and emotional level, I also mean it on a physical level. Stuff that shouts "I live here!" has to go. You don't have to throw it away, of course; just pack it away and store it, at your mother in law's house or in a storage unit. This includes, but is not limited to, very specific collections or hobbies, wedding, baby and family photographs, and artwork on the refrigerator. There might be some emotionally significant things that are actually a part of the house or yard--a tree planted in memory of a loved one or in honor of someone's birth, a mural on the nursery wall or the room that Hildi did when you were on Trading Spaces. In these cases, you can choose to leave them with the house as long as you can walk away from that emotional connection and as long as these built in items are not obviously personal. A mural that says "Welcome, precious Adelaide, to our family," is a lot more personalized than the lovely Japanese maple outside.

How to Stay Cool

"That's great, Jen," you say. "Keep cool. Riiiight." Alright, I know, I know. It's easy to say it, but how do you do it? Well, there are a bunch of ways; you have to find the way that works for you. If you are a religious person, you can ask congregation members and your clergy to keep you in their prayers. It always helps to know that people are pulling for you. If you're not a big church goer, you can still have your friends think positive thoughts, send you calming energy, etc--whatever fits comfortably into your world view.

Maybe you're more of an "I am an island" person. Someone who does not look to others. If you work out, you could easily incorporate a "Stay cool" mantra as you're doing your cardio. As a matter of fact, pairing positive talk that everything will work out with the endorphin rush you get from exercise is probably a really good idea.

"Gee, Jen. So far you've given us mystical assignments; where's all the information on the concrete steps I need to take to sell my house?" Well, friends, unless you have your head in the right space, your action plan isn't going to be as effective. I'm not saying that you won't be able to sell; I'm just saying that our negative thoughts are our own worst enemy when selling. Get your head in the game, and I promise the nuts and bolts are coming.

The Case for Keeping Cool, Part II

As I was saying, believe that selling your house is the right decision. Why? Honestly, because if you have come to the conclusion that you have to sell, you obviously don't have another choice. So, you may as well decide that it is the right thing to do. If you spend a lot of time wishing you didn't have to sell, wishing that things were different, wanting to stay in that house even though you can't, you've set up a war within yourself. A war between what is and what you want. So, no matter what you are doing externally to sell--hiring a Realtor, listing, putting a sign in the yard--internally your thought is "This sucks. I can't believe this is happening. Why us?"

If this is your internal monologue, how in the world can you even begin to focus on what you need to do? Folks, stop the madness. Cry, gnash your teeth, rail against the fates, but then pull it together, take some deep breaths, and just keep cool. Tell yourself that, no matter why you're here, you need to sell. You need to sell quickly so you can get on with your lives.

Do what you need to do to reconcile your internal thoughts with your external reality. The mind is a powerful thing. To paraphrase the NAACP, "The Power of the Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste." Spending your time wanting something that is entirely at odds with your reality is a waste of time. And believing that you can't sell your house when you're going through the motions creates a kind of psychic deadlock. Look at our little pug friends up there. They're both pulling for all they're worth. If we could hear them, they'd be growling and doing that snore-breathing that pugs do. But for all the energy they're expending, neither is getting anywhere. Get it?

Now we get to the crux of the matter. In a nutshell, here's the case for keeping cool: if you don't keep your cool and surrender to what is, you will expend a lot of energy being anxious and conflicted and you really won't be able to sell. Settle down, reconcile yourself to your reality, and believe you can sell. I believe that you can. Still not convinced? More later...

The Case for Keeping Cool, Part I

When you know that what you're doing is right and that it will lead you to your goal, the anxiety goes away. You are left with your resolve and your action plan, and you are better able to focus on what needs to be done since you're not spending that time worrying if what you're doing is right.

So, how do you get there? How do you go from panic and anxiety to assurance and purpose? What people have tried to tell me for ever is true: It really is all in your head. At some point, you have to make the conscious decision that what you're doing is correct. I think a lot of the anxiety comes from worrying that all your plans will end in ruin. Gee, talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy!

The fact of the matter boils down to this: if you're here reading this, you want or need to sell your house. Believe that, no matter what events led you to this decision, it is the right decision for you at this time.

More later, but I do want to share this with you. It's my shiny new Press Release about my eBook.

Just Look at The Mess That We're In

So, here's the thing: there are thousands and thousands of people out there right now trying to sell their homes. On some streets, there may be several sellers competing for the same buyers. Sellers are stressed, and they become frantic as they watch the market slide lower and lower. In some markets, the slide is gradual, but in some places, sellers are on that big slide from The Banana Splits Show (fast forward to :55 if you don't want to watch the whole thing). At any rate, people are scared. Sellers are scared that they won't be able to sell; buyers are afraid to buy as they wait for the market to hit bottom. People are doing desperate and frightening things because of foreclosures and other financial problems. My Uncle Ray, who was a young man during the Great Depression and who remembers being told to walk on the extreme street-side of the sidewalks in New York to keep out of the way of falling bodies--seriously--says he's never seen anything like it and didn't believe he would live to see this. Where is the calm voice of reason in this storm?

Friends, I humbly present myself, as unlikely as that may seem to those who know me, as that voice of calm and reason. I recently navigated the shark-infested waters of the Central Florida housing market, deftly steering our sales course between the burst bubble Scylla and the sub-prime loan Charybdis with relative ease, if I do say so myself. And what did I have that others didn't? Not real estate know-how. Not business savvy. Certainly not deeeeep pockets. What I did have was the absolute knowledge that we would sell our house quickly, no matter what was going on around us. I didn't get the knowledge from a book, or a website or even my Realtor (although she was awesome). I knew we would sell quickly because that was our intention, and that intention was underscored by and reinforced with every action we took to sell our house.