Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #13-02: What three areas of your house are a must to update

Bryan Vogt: Welcome back, this is Bryan Vogt with Ready, Set, Sold. Thanks so much for joining us this Saturday. How about those Cardinals? Boy, just as we were digging their grave, all of a sudden they’ve risen. That’s a cool thing. If you’re born here like I am and raised here, even if you’re a transplant it becomes built into your DNA that you’re going to be a Cardinal fan and you’re rooting the Cardinals on. That’s been a great thing.
Anyway, what we were talking about the last segment, kind of tying into about all the reasons why you should update, and why it can get you top dollar, and some of the other things it can help you with. Let’s start talking about the three areas that you really want to focus on. The things that you want to focus on is the improvement on the inside of your home.
The current living space now is what you want to focus on. Those areas are: number one, kitchens and bathrooms. Number two, flooring. Number three, painting. Those are the three things that you really want to focus on. Let’s dig a little deeper into all three of those.
On average, by industry standards, carpeting and painting least for about on average three to seven years depending on how much wear and tear. If you’re in that situation, that would give you a good indication that carpeting/flooring could be something you want to change. Also, that your painting could also make those changes too.
The same thing goes with kitchens and bathrooms, depending on when you hit. Sometimes people hit it in a great area, that they’ve had the updates. The average seller now lives in their home about five to seven years. You may have hit in that range, you already had to update the kitchen when you bought. That would be a great thing, and even bathrooms.
If you didn’t, maybe you caught it on the end or you’ve been there longer, then you want to start focusing on that. You want to start looking at the flooring in the kitchen, you want to start looking at the countertops, you want to start looking at the faucets. Things change, the sinks. Most of the time the good news is you’re not going to have to replace the cabinets, you may have to resurface them but you’re probably not going to have to change them.
Rarely does that happen. Some of these things, what’s popular right now is backsplashes. Again, putting a nice backslash on there, but you always stay in neutral colors, always neutral colors. All these three things that I just talked to you about, that’s what I can’t stress enough on. You want to make that beiges, tans, off-whites.
You probably want to stay away from white white, it gets a little bit more stark, unless that’s your motif. For example, we just sold a house recently and their motif was white and they had white couches, and chairs, and everything was white, and the walls were white. It was beautiful. They put it on the market and they had a great success. If it’s not, you might want to stay away from white and go with the tans, and the beiges, and off-whites.
Once you pick a color, don’t be afraid to start using the color throughout the whole area, meaning your whole house. That goes back to your carpeting, so you can match the carpeting somewhere to the flooring. You can do the same thing with the kitchen countertops. We’ve seen people do that and it looks amazing, it really does. It just all flows.
Understanding that buyers, not only do they want the updates, in most cases they expect the updates. Again, we had a situation, we heard a story about a buyer that they had a house that was updated but it was just a little bit too small. Just so you know, when they bought it they had done some of the updating, some of it was already done. They sure didn’t feel like doing more updating on the next house they bought.
Again this situation was a $100,000 home, it was in Belleville, they were moving to O’Fallon for a $200,000 home. They sure weren’t going to look into to try and put another $10,000, or $5,000, or even $3,000 into it. They usually just say next, they just go on to the next house. There’s not a big discussion for most buyers. That’s important for you to know too.
As we were talking about before is bringing this all together with the colors because buyers are trying to see themselves in your house. When you neutralize it, it gives you as a seller such a huge advantage. If they want to make color changes, that’s fine. Now they can see themselves in there.
The other problem that you have with colors, especially carpeting, carpeting can be a real issue, especially colored carpeting. If you have that in there you really want to neutralize that because green carpeting is not something that most sellers usually go for. It doesn’t match with anything and it just may be something that’s a personal thing for you as a seller, it worked great for you but now you’re trying to get top dollar.
You want to make sure that you’re keeping those colors all the same. What I mentioned before about seeing themselves in the house but also they may even like the color that you picked out. We’ve had crazy colors in houses and that’s okay, the trouble is they don’t feel like it’s their house and they just can’t get it. Some people are visual and some people are not visual.
Buyers that walked in just the other day, we had some buyers talking about they just couldn’t see it. The colors were beautiful but it just wasn’t them. They’re trying to find themselves in these situations and that’s what’s so critical to understand. That’s what’s important for you when you’re doing the updates.
On the bathroom side, again, simple things you can do. Just changing out the shower curtain sometimes can make a big difference. You may or may not have to do as much, talk with your agent, have a discussion with them. Again, three to seven years, if that’s been the date, it’s probably time to make a change. The reason why three years, especially on carpeting is, is it depends on the foot traffic. Do you have small children? How often is that area used? It doesn’t take too much, even with good carpeting, to get that worn down.
You want to make sure that all those things are in place. It’s one, two, three; kitchens and bathrooms. Again, those could be simple as changing out faucets, it could be simple as changing a shower curtain, or you may need more. Understand, if you do need more then I would strongly encourage you to do it. Same thing in the kitchen. Go back into the countertops that we mentioned before, it’s the sink, as far as the faucet. Make sure the flooring is there.
You want to just make sure that you’re updating to what the market is in your area. We’ll talk more about this next week, but you don’t want to put in a $150,000 house, you don’t want to put in quartz or you put in, may be necessary even, ceramic tile. You don’t want to over improve. Sometimes people get into that problem, they think if they just spend another $2,000 or $3,000 then it’ll work out and things will be fine. You’re probably not going to get that investment back. That’s not a direction that you want to take.
Those are the three things that we talked about. We’ve talked about them before but I can’t stress it enough, how important it is to have all those three things working. In the next segment we’re going to be talking about sellers that unfortunately did not take that direction. That maybe they did one of them, that maybe they did two of them, but they didn’t do all three of them and it didn’t turn out so well. Also, some of them that didn’t do any of them.
You don’t want that to be you, that’s why we’re going to be talking more about that in the next segment. In the meantime, while we’re getting ready for break, tons of people have already read the book, we’ve been very blessed with that, they’ve already ordered the book. Again, if you’re just thinking about selling your home, maybe you’re getting ready to pull the trigger, that’s fine. Order the book, go to readysetsold.org, not .com, readysetsold.org, not .com and get the book.
Maybe you’re two years out, we just had a client that was literally a year and a half out. We got them the book, they had gotten everything ready to go. We put it on the market, we were fortunate, or they were fortunate enough or vice versa, either way; that within seven days we were able to get a full price offer. They were ecstatic and they got to move on and move on with their lives.
Great things can happen. With that, we’re going to be talking in the next segment if maybe if you don’t make the updates, maybe hopefully after you hear that segment you’ll understand why it’s so important to do them. You’re listening to Bryan Vogt at Ready, Set, Sold and we’ll see you in a few.