Bryan Vogt: Welcome back to Ready, Set, Sold. I’m your host, Bryan Vogt. Hope you’re having a fantastic four-day weekend. Thanks so much for joining us. I’m here with Kelly Etheridge and Kathy Popovich, both great team members on the Bryan Vogt home selling team.
It was funny. We were talking during the break, and what I loved is Kelly was reciting some things about some of the other positives that we think about. We talked about the yard and what have you, and about the maintenance level. Kelly, why don’t you highlight some of those things that you’re aware of?
Kelly Etheridge: This time of year is the easiest time to put your house on the market because you don’t have to mow the grass. You don’t have to pull the weeds. You don’t have to edge the driveway or the sidewalk. You don’t have to maintain that pool. It’s just an easier time.
Bryan Vogt: Right, right, and I think that’s important to understand is this is so that you have those situations. Look, if you do have a situation. Maybe you have a pool. With people having cameras the way they do on their phones, everyone has a camera basically, most times you have taken a picture of that pool. If you feel that you need to, there’s nothing wrong with it. You can always add that. Tell your realtor to make sure they add that on there.
You can also have any outside pictures. Again, anymore, it’s very common that we take pictures. We don’t even think about it. Part of the problem is, is that we have so many pictures on there, we got to go to cloud, and then they add more money. I don’t know how that works. I’m one of those people that just never back up. Okay? I don’t know where my pictures are going to finally wind up being. I don’t. I don’t. It says, “Backup the phone,” and I just say, “Not now. Not now. I’m not doing it.” It’s a conspiracy.
Anyway, with that, I think that the other part to keep in mind, that I want to stress, is that once you’re putting your house on the market, it’s the cost if you don’t. Meaning is, is we’ve talked about this in the book before, and it’s actually in the first section. The true cost of waiting. It’s okay if you want to wait, but again, if you’re looking at trying to open up in March, well, that’s four months away.
Well, four months, you have to look at most people are doing principle and interest. They’re doing HOA. They’ve got taxes. They’ve got insurance. They’ve got utilities. They’ve got maintenance. Murphy’s Law unfortunately sometimes comes into play, and if something’s going to wrong. We’ve had sellers that the water heater went out. We’ve had unfortunately furnaces. Not the furnace is starting to kick out, and they find out things aren’t going well there.
Kelly Etheridge: Pipes burst.
Bryan Vogt: Pipes burst. Yes. We’ve just had that. That’s a great point, Kelly.
Again, whereas if we could’ve gotten that house on the market maybe a little bit sooner, we wouldn’t have had that issue. At least, the seller wouldn’t have had to deal with that issue. Not that we’re trying to hide anything, but weird things can happen. That’s really important. Again, if you start looking at that, and just looking at the cost factor or maybe the average is $1,500 or $2,000, which you’re paying, as I mentioned, for principle and interest, HOA’s, insurance, all the things that go into a house that we don’t even think about. Utilities. Well, four months down the road, that could be $8,000 difference. $8,000 that you’re not going to get back. That’s one of the things you have to keep in mind.
Yes, March is a great time to put your house on the market. That’s not the point. With every season, there’s concerns too. You’re in a situation where you have maybe direct competition with one of your neighbors on the street. We’ve seen that happen before. They put their house on the market before you did, and they have a different way to go, and their pricing is going to affect your pricing. We’ve seen that happen a few times.
Also is because there is so much onto the market, there can be a wall in the market, and we’ve seen that. It doesn’t mean your house isn’t going to sell, so I don’t want to give the wrong impression that spring is a bad time because it’s not. Again, there’s always factors and things to be concerned about, but the number one factor is, is if you’re talking about money, that may be a situation that you need to focus on. Again, if you’re dealing with a higher-end home, 3 or $400,000 home, you may be looking at monthly expenses of $3,000, $4,000. It just really depends on how you set up your loan.
We’re talking comparably up to $20,000 difference versus selling it now. Even if you took a slight, slight miscalculation, and it was a little bit less than you thought, chances are, not only did you get the money back, but guess what. You’re where you want to be at. That’s part of it too. Sometimes just we see from sellers, and we hear from sellers, it’s just the anticipation, and waiting, and concerns, and all the stories that come into the head versus where now they could be on the market, and have some great sales. That’s really important to understand for sellers to know also.
With that, we’re going to wrap up this segment, and be talking in the next more things. I still also have my tip of the week, which I think you really, really want to be listening to. That’s the last part of the program. That’s going to involve the number one reason why I believe … it’s a personal and professional reason … why home owners do not put their house on the market. You don’t want to miss that.
With that said, always want to make sure that the book is available. Again, it is informational. That’s what we do. I believe all realtors, that should be their profession is giving information timely and effective. That’s what we always try to do at the Bryan Vogt Home-Selling Team.
Ready Set sold with Bryan Vogt #26-03: Kelly Etheridge and Kathleen Popovich of the Bryan Vogt Team: Yard maintenance is a snap
November 25, 2017