Speaker 2: Welcome to Ready, Set, Sold with your host Bryan Vogt. Are you wanting or even thinking about selling your house but don’t know where to start? Good thing you found Ready, Set, Sold, and now, real estate broker, Bryan Vogt.
Bryan Vogt: Good morning everyone, welcome to Ready, Set, Sold, I am your host Bryan Vogt. Ready, Set, Sold is a real estate program designed to give you information on the 12 steps of getting your home sold for top dollar and fast in St Louis Metro-East market. So thank you so much for joining us, we do really appreciate it. Give you a little background of how this all got started, this is actually our fourth week that we’ve been doing this, oh my gosh, it’s been a month.
What we’re doing here is we’re giving information that you can use from a book I wrote, a number one best selling book called ‘Ready, Set, Sold: 12 proven steps to sell your house fast and for top tower in the St Louis Metro-East market’.
The reasons why I wrote the book was … Really comes down to three, and the first one was: There’s so much confusion out there for home sellers from watching the TV shows in the East coast and East coast, and it just isn’t … [inaudible 00:01:27] is out in the heartland, it’s not here in the St Louis Metro-East area and the markets are totally different. That information just confuses so many people, so many sellers.
The second reason for it is; What we said before, it’s the confusion, I wanted to have something that was easy to read, that was not theory, not conjecture, but 12 proven steps, because most sellers really do want to do the right thing, they really want to get their house on the market, do the right things to get top dollar for it and to have a fast sale.
So that was the second reason, and the third reason really comes down to this: It’s your biggest investment, it just is, for most people, I guess there are a few exceptions. But, again, we’re dealing with; In most cases; a hundred thousand, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you want to make sure that you’re making the right decisions, that you’re doing the right things and make sure that you have the information that’s gonna get you what you want to accomplish.
So, those are the reasons why I wrote the book. Here’s the great news, I’m offering it for free, you go to readysetsold.org, not .com, readysetsold.org, not .com and pick up the book. It’s absolutely free. If you’re just thinking about selling your home. Maybe you had a 30 second conversation this morning over breakfast, and one of the spouses mentioned that, “Hey, maybe it’s time to move.” Maybe you’re two or three years out, that’s okay. Maybe you’re currently on the market right now and you’re not having the success that you thought you were going to have. Get the book. You don’t have to use me, there’s no strings attached to it, it has valuable, easy to read information and proven steps that’s going to get your house sold.
So, with that, I’ll also give you a little bio about me. I have been a professional realtor/broker for over 16 years. I run a team of agents that combines with my 16 years that we have well over 30 years of experience in the real estate market. We work, right now currently, in the Metro-East market, in O’fallon, Shiloh, Swansea, Glen Carbon, Edwardsville, Columbia, or Lou markets. Just to put a plug out there, we are a fast growing team that we’re always looking for other agents or people that have just a passion for real estate, like we do that want to get involved with our team. You can go to bryanvogt.com, that’s B-R-Y-A-N V-O-G-T .com and send us a quick email. We’d love to hear from you, at least have a conversation.
With that being said, I have lived in Metro-East all my life. For the past 20 years I’ve lived in Shiloh, Illinois, which I love and I also noticed this week that the temperature has risen dramatically. Well, welcome to the St. Louis Metro-East market. I bring that up because the market also is improving in the cities I mentioned, Waterloo, Columbia, Belleville, Edwardsville and Carbon, the market is still going very, very strong, so that’s fantastic news. I also bring that up because it is hot out there.
If you’re not having the success that you thought that you should be having and the answer that your agent is giving you is because it’s too hot, hopefully you’re not getting that answer but if that’s what they’re saying, look, from May 15th to about September 15th, it’s hot in the St. Louis Metro-East market. So, you’ve got a long time to wait if that’s actually the reason. You might want to dig a little bit deeper into what’s going on.
Also remember, you’ve got air conditioning in the cars and you’re walking, the buyers are walking 30, 40 feet to the house, which is air conditioned so, again, there might be something else going on so you might want to ask a little bit more deeper about what you maybe need to do. If not, you can also pick up the book. If you have a jr. realtor and say, “Hey, look, this is where the problem’s at.”
So, with that, what we’re gonna recap a little bit from last week and what we talked about is what you should be doing to get your house updated. It comes down really to three things. The first thing would be kitchens and bathrooms, making sure that they’re updated. The second thing is painting, very important. And the third thing is the forum. And again, understanding all those three things have to be together. Having one or only having two can still have, it still might get you the results that you’re hoping for and that is to get top dollar and a fast sale.
With that in mind, what we’re going to be talking about today is actually what some people think is maybe the best topic and that is updating the right things, make sure thousands of updating the wrong things cost you thousands and nothing could be truer than that and that’s step four in the book. And here’s the thing that really comes to play far too often and that is the number one thing or maybe the number one rule that, as sellers, you need to know is concentrate on making your updates and your improvements on your pre-existing living space. Do not, do not add more living space. That is not the direction you want to go and what I’m talking specifically right now about is basements.
Typically there’s three reasons why people even consider doing or refinishing a basement before they leave. Number one, it doesn’t happen very often but the agent says it’s a good idea. If you have an agent that tells you that, you need to fire that agent and get another agent. That is not the direction you want to go. Number two and traditionally it’s the man that wanted that man cave that they always strive for but didn’t, but never got around to putting in, this is not the time to start putting, again, moneys into a basement. Work on that on your next house that you’re buying. Don’t go that direction.
But the main reason, the number one reason that people usually do this, and it’s very simply, their neighbors. Their neighbors have finished basements and so they don’t have a finished basement so they need to run out and put in 30, 40, maybe even $50,000 into their house to match what everyone else is doing. Wrong. Wrong. Okay?
Understand this, a couple things you need to know. Number one, return on investment and on the lower level, the appraisals work the same way with this, you don’t get as much credit. There’s also return on investment, it’s not a one for one. Usually you’re looking at maybe a third, so if you put $30,000 into a basement, you may get $10,000 back, that’s a $20,000 loss and we have seen it more than a few times where the sellers have gone out, on their own, put 30, 40, $50,000 in to lose 40, $45,000 on the market. I mean this is serious money. So, don’t go in that direction. That is not the direction that you want to go.
Again, instead, start talking to your agent and understanding that you know what? It doesn’t mean that you have to drop your price maybe that much, every situation’s different, again, 40, $50,000. You may have to make an adjustment on what you don’t have but the answer is not to go out and get another 2,000 square foot of living space.
The second part that I want to talk about too, is, is hardwood floors. Don’t get hardwood floors. If your agent tells you to get hardwood floors, fire that agent, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Again, East coast, West coast, when people are making 5, $7,000 a month payments, usually hardwood floors, the only thing it does is it speeds up the sale. Again, to give you a perfect example, you have $10,000. You have $10,000 for hardwood floors but your payments are only 2 to $3,000. Well, that’s your total payments. Well, guess what? That’s a $7,000 loss. Yeah, you got the house sold but it doesn’t have the return on investment. So, that’s really important.
The third thing we’re gonna talk about is going to be the kitchens and we have some special guests that’s going to be joining us on the next segment that you don’t want to miss and they are specialists in kitchens and bathrooms. So, you’re listening to Ready, Set, Sold and I’m Bryan Vogt.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #04-01: Marla Vogt & Jeremy Thompson: What Not to update
June 17, 2017