Bryan Vogt: Hello, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. We’ve been talking today about catching at the curb and how important that is, and I think most sellers understand that. They really do. Most sellers – here’s the good news – most sellers have these things taken care of, but this is also a friendly reminder for those people who don’t. Maybe sometimes put some reasoning behind that maybe you don’t know how it can have such an effect on it.
We talked about the curb, we talk about the idea of the grass being mowed and the trees being trimmed and making sure the shutters are painting. Front door is a big one, Kelly.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Bryan Vogt: You had that situation of repainting the front door. Maybe making a black or a green or a white. Sometimes red works too. You can have a little fun with that. That’s a focal point. You want to make sure you can see that. Keep it white or repaint that too.
But I think one of the things that people don’t understand, and this is something because they don’t use it. They simply don’t use it. And this creates a lot of problems and bad juju, shall we say. Very simply, the front door lock.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Bryan Vogt: I mean …
Kelly: I’ve had so many times when … There’s two different keys, which is not a horrible thing, but thy don’t quite fit. They’re bent. For some reason, it’s just a difficult way of getting … you just can’t get the door to unlock.
Bryan Vogt: Or the door sticks, and you can’t get the door, and you gotta … I think you said that one time, the agent told you that you had to hit the door.
Kelly: Oh, yeah. “You have to wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, and hit it with your hip.”
Bryan Vogt: Okay. Just so you know if you’re selling your home and the buyers are standing there trying to get into that house, that is not the first impression that you want to give them. As I said, I get that most people don’t use their front door, especially if they have a garage, is connected or whatever.
Sometimes, even if that’s not the case, they’ll come in their side door. But understand, that you … First off, you want the buyers to come through the front door. Just so you know, you may use that side door all the time, but you want to make sure that they come in that front door. That’s again, creating an illusion.
But again, if it’s hot and sweaty out in July, and the buyers are sweating, you can’t get in. And again, [inaudible 00:02:37] say the same thing. We talked about this last week. Aren’t they selling their home? Don’t they know we need to get in?
It starts off with the impression that you don’t have a well-maintained home. That’s not the impression that you want to give people and that’s so, so important. I think the other part of that really becomes important. We’ve talked about the front of the yard. We talked about coming up and there’s the sidewalks, to make sure that there’s no major cracks in that. But it’s the backyard.
And especially, we talked about it briefly last week, if you have pets. And more particularly, if you have dogs, okay? The Fido Bombs, okay? Or the F-Bombs as some people might call them. Basically, dogs have to go, and that’s okay. But understanding that they’re going to be walking in that backyard. Look, it’s bad enough if they step in it. It’s worse, and we’ve had this happen before, that they don’t know they stepped into it. And now they’re stepping back into your house.
This is really bad news now. You’ve got all kinds of things going on and we had a situation where not only did that happen, but what was worse about, there’s another showing right afterwards. So now we have a really dilemma on this. It’s kind of hard to explain what’s going on here. Look, they actually have, I saw this on Facebook the other day, they actually have people that you can pay to go pick up the poop. Which, I can’t remember what they called them. Something in that name. But whatever. It really is important, okay? People aren’t paying attention when they’re walking, they’re looking at your backyard, and that’s what you want them to be looking at, right?
If you’ve got a nice deck. If you’ve got even a swimming pool or a fence [inaudible 00:04:29], use it for them to walk the length of the house.
Kelly: They want to know the lay of the land.
Bryan Vogt: Right. And that’s all they’re doing. So again, when you have that situation, again, we laugh about it, but it can get to be really serious. Again, if they don’t catch it right away, and that has actually happened, so they go from the vinyl or possibly hardwood floors all the way into the carpeting, okay? That’s a serious, serious problem. It just happens.
You want to make sure you don’t have that. We talked about the lock on the door and we talked about that, too. Also making sure, when we talk about, I mentioned the sidewalk near the walk going up. But one of the issues that can come up is your driveway. And some people say, “Well, that’s how it was and that’s how it is,” and that might be, but if it’s buckled badly, that can have a very negative effect on potential buyers, if not else, look at your home, but again, maybe you bought it that way, but the buyer’s saying, “Why didn’t you fix it?” Those are things that you need to be looking at. Many times, it’s much easier to go ahead and fix something, because the buyer is going to be taking off serious, serious money for that.
We’ve talked about this before, about the updating. It’s the same thing on the outside. People think, “Well, one for one,” it’s always going to cost. Buyers tend to think of three times, five times the amount. If it’s $2000, it’s $10 thousand dollars in their mind. Understand that. Getting these things done in advance, getting them ready to go and again. It’s simple things. Flowers. Kelly, you tell me, you’ve taken buyers out. Flowers. Right by the front door.
Kelly: It just brightens up that first impression of the home. I’ve had homes that are completely gray. The roof is gray. The house is gray. Everything’s gray. But if you add red mulch or if a red pop door or a bright yellow door, it just brightens it up and pops.
Bryan Vogt: Because the front door is a central showcase.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Bryan Vogt: You may never as a buyer, or maybe when you bought the house, you may as a seller, used it once or twice in your life, and that’s usually to let friends in, but you probably maybe not even have walked in it yourself. But that front door is really important.
You mentioned something, too. The mulch.
Kelly: The mulch.
Bryan Vogt: Re-mulch it. It’s a pretty … It has very cost-effective for the cost versus the impact it has to the buyers. Remember, buyers don’t just start looking at your house when they walk in. They are looking at your house as they’re walking in.
If you can get the dings out of your garage door. I understand that kids play and what have you, but buyers catch that stuff. They really do. Remember, they haven’t sene your home before. They’re making their first impression. This in their mind is their dream home, they’re wanting it to be a dream home. We want to make sure that we keep the somewhat illusion but also make sure that we’re maintaining things in a good proper order. That’s how you get top dollar. That’s how you get a fast sale.
People see a well-maintained yard, it must be a well maintained house. And that’s probably the most important thing to keep in mind. Well-maintained gets you more money in the buyers’ mind, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, and that’s really, really important when you’re selling your house.
Because sometimes it’s the little things that people don’t always think about that you really want to focus on, and I think that’s … one of the most important things we’re going to talk about.
What we’re going to talk about now is we talked about the backyard, we talked about Fido, and we talked about how important that is. We’re going to talk about garages and decks and patios in the next section and how important that can be, also.
With that said, you’ve been listening to Ready Set Sold. I am your host Bryan Vogt. Go get the book. Again, we can’t cover that we want to. I wish we could, but we just can’t. But go get the book, ReadySetSold.org, not .com. ReadySetSold.org, not .com. Get the book. We’ll be back in a few.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #07-02: Kelly Etheridge RE/MAX Preferred #2: How quickly buyers make a decision
July 8, 2017