Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #16-05: Joe Harnist: $5000 tip of the week. Call your agent before you spend a dime.

Bryan Vogt: Welcome back, everyone to Ready, Set, Sold with your host Bryan Vogt. Thank you so much for staying with us, and with that, I want to talk about the tip of the week. As I kind of led into in the last segment is calling your agent before you spend a dime. Again, no one likes it, but a story an agent was telling me, people had done some tremendous yard work. When I say tremendous, they put in about $5,000 to $10,000, and anybody who’s ever done yard work or done any type of that knows that it can be pretty expensive. Now, it’s back-breaking work, so I kind of get the expense, but what they did is they had a walk-out basement, so they made terraces down and they made steps. It was absolutely beautiful. It cost, as I said, close to $10,000.
They did things in the front and they did all those things. The agent had to kind of basically say is, you know what, gosh I wish you had called me. They said, “No, no, no. This is what we see on the TV shows. This is what they … They’re always talking in Florida and wherever and California. This is what you have to do. This is what you have to do.” Maybe there you do, but not here. Not here. That kind of money is just not going to have return on investment. Mainly, quite frankly, is the appraisal. Again, 95%, 96%, I can’t remember, some crazy number is all based on the inside living space, not on the outside. That covers the brick and vinyl, whatever your house is made, the roof, your garages. Everything else is put into that.
He had to tell them, “Look, it looks beautiful, but we’re not going to get that money back.” They didn’t believe him, and I get it. Unfortunately, it took about five to six months, finally had to drop it past what the market was going at just to get it sold. Again, before you start going in and spending any money, we’ve seen it happen with kitchens, just heard a situation. Out of the blue, they went out and bought granite countertops. Spent well over $5,000 in a house that did not need granite countertops. In fact, when the agent saw the pictures of the old countertops, thought they were perfectly fine. They could have just kept everything in, but again, was well over $5,000 and it’s not going to get a return on investment.
My biggest tip of the week is very simply go, go, go and contact your agent. Whether that’s six months down the road, a year down the road, your agent should be able to help you. If they don’t, you probably have the wrong agent, and shop around some more. Again, I know we have, I know of other top agents that have worked with people years down the road, six months, three months even, whenever, getting you prepped up, ready to go to get your house on the market.
With that, again, don’t forget about Texas. They still need our help. Hopefully you go to Red Cross. Wherever you donate at, please make another donation to help those individuals out. I mean, it’s amazing the recovery stories we’ve seen, but I’m sure they’re going to need our help for a very, very long time. Please continue to do that. Again, if you’re thinking about selling, go to ReadySetSold.org, not .com. Get the book. I think you’ll enjoy it. In the meantime, have a fantastic week. Bye bye.

Bye bye.