Category: Uncategorized

Preparing Your Home for Sale – Some Practical Advice

Submitted by Suzie Wilson of HappierHome.net

Whether you’re moving because of a job, family expansion or retirement, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and get to work if you want your property to appeal to the most buyers. Before you start packing, however, there are a few minor home improvements you should tackle, which will speed up the process and get you on the road.

Start with aesthetics

No matter how short a time you’ve lived in your home, there are likely lots of little things that you’ve learned to overlook. The vast majority of these will be minor aesthetic imperfections that are cheap and easy to rectify. ProfessionalStaging.com notes that buyers are on the lookout for issues and will notice every little crack, stain, or chipped tile. Here are a few DIY projects that will reduce the lived-in look of your home:

  • Replace moldy or damaged caulk in the bathtub and shower
  • Clean or stain grout in the kitchen and bathroom
  • Fill nail holes in the wall and gaps around the trim
  • Plant colorful flowers by the mailbox and entryway
  • Organize storage spaces (buyers love to look in closets, under the stairs, and in the garage and attic)
  • Paint rooms that don’t already have a neutral color scheme
  • Install functional smoke and carbon monoxide alarms
  • Pull weeds and add a layer of fresh mulch to flower beds
  • Repair brown spots on the lawn
  • Replace outdated bronze and brass doorknobs, handles, and drawer pulls

Manage major malfunctions

There are plenty of small things you can tackle on your own, but you’ll also need to invest time and money making sure there are no major defects that may derail your home sale at inspection time. These include:

  • Foundation problems (Homes.com estimates this can devalue your property by up to $100,000)
  • HVAC issues
  • Mold
  • Leaks in the roof/missing shingles
  • Major plumbing problems, such as a clogged mainline
  • Outdated electrical panel
  • Windows that won’t open up or lock
  • Musty/animal smell
  • Rotted wood behind walls – most likely in the kitchen or bath
  • Damp basement

Small issues won’t necessarily be deal-breaker for most of your buyers but the less work they have to do the more likely they will be to give your home a second look. Large issues such as a crumbling foundation may designate your home as a fixer-upper, which won’t attract “everyday” buyers who want to move in immediately.

What do buyers want?

Buyers in different demographics will seek out home features that appeal to their lifestyles. There are, however, a few universal want-list items you can play up in your listing to cast as wide a net as possible. According to American Home Shield, the features homebuyers want are:

  • Separate laundry room
  • Energy-efficient appliances and windows
  • Exterior lighting
  • Outdoor entertainment space
  • Ceiling fan
  • Full bathroom on the main level
  • Hardwood flooring
  • Proper insulation
  • Garage storage
  • Eat-in kitchen

When it’s time

Once you’ve completed these repairs and renovations, there are a few finishing touches that will put the icing on the cake and sweeten the deal for your buyers. First, you should declutter, so that buyers can see more of the house and less of what you own. Before you declutter, though, it’s a good idea to buy an air filter. Since digging through those items is going to stir up a lot of dust, it’s important to keep the air clean for you and home buyers.

After you declutter, deep clean the entire home and weed out any belongings or furniture that don’t look quite right. To get your home sparkling clean, spend a little money on a housekeeping service. For an average of $166 a visit in Golden, housekeepers can help you keep up with laundry, mopping, sweeping, vacuuming, and straightening. Just keep in mind that the more you request from the housekeeping service, the more you’ll ultimately pay for the privilege. 

Also, staging and investing in high-quality professional listing photos (a real estate photographer usually charges between $110 and $300 for a shoot, depending on your location) will give online searchers a reason to pay your house a visit. 

Perhaps most importantly, you’ll need to choose the best listing agent. Interview multiple individuals and ask about their recent local sales history and how many current listings they manage. A good agent will encourage you to price your home competitively and will go above and beyond simply listing on the MLS to promote the property.

Brokerages Should Allow Agents to Enter or Change Their Listings on the MLS

At Golden Real Estate, each agent (under my supervision) enters and updates their own listings on the MLS. I believe that helps to promote accuracy.

But many brokerages block their agents from accessing their own listings, sometimes resulting in incomplete or inaccurate data. One would hope that agents in those brokerages check to see how their listings were entered and tell their admins when mistakes have been made or data omitted, but there’s no way to know that.

Did you know that in addition to the “public remarks” for listings, there is a place to enter a description of every room in the house?

Very few listings — under 50% by my count — include a description of any rooms, and some listings don’t even list rooms other than bedrooms and bathrooms.

Dimensions can be entered for each room, too (rounded to the nearest foot), but I find very few listings with that information either. Our office policy is to enter room dimensions and descriptions for every room in every listing.

Brokerages which require all agent listings to be entered by their unlicensed administrative staff are less likely to have these non-mandatory fields entered. If they would make each agent responsible for such data entry and then monitor their work as we do, I believe that buyers would have much more useful and accurate information for each listing. Other non-mandatory fields in the MLS include the following:

> Is the property owner-occupied, tenant-occupied, or vacant?

¨ How close are bus stops and light rail stations?

¨ Is it in an incorporated or unincorporated area?

¨ What are the dimensions and features of the garage/carport/RV parking?

¨ What appliances are in the house?

¨ What kinds of flooring is there?

¨ Does the home have any fireplaces, and where are they?

¨ If there’s an HOA, what are the fees and what do those fees cover?

Our office policy is not only to complete every field on our company’s MLS listings, but to share our MLS data entry in draft form with the seller before making the listing live on the MLS, which also helps to assure accuracy and completeness of our listings.

Have You Wondered About 72Sold? It’s Not Licensed as a Real Estate Brokerage in Colorado

Perhaps, like me, you have wondered about 72Sold, which runs commercials every night on local TV stations, giving the impression that it is a Colorado real estate brokerage, and directing you to www.72Sold.com, which gives the same impression.

In researching this company, the first thing I did was to look on REcolorado.com, the Denver MLS, to see how many listings they have sold. The answer was none, because 72Sold is not a member of the MLS and is not even licensed in Colorado to sell real estate.

So what’s the story? First I asked Marcia Waters, director of the Colorado Division of Real Estate, who confirmed that 72Sold is not licensed in Colorado, and said the division has not received any complaints about them — which makes sense, since one can only file a complaint against a licensed brokerage.

My suspicions about 72Sold were raised further as I scanned the company’s website, which contains numerous testimonials and the following graphic, which has no identification of, or links to, the “five independent studies” cited in it:

To learn more, I posed as a potential seller and requested a valuation on 72Sold’s website, which uses such terminology as “a better way to sell your home.” That sure sounds like a brokerage, doesn’t it?

Registering my name and a home address on their website resulted in a call from a woman who said she was from 72Sold but who, under questioning, said she was actually with Your Castle Realty, a non-Realtor brokerage. So as not to blow my cover, I used the excuse that I only wanted to work with a Realtor, and she offered to have an agent from Keller Williams call me.

Susan Thayer, co-owner with her husband of Keller Williams Action Realty in Castle Rock, was the agent who called me next. I revealed to her that I was actually a Realtor myself writing this real estate column. I explained that posing as a seller on 72Sold’s website was the only way I could find out what was really behind all those TV commercials.

Susan was quite open and helpful and sent me links with background information, including an Inman News article about 72Sold’s partnership with Keller Williams and its many franchises.

Like 72Sold’s website, the Inman story conflated the roles of a lead generating company and a real estate brokerage, reporting, for example, that 72Sold had grown from 10 agents to 426 agents (as of August 2022), when in fact they only have licensed agents in Arizona, where they are a licensed brokerage.  Everywhere else, as I understand it, they have what should be called “referral partners” instead of agents.

What 72Sold does is invest 80% of its referral fee income (according to the Inman story) into more TV advertising in those markets where it has referral partners, and some of that expense is apparently shared by those referral partners, although I didn’t garner any specific numbers.

What 72Sold offers through its referral partners is a strategy of combining a 7-day coming soon period with a Friday-to-Sunday active period during which buyers’ agents may show the home for 15 minutes on Saturday, according to the Inman article. The idea is to create a buyer frenzy and “fear of loss.” With the slowing of the market, that strategy has softened. It sounds great to sellers, however, making the leads generated well worth 72Sold’s referral fee.

Click on the thumbnail below to watch a video from 72Sold’s home page. Judge for yourself whether they are posing as a brokerage in Colorado, where you just watched their TV ad.

https://customer-1v1fe9xdf1t4u6v8.cloudflarestream.com/e02e9ac5fab9ccd518603b7cc92a65c9/iframe

PS: It is a violation of the Realtor Code of Ethics for a member to misrepresent himself or his level of success, but neither Greg Hague nor his Arizona brokerage is a member of the National Association of Realtors, and therefore neither is bound to the Code of Ethics.

An Apple ‘AirTag’ Can Help You Locate Your Stolen Car  

News media is full of reports about the increase in the theft of cars and trucks. This is not a problem for owners of internet-connected cars like Tesla, which you can follow on your app and even limit its speed (15 mph is good!), but what if your car is not connected that way and gets stolen?

Apple sells a $29 product called AirTag which you can hide in your vehicle. There’s no ongoing fee. If any GPS-connected smartphone is nearby, it uses that device to transmit its location. We have one hidden in Golden Real Estate’s truck, and I can use it to see where it is at any time.

Pictured here, the AirTag is about the size of a quarter and about as thick as 2 or 3 quarters. Put it under a seat or floor mat or any other place in your vehicle and know that if your vehicle is not where you left it, you’ll be able to tell police where to find it and perhaps nab the thief.

96.9 The Cloud Honored by Golden Chamber of Commerce for ‘Community Impact’

The Golden Chamber of Commerce recently honored 96.9 The Cloud (KKCL-FM) for its contribution to Golden and the greater Golden/Jefferson County area. Golden Real Estate is proud to have been advertising on The Cloud since its first year in business six years ago. I don’t recall the Chamber having such an award before, and its title is so appropriate: “2021 Community Impact of the Year Award.” The subtext reads as follows: “Awarded for creatively and effectively bringing together community members, resources, and organizations to encourage an environment of support, respect, and thoughtfulness within the Golden community.”

Rita and I have come to know Chuck Lontine, the owner of this radio station and a 7th generation native Coloradan. He is a remarkable man with quite a background, including as National Sales Manager for KOSI 101.  Although KKCL’s signal only reaches Jefferson County from its transmitter on Lookout Mountain, you can stream it on www.TheCloud.FM.

In addition to our regular advertising spots on The Cloud, I also record a weekly 5- to 10-minute report on the real estate market that the station carries.

How Listing Agents Handle Bidding Wars: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I have written in the past about how we handle multiple offers and bidding wars on our listings using an auction style, which we feel is best for our sellers and most fair to buyers and their agents.

Regrettably, very few listing agents handle multiple offers and bidding wars the way we do. Most are sticking with the “highest and best” approach, in which buyers submit an above-listing-price offer without knowing what other buyers are offering.

Usually agents maintain that their sellers won’t let them reveal the competing offers, but I find that hard to believe. Have they even had an honest discussion with their sellers about that? I have that discussion with every seller who hires me and invariably they agree that full transparency about offers in hand is not only going to net them the highest price for their home but is also fairest to the buyers.

I have written in the past that 4 days on the MLS before going under contract is the “sweet spot” when it comes to netting the best price for sellers, and I have supported that opinion statistically.

However, recently we have modified our policy because of more buyers submitting early offers which are too good to pass up. Do we keep our word not to sell before the 4th day, or take the offer?

Rule #1 is that the seller makes that decision, not us. If the seller wants to accept a particularly sweet offer on day one or day two, we ask for 24 hours’ lead time so that we can notify all other agents who have set showings that our timeline has changed. “We have this great offer, and the seller wants to accept it.” That gives those agents time to accelerate their timeline and compete (or not) with that particularly sweet offer.

Regardless of how an agent handles multiple offers, professional courtesy demands that they communicate with other agents and not just ignore the competing offers. Just call us and say, “My seller has decided to go with a better offer.” Give us a chance to recalibrate and resubmit. That’s best for your seller (to whom you owe “utmost good faith and fidelity”), and it’s only fair to the other bidders.

Sometime soon these bidding wars will subside, and we’ll go back to having a “balanced” market. I’d settle, frankly, for a seller’s market that is not crazy wild!

We are still seeing way too many homes that are selling with zero days on the market, often because the listing agent convinced the seller to accept a contract obtained by the listing agent, thereby allowing the listing agent to keep his or her entire commission instead of sharing it with a buyer’s agent.

The Colorado Real Estate Commission frowns upon this practice and has issued guidance that every listing agent should advise their sellers that they may be leaving money on the table (that is, getting less than they might for their home) if they don’t allow the home to be on the MLS for at least a few days so that all interested buyers have a chance to see it and make an offer.

Along that vein, the National Association of Realtors last November adopted a “Clear Cooperation Policy,” making it a violation to have “pocket listings” not on the MLS so agents can see and show it. On our MLS that carries a $1,500 fine.

Legislation Bans HOA Limits on Political Flags & Signage

Before the current session of the Colorado General Assembly ends this Saturday, it will send to the Governor a bill which bars HOAs from limiting the display of partisan flags and signs.

The bill’s prime sponsors are Rep. Lisa Cutter of Jefferson County and Sen. Robert Rodriguez of Denver, both Democrats.

The title of the bill is “Homeowners’ Association Regulation of Flags and Signs” with the subtitle “Concerning additional protections for homeowners’ freedom of expression in common interest communities.”

Sounds like a good idea, right? Who is (or dares to be) against freedom of expression? It has attracted 11 other representatives and 5 other senators as sponsors.

However, let’s consider the unintended (or perhaps intended) consequences of this law. Basically the bill only allows content-neutral regulation of signs and flags, prohibiting only commercial messages.

Considering the political divide in our country and the extremism on each side of it, do we really want to allow unfettered display in our communities of right-wing and left-wing signs and flags?

I can live with the fact that a neighbor might be a QAnon follower, but I don’t want his lawn festooned with conspiracy messages or even Trump 2024 flags and signs without any limitation on their number or duration of display.

Currently it is common for an HOA to bar flags or signs of a political nature unless they are for a particular candidate or ballot measure and to limit their display to 45 days prior to an election and a short period afterwards. The effect of HB21-1310 would be to bar HOAs from enforcing any such limitation on the display of any political message at all, even if the membership voted for such a limitation.

If this bill becomes law, look for signs cropping up in your neighborhood for “Stop the Steal” or “Black Lives Matter” or “White Power” or even hate speech that’s reduced to a slogan. Do we need that much freedom of expression right under our noses every, day year round?

This can only serve to rile up divisions among neighbors who were heretofore happily ignorant of each other’s political beliefs. I can picture neighbors removing or destroying signs and flags they disagree with. These actions will be caught on cameras leading to criminal complaints and sometimes violence.  Do we really want to go in this direction?

Homeowners and renters are entitled to the quiet enjoyment of their premises. Unleashing this “freedom of expression” through flags and signs will only work against that principle.

I hope Governor Polis vetoes this bill when it gets to his desk.

Don’t Let Service People Take Advantage of You

It makes me angry when I hear of service providers telling a homeowner they need a new furnace, water heater or other major repair when they don’t. I got a call recently from a single older woman who has owned her home for a couple decades, the type of homeowner who is often targeted by sales persons to spend money they shouldn’t on repairs and replacements.

In her case, she was told she needed both a new furnace and new water heater, but, knowing I am in real estate, she called me for advice. I listened to her describe the issues she was facing, and recommended she call vendors I trusted. The result? She needed only some minor fixes and no big expenditures.

Women often encounter this problem when it comes to auto repair as well, since they tend not to be mechanically minded or experienced. It burns me up to hear about such stories, so here’s a little advice, in case you can relate to this situation.

If you need (or think you need) a home repair, whether it’s plumbing, electrical, painting, roof replacement, or anything else, call me or your favorite real estate agent (preferably a Realtor), and ask them to recommend a vendor. We deal with such vendors so often, and they count on our referrals for future business. If we refer you to a vendor — and you tell the vendor we did — he or she is less likely to take advantage of you, even if they wanted to, because they know that would jeopardize future referrals. We don’t get a referral fee from such vendors, so you can trust our recommendations.

Use this same strategy when, for example, you need service for your car. Call a Realtor you trust to get a referral to a trusted mechanic to enjoy similar protection against being taken advantage of.

Don’t Fall for This Gift Card Scam

This Monday, people on my contact list received an email that looked as if it was from me, asking for “help.” If they responded to the email, it went to a scammer pretending to be me who said I was in a meeting but could they help me purchase some Google gift cards for me and I’d reimburse them.

This kind of scam doesn’t hurt the person who’s being impersonated, but it hurts his/her friends and contacts who fall for it. Tell your family and friends about this scam and don’t let them fall for it.