How to sell your home

The market in the Seattle area isn’t taking quite the beating it is in the rest of the country, but the number of homes on the market is growing – there are nearly 50,000 homes and condos for sale in western Washington now, up from about 30,000 when we launched in December. Some of that is the normal cycle of the market (more homes for sale in the summer), but not all of it.

That means more choices for home buyers, which means they can be pickier about quality and / or price. So what to do if you’re selling your place? The experts weigh in:

Greg Swann of the BloodHound Blog

Homes are being sold every day. There are fewer buyers than there were a year ago, a lot fewer than two years ago. But even though too many homes are on the market, some of them are selling.

Which ones? Those homes that offer the greatest perceived value to buyers.

And where is that value perceived? In the quality of the home or in a bargain price.

The seller of house number three can beat “the market” in one of two ways. He can refurbish the home to the quality of house number one, then undercut it on price by five or ten percent. Or he can leave the house the way it is — and cut the price by twenty percent.

Jim Duncan, Real Central VA:

1) Make your house stand out because of the price (make it more competitive than the rest).
2) Make your house spotless. Clean windows, baseboards, floors, corners, cabinets … everything.
3) If you don’t have a huge back yard, make it functional as it is. If you do have a huge back yard, offer your riding mower.
4) Make it sparkle. Do any and all reasonable (and some not-so-reasonable) repairs before it hits the market.
5) Remove any and all objections that you can before the house goes on the market. You only get one chance to make a first impression.

If all that sounds like too much, you can always just sell your home in 5 days, but I suspect that the same rules if you want to get the full value. Just last week I saw signs in Greenwood, Seattle touting “this home will sell Sunday night to the highest bidder.” I should have followed up…

The Frequently Asked Questions we get in person

The Estately team ends up explaining what we do to people – we’re small and we don’t have the name recognition that millions of dollars of venture capitol will bring you. People always seem to ask a few of the same questions though:

Q. How are you different than, uh, what’s it called, uh, Zillow?

A. We have nearly every home that is for sale in Washington and we have tons of local information to let you know what is nearby every home. Estately is a member of the North West MLS so there are over 45,000 Western Washington homes for sale on Estately, while there are only about 150,000 for sale nationwide on Zillow. If you’re looking to buy a home, you should look on Estately or you might miss the best one for you.

Q. So are you like Redfin?

A. In some ways we are: like Redfin, we have an innovative map search interface and we use the comprehensive database of MLS listings. But in some ways we aren’t: we have loads of local information about every home in our database, including which bus and transit stops are nearby, which parks and schools are nearby. We also have information about every neighborhood and city in Western Washington (and pictures for many!). We also have unique search features like text search (‘hardwood floors’ anyone?), “transit search” (don’t like driving to work?) and true area search so you can narrow your search to only the homes in or near the neighborhood you’re interested in. But the biggest difference is that we don’t employ real estate agents. There are so many great real estate agents with years of experience out there (and many more mediocre ones!) that we decided the best way we could help people buy and sell homes and get the hyper-local advice and support they need was to match them with great agents in their area through Estately Agent Match.

Q. How many people work at Estately?

A. There are two of us.

Q. You mean like two business people and a bunch of developers?

A. Nope. Two of us. We both work on strategy, coding and our feature roadmap. Galen does most of the design and the interviews and Doug works on the heavy lifting code tasks. We have both interview real estate agents for Agent Match.

Q. What’s next?

A. Our road map is chalk full of great features, some continuing to focus on finding a home (our specialty!) and some that continue to extend our mission (making finding, buying and selling a home easier). Our most recent innovation, Agent Match, is along those lines: once you’re ready for expert help, we recommend great agents who really know the area and can meet your needs.

Photos and maps

Did you see it yet? In 5 selected cities you can now see a street view, spin around, zoom in and out, watch your neighbor taking out the trash, look through people’s windows and even wander through the streets by clicking on the arrows. Amazon A9 had a similar feature, but the interface was lacking (only side shots) and clunky (no dragging the little dude around to see another area).

This was announced at the same time as Google’s real estate mashup yesterday. Obviously we’ll add this to ShackPrices the moment we’re allowed to use it. What great context it could bring to real estate search!

Search for homes and condos near bus and rail stops

Seattle is a middle-of-the-road city when it comes to mass transit: we have a good bus system, but not much in the way of rail (our first line is coming in the next couple of years). Middle of the road on transit, but definitely on the slow-to-stopped end of car transit, especially if you commute across the lake. The crummy driving conditions make our bus system pretty attractive for some folks.

Recently we’ve had a couple of users tell us they don’t just want to see what bus stops are near each home – they want to live near a specific bus line. We debated the clutter it would add to our search options (not another option unless it’s going to be used!) a little, but decided it would be a fun project, so we cooked up transit search on Friday. Now you can type in the bus routes you would like to live near, select how far from the stops you would like to be, and presto!, only homes near those stops are shown.

Living near mass transit is probably good for property values. And it seems like an especially good idea in the wake of the San Francisco freeway melt down (and the chance it could happen in Seattle). And the impending removal of or the endless construction on the viaduct.

We can’t guarantee that buses will stop for you or that they’ll be on time (but they are faster since the downtown bus tunnel was closed).

Read more about Seattle transit from the transit junkies at the Seattle Transit blog and from the Bus Chick.
(You can search for homes near metro and Sound Transit bus stops and Sound Transit light rail. Other lines not included at this time.)