Is there such a thing as an unsellable house?
There’s a wealth of information available on preparing and staging a
house to sell, but what about situations where the house can’t be
properly prepared or fixed up to sell? I work a lot with short sales and pre-foreclosures,
and in many of these situations the houses aren’t in great condition.
Often times the seller has no motivation to fix up or clean up the
house.
One house I recently sold was no exception. It was in
foreclosure and we had to sell it quickly. The house was only 13 years
old and needed new flooring, interior paint, and some landscaping work,
but it looked much worse. The owner had multiple large dogs that were
allowed to go in and out as they pleased and the house smelled like a
wet dog. Nearly every room in the house had boxes, clothing, and other
personal belongings stacked floor to ceiling, and some of these rooms
were so cluttered that it wasn’t even possible to get inside the room.
In the listing, I requested that agents contact me prior to
showing so I could warn them of what they were walking into and help
set the proper expectations. I could see the potential of this house,
but most buyers and their agents could not. Some buyers turned around
and walked out as soon as they opened the front door.
Critical Feedback
I
always request feedback from agents that show my listings. I received
several scathing comments about this house from other agents: “Get it off the market!”, “You should be embarrassed for listing this house”, “It stinks!”, not to mention some of the direct insults to the seller even though the agents had never even met the seller.
Seller In Distress
The seller was actually a very nice, thoughtful, intelligent, and
hard-working couple. They got in over their heads on a couple
projects, and as a result had a lot of distress in their lives. They
were spending so much time putting out fires in their lives that taking
care of the house became a low priority. Many people are quick to
judge because they’ve never been in true distress. They don’t
understand that most people make different decisions when in distress
than they would in normal situations.
In the end,
this house did sell—The short sale was approved and the bank took a $190,000 loss.
It was sold to a retail buyer, not an investor as many people might assume. This buyer saw great potential in this house and ended up getting a great deal.