Nutmegger

My favorite is the people who say, "The house is really nice, but I hate the purple paint in the bedroom . . . ."

petitefrancaise

It's all price dependant and what the rest of the house is like.
I think putting in new carpet, painting the interior and maybe painting the kitchen cupboards if it's old (builders' original wooden cupboards) is a good idea if you expect to get a good price. If the kitchen is really naff, get along to IKEA.

In my street, the smaller house with brand new Ikea kitchen, freshly painted and everything perfect and a small pool sold for $100k more than the bigger house, with no pool but needs a lick of paint and kitchen appliances replaced. Both sold in the last 2 months...

Leslie

Some things are just unknowable. You have no idea what type of buyer you will get in there. In this market, I would not update the kitchen just yet. What I would do is put the house on the market "as is" and see what sorts of offers you get. If the $$ are consistently less than what you want then you can take it off the market, do some upgrades, and then put it back on the market.

What I would recommend is a thorough and deep cleaning. The biggest turn-offs for me when I'm looking at a house are any sort of filth and/or decay. I'm not a clean freak but I cannot abide the filth of others. As others have said, if something looks dirty (like the carpet) it plants a seed of doubt about other upkeep that may have been neglected. It's largely psychological but still true. Why don't you hire a professional carpet, upholstery, window blind, etc etc cleaner? If the bathtubs/showers/sinks haven't been caulked recently, do that. A fresh coat of paint and filling in cracks at the baseboards goes a long way.

In this market, I look at it two ways.

1) If they want market (or above market) then I want it to be move-in ready. That doesn't mean all new everything. People who want all new everything already know they will have some upgrades to do themselves ... if not, they need to seriously get a grip or go build a new house.

2) If it's a mess and I'm going to have to put in all new flooring (not because of fashion but because of disrepair) and gut kitchens and bathrooms ... then it better be well below market. If it's not below market, I start deducting $$ off the price in my mind.

If somebody loves the house but hates the kitchen, they may ask you knock some off the price or do some sort of upgrade allowance at closing.

Personally, I think you'd be crazy to upgrade the kitchen. Just fix anything that may be broken. That way the new owners can move in and be functioning from day one. They can do their own upgrades.

OldJuddian

My neighbor was ready to move and planned to upgrade the house this year to be ready to sell. Their interior was very dated, but very well-kept. They were contacted by a realtor who had a couple looking in this area. The couple bought the house as-is and then did a full remodel of the house before moving in. Anything that my neighbor would have done would have been wasted money, and they had a very good offer so the dated interior did not appear to affect the selling price.

This seems to echo many posts in this thread. Ensure the home looks clean/good, but don't spend significant amounts of money.

Pulaski

Personally I would prefer to buy a dated as-is house at a fair price and do what I want to renovate it - and I certainly wouldn't thank you for new carpets! But many people seem to prefer "move-in ready".

I think you need to find out what the best possible price would be for a fully renovated house, and then compare it to the "as-is" price. My guess would be that you couldn't fully renovate the house for the difference in expected sales price.

We had exactly the same decision to make when we sold our house in London, but after I had owned it for five years, three before we married, the rest of the house had been renovated, improved and decorated, whereas the kitchen was an eye-sore, really pulling the rest of the house down - the ceiling sagged, and the cabinets and counters were second hand - had been installed somewhere else previously.

So we did a complete gut-to-the-brick-studs-and-rafters renovation of the kitchen - new walls, new ceiling (returned to its full 9ft height), new floor tiles, and then everything else new too - it looked fantastic! ... Mrs P will never let me forget that she never got to cook in it, not even once!

Honestly, I have no idea if we made or lost money do the renovation - the market was moving pretty fast at the time, but we also learned a lot from the process about how to do it and what looked good. .... I installed over- and under-cabinet lights (roughed-in the wiring before the plasterboard for the ceiling and walls was installed), which looked very cool, and I would certainly do that again!

Leslie

Then we need to agree on a definition of "move-in ready". For me, "move-in ready" means that everything works and, even though it may not be fashionable, I can live with it while I get my bearings, decide what I want to change, and figure it into my budget. The house that I wanted (from the other thread) wasn't particularly new or "up to date" but I wouldn't have minded using the shower/bath or kitchen for 6 months or even 6 years, tbh. However, the seller was asking $30,000 over market and, IMO, he was really taking the piss. That's why that particular house has been on the market since before Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, some of the houses that I've looked at have been pretty nasty and neglected. In those cases, I knew that, if I wanted to make an offer, there were certain things that would have to be upgraded/remodeled immediately. Otherwise, I wouldn't be happy. I'm not completely against this type of purchase, I'm just saying it needs to be a good bargain.

Pulaski

That would be my definition too. .... I think I meant many people seem to expect "ready to be featured in Architectural Digest magazine."

petitefrancaise

You also need to look at the competition in your expected price range. The estate agents will all tell you it's about "the comps"......

Leslie

I think that's true but only in a buyer's market. But these are crazy days in certain areas. I went to look at a really cute house, that had been on the market for 2 days, and by the time we got the viewing ... the seller had already accepted an offer that was over the selling price. This house was "move-in ready" and had great bones but there were absolutely no "comps".

ddsrph

In the new small house I am building I am doing by own kitchen cabinets using very high quality doors I purchased from a company in Kansa called "Raw Doors". They are hickory and finished as smooth as glass, very high quality.
Total cost for doors around $900. My point is you could redo your kitchen for peanuts, Learn a lot in process and maybe come out way ahead financially. They build doors using several wood species. I can give further advice on the how to if you decide to consider this route.

Steerpike

Thanks for all the ideas, thoughts, advice. Good input.

Our house is somewhat unique. It's on a steep hillside, and has great views, floor-to-ceiling windows, etc. But due to the hillside, there's no flat yard to speak of and nowhere for a kid to play; and due to the 40+ foot drop over the deck, not a child-friendly house. There are only 3 houses on the hillside, and none of us have kids; it's an 'adult' house. The three houses sit on a few acres of land, due to the inability to build on most of it, so it's private and quiet, despite being close to town. Being on a hillside like this makes maintenance a chore. Just painting the exterior required thousands of $ for scaffolding. The furnace is way down below the main living area in the cavernous 'basement'/'crawl space' and required an Act Of God to replace (small access door leading to the undeveloped hillside ...). I'm just getting too old deal with it now; I need a house I can maintain as I get older. But I will miss the privacy ...

Being unique makes it hard to do meaningful comps. We've refinanced several times and they always do find comps, but it's not truly a strong comparison. I should pull up those old appraisals, though, and see how the comps are doing today. Not being child-friendly rules out a huge segment of buyers, but then again, the design appeals to empty nesters.

The layout of the kitchen is great, it's just the counter-tops and appliances that are 'tired'. I've been told it's very cheap / easy to redo the carpets, so that sounds like a good idea. Repainting the interior (neutral beige) should be easy too. The hardwood floors can probably be left as is; they look worn but not destroyed. I'm about to have one bathroom redone because it's a mess.

I like the idea of Leslie's to put on the market 'as is' first, and rethink if nothing happens.

I will say, my g/f and I really do need to move into a 'move in ready' home, because we can't agree on anything when it comes to making changes. Before buying this current house, we had put a deposit on a brand new build. We disagreed about every choice (tile size, tile color, grout color, grout width ...) ... it was a stroke of luck that we found this house, 'move in ready' at the time and exactly what we were looking for!

petitefrancaise

Do you know how much you want it to sell for? Then look at other houses in your area in the same price range. At the end of the day if someone can buy a nice house for the same price without spending money then it's going to be harder to sell yours. I'm not sure that discounting the price to make up for lack of new/nice kitchen will work either since a lot of people tend to shop at the top of what they can afford.

How long is it taking houses in your area to sell? If it's just a few days, then just being in the right area will help without doing a load of work, but you're still going to get less money than the house down the street that doesn't need anything doing.

When I was looking to buy a house, I looked at loads despite having only a $50k difference between lower and upper limit. If it was on the upper limit then I wouldn't expect to spend any money on it and it surprised me how many people thought that they could get the same price for their house even if it needed $50k -$100k spent on it.

I wouldn't put it on the market to see what happens - if it is a seller's market and it doesn't sell then after a while it starts to look like a duff house that's too expensive.

Pulaski

I entirely agree - but then why do people out their home on the market with strong colors on the walls?

The first thing we had to do after closing was paint the walls of three bedrooms and the dining room that were olive green, raspberry pink, sky blue, and navy blue. Navy blue was the dining room, and the sky blue bedroom had a 12" wide wavy stripe of blackboard paint around the walls, as it had been a small boy's bedroom with cars glued to the "road". The cars were still attached to the wall!!!

Nutmegger

Because they think the colors look so wonderful that they refuse to believe that others wouldn't agree?

Pulaski

We looked at a house once in the northern suburbs of NYC, Peekskill IIRC, and it was a wreck, in need of gutting to the studs and refitting entirely - the kitchen appeared to date from the 1950's, and the bathrooms were similar, the plaster was coming off the walls in chunks, probably because rolls of fabric had been nailed to the walls in lieu of wallpaper. The windows were huge and single glazed, some were cracked - there were 26 large ones, plus a good few smaller, so realistically decent windows alone would have cost $30k or more. It was pretty much a given that the wiring and plumbing would need to be replaced. In the attic, daylight was visible through several gaps between the roof flashing and the chimneys. Oh, and for good measure there was asbestos in the basement! I believe that the work would have cost about $150k if done to a budget, or $200k with better materials.

The asking price was around $40k less than the highest price likely attainable in that area ($260k v $300k)! We decided that the chances of us getting the seller down to a price that reflected the work to be done was as close to zero as makes no difference and we walked away without making an offer. It was a fantastic old Victorian style house that would have been fantastic when fully restored.