The Holidays are a Great Time to Sell!

Sometimes sellers decide to take their homes off the market for the holidays. This is a mistake!

Any buyers who are looking right now are very motivated. They might have just become preapproved and are anxious to get started. If your house is on the market, they will see it and your house may be the perfect one for them! Take it off the market and they will miss it.

As a seller, you can decorate your house for the holidays (but don't clutter it). Light a fire in the fireplace for ambience. Bake cookies and leave them on the counter. Play holiday music! It's a great time to sell. Sure, you're busy, but go out during a showing and look at the lights in neighborhoods, go see a movie, or go to a local coffee house for a latte or hot chocolate.

Remember that "curb appeal" is still important in the winter. Dig out the old dead annuals from the window boxes and replace them with greenery and battery operated mini-lights. Put electric candles in the windows that will come on automatically at sundown. My favorite decoration is to wrap up big moving boxes with wrapping paper, tie ribbon around the boxes -- the kind that you get in big rolls at Michael's - and place them on your front steps. Shine a spot light on the boxes and your door. Hang the wreath and you're all set! When we lived in Grand Isle, people complimented us on our oversized presents on our front steps. The scale was just right for our big house!

So, while it's hard to keep the house picked up during the holidays, do your best, because the buyers are out there, they are motivated to buy, and it just might be your house they fall in love with!

Home Inspections

We recommend that any home that is purchased go through a home inspection with a professional inspector. The cost is approximately $400 and given the cost of your investment, this is a small sum. There may be extra costs involved for additional inspections that we will discuss at the end.

A professional inspection takes about three hours depending on the size of the home. Multifamilies take longer and cost more because there are at least two "properties" to inspect. The inspector will look at the home from top to bottom, inside and out, and especially focus on the major aspects of the home: structural, mechanical, and electrical. He will also teach you about the workings of the home so you understand how to maintain your future home.

The inspector will tell you how old the roof, the furnace, and the windows are (approximately) and tell you when you might anticipate replacing those items. He will test appliances and flush toilets while running the water in the sink to see if the water pressure diminishes.

The building inspection is not designed to find small issues to use as renegotiation. It is designed to find major defects which the home owner might not know even exist. It is also designed to find safety issues such as ungrounded outlets, no GFCI outlets in the kitchen, bathroom, basement or garage.

At a recent inspection where we were representing the seller, the inspection showed a loose electrical receptacle. We thought this was a loose outlet that was not seated properly in the outlet opening. When the electrician came to repair it, he could not find a problem. The outlet was properly installed. We called the agent only to find out they were referring to the outlet cover. The screws were loose. A butter knife... a screwdriver.. or a long fingernail could have secured the screws in the outlet plate. The inspection is not designed to focus on issues like this.

Have inspections caused deals to fall through? Yes. Sometimes the issues are great and the seller is unwilling to address them or to give a concession on the sales price. We had an inspection where the furnace was at the end of its life and to replace it when it died would cost nearly $8,000. The seller said the furnace was currently in good working condition. The inspector said it could stop working at any time -- and there was only one plumbing company that worked on these particular boilers. The buyers wanted a concession. The seller said no. The contract was terminated and the sellers eventually found another buyer.

More often though, there are small repairs that need to be made and the buyer and seller find a way to make the deal work. Buyers want to buy and sellers want to sell. It is our job to find a way to bring parties together in a win-win arrangement. That is our goal and that is out usual outcome.

What other inspections need to take place? We usually recommend a radon test. Check out this link from the epa site http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/hmbyguid.html

If the house is on a well, we recommend water testing for potability. Rural development loans require several water tests. http://healthvermont.gov/enviro/ph_lab/water_test.aspx

If the house is on a septic system, we recommend that the system is pumped and shown to be in satisfactory condition. This is not a test that a home inspector does but can be done separately by a local septic company. http://www.epa.gov/owm/septic/pubs/homeowner_guide_long.pdf