Pat Kennedy - Your Washington, DC Real Estate Connection

Last weekend, I had an Open House in a price range I don't usually work in.  It was very busy, and I picked up several buyers who came by and who were not already working with an agent.  This means that I have to do some homework to figure out what to show these people.

When I checked the MLS listings, there was an overwhelming amount of inventory.  Being naturally lazy, I was really hoping that I could check out the virtual tours and save the hassle of hopping in my car to preview.

In Washington, DC, where I do most of my work, anything built after 1952 is considered new construction.  Unless I'm showing something that has been completely renovated, there is likely to be something old and funky - galvanized plumbing, kitchens that were state of the art during World War One, or heating systems reminiscent of Dante's Inferno, wrapped in a blanket of asbestos.

So often, I hear myself saying, "You know, it wouldn't be all that hard to redo the [fill in the blank].  Actually, I had a conversation something like that with myself when I bought "This Old House" over 20 years ago!  

And over the years, I've done a fair amount of work on the place.  But I was sort of ignoring the bathrooms, which are great examples of early indoor plumbing, and were prioritized just below my face lift in terms of dealing with them.  All that changed when an antique burst pipe, and now I am making more appointments to meet contractors than I am to list and show houses.   

Friday, I was out showing houses to a favorite client when my phone rang.  It was a contractor alerting me that he was emailing a bid, which I checked out on my Blackberry a few minutes later.  When I saw his number, I had to pick myself and my Blackberry up off the floor, and I promised my client that I would never again utter the words, "You could fix that pretty easily," ever EVER again.

She hugged me!  We both laughed. 

Today, the electrical contractor showed up on time to the minute and did the electrical upgrade I'll need to handle the new central air (the place was going to be ripped up anyway, so why not?) and to run the heater on the Jacuzzi.  This is the first step, and I'm glad it finally happened - the pipe burst in mid-April. 

My face lift will have to wait a little longer.  Darn! 

Years ago, I listed a house that showed extremely well.  The owners were anal retentive neat freaks taken to a whole new level.  I mean, you could eat off the floor of the boiler room in the basement.  You could eat off the floor of the firebox in the wood-burning fireplace!  It had been on the market for over a year, and I was their third agent.  And even I couldn’t get it sold after a hefty price reduction.

When a friend gave me a visit to a great astrologer for my birthday, the wise old seer said, “I see a very clean and beautiful house for sale.  It is too clean.  Tell the owners s to burn a fire and leave a dirty dish in the sink.”

They did.  It sold.

 I thought about them the other day while showing a house in Upper Northwest DC.  The owners bought it a couple of years ago as a granny house needing renovation, paying somewhere in the high $600’s.  They renovated it using builder grade materials and appliances, painted, refinished the floors, and I hope they re-plumbed and upgraded the wiring.  It came back on the market about a month and a half ago at $1.6 million, and was just reduced to $1.5.

When we walked in, my buyer noted that the house was obviously staged by a professional to within an inch of its life, and sure enough, in walked the stager with a little table she added to the scene in the living room.  But even at the reduced price, I thought it was still at least $400,000 too high.

A house that shows well, either because the owners are channeling Martha Stewart or because they hired someone make the place look like they are, will probably sell in less time and for more money than a house that is dated, dirty and smells like kitty litter.  But it probably won’t sell for a lot more than it is worth.

Yes, it’s terribly important to prepare a home for the market, repairing dings, de-cluttering, and in many cases, putting excess furniture in a temporary storage bin.  And many people are hanging out shingles as professional home stagers, charging many thousands of dollars to make a house presentable.  There is a school in Georgia that is offering a course that will provide Realtors and others with a Certified Home Stager designation.

And while I think it almost always a good idea to call in the professionals, especially for the décor and housekeeping impaired, that is not going to compensate for overpricing, problematic showing instructions or poor marketing efforts.

It's about pulling together the entire picture!  And we have to remember that good staging is only one (albeit important) part of that picture!

My father was always on time - for everything.  Whenever he had an appointment or meeting, whether it was for the dentist, Mass on Sunday or an airline departure, he always built in what he called "flat tire time".  It was part of some sort of ethic he tried to pass on to his children. 

Like my father, and most real estate agents, I am habitually punctual, sometimes compulsively so, and have been annoyed by people who are not.  And the last couple of months, in the context of house renovations, I've been amazed at the number of home improvement professionals who have a very casual relationship with on-time arrivals. 

If someone says "I'll be there between 1:30 and 2 o'clock, and if they show up at 3:15, is says to me that they are careless with their word in small things.  So, how will they handle the big stuff? 

If a guy shows up late for the first appointment, will he begin work on July 5th, or will it be the 25th?  If I'm planning a week at the beach, will my plans be disrupted by a contractor's schedule?  

I think that most  of the real estate agents I know are good about showing up, especially if they have to meet colleagues at their listings.  Maybe it's spoiled me a little bit.  

Today, an electrician who was highly recommended by central air God, Ron Gallant, showed up on the dot, as did Ron when he came yesterday.  But I'm sitting here at my computer waiting for the final proposal from one of the two general contractors I am considering for the bathroom restorations (this one on my insurance company's list).  They called two hours ago and said they'd email it to me in a few minutes.  I gotta wonder what it's going to be like to deal with these fellows once my house is torn apart and I'm counting on them to put it back together.  

Yikes! 

The good part of this is, I'm learning what it feels like to be kept waiting.  It really, reaaly annoys me.  And it's reminding me what my own clients will feel like if I keep them waiting!

     I just read a post from Dawn in Arizona.  Now I know that part of every prospecting seminar and most sales meetings deal with FSBOs.  And I also know that it's highly unlikely that I will ever go after another one for the rest of my career.

So many of my clients do what I did.  They buy an imperfect house with the best of intentions.  They plan to renovate the kitchen, do some landscaping, lose the purple wall-to-wall in the rec room, and have the lead paint laden cracking plaster repaired.  

Then, like me, they help to pave the path to hell.  They move in and get used to the place.  The avocado green kitchen counter isn't all that bad, and the even though the rec room was inspired by "That 70's Show", the shag carpet has some good years left.  And the weeds in the back yard are really sort of - umm -  perennials. 

Years later, when they unexpectedly decide to move, there's this real estate agent in the living room explaining that, in order to sell the place, they'll have to bite the bullet.  The whole place needs painting.  They need granite for the kitchen counter.  They need ceramic tile for the basement floors.  Then they'll have to paint, refinish the hardwood floors, bring in the Roto-tiller guys to create a back yard paradise and install central air. 

And they don't get a chance to enjoy any of it, because as soon as the work is complete, the For Sale sign goes up and the lucky buyers will get the benefit of their hard work.  Of course, by doing the fix-ups they'll get more money for the house, but if they'd done the work a few years before the move, they could have enjoyed living in a great house. 

OK, I'm learning first hand that renovating can be daunting.  There's the planning, the architect, the contractors, the mess and the disruption.  It costs a lot more and takes a lot longer than you think it will.  And it's often like yanking the loose thread on a hem. 

My bathroom renovation was the yank on the thread.  I mean, ya know?  While they're here, let's go ahead and stick that powder room into a corner of the dining room.  Then, to create symmetry, add a built-in china closet in another corner.  And I need central air, so I might as well go ahead and put that in.  And I'll need an electrical heavy up for the central air and the heater in my new Jacuzzi.  

The good part of this story is that acute condo envy notwithstanding, I plan to live here for a bunch more years.  I'm going to be cool and comfortable in the hot, humid summers.  I'm going to love soaking in the big ol' Jacuzzi with all of its jets and bubble thingies.  And my Mom will love the first floor powder room when she comes for Thanksgiving dinner - assuming the work is finished by then.

In the blog I posted earlier today, the issue here wasn't so much that the listing agent told me that another offer was immenent.  It was that he has told me this in almost every conversation we have had regarding his listing - which is on its 173rd day on the market.  (That's a lot longer than it usually takes to sell a condo in this market - even if it is in the basement.)

I think that most agents could write a book.  I actually did, and it came out late last year - The Irreverent Guide to Real Estate: Buying, Selling and Making Money.  My favorite chapter, one that I added at the very last minute, is "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" and discusses fibs and real estate.

By and large, most of the agents I run into here in Washington are pretty honest almost all of the time.  But once in a while, something will happen that makes me wonder about one of my colleagues.

One of my buyers is interested in a condo in Georgetown.  It's is huge - over 2000 square feet - has a kitchen that could serve as a set for a cooking show, and it's priced well under a million dollars.  Well, there is one little thing - it's below grade (um, in the basement) and is light impaired, to put it kindly.  But my guy likes it.

He's been eying the place for a couple of months, but won't be in a position to put an offer on paper for another week and a half.  

I've been keeping in touch with the agent with periodic schmooze calls.  Three calls ago - early May - he informed me that an offer was coming in any minute.  Two calls ago - late May - he told me he he was expecting an offer that would be presented the next day.  Yesterday's call, he expected a buyer to sign an offer this morning.

Is this the same buyer, I ask?  No. he says, and there has been tremendous interest in the place since the last price reduction.  Why didn't any of the other offers work?  Well, um, they were all oral offers (I don't know about where you work, but here in DC oral offers don't cut it).

So, is this the agent who called wolf?  

These are not huge black lies.  They were what one might call "misleads".  After all, a listing agent is always expecting, or at least praying for, an offer to come in. So implying that he's expecting to have the place sold within hours isn't exactly one of real estate's mortal sins.

Still, after three times and a days on the market figure approaching three digits, I have to wonder.

This is a business where we are worth what our word is worth, and not just most of the time. 

By the way, you can check out the book on Amazon or on my site at www.housepat.com.  If you live in DC, Politics & Prose carries it. 

After about two years of writing Capital Homes (www.housepat.com), a real estate blog about my practice in Washington, DC, I discovered ActiveRain. 

So, whoever thought this one up - great idea!  Thank you!

It's a lot more fun and personal than hanging out in the ordinary blogosphere!  If I have to refer buyers to some other part of the continent, I will start here.  If I need marketing ideas for an especially challenging isting, I bet a few minutes of searching this site will provide ideas.  Or I can just do a little blog posting and one of my new friends will come to the rescue. 

So, it's time to hit the phones and then the streets of our nation's capital - first with Willie the Labradoodle and then with clients (Willie helps me pick up neighbors who might be moving - we are so shameless).