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Estate home sales are notorious for leaving money on the table as heirs seek to cash out quickly and potential buyers work to get a steal of a price. In selling my father’s home, I faced this reality and the added challenge of putting my father’s home on... (more)
Estate home sales are notorious for leaving money on the table as heirs seek to cash out quickly and potential buyers work to get a steal of a price. In selling my father’s home, I faced this reality and the added challenge of putting my father’s home on the market while living four hours away with a busy job, which limited my opportunity to get to Virginia Beach. I had heard from family and friends who had sold homes over the years many stories of over promises, missed expectations and just bungled attempts to sell their homes, and so I wasn’t looking forward to the task.
With this challenge in mind, I contacted Cathy Mayo Kahn, a real estate agent and old friend whom I had not seen in over thirty years, for some guidance. Even though I knew Cathy from high school years, she took nothing for granted and approached our relationship very professionally. Before I signed with her, she had overviewed her experience as an agent in assessing the value of a home, identifying the best way to extract value from it and formulating a thorough, proposed marketing plan (while also being sensitive to the fact that it was my late father’s home).
Cathy started with a careful assessment of the market and comparable houses in the surrounding neighborhoods to provide me with a realistic basis for the house’s likely sales price. I appreciated this quite a bit since I was not that familiar with home sales in the area and wanted to avoid unrealistic expectations of what the house was worth, especially if I was to invest in some upgrades, as Cathy had advised.
A key aspect of Cathy’s proposal was to encourage select updates to the home that would both increase its sale value and reduce its time on the market. As I was to later find out, her plan met both needs extremely well. Of course, I was not in town to manage these upgrades, but Cathy had a plan for this. She used her extensive contacts in the real estate community to identify the right individual to help upgrade and stage the house. In addition, Cathy managed other contractors and service providers on a number of additional improvements and corrections. I didn’t realize that one could count on a real estate agent for such service—and I expect that, in many cases, one cannot. But Cathy regularly advised me that this was her job and expertise. And she brought to these efforts a wide circle of contacts to handle the many assorted needs—home inspectors, termite inspectors, French drain installers, fence builders, to name a few. What’s more, Cathy regularly demonstrated that I was the customer and no service provider was going to get preferential treatment. Were I to take these steps from my home in northern Virginia, it would have easily extended the timeline and put the house’s sale in jeopardy in missing the peak selling season.
As we approached Cathy’s deadline to put the house on the market, Cathy quickly addressed a number of last-minute items that helped to place the house in the best light. And as the house went onto the market, Cathy began to put into place her multi-pronged marketing strategy to garner attention in so many different channels than I knew existed—including a strong social media plan which would best appeal to likely home buyers in the price range.
Unfortunately for Cathy’s sweeping marketing plan, we began receiving good offers right away, which negated the need for much additional marketing. Still, she insisted on launching additional marketing to increase exposure while I considered the various offers. We received the final offer that I was to accept within two weeks of the house’s listing. This compared with an average listing time in the neighborhood of six months. So, while I was elated with how quickly the house sold, I felt a tinge of guilt that Cathy hadn’t been able to completely display her marketing talents. But it was comforting that she had them in reserve if needed.
The house’s final selling price was about 150% over what I initially was offered for the home before making the updates and, factoring in the investment in the updates, was still over 100% of the pre-update offers. And, by the way, this sales price matched within two percent of Cathy’s original appraisal. Also, as mentioned, the time between my engaging Cathy and the home’s final sale was several months less than the average time on market for nearby houses—including the time spent on upgrades.
All in all, I would say Cathy exceeded by a large measure my anticipated experience in selling the house—I made many fewer trips to Virginia Beach and needed to address fewer issues from afar, and the house sold much more quickly and at a much higher price than had I attempted to sell it myself or, I suspect, had used another agent.
I believe we offered a nicely updated home to the buyers at a reasonable market price while significantly increasing the value that my family received for the house and in likely lesser (less)
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