Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 9:51 PM
La Costa Oaks REO
In this video, the house next door on the right to this one (the one you see in the beginning of this video) was also a 3,465sf REO, and closed for $790,000 in January, 2008.
Of twenty houses on the street, two others are also in default, including the house next door on the left, which will make for the trifecta – all three houses that back to RSF Rd. will be foreclosures. Most of these houses sold for $900,000+ when new in 2006, with a handful over $1,000,000.
Whether you have a bank-owned house or not, if you’re selling and have pet odor, you should change the carpet.
If you don’t, the buyers will mentally subtract the cost of new carpet throughout, then x2 because they’re not that familiar with carpet pricing and over-estimate.
Posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 9:51 PM in REOs for sale | 14 Comments » | 
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Don’t let that bother you; it’s only $750K.”
LOL
Tyrone | October 5th, 2008 at 10:52 pmProbably worth $450k in the coming depression.
DKO | October 5th, 2008 at 11:11 pmJim I’m becoming a fan of these videos, your commentary during the walkthrough is golden
Rick | October 5th, 2008 at 11:27 pmDetroit River…funny!
Okay, how about there was some sort of expensive marble or other trim along the edge (you said it wasn’t that, but ???). Why else would they have done that to the carpeting?
BTW, does anyone else get a little motion sickness watching the videos?
CA renter | October 5th, 2008 at 11:28 pmI think you hit the nail on the head–the dog was urinating on the walls/carpet corners. They didn’t want to rip out all the carpet, so they tried to get by just taking out the most urine-soaked part and leaving the rest.
you could put in some bargain basement carpet for a rounding error on the 750K value, instead it’s going to scare everyone away to the tune of 10′s of thousands.
travis lane | October 6th, 2008 at 12:10 amI too had carpet in a brand new condo in scripps ranch cut away exactly like the one in the video. Why? The developer would give you cheap thin carpet included in the purchase price, but you had to go to their “decorator” for any upgrades (which were priced 2-3 times market value). You could not get your own carpet installer in the unit prior to closing.
I had the developer install the standard s*** carpet, closed, and then had my carpet guy put in dcecent, and reasonably priced, carpet in the unit USING THE BUILDERS CARPET AS PAD.
That’s right, a 2″ strip was cut around the perimeter and the new carpet/pad installed directly over the builders. When done, it felt like you were walking on $75.00/yard carpet!
It appears the fromer owners might have been considering this as a last ditch effort to sell at a profit, but the market caught up with them and they abandoned the idea.
That’s my explanation and I’m sticking to it!
Downturn | October 6th, 2008 at 5:50 amOverestimating carpet replacement cost is not because of unfamiliarity with carpet pricing. Failure to properly prep a house for sale shows either ignorance or a lack of concern for the condition of a home, so I double the cost of any needed repairs when calculating an offer as extra insurance against whatever other problems are waiting to be discovered when the part needing repair or replacement is removed.
GeneK | October 6th, 2008 at 7:10 amI had carpet cut like that when preparing a condo to sell- I was replacing the carpet anyway, so I didn’t have to worry if the painters weren’t that careful with their drop cloths, and they could do a much better and faster job painting the base boards, and then when the old carpet was ripped out it didn’t damage the freshly painted baseboards. Of course, I actually DID have the new carpet installed before any potential buyers were shown the unit!
mentalpause | October 6th, 2008 at 7:42 amI think “mentalpause” is the winner winner chicken dinner!. I’ve had painters cut carpet in this fashion to paint the baseboard. It saves them having to drag out the bulk of the carpet.
Just a Broker | October 6th, 2008 at 2:17 pmExcept nobody’s painting anything….at least not yet. Not sure why they would consider ruining the carpet just to paint after being on the market since April.
Jim the Realtor | October 6th, 2008 at 2:26 pmI think it was a combination–seems there were some doggy issues; so they “planned” on replacing carpet; decided that all the carpet wasn’t bad, so were using “downturn’s” $75/yd-carpet-padding-plan (see above post); they started the cut away but never finished.
shoppingaround | October 6th, 2008 at 4:33 pmI went into this house about three months ago. The carpet wasn’t cut at that time but the house had a horrible stench of urine and cigarette smoke. I wouldn’t pay 300K for that sh@thole.
dp | October 6th, 2008 at 10:14 pmFailure to properly prep a house for sale shows either ignorance or a lack of concern for the condition of a home, so I double the cost of any needed repairs when calculating an offer as extra insurance against whatever other problems are waiting to be discovered when the part needing repair or replacement is removed.
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Agree with GeneK on this. Additionally, I consider our time and energy where repairs are concerned and discount for that as well. It’s not just the supplies/labor, but our very valuable time and the disruption that goes with this stuff that will make us discount the price.
BTW, cheap fixes do not bring the price up, either. We discount extra because we “charge” for ripping the cheap stuff out — or “fixes” that are not to our taste – as well.
CA renter | October 6th, 2008 at 10:57 pmHey, Jim,
I love your videos. They always crack me up and make me cry at the same time.
I’m disappointed that there was no “ice cream” truck prowling the neighborhood, though. It could be your trademark. Suggest you give the driver a fiver to drive up your street when you video the repos. It adds a touch of class, dontcha think?
Love your site,
Ricardo
Ricardo vendedor de helado | October 8th, 2008 at 9:22 am