Homeowners fixing up their homes to list this spring will have to decide where to put their time and money to get the most bang for their buck. Zillow has been there, and the practical tips and tricks their experts have learned after selling 10,000 homes could help you sell yours.
Zillow-owned homes, acquired through Zillow Offers in 25 markets nationwide, are carefully evaluated, repaired and cleaned before they hit the market. Zillow invests in the projects that make a home safe, clean and functional, and each time learns more about what appeals to buyers. By sharing these tips, Zillow hopes to help all sellers prioritize their home prep projects.
Pick the Perfect Paint Color
Painting is one project nearly all sellers take on before putting their home on the market. It is an affordable home improvement project that has a high return on investment. But when you’re thinking about resale, you’ll want to be strategic about the colors you select.
When Zillow needs to freshen up the walls before listing a home for sale, it uses Behr Premium Plus paint in either Aged Beige, Campfire Ash or Polar Bear. Neutral greige or taupe paint colors appeal to the widest group of buyers and don’t distract from a home’s best features.
Fix your Faucets and Fixtures
The two most common items Zillow repairs or replaces before listing a home for sale are faucets and light fixtures. A buyer may jump to the conclusion that a leaky faucet is a sign there may be water damage, while a broken fixture could inaccurately signal potential electrical problems. Either can suggest a home hasn’t been generally well-maintained.
These are both DIY-friendly fixes that could boost your home’s value. If you’d rather hire a professional, a Zillow and Thumbtack report finds you can expect to pay, on average, $205 to replace a faucet and $380 to replace a light fixture.
Clean the Carpet
A clean carpet is critical if you want your home to make a great first impression. Steam cleaning will often do the trick, but if your carpet is torn or has permanent stains, you’ll want to replace it.
Zillow uses Mohawk brand carpet in either Charger Classic or Scout Highgate. Selecting a high-performing, stain-resistant carpet in a neutral taupe color will appeal to the most buyers and add value to your home.
Sweat the Small Stuff
Zillow takes care of all the items that make life easier for the home’s next owner. These items include landscaping, servicing the HVAC system, and replacing all light bulbs and batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
By taking care of these items before putting your home on the market, you can boost curb appeal and give a potential buyer confidence that your home has been well-maintained.
Say No to a Full Reno
Home improvement TV shows often suggest you need a gut renovation to get top dollar in resale. However, Zillow research finds big renovation projects hardly ever pay for themselves when it comes time to sell, with a few exceptions.
Zillow rarely completes any major upgrade to a home that would dramatically alter its footprint or its value. Instead, Zillow focuses on the projects that make a home clean, safe and functional for a buyer, repairing items instead of replacing them when possible.
“Buyers often want to put their own stamp on a home and have it reflect their taste,” says Lindsey DellaSala, a broker with the DJ and Lindsey Team in Jacksonville, FL. “Let’s say you decide to upgrade your backsplash before selling. The trendy statement tile you love may not be what a buyer is looking for, and that could hurt, rather than help, your chances for a speedy sale.”
“When a buyer walks into a Zillow-owned home, they know it is move-in ready and they can add their personal touches over time,” says Claire Caldwell, Senior Director of Renovations at Zillow. “By creating that same kind of blank canvas in a safe and clean home, you can help buyers better envision their lives there.”
Embrace Tech
Online curb appeal is more important than ever, as most home shopping has gone virtual. Zillow-owned homes are listed for sale with professional photography, a floor plan with dimensions and a virtual 3D Home tour that gives shoppers an immersive experience of a home from the safety and comfort of their own living room.
Sellers can harness the power of tech to showcase their home’s best features by using the free 3D Home app to create a virtual tour, and explore other digital tools such as virtual staging.
(JtR: Big difference between ‘high-tech’ and robotic, which is the sales method they are pushing)
A simple one-day surge will only cause the few buyers who have a property right in front of them to hurry up and buy it. If rates continue into the 3s, it will affect everybody.
Recovery prospects, renewed focus on stimulus, inflation concerns, a brighter covid outlook, etc… All of these are reasons for an ongoing, gradual trend toward higher rates in 2021 (i.e. general bond market weakness) but none of them really explain why the bond market had its worst day in months today specifically. Still, pundits are pointing to the laundry list of usual suspects to explain the move. In their defense, that’s all anyone can really do on a day like today. At a certain point market momentum becomes its own justification and bond prices snowball to lower and lower levels.
When bond prices fall, rates rise–a fact which is abundantly clear in comparing today’s rates to those seen late last week. The average lender is quoting conventional 30yr fixed rates that are roughly 1/8th of a percent higher, and that’s a huge move for a single trading day.
Statistically speaking, Idaho is one of America’s greatest economic success stories. The state has low unemployment and high income growth. It has expanded education spending while managing to shore up budget reserves. Brad Little, the state’s Republican governor, has attributed this run of prosperity to the mix of low taxes and minimal regulation that conservatives call “the business climate.”
But there is another factor at play: Californians, fleeing high home prices, are moving to Idaho in droves. For the past several years, Idaho has been one of the fastest-growing states, with the largest share of new residents coming from California. This fact can be illustrated with census data, moving vans — or resentment.
Home prices rose 20 percent in 2020, according to Zillow, and in Boise, “Go Back to California” graffiti has been sprayed along the highways. The last election cycle was a referendum on growth and housing, and included a fringe mayoral candidate who campaigned on a promise to keep Californians out. The dichotomy between growth and its discontents has fused the city’s politics and collective consciousness with a question that city leaders around the country were asking even before the pandemic and remote work trends accelerated relocation: Is it possible to import California’s growth without also importing its housing problems?
“I can’t point to a city that has done it right,” said Lauren McLean, Boise’s Democratic mayor.
That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already visited Boise, Nashville, Denver and Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.
Housing costs are relative, of course, so anyone leaving Los Angeles or San Francisco will find almost any other city to have a bountiful selection of homes that seem unbelievably large and cheap. But for those tethered to the local economy, the influx of wealthier outsiders pushes housing costs further out of reach.
More from the 1979 series on Channel 8. I love this quote in the article:
“House hunting, today it’s a frustrating, time consuming and often times depressing process,” said Janet. “True, San Diego is the most expensive place to buy a home in all of the Continental United States, but that doesn’t mean only the affluent can buy here.”
Hard to believe that new-Pardee pricing is where Toll Brothers was 12-18 months ago. But this is the only game in town if you want a new house in the 92130 – especially a larger one-story:
We are up to 276 new NSDCC listings in January, which is 22% under last year’s count of 353 listings!
Here are the guesses – our winner is lifeisradincbad, congratulations!
234 – REOAndre
270 – lifeisradincbad
289 – Derek
305 – Joe
311 – Old Man
318 – Doughboy
325 – Haile
333 – Kris K.
347 – Big Crazy
353 – TominLaCosta
383 – Skip
387 – Amy
396 – Curtis (distance to centerfield wall at Petco!)
404 – Majeed
420 – BigDave
422 – Colleen
425 – Rob Dawg
432 – Tim
440 – Ben
If the total keeps climbing and gets up to 280, Derek will win the same prize – tickets to a Padres game and the U.S. Open. The slower start is probably due to the covid/nothing-else-to-buy/waiting-for-Prop-19 combo, all of which might open up a little in the coming weeks.
Last year at this time we had 222 active NSDCC listings priced under $2,000,000. Today we have 77!
This house went live on the MLS around lunchtime on Thursday, and by Friday afternoon all 52 showing-appointments allotted for the weekend were booked:
I got here early enough to catch the 3:15 agt on her way out, but the 3:30 agent showed up ten minutes late (his clients were on time) and he locks himself inside the house – which is all it takes to screw up the whole schedule. I was the 3:45 appt – I think there were at least five other parties who came after me:
Are you thinking about moving, but after living in San Diego, you wonder about places like Austin where the high temperature today is predicted to be 28 degrees? How about Mexico? Here are some tips:
In 2006, after years of living paycheck to paycheck in Santa Cruz, California, I decided to move to Mexico. I was 50, and a prior vacation in the beautiful coastal town of Mazatlán had convinced me that an easier, happier and affordable lifestyle was possible.
Right now, it seems like many people are fantasizing or seriously thinking about moving out of the U.S., but are unsure of where to start. I thought I was well-prepared, but it was still a bumpy ride for a couple of years until I really felt settled. Today, I’m retired and living on just $1,000 per month.
Here are some tips I wish I’d known in the beginning:
1. Visit more than once, in different seasons
Once you’ve decided on a place, make an exploratory trip — and stay as long as you’re able to. I took a one-month leave of absence from my job and rented a furnished apartment in Mazatlán to see what it was like to live in a neighborhood instead of a hotel in the tourist zone.
Why different seasons?
Because that beautiful beach town may become unbelievably hot and humid during the summer months; those cool mountain breezes might warrant space heaters and wool sweaters in January.
Listen to, but don’t rely completely on, what other people say, no matter how reputable they seem. Only your experience can tell you exactly how you’ll feel.
In the 1980s, one of the first places I lived in San Diego was at the Rancho Mission condos just across the freeway from the Murph. We used to walk to Padres games and and pay a few bucks to sit in the outfield and watch a few innings. For a guy who loved playing baseball all my life, it was a real treat for the games to be so accessible.
In 1988, we went to the Chargers vs. Raiders game the night after our wedding (we were married at the Mission down the street), and later took my young kids to a Chargers game – but vowed I’d never do that again after the cussing/fights.
In 1998, we became Padres season-ticket holders, and we went to the World Series our first year! The playoffs against the Astros and Braves were epic, but we got swept by the Yankees – I did go to Game Three though! I thought man – I hope this happens every year!
I was there when Rickey Henderson got his 3,000th hit in the last game of the 2001 season, which was also Tony Gwynn’s last game. It was such a treasure to see so many of Tony’s games – nobody played like T!
We saw a few concerts there too; the Eagles in 1994 and we took the kids to see two of their favorites – Beyonce and Coldplay too.
Once the Padres moved downtown, I really appreciated the greatness of the Murph. The field-level seats had their own concessions right under the stands so you could go to the bathroom and grab a hot dog & beer without missing more than an half-inning. Try that at Petco Park! Plus the parking was fantastic when you compare it to the nightmare downtown.
I don’t think that I hate Petco…..I just miss the Murph:
