ImGod

I know your pain regarding the house sale. We did it last year. Our situation was similar to what you were saying, with 4 houses for sale on the same street and at least a hundred in the immediate area. I did some research on the internet and found 1500 similar homes for sale in the three connected suburbs.

Here's my advice on the steps we took to make our house stand out and sell.

Advertise with signs and flyers.

Paint everything that looks like it needs it.

Move excess furniture, clothes, and items out to make the place look bigger.

Hold open houses on weekends with signs at the major intersections guiding people.

And what finally pushed us over the competition:

Look at all the other houses in the neighborhood and set your asking price lower than all of them. The internet was great in figuring out the asking prices of similar homes in the area.

We ended up selling the house for a couple thousand less than the lowest price in the neighborhood. We didn�t feel too bad because some of the houses were still on the market 4 to 6 months later. Four months of double payments would have cost us way more than lowering the price. Plus, it's a pain to sell a house when you live out of town.

We sold the house ourselves without a realtor. That allowed us to drop the price by almost the realtor's commission and in essence dump it in a poor market. Other people we know had to significantly lower their prices after several months but still had to pay a realtor commission. Our biggest mistake was trying to match the market for 3 months. We should have undercut it and sold the house immediately. We sold it the first day we cut our price.

You know the old saying Location, Location, Location. It should be Location, Condition, Price. Unless, of course, if you have a great location.

lowmagnet

I was thinking of telling my agent to drop the price after open house this weekend. The house has some cosmetic flaws (I've only had it for a year, and was planning on fixing it up over the years) so it's not perfect. I'm going out to get carpeting this afternoon, which I desperately need in the dining room. I was thinking of whole house, at least in the common areas, but I'm trying to reduce my cash outlays.

ImGod

Paint is the cheapest fix. We repainted areas that didn't "need" repainting. I was surprised at how it made the areas look new. The new smell of it helped too. Smell and light are very important. Go buy a sugar cookie candle and turn on all lights (including closets) before an open house. Cookies baking smells makes people feel at home. Unless you grew up with a bad cook mother like mine. I needed some burnt cookie smell to feel at home.

We didn't upgrade the carpeting because of the cost. Low price carpeting looks low price even new and we didn't want to spend too much. The people who moved in to our old house tore everything out and put in what they wanted anyway. You could offer a carpet allotment to interested people that mention the carpet. It's just lowering the price for them to put in the new carpet. It keeps your price up if someone comes by that doesn't care about it.

Plus, our price was enough below the rest in the neighborhood that we didn't entertain allotments. Being without a realtor helped us significantly lower the price, but selling your own house is by no means easy.

lowmagnet

I did the paint thing (I have 2 rooms left, and I'm not doing the bathroom -- it's hopeless) and it does look significantly better.

I really should have rented another year. Stupid stupid stupid.

Demosthenes

I'd like to join Monkeybot in welcoming you to the triangle too! I go to UNC in Chapel Hill during the school year. Raleigh's a decent place to live. Sure a relatively small city but it's cozy and have many good spots.

What made you decide to move to Raleigh instead of other places?

ohwilleke

Sounds reasonable.

Your description sounds like my life. I have neither cable or satellite TV (or satellite radio). When our VCR broke (two year olds, plus small objects equal dead DVD players) we replaced it with a DVD (although we have not yet disposed of our VCR tapes). We use one computer, although we have an old Mac that has not yet been disposed of. We have no computer games. We do use our DVD player. I watch maybe 2-3 hours of broadcast TV on the three or so channels we get (mostly the news when I know that I'm going to be on it or a friend is or there is some weather emergency or national disaster or election results). Outdated computer books deserve to go.

We just removed some furniture from our living room that was taking up more space than it should have. Last time we moved we also disposed of a lot of nasty furniture (as well as a lot of nice book cases we had no room for). Our donations to thrift stores (Goodwill, Association of Retarded Citizens, Lupus Foundation) is by far our largest charitable donation each year as we have persistently culled junk.

I would never throw away books which aren't completely outdated, however (it pains me to throw away old almanacs and computer books for programs I no longer own).

lowmagnet

I was looking around and found that there is still a lot of *junk* I'd like to get rid of. There are several boxes of things I should just give away. Like stuffed animals from my childhood which are constantly stored, but still too sentimental to let go. It often feels wasteful to 'clean house'.

I mainly survive on DVDs for video entertainment. Plus, there's my Playstation 2 and Dreamcast. I'm thinking of culling that collection of crap games as well. Less is more!

Non-praying Mantis

I live in Virginia now, but I lived in Raleigh for 3 years.

I didn't have cable either in Raleigh and I got 7 channels:

CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS, UPN, and WB.

You definitely won't need cable.

I second the NC Museum of Art, it was excellent!

Whereabouts in Raleigh are you moving? I lived off Hillsborough Street, about a 15 min walk from campus.

NPM

lowmagnet

I'm going to be living in the North Raleigh area probably somwhere close to Lake Lynn.

lowmagnet

I have been in Raleigh for about 5 days now, and I like it a lot. I have found several nice places to get my food (Taza on Neuse has good Mediterranean, Sitar has good Indian, and Fresh Market is a good grocer for produce so far) and I'm almost ready to close (something about a contract with someone for a lease)

So far so good!