Show and Sell 2023

Show and Sell: Selling Your Home Today

The author has taken care in preparing this book, but makes no express or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for errors and omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein.

Copyright © 2022 Wild Lake Press, Inc

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without the express permission of the author. This includes reprints, screen prints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing text. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles and reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher (Wild Lake Press, Inc) or author (Bill Hines)."

Second Edition, Version 2.0

ISBN: 979-8987079607

Wild Lake Press, Inc

Nazareth, PA, USA

wildlakepress.com

Please send questions, errors/corrections to info@wildlakepress.com and include the book title and page.

To my wife Lori, who stuck it out with me through all the trials and tribulations described herein.  —Bill Hines

2nd Edition Update (2023)

This book is about how to save yourself incredible amounts of money when selling (or buying) a home. Folks, it’s not that hard. We’ll walk you through two case studies. One in 2022 and one in 2015. One in a strong buyer’s market, one in a strong seller’s market. It’s invaluable strategic advice. One is older, one is newer – but please read them both, as there are tons of relevant tips in each.

As well, this is a book primarily about selling a home, but there are tons of great tips and insights for buyers as well. When you understand a deal and strategies from both sides, you will usually do far better.

Never say I don’t practice what I preach! When I wrote the first edition of this book back in 2015, I had just sold my third house for sale by owner. I started back in the olden times, when there weren’t great resources for doing it, and it was a hard slog without an official real estate multiple listing service (MLS) entry.

My, how times have changed! It’s so much easier in these modern times—even easier than in 2015. As I write this in late 2022, we’ve just done it again. We just sold another home, by owner, saving a load of dough. Details to follow!

So, in order to make this book even more valuable, I updated it with all the new tools and tricks. The great thing is that when we sold the house discussed in the first edition of this book (heretofore referred to as the Lakehouse), we weren’t sure we’d stay in New Jersey, so we rented for a while.

Then, we bought a home in Pennsylvania (we’ll call it the Townhouse), later sold it, and rented again. Our rationale for renting versus buying is at the end of the book. The two case studies offer a significant contrast in selling your home (or buying) in a seller’s market and a buyer’s market.

Enjoy!

Preface

Like anyone else, when my wife and I needed to move (both times!), we had a lot of decisions to make. First, rent out or sell our current home? Get a Realtor? Which Realtor? Sell or rent it out ourselves or through an agency? Make improvements? How much to sell or rent it for? The list goes on and on. Moving is a long, expensive, and stressful process, as are the associated tasks of finding a new place to live and relocating.

I dove right into the business of learning as much as I could about the current state of the real estate industry. I’m a techie, and therefore fully aware that traditional ways of doing things are being transformed by technology.

The beautiful thing is that these days, you can buy many inexpensive books on any topic, written by just about anyone. You can buy and download these titles for instant reading and even preview free samples before deciding to buy.

The bad thing is that a lot of them are not very good, are outdated, or are written from a specific point of view. Realtors, mortgage brokers, or real estate attorneys wrote some of them—people with a bias and agenda that might not be best for you. There are not enough by regular ‘Joe Homeowners’ like me.

The books that have good content are often poorly written. Authors aren’t motivated to pay someone to edit a book that brings in less than a buck a copy and will probably sell a few dozen.

Many of the books I read were rather dry and matter-of-fact. Some of these books were, shockingly, just a few pages. That’s it? Oh well, those were less than a dollar. Who’s complaining?

I read many of those books in short order. Even the worst of them provided me with more than enough value to justify what I had paid for them.

I came across the book Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate after we were already though the process in 2014, and it had some helpful information that I’ll reference in context throughout this book. I carefully highlighted (electronically, of course) the important passages, and then copied all of my highlighted passages into a notebook app. The information was useful in every phase of our journey.

However, as we went along, we also discovered quite a bit on our own. A few things were specific to our situation; others were more generic, or related to the changing landscape of the real estate business.

In the past, homeowners have had two choices—go the traditional For Sale by Owner (FSBO) route, where no Realtors are involved, or use the traditional listing/buying Multiple Listing Service (MLS) Realtor option. Put the emphasis on traditional in both cases. However, the world has changed, and continues to change, and that is the theme of this book.

In my research, I found that there is a new middle ground that has advantages for home buyers, home sellers, and (most) Realtors. It is really the best of all worlds, and a somewhat evolving revolution. This is the method we used twice, and which I’ll describe in this book.

Toward the end of our long process, I felt I had a lot to contribute to this topic that wasn’t in any of the other books. I thought it would be fun to, well, have some fun with it—hence the subtitle...

A Cautionary Tale.

We sure made a few mistakes and had some unplanned things happen.

I have attempted to make this more of a humorous read, rather than a dry set of frightening facts and dire warnings. In telling our story, maybe you’ll be entertained a little as you learn more about the process. I was shooting for a bit of tongue-in-cheek, a bit of read-it-and-weep. The good news is that we harmed no animals in the events that unfold here (just a few humans, because of psychological trauma).

I subtitled this book A Cautionary Tale for good reason, as you’ll see. It may help you realize that selling your home this way won’t work for you. In that case, the book will also save you a great deal of time and expense. Realtors should love the book for that reason—it may be the best thing that’s happened to your profession in a long time!

Some books I read were chock-full of links to resources such as home stagers and flat-fee MLS companies. I found that when I went to use those links, many of them didn’t work, probably because of the companies going out of business. So I didn’t want to clutter this book with that sort of thing. It’s easy enough to search for those resources, and check the recent reviews and ratings.

I will mention the service providers that worked for us. I feel it’s only fair, since they did a good job and often went above and beyond the call of duty. I suggest you use Google (or your preferred Internet search engine) to find the most up-to-date information when you are ready to sell your house.

I hope you enjoy this book, and that you learn some things that will help you on your own home-selling quest. I’ve put some of the most important hints in easily identifiable side notes that you can skim through. Home buyers will also find tips in this book that can save them a great deal of money!

The couple of bucks you spend on this book could save you thousands of dollars or more. At the very least, maybe you’ll get a few dollars’ worth of entertainment value. Especially entertaining are the stories about open houses, where the people who attended did some of the weirdest and most disgusting things imaginable! I hope you will learn and laugh as you read this book.

Your reviews speak loudly, and I hope that if you get something out of this book, you can find time to post a positive review.

1 Backstories

2012 (Lakehouse)

If this were a novel, starting with a backstory would be a bad thing, according to conventional wisdom. But, it’s not a novel. All of you literary types can relax. Just enjoy the ride. Buckle up. It’ll be bumpy. Please place your seat backs and tray tables in the upright and locked position. Expect turbulence ahead. In this book, we’re going to talk about how conventional wisdom can lead you down the wrong roads in today’s real estate market, and cost you a ton of money.

I thought it important to fill you in on how we got to where we were before this saga began. It may help to explain some of our later actions and the thought process we undertook.

It was a dark and stormy night (another bad way to start a novel). In fact, it was the night of Hurricane Sandy, which was in fact quite a dark and stormy night and day. A month earlier, my wife and I had put in an offer to buy a great little place down the shore, as we say in Jersey-speak. We were upset when someone beat us to the punch, and stole the place out from under us. We had always dreamed of living down the shore.

On that dark and stormy night, as we watched the hurricane obliterate great sections of the shore (at least, until our cable went out), we began to second-guess the logic of investing in property there. We had both grown up in the same town and had gone to the same high school a few years apart. We didn’t know each other back then—we met at a high school reunion some years later. Ah, but that’s a love story for another time.

When we were kids, neither of us had been fortunate enough to live on the waterfront of our lake town. We envied our friends who did—those who had boats and docks and could swim and skate in their backyards. In response to my pleas, my dear father’s favorite saying back then was We don’t need no boat, we got friends with boats. He was a wise and prudent man, indeed. That was not my opinion at the time, being a teenager and all.

Many years later, my wife and I decided we wanted that experience. We thought about living on the lake that we grew up near, rather than the ocean. We rented a waterfront home on the lake, with an option to purchase after six months, or allow the owner to put it up for sale. We learned quite a bit in those six months. Living on the lake was pretty cool. Living in a house high above the lake, with a bazillion downhill steps to get there, and uphill on the way back, was not cool.

Living back in our hometown was not cool; unfortunately the place had a lot of problems. Shortly before we had to make our decision, the township jacked the property taxes way up, especially on lakefront owners, and devalued the properties to boot. Thanks, but no thanks! We informed the landlord that we did not intend to purchase and searched for a better lakefront home.

All of this contributed to our experience and knowledge, and would come in handy later as we bought and then subsequently sold our lakefront home. This backstory will help you understand some decisions we made and how our initial renting experience gave us some leverage and strategy.

Long story short (not short enough, you may say, under your breath) we searched for and found a lakefront home in a different township on the other side of the lake. We could get it for a good price because the couple who owned it split up in what seemed to be an acrimonious way.

Let’s call it The House on Crazy Court (or, the Lakehouse for short). This fictionalized version of the street name is not that far off and apparently named for good reason! It was pricey, as lakefronts in NJ are wont to be, but my wife and I were both making good money.