A Well Maintained Home Means a Quicker Sale

Your home mortgage payment is the most expensive item in your monthly budget, so your home should be maintained properly to hold its value. Individuals often think that just paying the mortgage each month and painting the home will build value. This attitude is fine until you get ready to put your home on the market. A home will show better and sell quicker if it has been well maintained and is priced right. Let me give you a perfect example. In 2004, we put our home on the market to move to Colorado from another state. We focused on areas that needed some repair work and spent three months working before putting up a "For Sale" sign. The Realtor that we worked with thought our home was worth around $170,000 in its present condition. We explained that we felt it was worth $10,000 more and explained all the upgrades compared to the other houses in our area. She told us that after we completed our projects, that we would put the home on the market. If we didn't get any offers, then we would lower it to her recommended price. We put it on the market on Saturday, and by Sunday we had three offers. 

Why did it sell so quickly? It was the only house in that price range in our area that was well maintained. We even had several offers for more than we were asking. While still in the negotiating stages, one lady offered us twenty thousand more if we would sell to her. We told the buyers about the offer, and they told us that they were willing to give us more than the original offer. We told them that we would not ask for more than the original price which we had agreed on. It's never a good idea to try to take advantage of the buyer's emotions when the competition starts to heat up.

My point is that the home sold for a fair price because it was taken care of.  The home was built properly at the time of construction and so it was easier to maintain.  We knew this because the home inspector only found two things that needed to be repaired at no cost to us. I had to change an outlet's wiring, which meant loosening two screws and changing the wires around because another contractor had wired it wrong on an addition project.

Home owners need to hire an inspector to locate defects that the home owner may not have been aware of, or may have just overlooked. These defects may possibly create safety or structural problems in the house.  Hiring a qualified home inspector to find these defects, and then repairing the issues, will give you the peace of mind knowing that your home is ready to sell.