As many of my loyal readers know, Molly and I just built a home in our home town of Duluth. In this rotten economy we took a leap of faith that given our software focused jobs we would stay employed, and could build the house of our dreams near the shores of Lake Superior and across from a north woods waterfall (see our new home).
Late Friday we listed our home of 26+ years. It's now online (see below). Over the next several weeks, months (hopefully not years), I'll describe via my blog what it's like to sell a house in this rotten economy. Hopefully my blog posts will answer the questions:
- We're we stupid to move forward?
- Are we reasonable in our selling expectations?
- Did we set the price to high? to low? ($249,900)
- Are we smart to pay 6% to a traditional realty firm?
- Where will this path lead?
Our home town is in New Hope, Minnesota ... a small middle class suburb of Minneapolis. I doubt anyone would consider New Hope a prestigious address, but it's been a great place to raise Karen, Carl and Erik.
Our initial home marketing decisions were:
- No open house (don't like the idea of lots of unsupervised guests moving through our home)
- A $2,000 investment to refinish the hardwood floors and repaint the 1st floor
Our first important marketing date is this Tuesday. Our realtor, Nancy Lehrman, will host a private open house for other Edina Realty realtors. Molly and I feel that preparing for this private event is key! While my own job with a Fortune 100 company revolves around software, the external web, and social media, I firmly believe I need the help a traditional realty firm. Edina Realty is the biggest realtor in Minnesota, and Nancy comes highly recommended by my daughter's mother-in-law, Kath (also a realtor). Kath, to her credit, told us that having family represent us would not be a good idea. I will always respect Kath for taking that position.
You can learn more about the subject of this experiment below ... the link to the still photographs will give you the home particulars. I consider Tuesday Day #1 of our drive into selling our home. Today is T-2 (Sunday). You can follow all the posts in this series via my blog category Economy 2.0.
The floors look fabulous! That was almost certainly a good investment.
Posted by: Jim Lattin | September 24, 2010 at 04:51 PM