{"id":496,"date":"2006-10-02T17:33:57","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T00:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=496"},"modified":"2006-10-02T19:15:38","modified_gmt":"2006-10-03T02:15:38","slug":"looking-for-a-great-trick-to-make-a-house-sell-in-a-slow-market-clean-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/496\/looking-for-a-great-trick-to-make-a-house-sell-in-a-slow-market-clean-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking for a neat trick to make a house sell in a slow market? Clean it!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In last week’s Blog-off Greg addressed the importance of cleaning your house before listing it in no less than three of his posts: #43<\/a>, #78<\/a> and #98<\/a>. When you’re posting over 100 articles in one day you don’t have the luxury of putting a lot of thought into your posts, but keeping your house clean while it’s on the market shouldn’t require a lot of thought. This should be obvious to everyone<\/i>… It should be obvious to those of us who make a living marketing homes, of course. But this isn’t a trade secret. This is a precept that every seller, represented or not, should take to heart.<\/p>\n

So when I was showing a buying client houses this past weekend, I was surprised to see these comments in the Remarks field of the listing:<\/p>\n

This house is priced right and just needs cleaned up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The remarks go on to highlight the features of the house. And everything that was promised in the remarks was dead-on accurate! It’s a wonderful floor plan in my favorite Surprise community, priced $22,000 under the most recent sale of this same model in the same subdivision. The only discernible difference between the higher priced structure, which went under contract only two weeks after it was listed earlier this year, and the house we saw Friday, which has now been on market for six and a half months, is the higher priced house had “fresh paint,” and Friday’s house “needs cleaned up.”<\/p>\n

I had warned my clients before we entered, and told them that the seller was paying, with a low list price, for someone else to clean the house. The house is vacant, so I expected dirty walls that need painting, a dirty perhaps pet-soiled carpet, maybe some nicks or dents in the sinks or on the dishwasher. I had expected the type of problems that maybe a down-on-his-luck seller couldn’t afford to invest in fixing. But the house is only five years old, and as I said, empty, so I had hoped for better.<\/p>\n

Instead, we were faced with an empty home filled with trash. Nothing big, nothing that would Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In last week’s Blog-off Greg addressed the importance of cleaning your house before listing it in no less than three of his posts: #43, #78 and #98. When you’re posting over 100 articles in one day you don’t have the luxury of putting a lot of thought into your posts, but keeping your house clean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-marketing","7":"category-real-estate","9":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2707,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2707\/no-more-web-sites-in-the-remarks-section-armls-drops-the-hammer-on-the-one-little-bit-of-the-21st-century-it-was-getting-right\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":0},"title":"No more web sites in the remarks section? ARMLS drops the hammer on the one little bit of the 21st century it was getting right","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I read about the outlawing of web site URLs in listings on the \"Welcome to Tempo\" page of the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Services (ARMLS), but I wasn't certain it meant what it seemed to mean. Since I have been a Realtor, we have promoted our single-property websites in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":338,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/338\/friday-morning-real-estate-links\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":1},"title":"Friday morning real estate links . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Marlow Harris has a fascinating post on the barriers faced by Muslim buyers and real estate agents. Not to get too philosophical, but this actually ties in with Pope Benedict's remarks earlier this week: Where Judaism and Christianity each represent measured compromises with Greek culture, Islam is in certain respects\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4145,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4145\/every-picture-tells-a-story-orphaned-lockboxes\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":2},"title":"Every picture tells a story: Orphaned lockboxes…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I see this all the time lately. The blue lockboxes are Supra boxes. They cost about $75 each. The vendor box and the front blue box belong to the current lister of the home. We do our homes this way, too, with a Supra box for Realtors, appraisers and inspectors\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3074,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3074\/listing-remarks-haiku\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":3},"title":"Listing Remarks Haiku","author":"Cheryl Johnson","date":"May 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I finally commenced a project I have been contemplating for some time:\u00a0 I started printing out pages of property description text from various Bloodhound Realty single property web sites to put into a three ring binder, so I can refer to them for inspiration on those days that I struggle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Casual Friday"","block_context":{"text":"Casual Friday","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/casual-friday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1444,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1444\/by-withholding-the-secrets-of-the-mystical-mls-system-are-we-betraying-the-home-buyers-interests\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":4},"title":"By withholding the secrets of the mystical MLS system are we betraying the home-buyer’s interests?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In all my spare time, I've been working over the past few days on a real estate porn movie. The film features pictures from hundreds of homes, with loads of juicy details. We took the photos over the course of years, so it's entirely possible that some of those homes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Enduring Interest"","block_context":{"text":"Enduring Interest","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/enduring-interest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18706,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/18706\/dont-drop-that-listing-price-just-yet\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":5},"title":"Don’t drop that listing price just yet!","author":"Brian Brady","date":"May 6, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Southern California, agents are telling me that homebuyer enthusiasm has dropped quickly.\u00a0 More homes are on caravan and some are starting to reduce listing prices to get the home sold.\u00a0 Tampa Bay area agents are whispering the same.\u00a0 And while the US Home Price Index rose 2%, year over year,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}