Which Home Improvements Actually Pay Off Before Selling, with Ian Krause

We walk through the exact prep and pricing blueprint that helps a Bellingham home sell well over asking even when the market feels balanced. We focus on the upgrades that create a move-in-ready feeling, the projects we skip on purpose, and the hidden upside that comes from confirming zoning and ADU potential. 

• deciding whether to list high, at market, or a little low to trigger multiple offers 
• using comps to pick the right price bracket and avoid over-improving 
• learning which bigger remodels can pay off when they improve layout and views 
• timing a sale around interest rates, renting headaches, and capital gains rules 
• choosing high ROI updates like paint, touch-ups, and tightening loose fixtures 
• making smart flooring calls with carpet cleaning versus replacement 
• boosting curb appeal with exterior paint, pressure washing, landscaping, and window cleaning 
• coordinating contractors and photo timing for a clean listing launch 
• staging and decluttering to help buyers feel at home 
• emailing the City of Bellingham to confirm zoning, ADU, or subdivision options and marketing that upside 

Comment or subscribe if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do.

You can reach Ian at iankrause@johnlscott.com 

Transcript

Welcome And The Real ROI Question

0:07

Hello and welcome to the Bellingham Real Estate Podcast. I'm Paul Balzati. I'm here with Ian Cost. Welcome Ian. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, second time on the podcast. It's been about, what has it been, three years? Yeah, three years. This is the last time we've been on in the in the newer studio in the new office. Good to have you on. And today we are going to talk about what home improvements actually pay off before selling. And this could be for somebody considering selling right now, this year, or of course, if you're just remodeling your house, updating your house, you know you're eventually going to sell it. We have some good stuff for you today. And the reason I want to have you on to have this conversation is, you know, we had been in a seller's market for several years. And then this last couple years has been more of a balanced market. And you sold your personal home recently and had a lot of success with the process, got well over asking price, and uh in a in a balanced market, right? And where it's not necessarily guaranteed to happen. And so, and it's so it's a good example for what to do. We're gonna go through that blueprint that you had a lot of success with. And it's also a good example of practicing what you preach, right? Because you know, it's one thing to be a realtor and talk about doing this stuff, it's another thing to do it yourself. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so first off, um, well, and why don't you give a quick summary of like what happened and then and then we'll kind of go all the way back like to when okay, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, so we sold our primary residence um this spring. We had we had moved, we'd been living there for like seven, eight years, and then last year we moved across town. The the house where we were, we were living on Sandwich Hill, and then we moved over to Northern Heights area, the other side of town. Um we decided to move and buy first in the winter to kind of time the seasonal market, and then we rented out on Airbnb uh midterm, and then just listed it this past spring, um, which was two two months ago, roughly. And then

The $899K List Price Strategy

2:10

you and then and then just and then you why don't you tell everybody like let's just like how it went so we could then kind of go into how it started. So you uh okay. You got you got well over yes, what I think is worth sharing because oftentimes when we um are talking with people who want to sell a home, a a common question. I mean, let me know if you agree with this. I totally a common thing that comes up almost every time is like there's three different ways to to strategize listing your home, right? You can list it a little bit high, yeah. Maybe you get an offer that comes in a little bit low, but it's still gonna be above market value. You can list it at market value, or you can list it a little bit aggressively below market value. Everybody always asks, how low is that aggressive number? And they have to decide like if they're willing to do that. Almost everybody says no. Yeah. But when we were going through this process, what I what I learned it was helpful doing it for our own home was me and my wife talked, we're like, if we sold our home for that low price, which was $8.99, was our lower, because we thought it was roughly worth $9.25. Would we be happy with that? And the answer was yes. And so then we moved forward and did it, and ended up working out exactly how we us at John L. Scott like say that it's likely going to, stat statistically, it's going to. Um we listed a little bit low at $8.99. We ended up having um multiple offers come in and then it they escalated each other and end up um going for like over a hundred thousand dollars over our list price. Um, so just it was like a per perfect list listing situation, and I think it's good to share that with anybody who's in the process um or thinking about selling their home. Yeah, absolutely. And so uh that's the kind of success you had. So let's take a step back. So we're gonna talk about what the like most important improvements to do right before you list your house. But let's go back. So, how old was this house that you had? Um, when you like what was your bill approximately? Yeah, it was an older home. I mean, very typical in Bellingham. It was on Samish Hill. It was built in, I believe, the uh 20s or 30s, but that was just the initial main structure. But then over the course of a hundred years, it had two or two or three different add-ons. Um, the one most recently was like in the 70s, I think they added on a little bit. Um, and then we did a pretty major um interior remodel like five years ago, which which included um the kitchen. The the house kind of had like that like 80s, 90s vibe where it had a lot of wood, everything was really dark, there wasn't the open concept to it, walls everywhere, um tile, tile kitchen, countertops, that sort of thing. And so just to give everybody a reference, so we're gonna cover what you guys did five, six years ago versus what you did right before you were gonna sell. So this is when you guys were just planning on living there, right? Like you did a remodel just to do the remodel for yourselves, not thinking about the return yet. Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, um, but I think I think it gives context of what we actually did when we sold it. Totally. Because we weren't actually going from like a house that was like built in the 20s to getting it on the market. Yeah. Um, so like five years ago, our plan it was gonna be our forever, our forever home. And so we I think we remodeled the kitchen, the dining room, and the mass the primary bedroom. Um, we knocked out two different structural walls, so it was a significant remodel. Um and so that's that's because we were planning on living there forever. We had um another child, and so then we decided it wasn't this house wasn't gonna work, and so we decided to sell it. So when we were looking at selling, we had just remodeled it five years ago. So there was some things that we needed to do. Um, but like I would say roughly half of the house had just been updated five years ago. And so what structural walls did you take out um and why? Um, yeah, so in in the kitchen, um, just to give context for this house. The house is on Sandwich Hill, so it had a really nice view of Bellingham Bay. And what I thought was so silly with this house was they had the the kitchen was just walled off on either side. They had um, I don't know what those those those walls are called, but they're like like a galley kitchen? It's like they're made they're made out of wood doors and they open and close and they have the wood slats. Oh yeah. So it's not like it's not a full

Remodel Moves That Earned Back

6:40

wall. Yeah, but you can open and close-what do you do what those are called? Uh like a pocket door? Not even a pocket door, no, like years before pocket doors were even a thing. It was like it was an accordion style door that you open and close. Oh yeah, I don't remember what that's called, but I know what you're talking about. I you very rarely see that very and so um we removed both of those, and then the plan was um by doing that, it opened up the kitchen, so it um was an open floor plan to the living room, but then also the dining room. But the the really big thing was by removing one of those walls, it allowed the person in the kitchen to be able to actually see the view. Yeah. Because before it was so crazy that you were in the kitchen and you didn't get to see the the view. Yeah. Um because you have a water view, yeah. Yeah, so that was that was the big focus, was like uh my wife loves loves to cook, and so it's making it like enjoyable to be able to host and then also enjoy the view when you're in there cooking. Yeah, and I think that's a good the good takeaway there is it's like I think sometimes when people want to like when you when they walk in a house and they're like, Oh, I'm gonna take out this wall and do this, a lot of times that can get really expensive and not be worth it. But when it comes to opening up the kitchen, especially if the layout is right or it's gonna open up a view and things like that, that actually probably did definitely have a return when you look back on that. Oh, it it absolutely. And then you and then you took out the wall and you put in an island, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before there was no no island. Yeah. Um, we put in put in a huge island with quartz countertops, um, and then had like the bar seating so you could host and people could sit there. I think we'll talk about this a little more in the podcast. Um, but it really depends on the price point of your home as far as doing those those major updates and remodels. Um, in that situation, it did pay off and was was worth it. Oftentimes people really want that open concept. Um, but it's not not true across the board 100% of the time. Yeah. So you had done some pretty significant remodeling, opened up the kitchen, done some things for you to live there long term. Then take us to when six months out, five months out, you guys were thinking about selling, where are you at and what was the next steps? Yeah, so um, well, uh a huge a huge factor was this was uh this would have been December of 2025. We bought a home and interest rates were six and a half percent, so about what they are right now. Yeah, we knew this going into this. We had a six hundred thousand dollar mortgage with a six and a half percent interest rate. You can imagine our monthly payment on that. Yeah, so our hope was we did a two-year temporary buy down with the hope that we'd be able to refinance, but our backup plan when we bought the home was always we were gonna be selling the home we had moved from. Um once we got moved in and settled, we started like looking at the numbers. Also, there were some uh a few headaches with uh being a landlord and renting, um, which was a factor. But then a big one was uh capital gains. Um we were getting close to that uh two-year mark of the past five years having to be a primary residence, and so that was the big kicker. Um, we didn't think that if we were to hold on to it for another five years, the money would have paid in capital gains, we probably wouldn't have made more money if we would have sold it in four four years from now. Yeah, because it is a 15% something like or more. Yeah, it's more than that. Yeah, actually, capital gains pay more than that right now. Yeah, so it's it's significant, it's really significant. So, yeah, you if you lived in the primary as your primary resident for two of the last five years, then you can you can have then you can uh avoid that tax. Yeah, yeah. You get the five hundred thousand dollar uh capital gains tax exemption. And so we we of course wanted that it wasn't worth being a landlord for the appreciation of the home for another four years just to have that go into paying the capital gains. So that was a big factor in it being like we knew when we had to close, and so we had like a year to to work with to decide when the best time to list the home was and what steps we want to do in that time. Okay. So now you are know you're gonna be selling in the spring. Um, what did you prioritize as far as what you what what did you guys want to get done? And and that's kind of getting to the meat of this, is like what did you know as a realtor you already kind of knew, and then so what did you prioritize and why? Yeah. Um I think it it really started like in order in order to answer that question, it kind of goes back to like when we had decided we were gonna sell, which was like six months plus from when we knew our our list date was. Um, what we did is I went around and looked at all the comparable homes to see what what we could get for our house. Um, and then kind of eyed up like what our price bracket was. Yep. And our house, um it was like it was in between eight seventy-five. I mean, some people even told me it was like closer to like 850, and then up to like a million was like the very, very high end. So it was realistically like 875 to like 950. Um, but if if you're familiar with the real estate market at all in Bellingham, um if you're looking at like a mil a million dollar home, that's like those are nice houses, especially over like on Samush Hill on that side of town, which is where the house was. And our house, we we were realistic that we had remodeled it. There was some, you know, some some like things that we hadn't completed. Um I think the roof that was on it was probably 10 to 15 years old. And so we knew that whatever we the money we put into it, we didn't want to get to a point where we were trying to compete against those million dollar plus homes. Yeah. Because those homes are just so nice. It wasn't it wasn't gonna be beneficial for us. And so we used

Rates Landlording And Capital Gains Timing

12:20

we used that number to look at what we could do for projects that had a h a high ROI um that would make the house show really well, um, and would compete with like in the 800 to low 900 price point. Yeah. So so that's that that's a key takeaway. There is, you know, this is why we always recommend if you're thinking about selling to talk to a realtor three to six months before, so they can do that analysis. We can figure out, you know, where what price range you're gonna fit into before you start going too crazy on improvements and things like that, because you might end up kind of over improving um for what you need to be, what you need where you really need to fit yourself in. So you guys are thinking to yourselves, okay, we can only we we already we're already this point, we're already in the mid-eights at least or mid to high eights. So, and we want to make sure we're at least at this number, so we don't want to go too far. So, like, what did you land on as far as like what projects you were gonna do and what projects did you guys do? Yeah, let's just talk about not necessarily like the the weekend before, but like what you did in that last couple months. Yeah, yeah. So to give you some specifics, um the the bathroom downstairs had not been remodeled in a long time. It was that it's definitely due for a remodel, but we just didn't like, I mean, you're looking at like that was gonna be 10, 10 grand, possibly more. Um to totally remodel it, yeah. Yeah, we just we didn't think that was worth it. Um there was some exterior stuff where we had like an outdoor seating area where I'd always had these visions of like making it really nice, like putting in like a hot tub gazebo type thing. That would have been like another $20,000. So right there, that's like all of a sudden we're at $25,000, and that puts us up into that we'd have to sell it above $950. Otherwise, because then you have to factor in, you have to contract the work, you have to do the work. And so we decided not to remodel the the bathroom, not to that that big exterior, like hot tub edition type thing. Um, and we just went with some other smaller, just less less expensive things um that we thought would bring around uh higher ROI and and they did. What things um so a lot of a lot of cosmetic stuff, and this is often what what we suggest um at at John John L. Scott. Again, it really depends on the price point, but for a general rule of thumb, I mean you can't like let me know if you agree with this, but very often you can't you can't go wrong if the if the interior of the home hasn't been painted in 20, 30 years, I mean, spending the money to to paint the interior of the home is you're usually gonna get that money back. And the big reason is it's just gonna show so much better when people come through. Yeah. Um carpet, um, I think carpet is usually a pretty good one to do. Um, that depends on your carpet supplier and the cost you can get it for. Yeah. Um, we also our exterior paint, we were starting to get some chipping in areas. It was actually a uh metal siding, and we knew from previous experience that trying to do like patchwork, it just it never you can you can tell. Like it doesn't look like a new new painted house. And so we were like, well, we're gonna be spending like a couple thousand bucks to do the patchwork anyways, with a trim that was rotted and whatnot. So we're like, we might as well just do the outside right. We completely repainted, totally new color the exterior. Um, and that included the the trim, like the the railing on the decking. Um, and the goal was just to like when people drove up our driveway, we wanted them to be like, wow, this is like a beautiful house. Yeah. Not oh well, I can see a little like chip paint. Like as as their first thought. Yeah, so curb appeal. Exactly. Yeah, curb appeal. So you did you did fresh exterior and interior paint. We didn't we didn't do we didn't repaint everything inside, okay, but there were specific walls where you know we had artwork hanging up, and then you have like the the sunspots when you remove something like that. Um, and so I think we probably paint we repainted like maybe four or four walls. So it was it wasn't the full thing, but keep in mind we had just repainted our house five years ago in inside. So um that we did do the entire outside of the house repainted, and then there were some other small things. Our kitchen cabinets had gotten dinged up. Um we had a two-year-old son, and that was noticeable. And and the kitchen was one of the selling points of of the house. And so we went through and like touched up the kitchen um cabinets

High ROI Fixes Versus Overdoing It

16:46

and um yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, the other thing I was trying to, I was like, there's so many things that happen when you list a hundred. But um the the the upstairs bathroom, like all the um the hand, the the paper towel or hand towel and the toilet paper like racks like on the on the wall, those had all gotten loose because we've been Airbnbing it for the past year. And it was to the point where like it was one of those things where like when people walked around, I wanted people to feel like the new owner would be able to move in and not have to do anything right away. Like, of course, there's stuff they could do, but nothing they had to do. And so we had a contractor come in and um like properly install those so they weren't like wob wobbling around if someone wants to use the wash their hands and then find that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so there's some really good takeaways there. Um, number one is exterior paint, curb appeal for sure. Yeah, um, getting the curb appeal to where it was like a wow factor when you walked when you walked up and and then interior, you know, if it hadn't been repainted, you would have done it, but because it had been repainted recently, you just repainted some walls, like entire walls, and giving that fresh coat of paint on those walls that were more dingy. Sometimes that can be like a couple bedrooms or like a living room or whatever, but getting that fresh paint where it's needed, that's really good. Yeah, I love the idea of also um the little loose kind of knick-nacky things that are kind of wear and tear things, kind of buttoning those up. Um, and then what you said last, I love, which is you're saying, like, you know, make sure the buyer feels when they're walking through the house, like they don't have to do anything. So, like, it's okay if not everything's totally new. Like your downstairs bathroom was still dated. There's some still things that are like not perfect or not or not completely remodeled, but like at least everything about it felt move in ready, which is like exactly the right feel that like gets you the best ROI, I think. So that's all really good. Can I chime in there? I just thought it was something while you were saying this, but you you you refer to stuff as like nicki-nacky things, yeah. And that made me think it's like look just like a general rule of thumb when you're getting your house ready. If like if you're looking at something that you think should be redone, if it's gonna be like hundreds of dollars, it's probably worth doing. Yes, if it's thousands of dollars, that's when you really need to think about it. Look at your competition, the homes that you're competing against. If it's if you're talking about hundreds of dollars, that feeling that people have when they come in that home knowing that they get a move in and it's moving ready. I would I would almost say 100% across the board, that stuff is is is worth doing. Yeah, and another thing I want to point out about what you brought up the new carpet, what you had a lot of hardwood in the house too, right? That you had already put in. Yeah, we'd installed like uh oak hardwood around like half of the main level. Yeah, so I think the um my opinion, I'm sure, and this is I think this would be backed up by statistics too, is if you have just like your bedrooms that are carpet or just like part of the home that's carpet, but you already have some nice like wood type hard surface flooring too, if the carpet's dingy, replacing the carpet is a great ROI. Um, but if the whole house is carpet, you know, that can get a little tricky because then you kind of wonder, okay, well, a lot of people, almost everybody now wants some hard surface floors, especially in the living room, kitchen, dining areas kind of thing. And so it's like sometimes if you are replacing carpet in like broad big areas that people may just want to put new floors in anyway, that may not be worth it. And then in that case, I I usually would just tell somebody just shampoo the carpet, make it as good as possible to where it's like livable and decent, and then they may want to do something different anyway. But if it's just like parts of the house and then you have like nice floors in the other parts, just replacing the carpet straight up if it's if you know it's not gonna shampoo out well, or if it's a super dated technical type of carpet, that brand new carpet with some fresh paint is is huge. Yeah. So you had that brand new carpet like feel with some like with the with no noticeable paint needed either, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. I we we actually didn't replace our carpet. Oh, you didn't? We didn't but you brought up brand new carpet, you brought up new carpet. I think that's a really good ROI to do in general. Was the but was the carpet replaced five years ago? We had just put it on some five years ago. It's funny you yeah, we didn't do it. We had talked about doing it, but we had somebody come professionally clean it and it looked so good that we decided it wasn't worth it. Okay, so there you go. In general, yes, though, just cleaning it. Well, if it was only if if the carpet's five years or less now and you and it's and it's neutral and nice, and you can shampoo it out of course. I I guess I meant like if it was super data carpet, I'd agreed with you that's not a good thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely. So and then you and then you were very focused on the curve appeal, which is great. And the and and when you got the fresh paint on the outside, if you're gonna go ahead and repaint the whole outside, you tried to go even more modern color and everything and and all that to be more even appealing, right? Yeah, yeah. And um, I don't know if you want to talk about exterior paint color, but I learned a lot from painting our house. I'm curious to know what because you you talk to a lot of people selling their homes. Um, I'm also curious anyone that watches this video, I'd love to hear comments of of what their favorite paint colors are exterior, sure. Favorite, yeah, yeah, of course, but also just like if they've repainted their house, what they what it looked like before, and then what they chose to do. Yeah, because man, I'll tell. You what it was hard. If you you you go on like AI Pinterest right now, you see these things, and then you go into the store, and then you get all these colors. So you have like five different matches, right? Yeah, they all look beautiful. You take it to your house, they all look completely different when you're just holding there because of the light, you're you're now outside. Then you put it, you actually paint it on your house. It like has changed like two different two or three different times to when you picked it out or what you saw online. And so I think I think I went to uh Benjamin Moore here in sunset. I think I went there like five different trips over the course of two days. And like it once you start painting your house, we were initially gonna go like really bold and go like a dark, uh like almost like black, dark gray color. Um, but then I I thought I loved it personally, but I thought that it would scare away too many potential buyers. Yeah. And so we decided not to go that route. Um and we ended up going with a a light, light green, like a little lighter color than this this plant, actually. Um, and the thought was it'd be like it was kind of like a natural color, and our home was sitting up on a hill with grass all around and a backdrop of um, you know, bushes and trees. And so it actually did a really nice job of kind of like enhancing that natural like feeling instead of being too boring modern, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I think I think by doing that it sh it kept the buyer pool larger, which in turn ended up um helping us. And I also think like if you were to look up like most popular paint colors in 2025, it was like na natural colors, like a like a green, like what

Curb Appeal Sprint Before Photos

23:35

we did. And it is it is funny because if somebody does repaint with like a bold kind of uh too too modern or too whatever color, um, you know, it's like people do get really even though they know they can repaint it, they do get like I've had buyers say, Oh, you know, gosh, I just hate the colors and that. And I'm like, you know you can repaint it. So it really does like if they like the colors or they don't have to think about it because it just looks good, yeah. Um and it's neutral enough, it makes a huge difference. So let's fast forward to um now you're like, what did you wait on? Like, what were the final touches you did before you went live? Yeah, so uh the the final touches, you mean like the like week leading up to listing two weeks before? Um so once so what we had we had painted the outside of the house. Um I think a huge thing that everybody should do when they sell their home is is pay to have somebody professionally pressure wash your house. Not not your house specifically, like the driveway, that kind of thing. All the hard surfaces on your property, I so often I see where people don't do them. Like that is such low-hanging fruit. Yes, it just it makes the prop property just shine. Like you've everybody everybody's pressure washed. When you pressure wash something, it looks so beautiful afterwards. It's brighter. Well, paying somebody to do it because if you had me pressure wash, oh, you'd see you'd see all like streaks, all the streaks and stuff. Andrea lets me pressure wash the deck, but not the driveway. Yeah, uh I have to get a shout out to uh Samuel at Clear Windows pressure washing. Yeah, I used to never hire out pressure washing I did with this guy. He rolls up, he has like these huge, like 20-gallon bucket drums in his truck full of pressure wash, I don't know, soap, I don't know what it is. Um he it was an um he did an amazing job. And we had like retaining walls all over the place. He had all the retaining walls, but a long driveway. I had him do the entire driveway, all the steps, the deck, every every hard surface on the property. I think it was like a thousand dollars is what it came out to be. But like the photos turned out so good from him doing the pressure washing. Um, I definitely think that that's definitely worth it. And you gotta be careful with who you hire if they make sure they know what they're doing, because if people don't know what they're doing, they could they could hit the wall or hit the siding or something, it could chip things, like crack a wheelchair. Yeah, yeah, or whatever. You gotta make sure that, or they'll they'll get a bunch of you know, landscape dirt kicking up on your side. Like they like people who know what they're doing, know how to prep right and how to like do everything the right way. Totally. That that's that's a good point. So we so we did the pressure washing, and we had to be like you have to be strategic about it. You can't do your yard prep and then have the pressure washer come in. No, and so pressure wash first. Yeah, so so once the painters were finished, we had him come in, pressure wash everything, and then we had the landscaping company come in, um trim, trim up everything, um, and then added some beauty bark and areas, especially like in the front of the house, like the curb appeal that you mentioned. Um all the flower pots were all dead because we were coming out of winter. Um, usually spring is the best time to list. And so putting in, going to the nursery, getting all new flowers to put in the flower pots. Um we professionally cleaned all the windows, the roof, and the gutters. Um there again, it's it's just going back to it's like when people were gonna come see the house and go to the open houses. I wanted them to think in their head, I can move in and I need to focus on moving my furniture in, not I need to focus on what are the things I need to do in the first week that I'm there. That was kind of like the goal with like with with what we decided to do. Yeah, and the window cleaning, um, along with all that, it's just the curb appeal, the the sparkle, all that just makes such a huge difference. And you and doing that right before, because as we know, windows can get dirty fast in the northwest. And then you're and then you're also timing the the weather too, as you know. Like we we have this the it could be rainy, and then you're trying to get your uh videographer and photographer, and so it's like you're trying to line up. There's like five different people you're trying to line up, but you want to have the photographer come like very quickly after all that stuff happens. So it's like that like week before a list is like it's nice to have somebody, uh a listing agent, assisting you in that. Yeah, so you can continue doing whatever it is you like to do and let the listing agent handle that stuff for you. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely when you wait. I think that it's uh you're right, it's a under under like rated thing that um that brokers, listing brokers do for their sellers if they if the sellers utilize that service and the listing broker does a good job is helping them coordinate that, getting all that timing right. It could shave weeks off of the process and um and make sure everything goes smoothly and make sure everything's timed out right. Because even with like, shoot, if you list this time of year, you know, you put your do your landscaping and the weeds are coming right back up so fast, and then it's like and so like timing all of that stuff together to get the photos out right afterwards is is kind of there's an art to that for sure. So there there is, and then um I think I think it's all it's just underrated. Like people don't think about that stuff when they go to list until you do it once, and then you realize that it actually takes a lot of time to coordinate all those people because all those people are busy in this spring, all those contractors. So you have to know contractors who are going to prioritize you and your your listings to come do that stuff. It's one thing that people don't think about until they go through it once. Totally, totally. Okay, so then the last question is is did you stage or did you have furniture in there? What do you have? Yeah, so uh we we did stage it um

Staging To Boost Price And Speed

28:55

because we've been running as an Airbnb for the the last year. Um, we already had intentionally picked out the furniture that was in there and it all looked pretty good. What we did is we went through and kind of decluttered and took out things we didn't need. Um, but we left we left it staged. I mean, anyone who goes into a like the home, it just it feels homey when it's staged versus you go into a vacant house. I work with a lot of buyers and it's so significant the difference. Oh, yeah. Um a hundred percent I think it's worth staging your house versus having it vacant. Yeah, I mean we looked up like one to five percent higher uh sales price when staged. And statistically, everybody, every stat that's been run on this, all the researchers that it sells faster and for more money. Yeah. If you have furniture in there that looks right, stage furniture. Yeah, and um, so you did not leave it just completely vacant um and you had actual nice furniture in there um and everything like that. So then you and then you did your whole listing launch marketing, you did your open houses, you ended up setting a review and um and it worked out. Um and so you did all the all the things. So congrats on that. Um I hope that um I hope that everybody got some takeaways from this. I mean, uh my takeaways here that I that I think are so good is that you you picked your spots, you know, like that downstairs bathroom, you know, is dated, but you were like, okay, this is a basement bathroom. In our price range, we um we don't we there's homes at other homes that have dated bathrooms, and we not we're not trying to be over a million dollars, although you ended up over a million dollars. Um you picked your spots, you you did the paint, you did the curb appeal stuff, um, you did the carpet cleaning, but you um you didn't go overboard on anything. And then um, oh, one final thing I gotta I gotta bring up is so with the one other thing that you did that was so brilliant that was really helpful is um in the city of Bellingham, of course, that there's the new comprehensive plan. And even if you live in the county, there's these new ADU um, you know, changes that have gone on on what you could do there. So you went out and reached out to the city of Bellingham, right? Uh yeah, yeah, correct. Um

Zoning ADU Upside That Drove Offers

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actually a good colleague of mine uh suggested I do that before I list it. Um so thank you for suggesting that. Um but we had kind of decided on the $8.99 price, we weren't feeling super great about it. Um and then we were like, let's reach out to the city, see what they say, because it was a large lot. And like five years ago, they were like, you can build an ADU on this for sure. But I hadn't revisited that in the last five years. And with all the zoning changes, I'm glad I did reach out to the city. And the city told like they sent me an email basically saying, like, you could literally put an entire you could subdivide it, put a single family home, another a second single family home on it. Um, and so that all and then we we marketed it that way, and we had that information available to anybody that was interested, and that also um brought in like in some some investors, yeah, um, with with the building potential. Yeah, so I think that was huge. That was a big factor into the reason why it ended up escalating um a hundred thousand dollars over um our list price. And on it, honestly, like yeah, I'll just I'll just leave it at that, but but significantly over our our list price because of the potential. Well, I mean, with the zoning changes, when these potential marketing the potential of these additional options, it's like A, obviously opens up these new pool buyers, like you mentioned, um, but it also, even if somebody just wants the house and they're having and they're having to pay a premium price and get in a multiple offer situation, them knowing, hey, like it has this upside, you know, it it can make them more comfortable going up higher. So it's like maybe you're not trying to, you weren't trying to price it higher to like only get those buyers that wanted the zoning to be bet that way. You were trying to price it for just somebody who wanted the house, but allowing for that upside in a multiple offer situation, and maybe and maybe you could have pushed it up a little bit for that because even this current person who purchased your home, they will now have that upside when they go to resale of also, even if they decide to do nothing with it, they'll be able to now share that um with the future buyer. And then that person might do something. And so just having that information marketed um makes a big different difference for sure. Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up because I like to talk about that with my buyers when you're trying to decide on that huge purchase. Like, do we want to do this? Knowing that resale value, even if you don't plan on doing it, just knowing in the future that that is gonna be beneficial and you'll be able to sell it and turn a profit. Um, I don't mind talking about this because our new buyer, I mean, they paid well over the list price. There's no doubt in my mind that in five, 10 years, they're gonna sell it and they're gonna be so they're gonna make a profit and be glad. They're not gonna regret paying what they paid for it because of the potential, whether they choose to to do it or or sell it and let somebody else do it, like you said. Yeah, and it's cool that the city now in Bellingham will will send an email now and say so nice, um, say, hey, these are the things you could do. Before, um, the it used to not have that situation where when you'd call the city, they would just kind of send you a link to like, here's all the red tape of how to, you know, all the zoning stuff, and send you down a rabbit hole. Um, they've been better about um about just offering up the information on um the new zoning. So if you live in the city of Bellingham in particular, really good. You can email if you're not selling right now, you could still email them and be like, hey, um, you know, is what's possible with my home if I wanted to, if I wanted to add an ADU or I wanted to add on to it, or I wanted to, you know, and in your case, your case, it was like you could add two. It was like, it was like you could split it, you could do this, this. So it's it was it was more than you even expected, which was cool. Yeah, yeah. Shout out to uh Simron at the planning department in the city of Bellingham. Like his email was, it was just so helpful. There was it answered like all the all the questions that I had in future buyers. It was very, very

Final Takeaways And How To Prepare

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helpful. Yeah, good stuff. Okay, thanks for sharing. Um, you can reach out to uh to Ian six months out if before you're thinking about selling if you want, but otherwise, um never too early to reach out to make that game plan if you're gonna sell. Yes, but I love that you practiced what you preach and uh congrats on that, and thanks for sharing and being on the podcast. Yeah. And uh yeah, comment or subscribe if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do. And uh thank you for watching or listening, you guys. Cheers.