Spring Seller Tips

Spring is one of the busiest seasons in real estate—and if you're thinking about selling, this is the time to get prepared. In this episode, we’re sharing practical Spring Seller Tips to help homeowners get their property market-ready and stand out to buyers. 

The living you podcast is a conversation about life, real estate, and the journey of living you.

For more updates, please follow us on:

Facebook: Living You Media

Instagram: livingyoumedia

YouTube: Living You Podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

All right, Jess, we are back with the Living You podcast. Welcome to another episode, everyone. Uh, how are you doing? How is how are things in the world of Jessica? And what does it mean to be Living You this fine day?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Oh, well, we are basically tasting a little bit of spring this week. So as soon as the sun came out, my life got exponentially better. So that's great. Although I think today is probably the last day of sun and happiness for a little while.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Again, yes, for clarity, we're in upstate New York. We have a strong seasonal uh geography and seasons, and we just melted off what, like uh basically six inches or ten inches of snow, depending on where we were on elevation, and in the last week or so kind of disappeared. We're out looking at greenish brown grass, and um but it does get everyone thinking spring-like, and we had sun, and I think almost universally everyone was in a better mood instantaneously. Once you see like 65 degrees, and you actually get some solar radiation into your into your skin, and it's like, wow, this is what humans in the actual environment are meant to experience. So yeah, this is what vitamin D feels like. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I personally am one of these Jess, I can I can cave in pretty good, meaning like I can hang out in a dark, cold, like home base. I like to be homebody. Uh, so it takes a lot for me to get kind of like in a funk, but upstate winters are long. And after you get to March and you're definitely kind of like, all right, I think, I think it's time for some warmth. I'm done with snow and everything. So anyway, we're welcoming it. But like you said, it's gonna get cold again, and we're not out of the woods, but it does have everyone thinking spring, and that's what we were gonna talk about today, right? We're gonna talk about some seller, seller perspective things on what one would look for or consider in this 2026 spring market, again, in our local context, um, but things that would be on a seller's mind, maybe conversations they would have with their agent or things that would help them sell. Um What do you what are your initial thoughts on that? Do you let's talk timing, let's talk seasonal timing real quick, because I have strong thoughts on this, and let me let me pair, let me back up a second. When we talk spring market, some people think we're already in it, right? Some people think that doesn't mean that does that mean May or or even late May June, right? Memorial Day is spring. Um, what does it mean to you and what makes sense around here?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Um, all good thoughts and points. Um, we did touch on this in one of our last episodes um on our myth understandings that, you know, spring was going to be the best time. And it's it's great to come back to that and define, yeah, what is spring? I think spring is just literally like we were saying, when it starts to get warmer, when you can sustain temperatures that are not freezing, things start to bud a little bit, and you start to get little sniffles and sneezes in, which actually already has already started this week for me. Um, allergy season, I would say, is spring season. Uh no, but I think when your property starts to dry out a little bit, like we do have a pretty significant mud season happening at the moment. Um, and again, we're not out of the woods, but as soon as you can sustain warmer temperatures and people feel like being outside, they will certainly feel like going to see property. Um, and that gives them the earlier in the year we can get that warm, those warm temperatures up, the better. I think buyers are willing to come out a little earlier. Again, they probably have been in a cave. They've been hibernating. I mean, no matter where you are, if you're seasonal, most of the United States is has, you know, four seasons. Um, you know, you you want to get out, you want to get out as soon as possible. If it's just going to open houses, you know, okay. So we're thinking about selling this year, but also being done before the summer, moved in, you know, things like that, because they're gonna start school, you know, kids go back to school in August now. So I think it already gets people thinking as soon as we can sustain any temperatures and houses are not winterized and miserable to be inside.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Yeah. We're actually gonna we're gonna touch on a lot of that stuff um as we as we go here. I think I think there's validity to considering anywhere from right now through kind of that that May, June to be considered spring in different ways, right? So, for example, we just talked about our snow melted. So that means that people that are worried about like driveway access or or maybe like to be honest, we just melted all this snow. The rivers are very high, streams are very high. You might have like a drainage culvert or a ditch that might be full of debris and might get clogged. And so there's stuff that like once you're through the melt, the big melt off of snow, uh, that kind of feels like you've you've cleared a hurdle, basically, because now like I don't have to worry about people not being able to get up the driveway, right? Or something along those lines or anything like that. Um, it is amazing, frankly, just how much water is in our land, is in our hills around here. We have these beautiful rolling hills, these big Catskill Mountains, and people don't think about it, but that is I don't want to go geology on you, but I mean, this is like this is largely sedimentary rock in our area. This are sh uh, these slate-ish uh rock features, these sedimentary rock formations that have been eroded over time, but soils build up on these surfaces through uh weatherization anyway, weather weathering processes. You went full geology. I think we go full geology. Um microgeology, but uh there's there's natural springs that are seeping out of hillsides, and uh people just don't think about it. They think hills are like rock, and it's like uh there's a lot more to it. But anyway, um, so you might you might walk back behind your house and think, Oh, I'm gonna have a dry hike, and then suddenly every five steps, you're like, why is it spongy underneath my feet? It's because there's water just just bursting out of the hillside because it was contained and soaked up over the over the winter. Anyway, that's a small part of it, but that was fascinating as a as a land as a land hiker of these parcels that I that I love to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Um But we are right now, like I said, in kind of a micro mud season, and I live on Scenevas Creek. Um, and I will tell you as a downstater, that's not a creek. I don't care what you want to call it, that's a river. I have a raging river. It's literally there are uprooted trees going by my house. I am like in full on like tsunami mode over here um in uh right now. And you know, we do have uh what we call level one flooding, level two flooding, and then level three flooding, it would go ahead, you know, would be in my house. Um that's our sometimes we call it DEF CON one or level one. Uh but we are back at level zero, but yeah, that is happening right now. There's a lot of things um to consider, but it all points to we're warming up and we're getting much closer to um when people are going to start venturing out and wanting to get these properties sold.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Your creek is particularly cool, right where you are, because it's a very broad and shallow creek. So it looks very intimidating. It's not actually super deep, but it's probably it's probably what, 30 feet wide literat at a normal time of year.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

70 feet wide.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

70 feet wide?

SPEAKER_00 7:42

It is not a creek. When people tell me that this is, I'm like, you're a nuts. It is 70 feet, and right now the water, you would be up over your head. It would be over your head because it there's at least there's at least seven to eight feet of bank. Like, you know, when you go down and you're in it and it's ankle deep, you can't see over the bank. It's well above your head, you can't really see over into the into the land. Right now, it's spilling over the banks, so it's up six, seven, eight feet higher than it's supposed to be, seventy feet wide. How much water is that? And it's going so fast. I mean, there's trees whipping by my house. This is not at all what we were supposed to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

No, no, well, um but it's terrifying. We'll decide whether this stays in. CJ might uh we might we might edit this out.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Um it might also be interesting.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

It might be. Uh so I the the part what I was trying to get at with my water out of the hills and your width of the of the creek thing is I I truly believe that there's a lot of agents that sell that have conversations with their potential sellers at this time of year saying, or have been saying it frankly for months in the winter, saying, let's wait till spring because things will look better, right? So I want to clarify what look better or optimal is again in our area. You go south an hour, it's different. You go north an hour, it's different. But for for where we are, like I'm looking outside my window, Jess, it's kind of gross out there, right? We had we had white snow for a while, and that's kind of pretty in its own way. Now we've got this dead brown grass, and like you said, there's mud, there's still some like slushy snow sticking around. Like it's a challenge, to be completely honest, to get great outdoor photography at this time of year. And that's gonna remain the case probably until late April, early May. Grass will start to grow uh in April, right? I I distinctly remember every year because I mow my own lawn and it's a chore, and I always am like, ugh, the first couple lawn mows are super exciting because it's fun, you got the machine out, you're uh conquering my land and my world. Man, but after like four lawn mows, you're kind of like, oh yeah, this is a chore. I forgot how redundant this gets. But either way, I always chart track that first lawn mow of the season because I think it kind of tells where where spring has progressed. And I think last year I mowed my lawn for the first time at the very end of April, but before that, it's been like the first week of May. So that's generally in my mind, for me, that's spring. Spring means the lawn mower came out and I had to like start cutting the grass. Um so the lawns might start to perk up, but if you want like aerial photography or if you want beautiful green forests, you're not getting true leaf cover until later in May or even into June to some extent. So you're gonna get the again. This is why am I such a biologist ecologist type, but we're getting the buds that are gonna they're gonna bud from the the leaves in the next few weeks, but it'll take them a while to fully leaf, and then you'll have the the true foliage by by June. So there's a really beautiful progression. I actually have often wanted to do a time lapse of like yes, like because people do time lapses of fall foliage, but I want to do a time lapse of spring growth.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Everything budding. It is so beautiful up here. Yeah. And there's so for a couple of years, with the exception of last year, for a couple of years, there was literally it felt like it was an overnight burst, where it was like one day in May, I woke up and everything was green. It it felt like there was a line in the sand, and the next day it was spring. It was incredible. Last year, I think it was a little bit more of an evolution and it took a little bit more time, but it it's you can literally wake up one day randomly in May and full on, you're ready to go. Here's spring. Um, but I think if we're talking about how that affects the real estate market, and you know, there's there's tools and tricks in the trade. Um, you know, we we don't advocate, you know, lying or misrepresenting anything, but you know, you can clean up a property, you can add some green grass, you can pop the colors a little bit, you know, in posts.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

So you mean through like editing or even now it's like AI, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

You can so we the one of the things that we use now, um, our photographer uses something like no matter it was like pouring out, and you know, it looked like it was a sunny day, and he literally had to go and take the droplets off of the windows, but it looked like it was shot on a beautiful sunny day. So we also could help the photos look better now more than we used to. And I think people understand within a few months it's gonna look like that anyway, or within a few weeks. Um, so I don't think sellers, if they're ready to go, and that's what we said in our our last pod was if they're ready to go now, it doesn't matter if there's mud, it doesn't matter if there's snow, it doesn't matter if it's beautiful, it really doesn't matter. If you're ready to go now, now is the best time to do it, and we'll do everything we can to represent that property in the most beautiful, you know, um marketable way.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

Yeah, yeah, that's all I wanted to get at was but there is that little caveat of like if an agent is saying to you, Oh, we're gonna, it's gonna look gorgeous in in March or April, truthfully, it won't naturally look that gorgeous. It's we can make it look as, you know, like you just said, we'll do our best, it'll look fine, but it won't look truly green, vibrant until uh until May. I don't know why I belabored that issue so much, but um I always track that and I always think it's fascinating. Um Okay. Does a seller care about buyer activity at this time of year? I mean, that seems like a no-brainer, but like what what can a what would a potential seller gonna put their house in the market this season what do they want to pay attention to? Should they pay attention to anything, or should they just follow their own timeline? Um I have some stats in front of me, but I want to see your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

I mean, again, like I said, the the best time for you is always whatever the best time is for you. Um I would say, and it's probably on your list, and I might be doing I might be Okay, yep, so there's dogs here in the studio today. It's bring your dog to work day. No, thank you, sir. Um I think the best thing for for any seller at any time, actually, is it really spring um, you know, specific, but that's spring clean, right? Decluttering, spring cleaning. I mean, you know, just just get in the nooks and crannies, get it dusted, you know, maybe get a cleaning lady for the spring to come and do a deep clean. That would be the the best thing I think people could do is declutter, put things away, get some stuff into storage. The garage is already full, the basement's already full. I don't care. Get some bins from Walmart, you know, get the clutter away, put it away, get it cleaned really well. That's all I want people to do. I don't necessarily want them to do a whole bunch of work and stuff. I think no matter what time of year it is, it's always best to do that. But the spring, everyone just feels like doing that. Like, let's throw out all the junk we haven't used in eight months um and start fresh. So that would be the my my first initial reaction. Um, just declutter it and get it cleaned.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

So you're talking see, because you're you're the interior specialist here. I feel like I'm the exterior specialist in a in a way. Like that's kind of how we divide our our mentality. But I I think so decluttering is always a good idea, whether it's spring, summer, fall, whatever, right? Um, in terms of outside stuff, there's a lot you'd really you should spring cleaning is a legit thing, right? But you want to make sure you're, like I said earlier, the driveway, make sure it's it's you might want to get a load of gravel. Like again, every house is different. Someone has a paved driveway, some might have gravel, but if you have a rough like think about it from the buyer's perspective, right? We're talking first impressions, right? So a much better first impression is a seller that might invest a small amount of money into having a landscaper or a or a clean out crew come out and you know, drop a little load of gravel to refresh that entry, um, that that walkway up to your house, you know, that that stone walkway, like weed whack it or or whatever, like just make it nice. Like you don't have to spend a ton of money. This is one of the highest return on investment things, is just make the exterior approach as as good as you can for as little investment of money and a little bit of time. Clean your gutters. You know what's really, really unappealing is when a buyer looks up at the gutters of a house and they see little saplings growing out of the gutter because they're like, wow, that's been so unattended for six years that there's literally seedlings, seedlings growing in the biomass that's accumulated in the gutter. That's not a great sign of a well-maintained home, to be completely honest. And you could you could just deduce or reduce the price right there based on those little saplings in the gutter. Every time I see that, I'm like, what else has not been paid attention to for six or seven years? Right. So, like, I mean, hire a handyman, clean out the gutter, power wash the house is a good idea. Again, you gotta be careful with their siding type, depending on what's on your house, but or at least some kind of a light power wash, a power scrub, same thing for like your your deck, maybe, or your stone walkway. That little bit, that six hours on one weekend, would make the buyer so much more optimistic about how the rest of that showing is gonna go.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, no, I agree with that. Curb appeal is huge, and that's that's why there's that that term, curb appeal, literally is a real estate term that's just as important as everything else. Um, but yes, at least the approach to the house, just the walkway coming into the house. It doesn't have to be all around the whole thing, doesn't necessarily have to be done right then in early spring um or late winter, but definitely the approach should be um like we we had that listing recently, like there was like the I think the mailbox got like hit by a car and the like we saw pieces of the mailbox when we went to do like the listing presentation, and I was like really hoping like I totally forgot to say like maybe you did, but I totally forgot to say like make sure that pieces of the mailbox aren't there when we started showing. But I was happy that when I did go to do the first showing, the mailbox was back. So little things like that, and things happen all the time, especially with rural properties, and um you know, make sure there's no dead birds around or anything. Yeah, so do do a little bit of that. That does definitely goes a long way.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

Yeah, all those, yeah, all that those sticks that have fallen, uh, you know, clean up, clean up that anyway. Okay, so that covers kind of the the visual appeal of what you can do with a minimal, minimal kind of investment. I'm gonna push go back into buyer behaviors. I'm looking at a little piece of data I pulled earlier. So we're we sometimes deep dive into data, Jess, and sometimes we'll just do a light, a light data scrub. So I just asked uh, frankly, my my AI what what nationally um well northeast actually, so we have some seasonality, but what are the peak contract date, contract periods? So there's actually a uh a contract peak in May and June, and then a secondary peak in September. So think about that. That's your your serious spring buyers who came out, they were waiting all winter, they're ready to buy, things are popping, and they're ready to go into contract immediately. And then a lot of time it slows down a bit, not a lot, but it slows down a bit over the duration of the proper summer because school is out, people are active and enjoying life. And then as you kind of prep to go back into the the school year or or whatever, people kind of have another little secondary bubble. And up here, we get like we get definitely foliage listings and foliage contracts. So for up here, September, October are high contract uh months, and then of course they don't close until your your November, December because of the delay. So if you look at actual closings, that doesn't track. But if you look at contract, you know, written contract moments, there's a May June and a and a September-October.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

That's interesting. So you'd think, you know, contract might be one to two months after listing, right? Um, if you're if you're kind of doing the things well. Um so that's great. And also, you know, I always feel like the sellers that step out a little earlier, they're not lumped into because when there's only so many buyers, right? So then all of a sudden, if the inventory, and that's what we're talking about, are we gonna have, are we gonna swing the other way and have too much inventory this year because we've had not enough inventory. So that's why I say you always want to position yourself in the market when your home's gonna stand out. And that may not be in peak spring. It might be the minute your house looks beautiful, the minute you kind of have all your ducks in a row, get out a little early so those serious buyers see your house first and get you into contract. Don't wait for like, because I think that's what happened last year. We had sort of a late pop where it was like May and June and July. We had the most listings go up. And okay, so you know, there's gonna be somebody that misses out. There's gonna be houses that get missed, or there's gonna be buyers that just see so many things, they just make themselves crazy. So I I also advocate for finding the perfect sweet spot for you and your property. Don't get lumped in with everybody. If you have to sell when everybody sells, that's great. You know, we can we'll make it work. We again, then you have some other things to consider to stand out, and then you definitely want to be priced well. You don't want to be overpriced when there's 50 things to look at, um, because that's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

I mean, this remains probably the the single most abide most important concept for a seller to understand is you this is no longer the the price it where you want to market. It truly isn't. You have to rely on your agent for some expertise to help you position that property. If you if you actually want to sell the property, you have to price it to where the eyeballs are gonna be. And not just the eyeballs, but the the actual the actual written offers are gonna be. So the days of yeah, I can list high and negotiate down, and oh, we can wait. You can do that if that's your choice, but be prepared to uh wait. Uh yeah, I don't I don't want to know and or price reduce and or play those days on market games. So again, that's not like we're not, we don't do this pod just to like say, come list with us or anything like that. But this is just a general principle. If I want to put we talked about this the last time we met, if I want to put a product on any market, why would I want to be the highest priced one when it might not be the best? Like, why would I overprice anything? Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Just if you're know your market, know your consumer. Yep, know your consumer. And we also talked about appraisal on one of the last ones, which was interesting. Like, is the appraisal the same as the market value? Um, no. So you can even go and get an appraisal and be way off because that's just another opinion. That's just another, that's comps, that's dollars and cents. Maybe that is lower than what you should get. Maybe that is higher than what the than what you should get. Um, it all comes down to what is a buyer willing to pay. You have to get the buyer in the door. The higher you are, the less buyers walk in the door. Or, like we said, they may not even call at all. So now no buyers are coming in the door. When that happens for two or more weeks, you got a problem. It's price.

SPEAKER_03 23:01

Yep. And so you just spoke a little bit about buyer mentality. So let's go into what what I know this this this pod we're trying to focus on seller mindset for the spring, but we also have to be cognizant of the buyer mindset. What are they up against? So here's I'll explain some of the context. Um, we're actually seeing a slight increase recently in first-time home buyers for the first time in a while. That's uh good news. Maybe they're able to save a little bit more. Uh, but again, we're recording this in early mid-March of 2026. Right now, mortgage interest rates are just about 6%, a little over. They had dropped a tiny bit below six, now they're back up. Now we've also engaged in some, you know, the geopolitical landscape is highly fluid right now. We're not gonna go into a ton of that, but truly buying momentum slows down uh as you increase uncertainty about uh the the the national economy, and the national economy is tied to geopolitics, right? So the more weird stuff that uh is happening in the world, the less confident buyers are gonna be to make that huge decision in their life. So there's a little pumping of the brakes. We have a a solid mortgage rate for what has been the last couple years. It's it's on the better side of where we've been. Housing affordability remains a challenge, especially in the face of what we talked about recently: increased utility costs, increased home insurance costs, increased general cost of living. So buyers have it hard. If you're wanting to sell, don't make it harder. Again, that's that overpricing part. People will buy, they are saving, they're prepared, but they're not prepared to overpay for this thing that you think is worth more than it actually is. Um, that's kind of my sentiment on buying mindset for where we are right now.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Mm-hmm. No, that makes sense. It the emotional value that people assign, you know, on both sides. Again, that's like, why do why are why is there a bidding war? Because people love the house and they can't lose it, you know. Why are things overpriced? Because the seller, the homeowner that's been there has renovated or taken care of this or done this. There's an emotional value to their their things on both sides that really shouldn't play a factor. Sometimes it does, but it really shouldn't play a factor, especially when you're pricing. Because again, the whole idea is not testing the market. Don't test the market. When people say, let's just test the market, don't test the market because you're gonna fail. You may fail. And then what happens now? What is the buyer psychology behind the house that comes on way too high and then gets pulled off? Buyers are this seller's not realistic, and we've talked about that before.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Seller's not realistic, something's wrong with it. It's a litany of these things. They're not positive.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

You don't want bad press on your listing. I mean, I literally had a seller that we we couldn't sell, it was four weeks, and I'm always four weeks in, and like, let's have a conversation. And after four weeks, he goes, Well, I understand a price reduction, and that might help get more buyers, but what does it say if we raise the price? And I had this moment of like, I don't even want to explore this because I first of all I'm not raising the price. But second of all, it does say the opposite. It says we've had so much activity, right, that we have too many offers and we don't know what to do. So we're gonna raise the price to thin the herd. Yeah, it might say that, but when you have no activity, that is not the answer. That's not the remedy. Raise the price, which I thought was incredible. And I said, please just give me one more week at this price. And thankfully, I sold it that week. I didn't have to raise the price. But yeah, so everything you do on the market lands on the buyer and has a perception. Whether it's right or wrong doesn't matter. Their perception is their reality. Something's wrong with the house, the seller's unrealistic. So when you come back out at a more realistic price, they may just skip it. Because especially if you come back out and there's 10 other houses to look at in their price range, they're skipping it. So don't kill your own listing, is is my best advice. Yeah. I still I I know you're a high guy. If you want to list high, call rich. No, no, that's not that's not my mentality.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

But I also want to give I like autonomy. So I think some agents think that they need to drive the dialogue or the narrative or the process more than I do. I want this to be your decision. I want to present you with options, right? There is an option to list on the high side and and hope. That's an option, but there's gonna be there's potential consequences. I want to run you through the gamut of of options and potential consequences and and make a it's a decision that's best for you. So I don't want to just be like, this is what I would do, so this is what you should do. Because that's I I fundamentally I am not you. I don't know your your inner workings of your brain and your mindset. So that's how I operate, but um as an agent, I prefer to sell the thing, right? Because that's that that that's my business.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

For everybody, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:05

But but but I still it should be the the owner's decision on how they treat their property and the selling process.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yes, and I I I do agree with that. This is not a disagreement, and sometimes they really don't know what's best. And I'm gonna I'm gonna lean heavily sometimes on hey, I really don't think we should do that, and here's why, and you can still make a decision, but there may be times where I really not saying I don't advise, I'm not saying I don't give away.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

Like if something seems really foolish.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Yeah, but I've watched you do it, and you do a and I've I literally said it was masterful, a masterful job of talking through all the options without making the seller feel any kind of way that they were right or wrong. Like just here's all your yeah, we can talk through that too. And yep, that could be an issue, but here's the other thing. Like, it was an incredible neutral, you know, menu of options for them that I think that they really appreciated, and I did too, just kind of witnessing that where my style is like, so here's here here's what I would do, and maybe here's what I would do really doesn't matter. But again, it's really up to that seller, like you said. I think at the end of the day, no one knows anything. We don't have a crystal ball. It comes down to what is a buyer willing to pay for this house. Nobody knows who the buyer is, nobody knows where they're coming from, nobody knows whether they're upstate, downstate, across the state. We don't know. There's no crystal ball. So all you have to do is all you should do is price it where people are going to be interested and actually call me and want me to show it to them. That's that's what we should be focused on, and then we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

Yeah. I also think the days of um, you know, the days of what do I want, how do I want to phrase this? I think that I think the buyer appetite for for making improvements is decreasing as well. And that's largely because of uh in our area specifically, contractor availability is low. So even if there are good contractors, they're they're booked and they're busy, they're hard to get a hold of. Um, some people want to now there is always a a niche of the the DIYer or the fix and flip, or the people that have the experience and want to do it themselves, that's a great opportunity. You can find these more more unrefined homes and put your own stamp on it. Great, and you're gonna get it at a lower cost. Let's set that aside. Let's put the your I don't want to call average, but a person that doesn't have the ambition or the skill or the the network to get uh professionals in and do a bunch of stuff. So I think what what I see is the cost of materials, all this other stuff, the the availability of contractors, I think it's uh making it more incumbent on the owner to not necessarily change the things, but like has your furnace been tuned up in a couple years, right? Because I think you have what I'm trying to get at is most buyers are gonna do a home inspection, right, Jess? So sometimes we we advise a seller to maybe you even do a pre-listing inspection so that you have a a knowledge of what might be flagged. That's an option. I like that option. I don't always push for it, but it's a strong option. But I think you should have an idea that this will this home at some point will be scrutinized pretty highly. So let's look at the things that we think. I'm not a home inspector, but I can tell you a couple things that I'm pretty sure are gonna be scrutinized, right? So let's look at those and if we can address those in a light way, you know, can we tune up the furnace? Can we, like I said, clean out those gutters, can we can we do some some light paint touch up on baseboards that are banged up by the dogs and stuff like that? Goes a long way towards again, it's the the visual appeal, but also when someone does put it under a a microscope, um, we can probably at least like manage that process a little better by getting ahead of it. I think fundamentally, Jess, I think I often just want to get ahead of the curve on stuff. So if I see a potential roadblock, I'd want to at least like you might not be able to remove the whole roadblock, but like plan it, plan know where the detour is, right? No, no, know the way around it or have a have an off-ramp. I don't know if that meant my my analogy is not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

No, no, no. But I think one of the things for if we're talking to sellers, you know, and prepping and thinking about coming on the market, it's those big ticket items. Like, don't worry about, hey, should I replace the fridge? Like, no, no, no. Does the septic, is the septic good? Has that been putting it on the floor? Do you know where it is? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

Like younger septic, like we're gonna talk about like, sorry, I'm gonna cut across you, but the these high return on investment things. Do you know how much peace of mind it is to say, oh, I had a professional come out a week before we listed it, pump my septic tank, visual inspection, and that thing has a document from a professional company that says this thing looks good. That is like gold. That is gold.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Pump your septic, check, you know, make sure your well is good. Um, your systems, guys, your furnace, your oil, whatever, whatever heating system you run, if you have central air, what whatever those things are, make sure your major systems, your roof. If your roof is leaking, you might want to address that before we go on, or be prepared to give a hefty credit for a roof. Like, you don't have to do the work. And I advocate not doing the work, but you also can't then ask for a higher price. You have to price accordingly. You have to say, hey, I'm priced because of the roof. Um, I'm priced because you're gonna have to put a new furnace in this thing. Those are the only things don't worry. Like, I love the curb appeal, I love decluttering. You don't have to do any of that stuff if you say, listen, all the systems are up and running beautifully. You gotta clean it yourself. No problem, a buyer will buy that all day. Or there's no weird structural issues, like the support beams and everything look clean in the basement. Like, clean your basement. Sometimes, like, get a dehumidifier, stick it in your basement so it doesn't smell musty when somebody comes in. I mean, just those are the major things that people are going to worry about. And those are the big ticket items where you're gonna someone's gonna come back to you and say, we want a $20,000 credit, a $10,000 credit, a $50,000 credit because of all the these major systems issues that came up on the inspection report. They don't give a shit about how many flowers you planted outside or like, you know, what color the living room is. They don't care. They don't care what your couch, where your couch is. At the end of the day, if we have to rank most important, take care of those systems first.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

That's such good advice. I love that. Uh, quick sidebar. Let's talk about homes that are winterized. So um in our in our area, we have a large number of secondary homeowners, meaning they're a vacation home, and oftentimes they just shut them, shut them in whatever October, November, December, and they don't open them back up. What that means, if you don't know winterization, it basically means you turn down the heat either all the way or down to a very low level. Most of the time, it means draining your water from all your fixtures in the house. You drain the water heater, turn off your well pump, you know, so that the house is basically dry, so that your the concept is you don't want burst pipes because that can be a major flood problem. So oftentimes you winterize the home. Here's some of the downsides of winterized homes, Jess, and we'll go and then I'll get into spring. But winterized homes get really cold inside, especially if you have the heat completely off. So uh we can show a home in December, January, February, and it's maybe 15, 20 degrees outside, and that's cold, and it's a miserable day. You the worst thing is you walk into a house and it's colder, and it actually is, these things really hold the cold in them. It's so unpleasant. I'm not showing your house. Freezing cold, freezing cold, winterized home. So that my point is, even into the spring, we might be 65 degrees outside today. You go in from a sunny 65 degree day into a cold winterized house, it's gonna feel weird. It's not gonna feel like a home.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

I'm leaving immediately.

SPEAKER_03 36:07

It's an odd experience. So I again I do it all, I do it regularly because that's a sort of a normative thing up here, but it is not the best experience for the buyer, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Um it's awful, and it's awful for the agent, especially when they're like me with Mediterranean blood and want to be in the sun. I want to be in 90 degrees, and I would be so comfortable. I need like a heat rock. Um but but I think our our our point of advice is winterize your home if you're not gonna be there. Do not just turn the heat down, like don't cause yourself more expensive problems later on. You may have to winterize your house, and maybe then we do have to wait to list it, just depending on you know that that specific situation. There are also buyers that don't care. They understand they've they've been in country homes before, they have one too. But um, but definitely uh do it if you're going to turn down your heat or not be there for the winter. Do it, winterize it, and and we'll deal with it. But it is, I still have nightmares of showing of my feet being frozen because it's like, oh, can you take your shoes off and walk on the slate floor?

SPEAKER_03 37:16

And you just had one recently where you were at a final walkthrough and some the water was turned on to like check a faucet and suddenly uh there was a leak, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:23

We and and you know, the and I was actually just a stand-in for the buyer's agent, but the buyer's agent and the seller's agent advised the buyer we really shouldn't dewinterize. I know you want to run water and make sure it works. We'd rather leave something in escrow. No, no, no, the water has to be on for the walkthrough. I want to see the water flowing. And as soon as uh the agent turned it on, the pipe literally burst right in front of her face. So um, yeah, so now the seller has to correct that. And it's like, really, but you know, it's fine. Burst pipes, and this was a very minor, um, you know, thankfully it was just an elbow popped out somewhere in the basement.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

But yeah, it's a it's an era we're in the era of of instant to instantly accessible information, but I did a I did a search earlier. So again, for our specific like kind of geographic area, we don't consistently get above freezing temperatures overnight. Or so our our cold our low temp isn't consistently above freezing until late April. So if you were gonna try to de-winterize, don't do it too early because if you were to try it because it's 65 degrees today, wonderful. But guess what? It's gonna be like 17 in a night or two. So you know, we're not gonna be we're not gonna be on easy street until until April or late April.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Correct. I mean, even into May, we've we've gotten a frost. I remember my first my first summer here, the first, you know, spring summer that that we had, we had bought our house in November uh of 2021. So we were excited for the spring and the warm weather. So I went and I bought rose bushes, and someone said, Don't don't put them out, don't put them out until after after Memorial Day. Don't plant anything. You're still gonna get a frost. I was like, there's no way. I literally waited until my grandmother's birthday, which is the May 13th, and I planted a rosebush for her in the front, and like within a week, we had a frost. I mean, yeah, it was terrible. So, no joke, like, don't put anything in the ground until after Memorial Day weekend. Like, I plant, I do want to planting Memorial Day weekend. So, yeah, it's just you still could well into May get that frost, and that might be a one-off just one night, one overnight, but yeah, it's the longer you can wait, probably the better.

SPEAKER_03 39:40

Yeah, I think that I mean, so that kind of concludes the what I wanted to cover for this topic. Um, I nothing really popped into my head uh additional in our conversation right here. I I wonder I mean, seller perspective, spring issues. We talked about looks, we talked about systems, we talked about pricing. Oh, here's one. Here's one. Um so let's say we take photos today, because that's when they want to put it on the market, and it and the outside doesn't look great. It's a little brownish, it's a little brown. Would you as an agent offer to come back in uh six weeks if we're not in a contract and and do a photography refresh? Is that an option? Is that viable?

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Is that a I would do that? I think I would first look at the digital option um and see if that looks good. I mean, sometimes a digital option looks perfectly fine. Um, if it looks a little wonky, yeah, I'll go back and shoot it. Absolutely. Absolutely I would because you gotta do everything you can. I think what really annoys me too, and this is why we want to do this podcast, is like it's the bad eggs out there. There's a lot of great agents, but sellers need to do their homework. The person that just puts your listing in the MLS to die and doesn't do anything else and doesn't update and doesn't have honest conversations with you about marketing or pricing or photography, or is just shooting on their cell phone. I'm seeing like five, six, seven, eight, nine hundred thousand dollar houses with cell phone pictures, and I just I have like a mini panic attack, and I just ask, I have to ask God, why is this happening? So just make sure that you do your due your due diligence as a seller. Look at what your listing agent does, look at their website, look at their current listings. And I always say, be like a secret shopper and actually, actually call and call on a listing and see how they handle you. Um be be very diligent, ask a lot of questions, look at their stuff, and just know that what they're doing right now, like the worst of what they're doing, is probably what you're gonna get. So just I know this is I got into a long-winded thing, but if this is what we're doing and helping people for the spring, you don't have to use us, right? But you should use the best agent you can find, the one that you know is being honest with you, the one that's not afraid to push back and actually educate you on things, but also the one that listens to you and considers what you need. There's a balance to that. If they just tell you everything you want to hear, that should be a red flag as well.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Professional photography.

SPEAKER_03 42:15

Yeah, I mean that's been your mantra for a long time. And so, full disclosure, when I first started as an agent seven, seven plus years ago, um, I was not I wasn't hiring a professional photographer for the vast majority of my first couple years. I I am now for the most part, and I enjoy it, first of all, because the product is better than I could do. And I mean, sure, there's a minimal expense, but in the grand scheme of things, if I want to be a professional agent, I should know my limitations. I am not a photographer. I don't have the highest end equipment, and I should trust the professional to provide the service to me that allows me to provide the service to you. And if anyone I don't want to like anti-agent, but any agent that doesn't understand that kind of bothers me.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

I want to say okay, so this is what I want to say, Rich. This is what you're gonna what you want to say too. The house sometimes sells anyway. Yeah. Despite a horrendous agent with horrendous marketing, an awful ugly photography, and a grammatically incorrect, like what are they talking about description. I read them sometimes and I cringe. Please just speak English next time. And those houses could sell anyway. So these agents are rewarded for bad behavior on a very large scale. If buyers stopped looking at houses and they're not going to, but in a perfect world, buyers wouldn't even click on a house that the first photo is a toilet with the seat up. Or I love like the the weird, um, it's like the the front of the house, and then it's like the laundry room, and then it's like outside, and then you're in the bedroom, and then all of a sudden you're outside again. I'm like, is there a portal? Are we like warping? Between rooms here? We like there's a hole in the floor that all of a sudden I'm in the backyard after I was in the laundry room. Don't do that. But though houses selling that peeve of mine, too. Yes, but houses sell anyway, and that's why agents get away with it, and that's why they continue to do it. But as a seller, you deserve better. You deserve better. You're gonna pay them a commission, which of course you get to negotiate, but you're gonna pay them a commission. Don't get the cheapest guy the discount because you think you're gonna make more money and they're not gonna put any effort into it. Don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

It might not be a discount, it might just be worth doing this for the same price.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Yeah, for the same price as somebody else that'll actually do a lot more for you. So that's what we're just asking you to do your homework, do your due diligence, and um and yeah, and you deserve better. You deserve the best. You deserve the best agent. I want you to have the best agent in your area. I really do. And someone who deserves your business because they're actually a professional. I know it's it might sound harsh, but this is these are just my beliefs and my opinions, and this is the standard I hold myself to. And I wish that all agents held themselves to a standard um and treated it like a business and not like they have to do everything. You don't have to do everything.

unknown 45:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Hire hire help.

SPEAKER_03 45:14

It's part of it's part of why we have these conversations. It's part of why we started this this podcast, Jess, is like not that we're we're we're not the best, right? But we try to be people that act with integrity, we act with the best interest of the the the client at heart, and we want to provide the best service we can. Um I I said this I think on our other like a week ago when we did this, but I just don't know that that's where everyone's starting place is in this industry. And I I wish it was. I think there's a lot of me first and not much you first, my client.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Um well it's the expectation of when they get in. They think it's a job or something, and like they're scrambling to make their first commission, or and and then people just get comfortable with the amount of money that they make and not spending anything. They need a net as much as possible. And we understand because it's expensive to live your life. They have expenses, they have kids, they have mortgage, whatever, groceries, gas is going up again. Things are very expensive. So agents feel they have to hold every dollar of that commission. It has to go into their pocket, so they are going to do everything so that they can earn every dollar. I love that, and I understand why you need to do that, but also are you making the best choices for your business? Like, I don't care what things cost me. I think about this is I don't think about this is what this costs. I think about what is this net? Okay, so what can I reasonably take away from this commission, this sale, this whatever, after I've paid my photographer, my transaction coordinator, my showing assistant, whatever, whatever my system is, so that I'm not scrambling and people aren't waiting on me. Because a lot of times when you have all these things start piling up, someone's waiting on you. And time is money. And and now you drop a ball, or you do this, or you mess something up, or something is done incorrectly because you're scrambling to do everything, or things are being are lagging that they shouldn't, and people are not being communicated with that deserve to be communicated with more timely. So you're gonna you can't do it all. You you shouldn't do it all, and it's not a criticism, it's I'm helping you too, agents, run it like a business. I can help you do that.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Shifted full into agent advice mode. I did, and I didn't we walk this in between like we want to talk to people, but we also want to ad like give give our ins insider tips to agents, like be better.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Well, I want to help everybody. I mean, but that the the this is what you know uh we're t we're telling sellers right now to call around and speak to agents. So I'm like, while you're doing that, let me tell the agents like when they call you, here's what you do.

SPEAKER_03 47:52

So can't take the coach out of you.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

I can't, you'll never get the coach out of me. Because I I do want it to be uh, I want everyone to be I want everyone to be happy. That's a great way to end it. It's a great way. It's a great way to end it.